10 to 1

A savanna elephant in Pilanesberg National Park, South Africa. The total biomass of savanna elephants was estimated in the study to be half that of the 2m tonnes cats collectively weigh. Photograph: Arterra Picture Library/Alamy

Being out of balance is not a good thing, particularly in terms of the 10 to 1 ratio of the weight of man versus the weight of wild animals as this shows just how effective we have been in plundering earth's resources 24/7.

To whit ...

‘A wake-up call’: total weight of wild mammals less than 10% of humanity’s

From elephants to tigers, study reveals scale of damage to wildlife caused by transformation of wildernesses and human activity

The total weight of Earth’s wild land mammals – from elephants to bisons and from deer to tigers – is now less than 10% of the combined tonnage of men, women and children living on the planet.

A study by scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, published this month, concludes that wild land mammals alive today have a total mass of 22m tonnes. By comparison, humanity now weighs in at a total of around 390m tonnes.

At the same time, the species we have domesticated, such as sheep and cattle, in addition to other hangers-on such as urban rodents, add a further 630m tonnes to the total mass of creatures that are now competing with wild mammals for Earth’s resources. The biomass of pigs alone is nearly double that of all wild land mammals.

The grim figures for land mammals were matched by those found in the oceans. The total mass of marine mammals was calculated to be around 40m tonnes. Fin whales have the largest total biomass with sperm whales and humpbacks coming into the second and third slots, respectively.

Fin whales feeding off the Gulf of California. The species was found by the study to have the highest biomass of ocean creatures. Photograph: Nature Picture Library/Alamy

Domesticated-to-wild mass ratios emphasise the active role humans play in shaping the abundance of mammals on Earth

Common pet species were also found to be major contributors to humanity’s planetary impact. Domestic dogs have a total mass of around 20m tonnes, a figure close to the combined biomass of all wild terrestrial mammals, while cats have a total biomass of around 2m tonnes, almost double that of the African savanna elephant. “These domesticated-to-wild mass ratios emphasise the active role humans play in shaping the abundance of mammals on Earth,” the researchers state in their paper.

The impact of GW, combined with continued looting of the planet, could potentially become worse than the PETM due, in large part, to not only population overload and temperature increase but also to habitat loss and environmental degradation caused by our endless pursuit of producing ever more stuff. 

Climate change during the last 65 million years as expressed by the oxygen isotope composition of benthic foraminifera. The Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) is characterized by a brief but prominent excursion, attributed to rapid warming. Note that the excursion is understated in this graph due to the smoothing of data.

The Paleocene–Eocene thermal maximum (PETM), alternatively "Eocene thermal maximum 1" (ETM1), and formerly known as the "Initial Eocene" or "Late Paleocene thermal maximum", was a time period with a more than 5–8 °C global average temperature rise across the event.[1][2] This climate event occurred at the time boundary of the Paleocene and Eocene geological epochs.[3] The exact age and duration of the event is uncertain but it is estimated to have occurred around 55.5 million years ago (Ma).[4]

The associated period of massive carbon release into the atmosphere has been estimated to have lasted from 20,000 to 50,000 years. The entire warm period lasted for about 200,000 years. Global temperatures increased by 5–8 °C.[2]

10 to 1 indeed.