The planetary substrate, 12,000 years
The Civilization Record
The long-run background quantities the four layers stand on: population, land, energy, climate, water, matter, each a series back to 10,000 BCE.
Matter and Biosphere
Annual material extraction has gone from a few megatonnes to 85 Gt. Over the same span living plant mass has halved, and human-made mass, concrete, asphalt, metal, plastic, passed all living biomass around 2020.
Annual material extraction
Gt / yr
10.000 BCE: 0,00312025 CE: 85,1 (log)
Construction minerals share of extraction
%
10.000 BCE: 02025 CE: 60,4 (log)
Global living biomass
Gt carbon
10.000 BCE: 1.0002025 CE: 550
Technosphere, human-made mass
Gt
10.000 BCE: 0,502025 CE: 1.200 (log)
Technosphere ÷ living biomass (dry weight)
ratio
10.000 BCE: 0,032025 CE: 1,1
Worth knowing
Human-made mass passed all living biomass around 2020; net new technosphere mass is being added at around 10 tonnes per person per year.
Today 96% of land-mammal biomass is human and domestic; 4% is wild.
Pre-industrial wild-mammal biomass was 6-7 times today's; plant biomass was twice today's and has halved.
Construction sand and gravel is the most-extracted solid material after water: around 50 Gt a year.