"The amount of bovine beasts on earth is currently about 6000× the natural order of things" - @SimonWa19449827 What “natural order of things” are you talking about? Please understand, I am not coming down on you but telling you the truth. Everyone seems to believe things that are simply not historically accurate about carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels. We live in a period when CO₂ levels are below average (avg CO₂ over 500 million years - ~1,500 ppm) and animal and plant life are relatively low compared to the past—literally the opposite of what you seem to think. There was 10¹⁹ times more plant and animal life with higher CO₂ in the past when life was thriving the most. Man exists during the one of the lowest periods of life on planet earth. To think somehow this is the "natural order" is extremely inaccurate. If there is a “natural order,” it certainly isn’t the unusually stable environment we have today despite anthropogenic CO₂. The total number of individual animals on Earth is extraordinarily difficult to estimate precisely due to the vast range in sizes, habitats, and lifespans, but current figures suggest an immense scale dominated by small organisms like insects, nematodes, and marine life. Estimates indicate approximately 10 quintillion (10¹⁹) insects alone, 3.5 trillion fish, up to 428 billion birds, and 130 billion mammals, with the overall total likely exceeding 20 quintillion individuals when including all invertebrates and other groups. This represents the highest abundance in Earth’s history, occurring in the modern era (the Holocene epoch within the Cenozoic era, from about 11,700 years ago to the present). Biomass and biodiversity have generally trended upward over the past 500 million years, with significant booms during the Cenozoic despite setbacks from mass extinctions. Earlier periods, such as the Ordovician (around 469 million years ago), saw the largest rapid increase in biodiversity (quadrupling in a few million years), but total abundance and diversity have since recovered and surpassed those levels in modern times. Compared to modern times, past peaks like the Ordovician or Cambrian Explosion (around 535 million years ago) had lower overall biomass and fewer species, as life was still diversifying from simpler forms. Today’s estimates for animal species total around 7.77 million (with about 1.05 million described), far exceeding historical diversity at any single point. Human impacts, however, are driving declines in many populations, potentially reversing this upward trend. But this is because humans build and encroach on nature, not because of fossil fuel use. Here is a relevant graph illustrating atmospheric CO₂ levels over geological time, showing higher concentrations during early periods of plant and life diversification (e.g., greenhouse conditions in the Ordovician and Silurian), which correlated with expansions in vascular plants and overall biomass before levels dropped with forest evolution and carbon burial. We’ve lost CO₂, not gained it, over Earth’s history—and it’s what makes life possible. It’s plant food, and with more plant food there are more plants, which in turn support more animal life. Or, put another way, biodiversity is enhanced by more plant and animal life, making Earth greener and more beautiful.
