Compare Nature's Sublime Art to Man's

Science News throws out some striking figures:

Have you ever felt weighed down by your material possessions? The boundless variety of stuff that humans manufacture -- tractors, buildings, ballpoint pens, Hello Kitty backpacks -- has serious heft: 30 trillion metric tons, a new study estimates. That's about 50 kilograms for every square meter of Earth's surface.

The human-made "technosphere," all the manufactured goods around today, surpasses the natural biosphere in mass and variety, geologi...