The Anthropocene Epoch Began With 1945 Atomic Bomb Test, Scientists Say 154
hypnosec writes: Scientists have proposed July 16, 1945 as the beginning of the Anthropocene Epoch. That was the day of the first nuclear detonation test. They say "the Great Acceleration" — the period when human activities started having a significant impact on Earth – are a good mark of the beginning of the new epoch. Since then, there has been a significant increase in population, environmental upheaval on land and oceans, and global connectivity. The group says in their article (abstract), "The beginning of the nuclear age ... marks the historic turning point when humans first accessed an enormous new energy source – and is also a time level that can be effectively tracked within geological strata, using a variety of geological clues."
Asimov did it first (Score:2)
This reminds me of the classic Asimov short story, "The Last Trump"; you should go read it. Here's the Wikipedia link, but it's full of spoilers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org]
I don't think so. (Score:3, Insightful)
We had access to coal and oil for a lot longer than nuclear, and fossil fuels today still represent 10x as much energy generated/used as nuclear. linky [wikipedia.org]
The figures are from 2008 - before fukushima, and nuclear plant construction is going nowhere, while China produces 1 new coal plant every day.
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...while China produces 1 new coal plant every day.
[citation needed]
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I think your search term is useless, and a few minutes of searching variations didn't help either. Feel free to actually try to contribute.
Re:I don't think so. (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
unless we are talking about may 17, 2013. for that time period, china did apparently produce 1 coal plant a day.
i don't even know why i feel the need to argue this though. it has little to do with the topic. i just can't fight the urge to look up statistics. i think there's something wrong with me.
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The real story is that China, not the US has driven down the co
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It's called having a low tolerance for bullshit, and so no, there's nothing wrong with you.
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I don't disagree that coal has had more effect than nuclear on the environment, but your "fact" is completely wrong. Kind of sad, since if you had just kept to the facts it would have been a decent point.
And yes, the top 3 Google results (as per your suggestion) say you are wrong. Feel free to find a citation that contradicts your suggestion, though.
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They're not saying that nuclear power has the only impact. Just that since 1945, our overall environmental impact has increased dramatically- with China building 800 GW of coal plants being a perfect example. While our per capita impact in many ways has decreased, the huge increase in population has caused the aggregate impact to increase greatly.
Also, while Japan and France may be scaling back their nuclear power generation, the "anti-nuclear" Obama administration has given the final approval for 4 new
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They're not saying that nuclear power has the only impact, just bringing it up disingenuously because people have strong feelings about nuclear power.
There, FTFY. And for the record, I'm anti-nuke because I don't believe that humans are sufficiently responsible to handle them, as a group. Once politics gets involved, it all goes downhill.
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The only other logical starting point for this era would be the beginning of the industrial revolution. But that happened slowly over several decades, so it's a lot more difficult.
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Yes, but they're talking about detectability of a time marker in Earth history. Post-1945 or so it is easy to detect radioisotopes in sediments being deposited world-wide.
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Yes, but they're talking about detectability of a time marker in Earth history. Post-1945 or so it is easy to detect radioisotopes in sediments being deposited world-wide.
As opposed to giant cities, garbage dumps, plastic in ocean sediments, weird chemicals in land and ocean sediments, carbon dioxide, aircraft carriers, AOL disks?
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True, but usage has been accelerating exponentially, and there's not really any firm date you can point to and say "this is where it started getting bad".
If the first atomic blast lines up with the rough time period when we started having a dramatic effect on a planetary scale, and offers a convenient global geologic marker in global radioisotope deposits, then it seems like as good a boundary point as any, and better than most.
That said, I've seen some good arguments that global desertification over the la
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Butterfly effect nothing - we've been the invasive species from hell, upending ecosystems wherever we go. Usually starting with exterminating all the megafauna.
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The reason is because it's easy to identify the precise geologic layer that corresponds with the first nuclear testing, not because that's the exact moment when humans starting screwing everything up.
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The reason is because it's easy to identify the precise geologic layer that corresponds with the first nuclear testing, not because that's the exact moment when humans starting screwing everything up.
So we fudge it? Sounds like bad science to me.
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No, good scientists understand significant digits. As far as geological epoch go, the time elapsed between the start of the industrial revolution and the start of the nuclear age is insignificant. Furthermore, while the technology began at the industrial revolution, the impact of that technology didn't have global environmental scale until later on. We don't mark the other geological boundaries at the point where precursors to change appeared, we mark them when change became significant. If you look at grap
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If they understood significant digits, they wouldn't have measured the changing of an epoch down to the day. That's like me celebrating my birthday down to the millisecond.
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No, I think that picking the atomic age is purely arbitrary, ignores the fact that we still get most of our energy from fossil fuels, which renders their "marks the historic turning point when humans first accessed an enormous new energy source" invalid, because fossil fuels were, and still are, our #1 source of energy.
We already have a different name for when we started using nuclear material - the "nuclear age." This article is stupid.
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Broken Style (Score:5, Informative)
The Anthropocene Epoch ended when the Bad Slashdot Style Epoch began after the following style code was introduced:
#comments { clear:both; display:block; position:relative; padding: 0; margin: 0 0 0 122px; padding-right: 1.5em;z-index:1;}
Get rid of the 122px left margin--it's wasting a lot of space.
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They are trying to move you to the broken look and feel of the beta pixel by pixel.
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Also it completely breaks formatting if you zoom in to 150% like I do
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Hey, that margin is where I put my drink.
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If this is part of the crap they changed a couple days ago, it also messed up viewing in some other browsers. I wish they would just go back to simple HTML 3, which used to view fine in everything.
They couldn't get rid of enough of us with that awful "beta", so instead now they are breaking it one bit at a time.
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The Anthropocene Epoch ended when the Bad Slashdot Style Epoch began after the following style code was introduced:
#comments { clear:both; display:block; position:relative; padding: 0; margin: 0 0 0 122px; padding-right: 1.5em;z-index:1;}
Get rid of the 122px left margin--it's wasting a lot of space.
Thank you I thought it was one of my script blockers acting up.
Industrial Revolution (Score:2)
If it's classified as "he period when human activities started having a significant impact on Earth", then wouldn't the industrial revolution mark the start of that?
Or were coal-powered factories all over Europe belching horrible soot and smoke into the atmosphere not good enough?
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Yeah I'd put it in the late 1700's.
http://naturalpatriot.org/wp-c... [naturalpatriot.org]
Industrial Revolution (Score:2, Insightful)
The nuclear blasts produce more obvious changes in the geological strata than the coal and other industrial changes do, so it's easier to trace. When looking at geological timeframes, the 200 years or so difference is a blink of an eye. It's not especially useful now while both periods are so recent, but it will become more useful as time goes on.
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The effects of the early years of the Industrial revolution (smog/pollution from early coal plants and unrestricted garbage furnaces) likely had a significantly larger and longer lasting impact on Earth than the first Nuclear detonation did.
If anything, I'd think that the discovery of the light bulb / harnessing of electricity would be a better point to define the start of a new epoch. That corresponds nicely with the time the industrial revolution started having lasting impacts on the environment, and do
No coincidence (Score:1)
That is the same day the Gojira was awakened.
Who got the steam achievement (Score:2)
And did the turns speed up ?
Scientists Think the World Revolves Around Them (Score:1)
I'm good with it ... (Score:2)
... I know when the Cretaceous period ended because the dinosaurs (except birds) went extinct and stuff, but I don't know when the Cretaceous period started or the Anthropocene period, either, but Bennett Haselton.
Farming (Score:1)
When we stopped hunting and gathering and stayed in one place. Not bending to the earth but bending the earth to our needs. That's the beginning of the Anthropocene.
1879 (Score:2)
should really begin in 1879 - the year edison first lit his lightbulb.
2cents
WW I & II (Score:1)
I'd put it down to world wars I & II which caused a massive acceleration in development of all types including land and air transport, computers, electronics, nuclear.
The nuclear bomb coincided with jet flight, the transistor was 2 years later.
And much of this development started with the industrial revolution in the 1800s.
It was also a time when women were prominent in industry and the war effort, suffraget late 1800s to women's liberation 1960s effectively doubled the working population and changed s
Time to reset the calendar (Score:3)
Today is January 16, 69 AE (Anthropocene Era)
Someone born in 1946 CE will now be referred to as: Born in 1 AE
Someone born in 1945 CE will now be referred to as "Born in 0 AE"; the year of the Anthropocene Epoch.
1944 CE will now be referred to as "1 BAE"; 1 year before the Anthropocene Epoch, etc
In this manner, every year renumbered.
And of course, tomorrow will be 1/17/69.
A million years ago +/- 500 years will be noise (Score:1)
In a million years, the start of the industrial age and the start of the nuclear age will be a geological blur.
Besides, if we have to put a date on it, 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z is about as good a time as any other time in the 19th/20th/21st centuries.
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Steel, E = mc^2" by David Bodanis, and Space... (Score:1)
I have the book "E = mc^2", by David Bodanis.
In the notes accompanying the text there is (on Page 295 of the paperback) a note regarding a phrase on Page 191 of the main text), regarding steel production, Scapa Flow, and radiation monitors on stellar and interstellar instruments:
In 1919 the Imperial German battlefleet surrendered to the British, and eventually the entire fleet was scuttled in the relatively shallow waters of Scapa Flow, Scotland. There's a lot of pre-WW2 iron in that watery graveyard.
Steel
Re:Steel, E = mc^2" by David Bodanis, and Space... (Score:4, Informative)
nice try but coal from the industrial age also threw heavy radioisotopes into the air, starting centuries ago
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In terms of radioactivity, coal isn't notably worse than crushing up other types of rocks and spewing that radioactive dust into the atmosphere.
Okay, but we're not doing that. So uh, coal isn't notably worse than something we're not doing? I'll keep that in mind.
The output from coal burning is pretty innocuous
Tee hee
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So you obsessively follow my comments like some facebook addicted emo teen of a pop star? Get help now. Also, read up on coal emissions vs. nuclear power industry.
rise of woman vs fall of man (Score:2)
Tying the antropocene epoch to the first nuclear detonation is a brazen attempt to smuggle the Garden of Eden / fall of man metaphor into this discussion under cover of a blinding fireball.
How about using Madame Curie instead, and picking a nice round date like 1900?
I also noted this passage in the Wikipedia article.
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Re:Academic wankery at its finest (Score:5, Informative)
Also... from TFAbstract, they chose the date because all of the nuclear explosions have left a clear marker of radioisotopes which can be easily located when tracing the geological record.
Re:Academic wankery at its finest (Score:5, Insightful)
Also... from TFAbstract, they chose the date because all of the nuclear explosions have left a clear marker of radioisotopes which can be easily located when tracing the geological record.
And importantly, this will be true globally. This seems to be what most posters here seem to be ignoring... A hundred thousand years from now you'll probably be able to dig into the ground and identify this epoch anywhere on Earth where the rocks are old enough by the distinct atomic decay signature, among other things.
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there is no way to tell what additional factors, natural or manmade, may influence the hypothetical future geological record.
Except through the usual tools of science and reason.
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There's already hundreds of millions or billions of tons of U238 in the natural environment - where do you think it all came from?
So what? It's not universally mixed throughout the environment. One will still be able to see a spike in uranium 238 in sediment from coal burning and enhanced erosion of certain forests.
Re: Academic wankery at its finest (Score:2, Insightful)
You almost have a point but that if it's only important for future scientists, let them define it based on better informed notions. I'm positive that the radio or some industrial landmark would make more sense. E.g. first mass pollutions, which do have environmental impact. Medieval deforestation of Europe may be a candidate too.
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You almost have a point but that if it's only important for future scientists, let them define it based on better informed notions. I'm positive that the radio or some industrial landmark would make more sense. E.g. first mass pollutions, which do have environmental impact. Medieval deforestation of Europe may be a candidate too.
Considering even today, only about 13% of power globally is nuclear generated, and it is not clear we will still be generating nuclear fission power in 100 years, or any more than we are now, I agree. Though its easy to trace the bombs' effects in the future, the incandescent light bulb had a far greater impact on society and the population explosion, and industrialization of that time had greater impact on the environment.
Then again, an argument could be made that the fulcrum for the advancement of our s
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Then again, an argument could be made that the fulcrum for the advancement of our species occured with the invention/introduction of true perspective in art, which isn't even technology.
Almost. You can see true perspective in statues and facades in pre dark age Europe and the Mediterranean. The flat non-perspective that you are referring to signifies the importance of every object on a panel. That's why you get floating ships in the background much larger than they should be ~ people in the foreground smaller than the subject in the middle. You are really talking about renaissance realism which incorporated true perspective on panel work.
The biggest change imho is the burning of masses of
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The shift to accuracy and secular subjects in art is a useful milestone in terms of anthropology or history certainly. However, it's not anthropology that's really under discussion in this "Age of Man" thread. That would be more of a goeologic metric than an anthropologic one.
+...and yes it is true that a lot of the Italian Renaissance was the re-discovery of principles that had been known to the ancients.
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Re:Academic wankery at its finest (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, it'd be like using Latin for scientific terminology today.
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Now, if we described stuff by it's percentages of fire earth air and water and spirit...
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Now, if we described stuff by it's percentages of fire earth air and water and spirit...
shouldn't that be fire, earth, air, water, and Leeloo?
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we use latin words to be unambiguous
We could use plenty of other schemes to get the same effect without having to use a dead language. The grand parent's point remains.
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Except it's not really using a *dead* language, it's using a popular academic language that was chosen back when people still LEARNED AND READ LATIN (and really, one with a structure that lends itself particularly well to the purpose).
Your current perspective on it is about as useful as someone 150 years from now saying "why they hell did we standardize one the metric system when we could have used plenty of other systems of measure?"
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Except it's not really using a *dead* language
Nobody speaks it. The closest anyone comes is "church latin" a near variant used by the Roman Catholic Church. That's what makes latin a dead language.
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Applying the colloquial criteria of "dead" to a language that remained—however frozen—in widespread and specialized use over many centuries is a complete waste of time for the present discussion. "Dead" is really just a shortened version of "dead to the evolutionary fads of populism".
One could argue that Perl is presently a near-dead language (it
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Applying the colloquial criteria of "dead" to a language that remainedâ"however frozenâ"in widespread and specialized use over many centuries is a complete waste of time for the present discussion.
Aside from being highly relevant to the discussion at hand. Keep in mind the original assertion was:
It's pure hubris to think that scientists in the future are going to go along with our stupid names for stuff.
Yet here we are going along with Latin names for things even though Latin is a dead language whose practical uses now only extend to specialized scientific labeling and rituals for a particular religious sect.
One could argue that Perl is presently a near-dead language (it's evolution has become famously glacial) and then on this basis write a script routing all security advisories concerning Perl (such as DSA-2870-1 libyaml-libyaml-perl) straight into the round device.
One can argue the Moon is made of green cheese. The obvious rebuttals are 1) computer languages aren't languages, 2) unlike Latin, Perl is in widespread use as far as computer languages go, and 3) nobody
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One can argue the Moon is made of green cheese. The obvious rebuttals are 1) computer languages aren't languages, 2) unlike Latin, Perl is in widespread use as far as computer languages go, and 3) nobody argued that a language was dead on the basis of it remaining static over time.
Yet none of your points has remotely disproved the green cheese hypothesis...
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Nobody speaks it.
I don't know. I think it still gets used on an ad hoc basis.
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My point was people did use it in many applications (church as well as science) back in the 1600-1700s when it was first used to name species.
And not speaking it in normal conversation doesn't mean it isn't or wasn't used. There are many thousands (tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands?) of scholars *now* who can read it in order to read and study old texts. And in the 1600's when the biological taxonomy was first established, Latin was literally the common written language between scientists of a doze
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Yes, why have words to describe things which have a significant impact on humans? Let's go further than denying the impact of our brains, and deny our brains entirely.
Unf. NN grrr mgrgrlrgl. Snarf? Brrrp. Fapfapfap. Queeeeg! Ook.
Re:Academic wankery at its finest (Score:4, Funny)
Unf. NN grrr mgrgrlrgl. Snarf? Brrrp. Fapfapfap. Queeeeg! Ook.
You sound like my niece.
Re:Academic wankery at its finest (Score:4, Funny)
And like my knees.
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And like my pants.
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It will provide the basis for lots of academic papers and the creation of new "anthropocene studies" departments at institutions of higher learning. What's not to love?
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In the terms of "Epochs" it's total wankery (or in American English, mental masturbation ;)
It may even make sense to consider "the atomic age" as a new Epoch at some point in the distant future, but placing that date on it is pure politics, not science.
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No, that was the Industrial Revolution: steam trains and burning coal.
No, it was when humans ventured out of Africa, caused mass extinctions, and began regularly burning millions of square miles of grassland to maintain better grazing for their prey.
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NO, it was when Porn because freely available on the Internet.
Fuck'n Amateurs.
Re:Anthropocene Epoch. (Score:5, Funny)
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This. This (or shortly thereafter) was when homo sapiens started significantly altering the ecology of the planet.
Now the nuclear age may introduce a specific inflection in the Anthropocene but so did the widespread burning of coal (the 'Industrial Revolution'). Just starting at ground zero, so to speak, seems really arbitrary.
Perhaps millions of years from now when the Anthropocene layers are a few meters thick it might make sense to start dating from the beginning of widespread man man isotopes, but if
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Meh. I'm sure there were many cases of species altering the ecology. It wasn't worldwide and (semi-)permanent until MUCH later. We didn't name an Epoch just because a particularly large population of predatory mammals reduced the population of prey in a region (which happens all the time).
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but that was the Native Americans, an indigenous population, so that is a good thing because they were so in touch with nature that every descendent they have 'til the end of time will also be totally in touch with nature and they could never harm it.
Signed 64-bit time_t integers .. (Score:1)
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"Most operating systems designed to run on 64-bit hardware already use signed 64-bit time_t integers [wikipedia.org]. Using a signed 64-bit value introduces a new wraparound date that is over twenty times greater than the estimated age of the universe: approximately 292 billion years from now, at 15:30:08 on Sunday, 4 December 292,277,026,596"
That's just great, right in the middle of the game. If this messes with the broadcast, they're gonna have some pissed off sports fans that day I can tell you.
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you are funny, plenty of software in use such as mysql has some functions with 32 bit time integers while others use 64 bit. it is NOT a solved problem
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Actually, the second bomb and the threat of 9 more produced "peace".
Many have suggested that the second bomb brought hostilities to a close a day or two earlier than would otherwise have happened. It was taking the Japanese a while to get their heads around the problem of not being invincible.
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Actually, the second bomb and the threat of 9 more produced "peace".
Many have suggested that the second bomb brought hostilities to a close a day or two earlier than would otherwise have happened. It was taking the Japanese a while to get their heads around the problem of not being invincible.
Others have suggested it was removing the clause to indict the Emperor for war crimes (and instead leave him be head of state) from the conditions of surrender that let the Japanese allow to surrender without losing face.
Re:Rubbish, and reversed (Score:5, Informative)
the detonation of the atomic bomb is a perfectly reasonable way to mark the beginning of a new epoch, because there is a very real and easily identifiable geologic marker for that event (radioactive isotopes & plastic in the topsoil.) if millions of years from now aliens discovered our planet and looked through geological data, and wanted to classify periods based on that data, it's a safe bet that the sudden proliferation of radioactive isotopes and appearance of an entirely new substance (plastic) would be something that they noticed.
as for the necessity of defining a new epoch - would you deny that humans have profoundly changed the planet? no value judgements being made here, just straight facts, the planet is WAY FUCKING DIFFERENT than it was 1000 years ago due to human population explosions and human construction. also, lots of newly-extinct species.
but, i at least agree with you about nuclear power being the solution to a lot of our problems, if we would stop being such pussies about it. that has nothing to do with the topic at hand, though.
Re: Rubbish, and reversed (Score:1)
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no, the dawn of the HUMAN age is the topic. the nuclear bomb just happens to be a nice easy geological marker for that.
note that the epoch is called the anthropocene epoch. anthopo, meaning human.
we aren't calling it the nuclear epoch.
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good luck finding a geological marker for any of those things you mention.
the geological timescale cares very little for your opinions on culture or our ability to insert tab A into slot B enough times to create an airplane.
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Because it is a load of PC navel gazing pseudo-religious bullshit?
Just a guess, but hey.
Could it be any clearer that this is a bunch of 'oh my god the sky is falling!' anti nuclear scaremongers desperately
trying to create a shred of link between unclear power (by FAR the least damaging base load power producer EVER)
and some idea of 'mankinds rape of our our beloved earth mother'?
Other than that particularly transparent attempt at politicalisation, the particular date seems basically stupid, it certainly
mark
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Philip K Dick was right after all - 'The Empire never ended'. King Felix!