The Arrogance of the Anthropocene (theatlantic.com) 123
EmagGeek writes: Peter Brannen has an interesting, if humbling take on the anthropocentric view of geology currently held by many scientists and governments, and the staggeringly arrogant assignment to humanity of its own epoch, despite all of human civilization fitting within a time period, on a geologic timescale, equivalent to that of the exposure time on a high speed camera. The idea of the Anthropocene is an interesting thought experiment. For those invested in the stratigraphic arcana of this infinitesimal moment in time, it serves as a useful catalog of our junk. But it can also serve to inflate humanity's legacy on an ever-churning planet that will quickly destroy -- or conceal forever -- even our most awesome creations. The article also ponders what will become of human civilization, and whether there will be any trace of it remaining when the (likely nonhuman) archaeologists of 100 million years from now go looking for new historical discoveries. An interesting read, for sure.
It's a win-win (Score:5, Insightful)
If the Anthropocene ends early, it doesn't matter because nobody will be around to remember it.
Naming the period is not arrogant, it's utilitarian.
Re:It's a win-win (Score:5, Interesting)
If the Anthropocene ends early, it doesn't matter because nobody will be around to remember it.
Naming the period is not arrogant, it's utilitarian.
Indeed, and it is very unlike any other era. Humans have impacted the planet in a very big way. I'm not talking about climate change (although there is that), we've spread species rapidly around the globe, we've caused mass extinctions, we've shaped and overturned the world in ways that have never been done by animals before.
A billion years from now, the sapient cockroaches that rule the earth may not consider it a long period of time, but they'll still consider it an important period in earth's history... and worth separating into it's own epoch.
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Shit changed. It just so happens that we did it quickly. But X amount of shit changing does warrant an epoch.
It's why the microseconds post-big bang are considered their own distinct window, then milliseconds etc, simply because the shit going on in span1 was distinct from the shit going on in span2
100,000 years is very short, okay fine cool, but there's a real chance that next tiny blink will include the world massively reshaped or massively ended (gray goo, LHC, supervirus, etc)
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I would argue a better title for that article is "The Sophomoric Arrogance of the Science Writer".
Problem is, this current time really is both unique and distinct in earth's history. Humans are sentient - we can recognize and interpret environmental trends, make decisions to adapt to environmental changes, or even choose to attempt modifying the environment on a grand scale. We can even choose to attempt leaving the planet!
One can argue whether, in the end, we'll collectively be wise enough to make the righ
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We can recognize and interpret environmental trends, make decisions to adapt to environmental changes, or even choose to attempt modifying the environment on a grand scale. We can even choose to attempt leaving the planet!
Notice the key here is 'we'. To paraphrase George Carlin 'the earth doesn't care'.
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"What's it all about?"
"Plastic, asshole." -George Carlin
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Can we really be sure about that? Not trying to push crackpot theories or anything but can we know for sure we are the first sentient species? I think at best we can say we are the first to use plastics on a large scale. Although we've only started looking for that since we've been polluting so it may be impossible to find the ancient remains of plastic products when ours can be found basically anywhere on earth at this point.
In spite of that uncertainty I think there is a 99.999 etc percent chance we are t
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Considering that there seems to be perhaps half a dozen sentient species currently on the Earth, it seems pretty arrogant to claim we're the first.
What we are it seems is the first technology using species, and that is what sets us apart,not that we think but what we build. We're also a story telling species,which allows us to build on past experience.
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A billion years from now, the sapient cockroaches that rule the earth...
But they'll be lost for words when they try to describe how unbelievably fecund H. sapiens was. "They bred like... what???"
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That one is easy.
Those humans they bred like elephants/sloths/pandas (or the current slow breeding animal of their time).
8^)
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Re: It's a win-win (Score:5, Interesting)
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Correct. We would need another event on the scale of the Theia Impact [wikipedia.org] to totally wipe out any trace of humanity in the timeframe of millions, if not billions, of years.
There aren't any objects in Earth-crossing orbits big enough to do that. Granted there are plenty that could cause a mass extinction, but none that can completely reform the surface of the Earth.
Re: It's a win-win (Score:4, Interesting)
What would happen to a Roman aquaduct in 100,000 years? The Great Wall of China? The Pyramids? Mayan temples? The Budhist temples in Tibet? (I'm trying to put together a host of stone structures from all around the world.)
Surely, some of those structures will be more lasting than a brontosaurus bone.
Re: It's a win-win (Score:4, Insightful)
Skyscraper basements. They are rectangular, cut into bedrock and will be filled with debris. Unless the bedrock itself gets scoured down below the level of the lowest basement they will be around, obvious to archeologists (of other species) and ground penetrating radar for billions of years.
And in the same vein (literally) there is all the stuff that is missing. We are digging out rich ore bodies that are hundreds of millions, even billions, of years old - leaving tunnels in hard rock everywhere that will last billions of years (maybe filled with water, but still). The fact the this ore is still here argues against any previous technological species every existing. Our holes will be one our longest lasting monuments.
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I've quoted those sentences together because I assume they go together, ie you're saying it's unlike any other era because of the extent to which one intelligent species has been able to impact the Earth.
The question I have for you is whether, if this had happened before, we'd know about it. If, 250 million years ago, a species of Dinosaur had, in the space of 25,000 years, raised itself to a similar level of dominance over the planet, wiping itself as a result of the changes it had made, would we see it?
Yes!
There is plenty of evidence left that dinosaurs existed; indeed we see evidence of species much older. We know the temperatures and general climate; there would be some evidence if they built an Empire State Building, or impacted climate or the atmosphere (as algae did) or if they were so popular their numbers were really common in certain time periods.
There will still be remnants of humans 250 million years from now for future intelligent life-forms to discover.
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It's both.
Every major civilization seems to think "they" are it. Everything revolves around them. Until they go the way of every civilization before them.
It's a very... human thing. We were doomed from the moment we were conceived. Maybe a future species will manage to evolve to our level of intelligence without so much violence. Or maybe you can't have one without the other. I'm certainly no expert on these subjects, I simply like to think on them.
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It's both.
Every major civilization seems to think "they" are it. Everything revolves around them. Until they go the way of every civilization before them.
We seen this "arrogance" (in scare quotes because I'm not agreeing this is the best word) and utility in describing the world from our own point of view.
Take a look at history and how significant events are named, such as wars. World War One was not called that until there was a World War Two. Even then calling these world wars is because as far as either side was concerned this was the entire world as they knew it at war. This is especially true with the first "world war" as it was pretty much contained
Re:It's a win-win (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire categorization of life on earth into epochs is man-made and utilitarian. We created that for us, to help us understand it all. It's not arrogant at all to create another such division to help us understand it and relate it to other epochs.
When we're gone those epochs will all be gone, unless there's some other intelligent life which decides to keep them around because they're useful. I find the author arrogant, for who gave them the power to declare humanity arrogant?
On top of that, epochs are defined by radical changes. Yes, those changes generally occur over tens of thousands of years to millions of years. Some of the very few exceptions are things like the K-T boundary. Most of us who are vaguely scientifically literate understand that we're making very significant modifications to the earth and its climate and ecosystems. Modifications that generally happened over eons in the past. In a million years, it would be rather shocking if the fossil record didn't show this.
We define epochs by species dying out and new ones filling the void. The lack of megafauna is an example of what will define the new epoch. In just 200-300 years or so we've essentially eliminated most megafauna. Whales are mostly gone, buffalo got mostly wiped out, most of the big game in Africa has been wiped out, mountain gorillas, panda bears, polar bears, grizzly bears, etc. What are hanging on will likely be wiped out by climate change. Humans are responsible for 100% of that. Now, it's going to take a million years for new species to populate the spaces left vacant, but humans sure as hell started that replacement process.
It's not arrogant to point out that we're doing essentially what an asteroid did 65 million years ago. It's only going to be arrogant if we declare this epoch over in the next couple of thousand years.
Re:It's a win-win (Score:5, Informative)
In a million years, it would be rather shocking if the fossil record didn't show this.
The fossil record won't show much, but the geology is very noticeably and permanently different. Strip mining and changes made in order to run railroads have radically altered mountains all over the world. Whole geological strata are simply missing, in suspiciously straight lines that could not have been created by wind or flowing water, and don't follow any fault lines. In North America, unless something radically changes geologically, the alterations to the Appalachians will remain intact and visible for multiple hundreds of millions of years, if not billions of years. No part of the North American Plate [wikipedia.org] is subducting, so the surface geology will remain intact indefinitely.
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What are you talking about? There is wind erosion; there are ice ages and glaciers; there are rising and falling sea levels; North America as a continent has only existed for the last 200m years or so. The earth itself is 4.5bn years old -- 22.5 times as old as the continent. In another 200m years, the Applachians are likely to have been completely eroded.
Roadrunner: blip, blip (Score:2)
The whole point of the article is that these signals will probably remain, but you'd pretty much have to go over the fossil record with a toothpick to find them. We haven't traditionally named our toothpick discoveries as epochs. Should this one be different for the first time? Opinions vary.
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In a billion years aliens may dig up fossilized AOL disks. It will be labeled the "Aolocene".
Or maybe they'll find the buried ET cartridges [wikipedia.org] and call it the "Brothercene".
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If the Anthropocene ends early, it doesn't matter because nobody will be around to remember it. Naming the period is not arrogant, it's utilitarian.
The real question is:
What will the cockroach survivors of the future call this epoch?
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It simply is different. (Score:2)
Humans live in advanced industrial civilizations, and no other animal does or ever has. Humans are different, and the age of humans is different, and they have made the Earth different chemically and ecologically on a scale comparable to other geological periods. That's why it qualifies as a distinct epoch.
as opposed to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
did the dinosaurs name the Jurassic? um, newsflash, we came up with the names of *everything*
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Funny thing how much attention we pay to a small band of Iridium, since it relates to a mass extinction
Humanity will likely be noted for its role in the current mass extinction, it should be obvious even millions of years in the future
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Yes, they did. They wanted to call it the "Raarrrocene", but a meteorite interfered with their plan.
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Anthropocene definitely exists. (Score:5, Insightful)
I work in environmental geoscience and engineering. My specialty involves construction consulting.
Please believe me: if 100,000,000 years from now, some future species is interested in geological science, they would look at this time period (as short as it is, geologically speaking) and say "WHAT THE F****** H*** HAPPENED 100 MILLION YEARS AGO?" They would probably be able to tell pretty conclusively that an advanced species developed in a very short time period and changed every aspect of their environment causing a great extinction. They would do isotope analysis and find that there is a very thin layer of radioactive material covering the entire globe (due to nuclear testing in the mid-20th century). They would find layers of plastic particles. They would find entire epochs of geology removed and replaced with fill from other parts of the world.
If we disappeared this year, and were replaced by another advanced species 100 million years from now, that species would know we existed. And if they counted geologic time in epochs like we do, they would almost certainly draw a bright line on our time.
The Anthropocene definitely exists.
Re:Anthropocene definitely exists. (Score:4)
Funny that Humanity will be noted in the same light that we note a Killer Meteor
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^^^ THIS is the correct take.
Geologically speaking, humanity has more in common with the killer asteroid than it does the T-Rex.
The Silurian Hypothesis (Score:3)
Well apparently it might not be that easy to find traces and understand what happens, even when you are explicitly looking for them.
Google for "The Silurian Hypothesis" and go from there, or go directly here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.037... [arxiv.org]
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Sure, so does an asteroid impact. It still isn't worth naming an epoch.
Are you kidding? That is exactly what happened at the K-T boundary [wikipedia.org], which ended the entire Mesozoic Era (2 levels up from Epoch).
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I work in environmental geoscience and engineering. My specialty involves construction consulting.
Please believe me: if 100,000,000 years from now, some future species is interested in geological science, they would look at this time period (as short as it is, geologically speaking) and say "WHAT THE F****** H*** HAPPENED 100 MILLION YEARS AGO?" They would probably be able to tell pretty conclusively that an advanced species developed in a very short time period and changed every aspect of their environment
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Sure I will weigh in. I'll even pretend to believe you are asking in good faith and actually interested in gaining new knowledge.
The primary difference between what we are seeing today (what we call Global Warming) and paleolithic temperature variations is the rate of change. This was depicted very well in an XKCD comic (as most things are). https://xkcd.com/1732/ [xkcd.com]
In the past 150 years, we have seen an equivalent global temperature change as the previous 20,000 years. And the rate of change is accelerating.
T
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I think it's really exciting. Maps will be rewritten, old cities will be abandoned and new cities will rise, nations will fall, new nations will rise, there will be new circumstances to be exploited, new opportunities, and I expect it will usher in a better world that is more hospitable towards human life.
The deserts in northern Canada are turning into forests.
There will be lots of work to keep you busy.
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Millions if not billions of people will suffer and die of war and famine.
And as is typical, conservatives gleefully don't care.
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I can pretty much guarantee that at least 7.7 billion people will die in the next 100 years, and no, it doesn't bother me at all.
Identified Dinosaucers (Score:2)
If, in the final 7,000 years of their reign, dinosaurs became hyperintelligent, built a civilization, started asteroid mining, and did so for centuries before forgetting to carry the one on an orbital calculation, thereby sending that famous valedictory six-mile space rock hurtling senselessly toward the Earth themselves—it would be virtually impossible to tell.
Would it though?
Dinosaur industrial-lization should leave geological clues, just like human industry did.
Plus, the troodontid moon base would be a total giveaway.
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That statement you quote is said by someone that doesn't understand paleontology or geology.
Re: Anthropocene definitely exists. (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, I read it. I was specifically responding to points made in it.
Re: Anthropocene definitely exists. (Score:2)
My point was, as a previous commenter pointed out above, a future species would recognize this time period as an important break in geology the same way we recognize the asteroid hit that killed the dinosaurs as an important break.
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My point was, as a previous commenter pointed out above, a future species would recognize this time period as an important break in geology the same way we recognize the asteroid hit that killed the dinosaurs as an important break.
But bigger. Much, much bigger.
Re: Anthropocene definitely exists. (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, and the epoch named after that asteroid impact is .. oh right, it doesn't have one. It's the boundary between the Cretaceous epoch and the Paleogene epoch, but not an epoch of its own. It's "merely" the K-Pg boundary.
Humanity, so far, appears to have a similar impact. By the usual rules, to have an epoch named after humanity, especially modern humanity (we're boring until somewhen around 70k-10k years ago), we need to stick around longer. Right now, we're merely another extinction event, and those don't normally get wide time scales named after them. Want an epoch named after you? Then don't be a flash in the pan. Not even a thousand thermonuclear flashes all on the same day. Oh, you'll make an impact and we'll have a boundary named after us, if anyone is there to do the naming. But that's not enough to earn an epoch.
Now, that said... that was all about things happening "normally" under the "usual rules." I don't have a problem with breaking the rules. Calling it the Anthropocene isn't arrogant; it's subjective and also very useful to us, the people living now. A few million years from now is the appropriate time to argue about what epoch this was. You and I won't be participating in that discussion. It's ok to be wrong; neither of us will get to gloat about it. But until then, talking about the post-WW2 period of history as being different than the rest of the Holocene is totally fine, because especially from our point of view, it really is different. The plants and animals are different. The climate may end up being pretty different on average. But will they call it the Anthropocene, or something else? And who is "they?"
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He's quibbling over a definition when the main event is that we humans are doing a lot of damage right now.
"Damage" is a value judgment. To the planet's history, which doesn't make value judgments, we're merely an agent of change, of moderate scale (bigger than many, far smaller than the biggest). A theoretical future species might call what we have done "damage", or it might not. Assuming that such a species would agree with our value judgment is deep anthropocentrism.
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We haven't finished yet. Perhaps next century we start throwing asteroids at the Earth. A few dinosaur killers strategically dropped could really change things.
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We haven't finished yet. Perhaps next century we start throwing asteroids at the Earth. A few dinosaur killers strategically dropped could really change things.
Okay, but it would still just be change, like a lot of change that has come before and a lot that will likely come after. Calling it "damage" is an anthropic value judgment.
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OK, how about if, instead of 'damage', I said 'changes to the biosphere'?
Sounds good to me. Though we've changed more than just the biosphere; we've also moved chunks of the upper layer of the crust around.
Could I even get away with 'profound changes to the biosphere' or is 'profound' too relative to one's point of view also?
I think you've answered your own question :-)
I'm still of the opinion that the writer of that Atlantic Magazine article was overly verbose and sensationalizing.
No argument from me. My only point was that calling our actions "damage" is also somewhat sensationalistic and definitely anthropocentric, at least if you're considering them in the context of planetary history. If you're calling our actions "damage" in the context of the effect that they may have on how nice a place the planet i
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So you're being obnoxious? The article has shit reasoning and the parent is laying out why.
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The article is masturbatory tripe.
For those invested in the stratigraphic arcana of this infinitesimal moment in time
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck offffffff!
Are lizards also arrogant? (Score:3)
Plants or bugs or lizards don't try to be responsible to some magic unknown someone who might want a resource 50 million years from now. They just live their lives. Are plants and bugs and lizards being arrogant?
You can make a religion by imagining impossible double standards for people if you want. The rest of us will ignore you and just live our lives.
Take credit for your work (Score:4, Insightful)
Humanity, with some farm implements and a bit of petroleum youâ(TM)ve managed to accomplish in 100-200 years what would ordinarily take a 3 mile asteroid moving at 60,000mph to do.
Donâ(TM)t sell yourself short.
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Don't forget coal and iron too. Steel has let us build ships to fish the oceans empty, machines capable of removing mountain tops and digging pits which would make the sarlacc jealous, and the tools which allow us to deforest areas on the scale of a continent in the span of a human lifetime. And the guns and traps with which we can exterminate almost any species.
Re: Take credit for your work (Score:2)
On the topic of mountaintop-removal...
What would actually HAPPEN if Caltrans blasted away either the top of a mountain, or at least made a sizeable hole, above the cloud line in the mountains separating California's green central valley from the desert on the other side? Would rainclouds spill out and turn part of the desert on the other side green, or would hot dry air push the desert into the valley? How big of a zone with different weather would there be if the new gap were, say, 1000 feet wide? A kilome
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Appropriate arrogance (Score:2)
After all, we won. ...and some of us will continue to.
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A very bleak outlook for the universe if we're the civilization that ends up "winning".
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That's why I said "some of us".
Most will be eliminated by evolution within 150 years, regardless of the sciencey mysticism that "survival of the fittest" is not biologically an empty set.
For those who know the only thing that ever survives is information, the possibilities are larger, and the future considerably less bleak.
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In what way? I'm not being facetious - I don't get it.
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Well, if I have some important software and data I want to preserve, I put it on a USB stick and if my computer breaks, I transfer it to another computer and carry on.
Same basic plan with what's currently stored in my skull. Though, I am reliant on some divine technology for that. Still, considerably better plan than seeking evolutionary "survival" when absolutely nothing biological survives. I "don't get it" when something is suggested to "survive", but then that's because there's nothing there to get.
Re: Appropriate arrogance (Score:2)
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Nothing at all complex about the attribute of evolution that it will absolutely eliminate you within 150 years.
Don't try to handwave away facts by vaguely suggesting they are "complex". Not at all, given naturalistic evolution as the reference point.
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Huh? Virtue is by its very nature is an anthropomorphic trait. You might as well laugh at monkeys for not liking Star Trek.
Maybe I'm missing something.
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A very bleak outlook for the universe if we're the civilization that ends up "winning".
Yet another loser who hates his own species. Sad.
When you're a teen, such opinions are edgy and cool. And fair enough, life generally sucks when you're a teen. But then you grow up, have a family, and want the best for your kids. If your kids don't make you optimistic about the futre, you've failed badly somewhere along the path.
Very colorful writing. (Score:3)
I like it.
My favorite i think :
"the detritus of civilization will be quickly devoured by the maw of deep time."
I often wonder how many vast civilizations came before ours, perhaps even far more advanced. To think that maybe these epoch, these events, the massive evidence of the cyclical nature of Earth's geology might have been caused by civilizations that have left no other lasting record.
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I think it's crap.
"The detritus of civilization" is going to last a hell of a lot longer than the author seems to think. We're peering inside fossilized eggs from 150 million years ago to see the structure of what was growing in them. We're doing chemical analyses of fossilized creatures the size of pinheads multiple times that old.
We've found fossilized microorganisms from 3.5 billion years ago.
If we can find microscopic life that old, I'm pretty damn sure that some of our crap will be discoverable that fa
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I often wonder how many vast civilizations came before ours, perhaps even far more advanced.
None. We can tell where dinosaurs dug holes for their eggs. Just those simple holes disturb thousands of years of geological growth. Our digging, mining, roadwork that has carved away mountains will be evident to any one looking a 100 million years from now. That doesn't even consider radiological or chemical deposits (mercury, lead, etc) all across the world from industry. If any other species had managed technology, we'd be seeing similar signs. They certianly didn't ever use oil or coal, and no species a
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You're kinda missing the point. There were many billions of dinosaurs digging holes for eggs over many millions of years, and a vanishingly small number of holes got preserved. There are billions of us too, but we've not been active over millions of years, far from it.
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I often wonder how many vast civilizations came before ours, perhaps even far more advanced. To think that maybe these epoch, these events, the massive evidence of the cyclical nature of Earth's geology might have been caused by civilizations that have left no other lasting record.
Basically none. We would have noticed.
Seriously, we would have. While the Earth's surface does eventually completely recycle, it does so very very slowly. The North American Plate is not currently subducting under any other plate. Its surface features will remain intact for hundreds of millions of years, if not billions, unless and until that changes (probably by cometary impact).
The Antarctic plate is moving away from the Pacific plate and into the Atlantic plate, but it's moving at 12-14 mm per year a
Which is it? Humans are evil or irrelevant? (Score:2)
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Can you not see the difference between a person getting angry because you kicked him in the nuts and the crab nebula not caring that you kicked some guy in the nuts? You can be a nihilist, but still care that someone is going round kicking people in the nuts.
Naming suggestion (Score:4, Insightful)
If it's not about the existence of humans itself but rather their large-scale impact on the planet, then call it the Pollutocene or Trashocene.
The earth is 4.5 billion years old, and we're it? (Score:3)
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/are-we-earths-only-civilization/557180/ [theatlantic.com]
Weâ(TM)re used to imagining extinct civilizations in terms of the sunken statues and subterranean ruins. These kinds of artifacts of previous societies are fine if youâ(TM)re only interested in timescales of a few thousands of years. But once you roll the clock back to tens of millions or hundreds of millions of years, things get more complicated.
When it comes to direct evidence of an industrial civilizationâ"things like cities, factories, and roadsâ"the geologic record doesnâ(TM)t go back past whatâ(TM)s called the Quaternary period 2.6 million years ago. For example, the oldest large-scale stretch of ancient surface lies in the Negev Desert. Itâ(TM)s âoejustâ 1.8 million years oldâ"older surfaces are mostly visible in cross section via something like a cliff face or rock cuts. Go back much farther than the Quaternary and everything has been turned over and crushed to dust.
And, if weâ(TM)re going back this far, weâ(TM)re not talking about human civilizations anymore. Homo sapiens didnâ(TM)t make their appearance on the planet until just 300,000 years or so ago. That means the question shifts to other species, which is why Gavin called the idea the Silurian hypothesis, after an old Dr. Who episode with intelligent reptiles.
So, could researchers find clear evidence that an ancient species built a relatively short-lived industrial civilization long before our own? Perhaps, for example, some early mammal rose briefly to civilization building during the Paleocene epoch about 60 million years ago. There are fossils, of course. But the fraction of life that gets fossilized is always minuscule and varies a lot depending on time and habitat. It would be easy, therefore, to miss an industrial civilization that only lasted 100,000 yearsâ"which would be 500 times longer than our industrial civilization has made it so far.
Given that all direct evidence would be long gone after many millions of years, what kinds of evidence might then still exist? The best way to answer this question is to figure out what evidence weâ(TM)d leave behind if human civilization collapsed at its current stage of development.
Look at this way, there are those that scoff at religion and say there is no god. What is the proof. Well, how can we say that a planet as old as ours where we only find evidence a couple years old. That there never was another cycle of advanced life that was industrialist and technically advanced. That made the same mistakes way back when, that we currently are making now?
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What we find from our own ancient civs is pottery. What we'd be likely to find from an even more ancient civ? Artificial stone structures, or pieces of them anyway.
Of course, they might have built things to be compostable, because they might have had replicator technology or something, and maybe they had a leave-no-trace ethic. But I still think we'd find pieces of buildings.
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I am not trying to be a smart ass here. But the earth is constantly changing with things being buried how ever deep, and others being brought to the surface. Shoot, how sure are we that anything over a billion years old made by a previ
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Some parts have been buried, some haven't. Some have been buried deeply, some haven't. Humans live pretty much everywhere now...
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Given that all direct evidence would be long gone after many millions of years, what kinds of evidence might then still exist?
Most glaringly will be any mine or extraction of ore, coal, or oil which has existed untouched for at least 300 million years and probably more. Those resources won't be there, and it will be obvious in the geological record that large amounts of escavation were done all at one time that cut through millions of years of geological layers to get to them. Then they'll look at our layer, and find all of that deposited in metal oxides and other compounds including radiological isotopes that couldn't have been c
Things are named based on usefulness. (Score:3)
It doesn't matter if the "era" is 100 years or 100,000 years, we'll speak of it that way because it's relevant right now. If we were living a million years in the future, this would be a valid argument, but right now we attach the importance that we do because we are here, now.
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oh dear... (Score:2)
Arrogant Projection (Score:2)
No other species has risen so far or fast, or been a mass extinction event all on its own. We don't have to outlive cockroaches to be recognized for a very distinct era, even if we only remain on the planet for a blip in geological time. Authors should rewrite the piece without the snobby wankery.
"Orangecene" would cost me mod points (Score:2)
"The Arrogance of the Anthropocene"
Arrogancene?
Egocene! Has a nice ring to it.
Strawman epoch (Score:2)
Existing divisions are keyed to notable changes to life and environment. People can argue about the best way to classify shit and whether sixth mass extinction is special enough to warrant x, y or z.
What this joker is doing is decidedly different. His argument mostly centers on the notion future geologists would barely find indications of human existence in strata therefore we don't "deserve" our own epoch when basis for actual consideration centers on notable changes to life that would most certainly per
Things to look for: (Score:2)
A technological civilization would need some energy source to power that technology. The easiest way, starting from the proverbial stone knives and bear... er, triceratops skins is fossil fuels.
A velociraptor civilization on a global scale would doubtless have depleted fossil fuels in a way that would be detectable today by those who go looking for them. Fossil fuels are *much* older than the Mesozoic.
statigraphy (Score:2)
It is not arrogance to denote a geological age to man. It will clearly show up in statigraphy even if we die out tomorrow. This is just more "always changing" shit from the same people paying for climate change denial and promoting the health benefits of smoking. Eff off and defenestrate yourself.
Re: (Score:2)
no it won't "show up in statigraphy", in a couple million years and all the manmade stuff will be gone. Mankind itself will have turned into something else.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
gravel pits are made in places with high water table, erosion will erase the evidence long before it becomes part of geology. Erosion will smooth out the strip mines too. Two million years is just too damn long for man made scars on the earth to endure.
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No Rosetta Stone of the Jurassic (Score:2)
required reading (Score:2)
In the long run we can move to a sustainable strategy for existence, or cease to exist. Take your pick. We can get away with short-termism for a while, but better not to push it too far.