Geologists Reject Declaration of Anthropocene Epoch (theguardian.com) 41
The guardians of the world's official geological timescale have firmly rejected a proposal to declare an Anthropocene epoch, after an epic academic row. From a report: The proposal would have designated the period from 1952 as the Anthropocene to reflect the planet-changing impact of humanity. It would have ended the Holocene epoch, the 11,700 years of stable climate since the last ice age and during which human civilisation arose. The International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) has announced, however, that geologists have rejected the idea in a series of votes. Those objecting noted a much longer history of human impacts on Earth, including the dawn of agriculture and the industrial revolution, and unease about including a new unit in the geological timescale with a span of less than less than a single human lifetime, it said. Most units span thousands or millions of years.
It also acknowledged: "The Anthropocene as a concept will continue to be widely used not only by Earth and environmental scientists, but also by social scientists, politicians and economists, as well as by the public at large. As such, it will remain an invaluable descriptor in human-environment interactions." The Anthropocene working group (AWG), which was formed by the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS), in turn part of the IUGS, took 15 years to develop the proposal. It concluded that the radioactive isotopes spread worldwide by hydrogen bomb tests were the best marker of humanity's transformation of the planet. Geological time units also need a specific location to typify the unit and the Crawford sinkhole lake in Canada was chosen.
It also acknowledged: "The Anthropocene as a concept will continue to be widely used not only by Earth and environmental scientists, but also by social scientists, politicians and economists, as well as by the public at large. As such, it will remain an invaluable descriptor in human-environment interactions." The Anthropocene working group (AWG), which was formed by the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS), in turn part of the IUGS, took 15 years to develop the proposal. It concluded that the radioactive isotopes spread worldwide by hydrogen bomb tests were the best marker of humanity's transformation of the planet. Geological time units also need a specific location to typify the unit and the Crawford sinkhole lake in Canada was chosen.
Re:Even if they deny it (Score:5, Informative)
That won't stop it (Global Warming, Mass extinction) happening.
It's not a denial, more like declaring a special geological distinction is not warranted for the event (human industrialization) in question.
Remember, it's a group of scientists studying rocks, sediment, stratigraphy, that sort of thing. Perhaps some folks passionate about the climate think it would be useful to declare a special geological era, but if the science in this narrow area doesn't follow, then it's not going to happen.
Mod post above me up (Score:2)
Mod post above me up, I dont have any mod points right now.
I haven't read anything that makes this decision sound political.
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This is the correct response.
Re: Even if they deny it (Score:2)
If the standard is what you find when you dig then they're wrong, because plastic. It can last a pretty crazy long time when buried.
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I think it's more of a technicality than anything. 10,000 years from now, their successors would probably unanimously vote 1952 as the start of the Anthropocene era. It's not a question of whether it has happened, but whether it makes sense to declare it.
Some of Gen Z were born in the 90s but you didn't hear much about them as ageneration until they came of age.
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I'll walk that back a bit. The second industrial revolution could potentially be the start date (not that they'll likely keep it as a specific year by that point). Its effects might not measure big on the scale, but they are big enough to signify a shift in the larger picture.
Re: Even if they deny it (Score:1)
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In that case, we really don't need a geological milestone marker. Unless it's just a big red dot labelled "beginning of the end" - either way, you aren't going to convince them to create one right now.
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Name one species now extinct due to higher CO2.
People hunt, pollute, plow, pave, burn, and do all sorts of other stuff that kill off species. Emissions of CO2 and 1.5 C higher temperatures have not killed off any species that we can identify.
Science means data and evidence. Propaganda is about pushing narratives with social traction. The latter might even be true, but without any evidence and data, it still isn't science.
AoFaD (Score:1)
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1952 (Score:5, Insightful)
You can tell by that level of specificity that the idea is out of the social sciences, not the physical.
Barring a comet impact or black-mat event, nothing happens geologically with that level of specificity.
Good for the geologists for moving on geological time and not succumbing to a propaganda campaign.
(These are /the experts/ if that's what you were going to say).
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You are 100% incorrect. There is and will continue to be a global geological layer set down at that time.
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Barring a comet impact or black-mat event, nothing happens geologically with that level of specificity.
Nothing at all happens with that level of specificity, no matter how sudden or significant the event. Geological dating just isn't that precise. That doesn't matter, the question is whether the layer of radioactive isotopes is sufficiently notable to define an epoch.
The date is specific because it can be: unlike all other epoch-defining events, we know when this one happened.
As if it matters (Score:3)
Picked the wrong starting year... (Score:3)
If you're going to pick a year that marks the planet-changing impact of humanity, 1952 is way too late...
The atomic bombs built and tested and deployed in WWII had already made a planet-changing impact on humanity.
Heck, even the rise of industrialization had a wave of planet-changing impact on humanity. Just look at pictures of Chicago after the railroads connected to all points south and west where cattle were brought to market (and slaughter).
Or the growth of massive cities such as New York City, it had its own planet-changing impact on humanity.
You could also argue that 1952 was too early, that planet-changing impact didn't happen until later when pollution levels peaked, when we created new chemicals (like CFCs, etc) and plastics, lacked fuel economy requirements and heavy, gas guzzling vehicles, ...
You can't just pick one year arbitrarily and say this is where Humanity started to change the planet in a significant way. Too much before that date was necessary to contribute to get there, and even bigger changes followed that would make what you picked as the starting point insignificant in comparison.
Re: Picked the wrong starting year... (Score:1)
In the long run, the atomic bombs will have had no impact. Very little radioactivity from weapons testing in the 1950s and 1960s can still be detected in the environment now, almost anything that is still floating around is from natural sources and/or civilian use (hospital equipment etc).
It is similar to asking whether you can find evidence of a battle a few thousand years ago. If youâ(TM)re lucky there will be some myth about it, in rare cases will you find a smashed skull and you can kind of extrapo
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You can't just pick one year arbitrarily and say this is where Humanity started to change the planet in a significant way.
Remember that these are geologists. They're not talking about humans changing the planet in an abstract way, they're talking about rocks. What have humans done to change rocks? The proposal was to define the epoch by the layer of radioactive isotopes which were deposited around the world by thermonuclear testing, starting in 1952 when the first such test took place.
Millions of years from now (Score:5, Interesting)
Here and there will be other weird geologic things: giant holes in the ground with natural explanation (open-pit mines, canals); evidence of lakes that shouldn't have been there (from river dams); weird kinds of stone never seen prior to that stratum (concrete), sometimes with isotopic signatures from half a world away; isolated fossils of plants and animals far from where they normally are found. Maybe the degraded remains of microplastics could be found, or brake dust, or broken glass.
By contrast, any evidence of humans prior to this curious boundary layer - like the last 10,000 years of agriculture - will not even register, save for isolated fossils.
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Agreed. This is a scientifically significant age and the geologists are in error... I believe in an attempt to be apolitical because somehow reality itself is now up for political debate.
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Re: Millions of years from now (Score:1)
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Millions of years from now,
Do you think there will actually be anyone left to look [ifunny.co]?
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Yes, I expect so [youtube.com].
As best we know, civilization-level intelligence has only evolved on Earth once, despite really complicated life being around for a few hundred million years. But I expect that, even if humanity went extinct tomorrow, some other intelligent civilization will come along...eventually. They'll puzzle over the marks we've left behind in the geologic record.
Who knows, maybe they'll even land on the M
Re: Millions of years from now (Score:2)
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Actually, it's very likely that we would not be detectable as having existed a few million years after our extinction, which is still a blink of an eye on geological timescales. Look back tens or hundreds of millions of years, and there could easily have been intelligent, planet-spanning civilizations on Earth that we wouldn't be able to find conclusive evidence of at all.
https://nautil.us/could-an-ind... [nautil.us]
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>Actually, it's very likely that we would not be detectable as having existed a few million years after our extinction
Any competent geologist working with our level of technology would immediately notice the layer of radioactive fallout, probably the microplastics, and definitely that there was a massive extinction event due to the drastic drop in quantity of fossil remains. These things cannot be erased from the geological record, and will last the remainder of the planet's habitable period and probabl
Re: Millions of years from now (Score:1)
Nope, none of that will be true. People will have understood by then that simply because you can count better doesnâ(TM)t mean that the new numbers are bad or wrong. We can already no longer detect atmospheric radiation from nuclear weapon testing in the 1960s, half life is measured in minutes to years.
Geologic time scales (Score:2)
"The proposal would have designated the period from 1952 as the Anthropocene to reflect the planet-changing impact of humanity. It would have ended the Holocene epoch, the 11,700 years of stable climate since the last ice age and during which human civilisation arose."
*sigh* Only if by "stable", we mean that temperatures have been steadily increasing for the past 11K years, and is likely within a few thousand years of reaching its apex, after which temperatures will decrease over the next time scale of tens
Fuck "social scientists" (Score:1)
That's like a gender activist and a race grifter getting into an argument with a a building engineer and an architect and expecting to be declared "right".
Dupe (Score:2)
https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
Nope (Score:2, Interesting)
I submit no. Why? 200 to 300 years will go by and tech will have altered the situation unrecognizably.
This is political arrogancy, not science.
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This is why geologists are poor (Score:2)
Ever see these folks? They're always running around in shorts and worn-out t-shirts. But I do admit their boots are often expensive...
Obviously, they don't understand how science WORKS. Look at the botanists, for example - they see everything is getting too settled, so they decide "we need to start reclassifying all the plant families... otherwise people will start asking why the world needs so many botanists!" So Crucifereae becomes Brassicaceae, Umbellifereae becomes Apiaceae, and all the botanists stay v
You have to genuflect to AGW... (Score:2)
Kudos for sticking to science.
Boos for giving any credence to the term "Anthropocene Epoch" which has no basis in geological history.
It will take centuries to know if we have really established a geological epoch. Really, thousands of years.