21–30 of 64 posts
Yeah, let's not be hasty here. Let's just call it a war, because something worse can come along...
Let's not call this the Anthropocene yet, we don't know what's coming.
Honestly, it is hubris to start the anthropocene in just the last human lifetime. Our species has been making an impact that will be evident in the geological record for longer than that. e.g. Geologists of some far-off future are going to notice that species that were isolated to one continent suddenly started popping up everywhere in the fossil record a few hundred years ago. Sea travel has united the continents in…
Related: Geologists reject declaration of Anthropocene epoch https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/mar/22/geologists-r...
Huh. That looks like really important context. I wonder why the Smithsonian article neglected to mention it. Do they just not want to admit that there's any dissent?
Honestly, it is hubris to start the anthropocene in just the last human lifetime. Our species has been making an impact that will be evident in the geological record for longer than that. e.g. Geologists of some far-off future are going to notice that species that were isolated to one continent suddenly started popping up everywhere in the fossil record a few hundred years ago. Sea travel has united the continents in…
On what do you base this claim? Before humans, not much happened around and the sediment layers were thin. The amount of energy moving things around was limited to weather (due to sun radiation, mostly), volcanic/tectonic activity, and to (a lesser degree, due to direct effect of) tidal forces. Humans activity however, both directly and indirectly, caused effects that also involved energy stored in the span of millions of years. That should be anything but indistinguishable.
Also, from the article: "The amount of sediment settled behind the world’s thousands of big dams would cover all of California to a depth of five meters, and such sediments are full of distinctive markers, like pesticide residues, metals, microplastics and the fossils of invasive species. To define a time period formally, geologists must identify distinctive signals in sediments or rocks that can be correlated around the globe, and the presence of such markers is ubiquitous. The geology is real."
Related: Geologists reject declaration of Anthropocene epoch https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/mar/22/geologists-r...
Huh. That looks like really important context. I wonder why the Smithsonian article neglected to mention it. Do they just not want to admit that there's any dissent?
The proposal was rejected by the international hierarchy of stratigraphy— of which the International Commission on Stratigraphy is a part— without citing substantive reasons, but most public criticisms of the Anthropocene stem from a range of sources: from within the heart of geology, to well outside it, among the social sciences and humanities.
If the problem being identified is that science is bad at PR, I agree. Science communication, I love you; please stop being a self-fulfilling prophesy.
If the message is that human industrialization besides carbon emissions directly have obscured the discussion. Yes.
But this article kinda… does not tell you the thesis, it gives you the evidence for us to come to our own (proven and correct) conclusions. At… length.
I like it, but we should probably try to get new people who don’t already agree… maybe
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This makes it sound like the designation is latent, even if rejected by committee right now. They acknowledge an anthropogenic "event" is under way but aren't admitting the anthropocene because of its recency and unclear boundaries. But the boundaries of other epochs are also only estimated and didn't unfold completely overnight, not even for the K-Pg impactor, probably the most sudden change in the geological record…
> They acknowledge an anthropogenic "event" is under way but aren't admitting the anthropocene because of its recency and unclear boundaries. You mean aren't admitting the anthropocene as an epoch? That's not what the article says. The reason it's not admissible as an epoch is because we might blow ourselves up tomorrow and wipe out industrial civilisation. And the whole layer of steel and concrete we laid down would…
Hell, many of the changes from the current event are not even coherent with each other.
IMO, some people are just way too intent on pushing futurology around. (On something similar, people started pushing some grand event that would mark the end of the 20th century at the 80s. Of course, they pushed lots of different ones.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huh. That looks like really important context. I wonder why the Smithsonian article neglected to mention it. Do they just not want to admit that there's any dissent?
The Smithsonian article specifically mentioned it right after the leading paragraphs that outlined what the distinguishing features were and that it had been put forward: The proposal was rejected by the international hierarchy of stratigraphy— of which the International Commission on Stratigraphy is a part— without citing substantive reasons, but most public criticisms of the Anthropocene stem from a range of source…
Honestly, it is hubris to start the anthropocene in just the last human lifetime. Our species has been making an impact that will be evident in the geological record for longer than that. e.g. Geologists of some far-off future are going to notice that species that were isolated to one continent suddenly started popping up everywhere in the fossil record a few hundred years ago. Sea travel has united the continents in…
"A few hundred years will be indistinguishable from a single human lifetime to those future geologists." On what do you base this claim? Before humans, not much happened around and the sediment layers were thin. The amount of energy moving things around was limited to weather (due to sun radiation, mostly), volcanic/tectonic activity, and to (a lesser degree, due to direct effect of) tidal forces. Humans activity how…
How much of that stuff is going to survive on geological timescales amd the concept of "invasive species" isn't really applicable to anything but conservationists that want to maintain a static environment.