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Myths about the Anthropocene

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Myths about the Anthropocene

#31

Post by eimrine »

b33j0r wrote: post #26

Would anthropoch be better? Manflection point? Gympulse? 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…

I would like to have a word like Antropocrisis or Anthropoverflow which would be a collecting point for child-free arguments, because nowadays a declining of population is still considered as a negative event everywhere.

Re: Myths about the Anthropocene

#32

Post by eimrine »

mig39 wrote: post #21

The argument is a lot like calling that 1914-1918 global conflict "The Great War." 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.

Your metaphor is great but lacks an answer how exactly should we call this non-Anthropocene.

Re: Myths about the Anthropocene

#33

Post by kadoban »

Nevermark wrote: post #7

It does seem pointless to avoid naming a new era for dramatic irreversible changes that would have defined a new era if they happened millions of years ago. How many common assumptions about the Holocene are already broken? -- With much less at stake, I think it was out of touch and impractical to choose scientific terminology at odds with existing common language, when "dwarf planet" was defined as not a subcategory…

That doesn't really fix anything, because no matter what you call Pluto, it has to get demoted from the list of planet-like-things-whatever-we-call-them that school children learn.

The issue is that there's hundreds of objects at least as planet-y as Pluto is, and nobody is going to remember all of those. So either we demote Pluto somehow, or we have to have some reason that it's more important than the rest.

So, Pluto is just historically interesting but inherently just one of many rocks. And science tries not to categorize things based on "oh that one somebody noticed first".

Re: Myths about the Anthropocene

#34

Post by heresie-dabord »

b33j0r wrote: post #26

Would anthropoch be better? Manflection point? Gympulse? 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…

> anthropoch be better? Manflection point? Gympulse?

How about the Idiocracene. ^_^

Re: Myths about the Anthropocene

#35

Post by Twisell »

parineum wrote: post #30
userulluipeste wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> like pesticide residues, metals, microplastics and the fossils of invasive species. 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.

Much will survive even if it will eventually transform. But that's not unlike petroleum which is composed of fossilized organic materials.

Wether the result will be useful or detrimental to future generations is yet another question that we deferred to them.

Re: Myths about the Anthropocene

#36

Post by masklinn »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #14
Nevermark wrote: post #7

It does seem pointless to avoid naming a new era for dramatic irreversible changes that would have defined a new era if they happened millions of years ago. How many common assumptions about the Holocene are already broken? -- With much less at stake, I think it was out of touch and impractical to choose scientific terminology at odds with existing common language, when "dwarf planet" was defined as not a subcategory…

Yes. The entire Pluto thing seemed like a pedantic waste of time. Or, at least grandfather it in. Now everyone still thinks of it as a planet, but we have to qualify it when talking : "Oh hey I read an interesting story about the 9th planet Pluto, ooops, sorry, I mean 'dwarf', don't crucify me".

The only waste of time is from emotionally charged reactions like yours. The IAU vote happened 18 years ago, yet you can’t let it go.

The grandfathering idea makes a negative amount of sense. These are technical classifications on objective criteria.

Re: Myths about the Anthropocene

#38

Post by noduerme »

Suppose you want to graph negative responses to a survey over time. Let's say the business had been getting increasingly worse on all metrics over time.

Grouped by day you might just see a couple huge spikes on days where there were a few negative responses.

Grouped by year you'd notice that the volume of negative feedbacks was increasing.

Grouped by milllenia it would be hard to notice that something had changed radically in the last few years.

The question is what timeframe matters to your particular case. Unless you can answer that, you can't form a specific idea of how bad something actually is or whether it's begun improving or is still deteriorating.

The worst atmospheric polluting parts of the industrial revolution will have been over for most countries for a century before we really feel the environmental consequences of rising sea levels and increased greenhouse effects. No one alive today was burning coal in 1895. So it's not crazy to think about how we adapt, while still considering how to stop adding to the damage.

Re: Myths about the Anthropocene

#39

Post by hoc »

Making fire and the wheel considered dangerous, choosing farty animals for our cultivation endeavors stinks while getting down from trees into concrete caves was a bad move. Scaling that up to "everyone"... priceless.

What we once considered pivotal points in our development seems now the source for our declared demise. At least we discovered that via satellites shot into orbit by rockets.

Now, if we accept that as the natural overshooting in a evolutionary jump, we just need to adjust. The undershooting will be painful, the discussion in the next few oscillations annyoing, still, it's the way to go. After all, denial is just a common step in change.

Re: Myths about the Anthropocene

#40

Post by Vecr »

eimrine wrote: post #31
b33j0r wrote: post #26

Would anthropoch be better? Manflection point? Gympulse? 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…

I would like to have a word like Antropocrisis or Anthropoverflow which would be a collecting point for child-free arguments, because nowadays a declining of population is still considered as a negative event everywhere.

It is a negative event. I see the sign of the exponential, and it's the wrong one.
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