Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Myths about the Anthropocene

smithsonianmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 64 posts

Re: Myths about the Anthropocene

#51

Post by tim333 »

beloch wrote: post #18

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…

We seem to have wiped out most of the 'charismatic megafauna' from about 10,000 years ago. Mammoths, dodos etc.

Re: Myths about the Anthropocene

#52

Post by noduerme »

1oooqooq wrote: post #47
noduerme wrote: post #38

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 rad…

you will be detecting micro plastic with every single fossil for millennia to come.

Yeah, but a few thousand years is nothing.

Re: Myths about the Anthropocene

#53

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Myths about the Anthropocene

#54

Post by derbOac »

kadoban wrote: post #33
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, Plu…

I guess I never understood the problem with saying we have hundreds of planets, and then to classify them.

Re: Myths about the Anthropocene

#55

Post by FrustratedMonky »

masklinn wrote: post #36
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sometimes when forming standards, it is worthwhile to grandfather something in, just for the pure logistical effort needed to change.

Consider that every single book, textbook, poster, pamphlet in the entire world has to be edited and re-printed. Just so we don't have the numbers go to 9.

Every kid for decades was taught about the 9th planet Pluto. 18 years later, and a lot of people still refer to it as a Planet.

And. Now we can't refer to the search for Planet 10 with the much cooler name of Planet X. "Searching for Planet X" sounds cooler. Now every conversation has to be "Searching for Planet X, oh, I mean 9, because of those guys that renumbered them, why did they do that again? Was there a point."

"emotionally charged reactions like yours"

Someone needs to look in the mirror.

Re: Myths about the Anthropocene

#56

Post by laszlojamf »

b33j0r wrote: post #42
heresie-dabord wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anthropoch be better? Manflection point? Gympulse? How about the Idiocracene. ^_^

We don’t _have_ to succumb to idiocracy. Just a reminder. Our (royal we) actions to dumb down our UIs was probably immoral in the middle-game; if we wanted anyone to not just smash money buttons, based on feelings. I was here. I get it

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean, and I really don't mean to be the language police, but I don't think "royal we" means what you intend it to mean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_we

Re: Myths about the Anthropocene

#57

Post by kadoban »

derbOac wrote: post #54
kadoban wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, Plu…

I guess I never understood the problem with saying we have hundreds of planets, and then to classify them.

The main issue is just that you have a limited number of rocks that normal people are going to care about. Mercury, Venus, Earth, etc.

Should Pluto be in this list? If so, why? It's a boring tiny rock way the hell out, one of hundreds. Making this list hundreds long is not feasible, nobody will remember them.

Re: Myths about the Anthropocene

#58

Post by specialist »

Clamchop wrote: post #9
lainga wrote: post #3

Related: Geologists reject declaration of Anthropocene epoch https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/mar/22/geologists-r...

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…

The Great War, World War, Forever War.

Industrial, organic, traditional farming.

Toast vs merely warmed bread.

I'm fine with everyone landing on their own names. Provided each has some kind of preamble (context, assumptions, scope) and acknowledging everyone else has the same right(s) to add to the confusion.

Re: Myths about the Anthropocene

#59

Post by specialist »

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…

IMHO anthropocalypse is most accurate. Though I use "oops" for brevity.

Re: Myths about the Anthropocene

#60

Post by southernplaces7 »

AdamN wrote: post #46
beloch wrote: post #18

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…

Agreed. Spain's old growth forests were denuded to build the Spanish Armada (or thereabouts) and you can go further back to catastrophic, anthropogenic, environmental shifts a few thousand years back in India, China and elsewhere in the world. Geology isn't focused on single year boundaries so maybe it's best to say that we entered the Anthropocene 6k-2k years ago (a 4k year range).

Spains (and much of Europe's) old growth forests were also almost completely denuded much earlier than that to build most of the Roman Empire, and its vast mining operations, naval flotillas and so forth. Yet they grew back to again disappear roughly around the Renaissance over 1000 years later.

The interesting thing is that many modern popular social discussions (and even some pop sci arguments) speak of old growth forests as irreplaceable things that, if cut down, pretty much disappear when history clearly shows that this isn't true.

I don't defend cutting them down just because, but I think it's good to be honest about their ability to come back.

Post reply on HN