Man-Made Changes Bring About New Epoch in Earth's History

Alpha Galileo ^ | 1-26-2008 | University Of Leicester

[blam]

Man-Made Changes Bring About New Epoch in Earth's History

25 January 2008

Geologists from the University of Leicester propose that humankind has so altered the Earth that it has brought about an end to one epoch of Earth’s history and marked the start of a new epoch.

Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams at the University of Leicester and their colleagues on the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London have presented their research in the journal GSA Today.

In it, they suggest humans have so changed the Earth that on the planet the Holocene epoch has ended and we have entered a new epoch - the Anthropocene.

They have identified human impact through phenomena such as:

· Transformed patterns of sediment erosion and deposition worldwide

· Major disturbances to the carbon cycle and global temperature

· Wholesale changes to the world’s plants and animals

· Ocean acidification

The scientists analysed a proposal made by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen in 2002. He suggested the Earth had left the Holocene and started the Anthropocene era because of the global environmental effects of increased human population and economic development.

The researchers argue that the dominance of humans has so physically changed Earth that there is increasingly less justification for linking pre- and post-industrialized Earth within the same epoch - the Holocene.

The scientists said their findings present the scholarly groundwork for consideration by the International Commission on Stratigraphy for formal adoption of the Anthropocene as the youngest epoch of, and most recent addition to, the Earth's geological timescale.

They state: “Sufficient evidence has emerged of stratigraphically significant change (both elapsed and imminent) for recognition of the Anthropocene—currently a vivid yet informal metaphor of global environmental change—as a new geological epoch to be considered for formalization by international discussion.”

[ConservativeMind]

It’s about time we had an era named after us!

[blam]

GGG Ping.

Welcome To The Anthropocene

[JasonC]

And --- wait for it --- here it comes --- you just know ---

It ... is ... all... Bush's fault!

[Kickass Conservative]

OK, that’s it. Everyone stop breathing in 3, 2, 1....

[2ndDivisionVet]

This is like a tiny ant on a giant boulder, thinking he is controlling it’s direction.

[ketsu]

This is like a tiny ant on a giant boulder, thinking he is controlling it’s direction.

Not at all. Do you know why the Earth has an Oxygen atmosphere?

[Kickass Conservative]

So, how do they explain all the other Climate Change periods before the ascension of mankind?
Any pictures of a T Rex driving a Hummer?

[Grimmy]

AGW is to ecofascism was theory of immiseration was to marxism.

Ecofascism. The latest in the line of misanthropic socialist utopianisms.

[2ndDivisionVet]

"Not at all. Do you know why the Earth has an Oxygen atmosphere?"

Go ahead and tell us, I know you're dying to...

[D-fendr]

Plant farts.

[dsc]

“This is like a tiny ant on a giant boulder, thinking he is controlling it’s direction.”

Or a flea crawling up an elephant’s leg with rape on his mind?

[proudtobeanamerican1]

Must be weather warfare!

[ketsu]

Go ahead and tell us, I know you're dying to...

Google is your friend.

[The Spirit Of Allegiance]

a proposal made by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen in 2002. He suggested the Earth had left the Holocene and started the Anthropocene era

Sorry to be a flat-earth tire, but the Holocene scene just wasn't happenene. Those who subscribe to the Old-Earth Theory should revolve to realize that only a Rebel Without a Cosmos Young Earth would walk this way, talk this way.




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[onedoug]

(C)rock formation.

[SIDENET]

Google is your friend.

Google is the reason we have an oxygen atmosphere?

I knew it all along.

[Salamander]

“Do you know why the Earth has an Oxygen atmosphere?”

Because perfluorocarbons are just too darn messy.

[ketsu]

Google is the reason we have an oxygen atmosphere?

I knew it all along.

I see google is not your friend. So much the pity.

[D-fendr]

Seems, there is a combination of reasons; and, according to yahoo answwers anyway, it's because there are plants:

Oxygen is one of the most chemically reactive elements, with the result that on any planet without life the oxygen quickly combines with other elements in exposed rocks. For example, on Mars the red color comes from Fe2O7, a super oxide of iron which not only does not exist on Earth, but whose existence was totally unknown until the Viking landers found it on Mars.

The result is that only on a planet with some form of life that takes oxygen out of chemical combinations and releases it into the atmosphere (as plants do on Earth) will O2 be found as a constituent of the atmosphere. It is hoped that one of the planet searches may ultimately find oxygen spectroscopically in one of the extra-solar planets, as this would be absolute proof of life on such a planet.