Posted on 01/31/2008 9:37:24 AM PST by forkinsocket
Humans have altered Earth so much that scientists say a new epoch in the planet's geologic history has begun.
Say goodbye to the 10,000-year-old Holocene Epoch and hello to the Anthropocene.
Among the major changes heralding this two-century-old man-made epoch:
Vastly altered sediment erosion and deposition patterns. Major disturbances to the carbon cycle and global temperature. Wholesale changes in biology, from altered flowering times to new migration patterns. Acidification of the ocean, which threatens tiny marine life that forms the bottom of the food chain. The idea, first suggested in 2000 by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen, has gained steam with two new scientific papers that call for official recognition of the shift.
Vivid metaphor
In the February issue of the journal GSA Today, a publication of the Geological Society of America, Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams of the University of Leicester and colleagues at the Geological Society of London argue that industrialization has wrought changes that usher in a new epoch.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Ping
Oh and this is bunk, but that’s where government grants are going these days.
GMTA
Yes, Mankind has to be worse for the planet than billions of reptiles passing gas, dying by the millions in the open, and crapping all over the place when alive.........
Eventually it will be renamed the “Goreobscene” Epoch.
Twenty years ago we called it the Cocacola-zoic since that will be a major marker for the sedimentary units.
In yer face, all the marine life that died and became chalk! You little guys absorbed all the CO2 there has ever been, but guess what, WE got the geological epoch named after us!
And I for one am loving it. Lets hear it for the Anthropocene Age.
I can see that agriculture, with its water use patterns, intensive livestock grazing, and promotion of erosion and degradation of the soil, could have a huge impact. We’ll just have to wait a few million years to see.
Farewell, Holocene, we hardly knew you.
The evolution guys tell us that 10,000 years is a blink of an eye. Compared to 6 billion (or whatever the current estimate is), this is hubris. Was there ever an epoch so short?
The human race should just commit mass suicide and get it over with.
I call BS and for stripping these people of their accreditation.
The politicizing of science must end.
The most adamant of the ecoterrorists demand just that.
Either this stuff is emanating from a new cult, or it's from another planet. Maybe both.
When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Anthropocene
age of Anthropocene!
Anthropocene!
Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind's true liberation
Anthropocene!
Anthropocene!
When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Anthropocene
The age of Anthropocene
Anthropocene!
Anthropocene!
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