Guest Post by David Middleton
I just love it when the authors of these sorts of articles start out with a series of mistakes…
The Anthropocene: Can Humans Survive A Human Age?
by Adam Frank
About 12,000 years ago (give or take a thousand) the glaciers covering much of the northern hemisphere disappeared and an ice age gripping the Earth ended. The planet became warmer, wetter and entered the geological era scientists call the Holocene. Marked by a stable climate, the Holocene has been good to humans. The entire history of our civilization (agriculture, city building, writing etc.) is bound within the Holocene and its bounty of productive land and oceans.
Now, it appears, the Holocene is over…
[…]
The author, an astrophysicist, must have never taken a course in Quaternary geology.
Mistake #1: “About 12,000 years ago (give or take a thousand) the glaciers covering much of the northern hemisphere disappeared and an ice age gripping the Earth ended.”
The glaciers retreated; but we are still very much in the grip of an ice age that began about 35 million years ago (the x-axes of first four graphs are denominated in millions of years ago (MYA) – Today is to the left)…
The boundary between the Eocene and Oligocene marks the beginning of the Cenozoic ice age. It’s the fourth major ice age of the Phanerozoic Eon…
The Holocene is an interglacial period within an ice age. The only thing that distinguishes the Holocene from previous Pleistocene interglacial episodes is the fact that modern man migrated out of Africa and hunted the megafauna of Europe and North America into extinction…
Yes… I know that there’s not much evidence that our ancestors were capable of causing so much extinction prior to the invention of capitalism – But those megafauna had coped with all of the previous glacial-interglacial cycles just fine, so long as our ancestors stayed in Africa.
At this point in time there is no reason to assume that the Holocene marked the end of the Cenozoic ice age… There’s not even any reason to think that it marked the end of very cold Quaternary Period…
Mistake #2: “Marked by a stable climate, the Holocene has been good to humans.”
The Holocene has been a heck of a lot more stable than the preceding Pleistocene glacial episode (the x-axes of next three graphs are denominated in calendar years – Today is to the right)…
But it has been far from stable…
And it hasn’t always been nice to humans…
The Holocene of the Dark Ages Cold Period and Little Ice Age were quite often very unkind to humans.
Will there one day be a clear geological distinction between the “Anthropocene” and the Holocene and the rest of the Quaternary? I seriously doubt it – But no one will know for hundreds of thousands of years.
Professor Frank started out with a paragraph-full of mistakes; which then formed the basis of his sheer speculation about the Anthropocene’s future relevance in the geologic record.
H/T to Bill Illis for much of the paleoclimate data.
Gary Pearse says @ur momisugly June 25, 2011 at 7:41 am “I collected an Ordovician nautiloid in northern Saskatchewan.”
So….you are claiming to refute all the evidence from modern climate science on the basis of one single item you collected? Or are you saying that since there was ocean life back then that nothing we do today can impact the biology of the ocean?
Neither of those assertions hold up at even a glancing review…
Middleton gets a few things wrong. One is that he uses the term Cenozoic ice age, which is nonsense, because the Cenozoic Era covers the post-asteroid period of the last 65 million years, most of which did not have ice ages. Only the latter part has ice ages interspersed with warm periods, the current warm period being the Holocene. I don’t think the article claimed that the Anthropocene marks the end of the Cenozoic Era, only the Holocene epoch and probably the Quaternary Period that is marked by the ice ages and interglacials. By its name Anthropocene is only an epoch, not even a period. If the Quaternary ends, as some believe ice ages won’t happen in a high-CO2 world, it will be the Quinary Period. Interestingly, Hansen in 1981 referred to the temperature by 2100 as Mesozoic (being the era before Cenozoic that last had elevated CO2 levels comparable with where we are going), but it may be premature to suggest the Era is ending, because that is only defined by mass extinctions. What comes after Cenozoic, anyway?
John B says:
June 25, 2011 at 3:27 am
“We zoom in on thousands of years and see stability (yes, really). We then zoom in further on hundreds of years and see an unprecedented rate of change. It is the rate of change more than the absolute level which is problematic. And it is the scale of hundreds of years that matters to us, our children and our children’s children.”
Saying that it is “unprecedented” does not make it scientific fact. Compare the 40 year HADCRUT3 trends from 1900 to 1940 and 1970 to 2010. The trends are almost identical yet the atmospheric CO2 concentration during the earlier interval has been deemed by warmists to produce the ideal climate. So let’s just stick to the facts and eschew the weeping, wailing and evocation of the children.
Sorry Robert, I didn’t mean to weep or wail, just pointing out that it is the scale of hundreds of years that matters, not millions.
“Unprecedented” is a scientific claim, as long as it is qualified. I take it you are referring to HADCRUT as here:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/nhshgl.gif
Looks unprecedented to me! That the early part of the century is as unprecedented as the later half depends on the dates you choose and is affected by short term variation. AGW predicts that warming will continue and the trends will be the highest for thousands of years. We shall see…
It’s becoming more clear as time passes, that Adam Frank is becoming increasingly seperated from reality as it stands.
Nearly a year ago (July 12, 2010) on Frank’s well read NPR blog post, titled: “Climategate Closed: Lessons At The Edge Of Science, Politics and the Future” (http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2010/07/12/128465098/climategate-closed-lessons-at-the-edge-science-politics-and-the-future) Frank made a number of very absurd and wholly skewed comments regarding the climate science and the “ClimateGate” issue.
When challenged by knowledgable people, Frank eventually attempted to (momentarily) retreat behind this enormously absurd and disingenuous statement: “Personally I am not wedded to climate change being true. Time will tell and I try watch and evaluate from the sidelines as best I can.” among others.
Now, after reading this latest nonsense coming from Mr Frank, one must ask, why is this fully politicisized ~scientist~ still being allowed to feed so well at the public trough? To be allowed to teach anyone at all? And, being allowed to misrepresent facts so completely, on a publicly funded blog?
To answer my own questions, it’s because, not despite of Mr Frank’s political interests, support, and affiliations. And I’m confident that if those things fell on the opposite side of the political fence, he would be expelled, belittled, and even have his super secret climate decoder ring taken away, to be given to another.
On the use of Ljunqvist, 2010: it captures the pre-MWP better than Moberg et al., 2005 and as well as Mann, 2008 (without the 20th century distraction of Mike’s Nature Trick).
On the notion that our ancestors hunting megafauna into extinction: My commentary is at least half tongue-in-cheek… But the major difference between the Sangamonian (Eemian) and the Holocene is modern man.
Jim D: I did not say that the entire Cenozoic was an “ice age”… Only the most recent 35 million years fits the geological definition of “ice age.”
The Holocene already was the Anthropocene long before the word was invented by New Age “science.”
NSIDC’s narrative is contradicted by the NOAA data. It’s not uncommon for the data to contradict the narrative. IPSO is a clear example of this phenomenon.
The NSIDC/IPSO comment was not supposed to be in my previous comment.
We’ve moved from the holocene to the politicicene to the algoricene to the charlatanocene and are now in the scientificallyobscene. Next – the dejourocene – One epoch that places a political wrapper around all contingencies where no matter what happens it will require leftist oversight.
15,000 years ago the entire world’s population was less than 5 million individuals (about half the population of New York City).
With such a small human footprint upon an incredibly vast land mass, it is difficult for me to imagine how man was responsible for the mass extinctions as suggested. It makes better sense to me that the climate shift at the transition to the Holocene advantaged a host of species while disadvantaging others. Mass extinctions would have been a natural consequence without man’s help.
David Middleton, Thanks for making that clear about the Cenozoic ice age. By your definition we are in an ice age as long as the polar ice exists, which includes today. To me, this is not a useful definition, because most people would equate ice ages to glacials, as distinct from interglacials. Also Anthropocene only becomes a useful definition if it can be distinguished from the Holocene or other interglacials in future sediment layers. I would suggest that the CO2 will do that very clearly because of what it will do to the ocean life and vegetation distribution, which should be geologically noticeable in the future, as the Anthropocene article says.
John B says:
June 25, 2011 at 11:32 am
“Unprecedented” is a scientific claim, as long as it is qualified. I take it you are referring to HADCRUT as here:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/nhshgl.gif
Looks unprecedented to me! That the early part of the century is as unprecedented as the later half depends on the dates you choose and is affected by short term variation.
————–
I think you need to look up what “unprecedented” means. If it’s happened before and humans weren’t responsible, then you have a problem in claiming that something that’s happened before without human influence is unprecedented. OHHHHH, I get it. You’re saying that today’s warming is unprecedented because it’s human induced. Yeah… your circular logic isn’t impressive.
The reason the megafauna survived in Africa wasthat they had lived alongside the Human Race since it first appeared and had learned to coexist. In other continents it was different. When humans appeared the megafaunas vanished.
@MrX
We were talking about “rate of change”. Mainstream science indicates that the rate of change of temperature since the industrial revolution and particularly in the late 20th century is unprecedented for at least the last 2000 years and probably much longer. No circular reasoning.
John B says:
“… the rate of change of temperature since the industrial revolution and particularly in the late 20th century is unprecedented for at least the last 2000 years and probably much longer. ”
That is flat wrong.
@jim B,
The geological definition of “ice age” is a period of year-round ice in at least one polar region and evidence of cyclic glaciation in lower latitudes.
Those conditions have been in place the Oligocene; and aren’t likely to change until Antarctica drifts north of the Antarctic Circle.
John B
Are you sure you didn’t mean Mannstream Science?
John Middleton, I am not sure if you are a geologist, but if you are, is it your opinion that what we are doing here (e.g. ocean acidification, glacial melting, global vegetation changes) will leave a geological mark? This is the acid test for a new geological age.
As a missive from the sceptical side, this post is entirely self-defeating.
In the first place, it is indeed nitpicking (as Peter George says) to make a fuss about the use of the terminology of the last ‘ice age’ in a popular presentation when refering to the time before the Holocene interglacial . So what? It doesn’t seem to distort the debate to talk about the last period between the last two interglacials as the last Ice Age…in fact, this simple and commonly used terminology makes it easier for us to talk about expectation of the end of the current interglacial as the next period of glacial advance.
And generally, the entire quoted paragraph contains nothing particularly missleading, especially not on the scale of the misleading ‘science communication’ to which we have become accustomed in this AGW controversy. Yet there are some really problems with Middleton’s case against it. Most alarming is the way he presents the the claim that the migration of humans out of Africa during the Holocene (and not before) caused the extinction of the megafauna. Is the science behind this claim so well established that it does not require so much as a sceptical qualification or a reference? Wow.
There is more nitpicking over Adam Frank saying that a stable climate during the Holocene “has been good to humans.” I see no big issue here — although he might better have said ‘a warmer and relatively stable climate…’. There is no doubt that Civilisation began, and thrived, through the Holocene. In fact, the correspondence of civilisation with a warmer stable climate is almost by definition this epoch.
But this is hardly to say that the Human species, and its Civilisation, have never suffered catastrophic climate change during this time. Middleton’s example of the Little Ice Age impact on European civilisation is dewarfed by the drying up of the Sahara and areas of the middle east and central Asia earlier in the epoch. Northern European civilisation survived the Little Ice Age and thrived, just as previously humanity survived earlier North African and Central Asian desiccation, and soon began to thrive further north — where we cropped on land that was, before the Holocene, covered by a solid layer of ice.
@ur momisugly David Middleton: This is a really good presentation of the data that causes us geologists to laugh at the arrogance and stupidity of folks like Mann (and several chronic posters here). There is far more to the climate of the earth than a few ppm of CO2, unless there are just too few ppm of that beneficial gas, which is sort of where we uncomfortably find ourselves today.
As to “unprecedented” from one of the trolls – it seems we can just make up meanings for words today. Now that the key thermometers recording this “unprecedented” rise in temperature all reside on airport tarmac, there isn’t going to be much if any further rise.
Moderate Republican:
At June 25, 2011 at 9:04 am you ask Gary Pearse:
“So….you are claiming to refute all the evidence from modern climate science on the basis of one single item you collected?”
What “evidence from modern climate science” supporting the existence of AGW? There is no such evidence; n.b. zilch, none, not any.
Unless and until some such evidence exists then your question cannot be answered for the same reason that it is not possible to answer the question;
‘What is the name of the Pope’s wife?’
Richard
OK, I understand the premise and conclusion that the paper promoting Anthropocene is fraught with many errors and misunderstandings of the context of ice ages and glacial and interglacial periods. I agree, but let’s not further muddy the waters with poor guesses, stated as fact, that humans killed off the megafuana of the day.
This statement from the post: “The only thing that distinguishes the Holocene from previous Pleistocene interglacial episodes is the fact that modern man migrated out of Africa and hunted the megafauna of Europe and North America into extinction.” is baseless, if not incomprehensible.
The 12,000 yr. date of the end of the (continuing ice age period of glaciation) is off too. The glacial maximus was far older than than 12 K yrs. ago. By 12K yrs. ago there had already been considerable melting of the glaciers. But an event occurred at that time that thrust us back into a period of glaciation and curiously enough, the timing of that event coincides with the extinction of northern hemisphere megafauna and the extinction of the Clovas indian culture in the US (for several hundred years).
As other commenters on this string have pointed out, the thought that humans caused the extinction of northern hemisphere megafauna, at that time, is ridiculous. There are other theories about these extinctions that the author might want to investigate.
Otherwise, a good post.
One big impact and all of the above bets go out the window and on time scales of millions of years it is inevitable.
Please indulge a follow-up comment about humans causing the demise of the megafauna of 12K yrs. ago.
I believe the the author of this post might benefit by visiting the La Brea Tar Pits Museum in Los Angeles (located on La Brea Avenue, of course, in the middle of LA). This museum displays the skeletal remains of these animals, collected from years of excavating bones from the tar pits on the property of the museum in Los Angeles. This megafauna is huge. One might think that a Mastadon might be too dumb and slow to counter an attack of lots of humans equipped with hand spears with stone points, kind of like a cornered elephant, but what about the Saber Tooth Tiger? What about the massive Tree Sloth? Is it credible to believe that these huge creatures were decimated to extinction by man? All at the same time? What about the Camels and Horses of the time? They too were huge and numerous. How voracious do you believe our ancestors were?
Check it out. It may open your eyes and mind. Everything on display there is extinct, and they all disappeared at the same time.
beng says:
June 25, 2011 at 5:38 am
I apologize if my wording wasn’t as clear as it should be. I am not claiming that the closing isthmus caused the current ice-age nor does my perhaps less than clear wording make that claim. I am claiming that the closing isthmus looks like it may have caused an increase in the variance or, in other words, an increase in the amplitude of the oscillations about the mean or about the trend. I did not mean to imply that the closing isthmus affected or changed the mean or trend. There isn’t enough data to be able to tell in the linked graph (which is simply the one in the post above “Mistake #2..” and titled “Neogene CO2 vs Temperature.”
Smokey said: “That is flat wrong.”
On your chart, 1860-1880 is too short a period and the line you have drawn for 1910-1940 looks too steep to me. Where did you get the graph and particularly the trends attributed to Phil Jones?
I just pulled up this chart, where the recent trend definitely looks steeper than anything before it. In your opinion, why does it look so different to yours?
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/recenttc_triad.html