Steve Harris writes:
An article came out on the AIP Physics Today website about a push from some scientists to formally designate today’s human geological epoch as the “Anthropocene”. Editors of the journal Nature argue that the name “provides a powerful framework for considering global change and how to manage it.” Here is a link:
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/news/10.1063/PT.5.8107
Here is an excerpt, quoted from an article in Nature:
“Some supporters of the Anthropocene idea have even been likened to zealots. “There’s a similarity to certain religious groups who are extremely keen on their religion—to the extent that they think everybody who doesn’t practise their religion is some kind of barbarian,” says one geologist who asked not to be named.”
Another excerpt:
“Official recognition of the concept would invite cross-disciplinary science. And it would encourage a mindset that will be important not only to fully understand the transformation now occurring but to take action to control it.”
There are some interesting comments in the online discussion. One of them from a poster known as Guest is copied below. I thought it well written and worth sharing.
“When a popular foolishness arises in society one may weep for Reason, or laugh at absurdity. Few take notice of the former, and the proponents of the absurdity are greatly offended by the latter. It is clearly embarrassing to be exposed on the wrong side of Reality, and to have your favourite phantom hazard deflated. Consider crop circles. Even after the perpetrators confessed and demonstrated how they created them, true believers refused the explanation and vilified both the sceptics and the self-exposed pranksters.
Phantom hazards are popular with the fundamentally pusillanimous for the ‘threat’ can be confronted with the (perhaps sub-conscious) realization that there is no physical harm for the believer, but provides a cause of great moral superiority – and not infrequently, a generous income. Politically, phantom hazards are ideal tool for manipulating a trusting population. The threat is what the proponents construe it to be, it will never physically materialize, and victory can be declared at any time it loses its persuasive ability and attendant revenue. The true danger lies in real damage done to society through misapplication of effort and funds, and the theft of personal freedom – in this case ‘to fight climate change’ – previously ‘global warming’.
The arrogance of the political manipulators to pretend that they can organize society to prevent ‘climate change’ speaks poorly of those who would be thought of as ‘leaders’, and brings into question not only their intelligence but also their ethics. We must ask who benefits from this particular phantom hazard – and it certainly is not the general population.
One must admit that, from the perspective of manipulating society, global warming (or ‘climate change’) is a clever tool. This phantom hazard is global. It impacts everyone in the world. And they are not only its victims but also its cause. Brilliant! But dishonest. Such perfidy warrants much more than mere scoff.”
Related:
The Anthropocene Myth
Blaming all of humanity for climate change lets capitalism off the hook.
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I prefer my moniker . ABIOGENESIS.
Anthropocene = Incrediblyobcene
It is not just Climate Change they have tried this ‘population manipulation’ technique with. They also tried it with bird flu and various other supposed ‘pandemics’.
I saw the head of the WHO declare H1N1 a ‘pandemic’ on the basis of ninety people dead in in Mexico – people who were already on death’s door anyway – and I thought ‘who are you trying to kid’. Yes, they were trying to:
Create another ‘global scare’ in order to,
Create a ‘global concern’ which would,
Need ‘global action’ which would,
Require a ‘global government.
And that is what they wanted. But unlike climate, flue outbreaks come and go, and their plans crumbled to dust in a instant. But not before the Blair government gave $500 million to the drug companies for untested tamiflu vaccines, and those vaccines had killed dozens of people. The who thing was a scare-mongering farce.
Politicians only find followers amid people they can convince they need protection. Right now the antics of Putin in Russia are clearly intended to restore the Cold War status quo. If he can do that, there may not be another Russian Revolution. If he can’t, he and many other oligarchs know where they are headed. Climate change and similar concepts act on populations that don’t take Cold War fears seriously. It is no coincidence that AGW arises as a major issue in the west as the Iron Curtain collapsed.
‘Anthropocene’ is another example of Climatism newspeak designed to control thought through vocabulary.
The fact that Humans now dominate the planet means that it is a new epoch.
It has nothing to do with climate change but the life on the planet has now clearly changed. How many human burials will eventually be left in the fossil record for future geologists. Millions? Billions? It will be clear that a new species came to completely dominate the planet and also had advanced technology.
The Earth is a different place. Of course, no species other than us actually knows that.
Excellent point, Bill, We know where the next layer of remains starts. We just don’t know where it will end or how thick it will be,
I suggest we wait until the period ends before we name it
Jim Francisco:
But none of the previous divisions had names until humans gave them names. We’re all caught up. It’s time to name the period going forward and let our Alien Overlords or A.I. Machine Masters call it what they will when all that’s left are our human remains.
OTOH, I do appreciate that an asteroid could nearly wipe out the human race and then there would be a nice fresh boundary layer to mark the end of the current Crimescene (loved that!), assuming there are any geologists left to make the call.
If there is an ‘Anthropocene’, it started when most of the megafauna were hunted to extinction.
Re: the “Anthropocene”:
The ‘Anthropocene’ is not a formally defined geological unit within the Geological Time Scale. [source]
That self-serving alarmist term was only invented in year 2000. The problem with it is the climate Null Hypothesis: there is nothing unusual or unprecedented happening. Nothing is happening that did not happen before the “Anthropocene”.
To be a different geologic time interval, many geologically significant conditions and processes must be identifiable. But none are.
The Holocene is completely adequate for what we’re in. Changing the name only muddies the waters, and it is intended to demonize human activity; nothing more.
The Holocene is good enough for most Geologists, so it’s good enough for me.
Reminds me of an old Isaac Asimov Joke, where he referred to the epochs of the Cenozoic era:
Paleocene
Eocene
Oligocene
Miocene
Pliocene
Pleistocene
Obscene
You could complete the list with” crimescene” as someone above has suggested.
As a geologist, I regularly see breaks in the geologic record that indicate “short” regressions or transgressions of the oceans, meaning that large areas are “suddenly” exposed to the air or submerged. Bad things happen and then unhappen often but are little more than a line in the rocks. The current “Anthropocene”, if it were to last a thousand years, would be a similar line of minor disruption in the rocks.
Call a thing what you want, but do not apply your self-indulgence and self-importance to renaming geological eras, periods, epochs or whatever. Geology is long-time. Man is short-time. In the geologic sense, we don’t even exist yet.
Indeed.
The LAT’s had a piece about this scheme a few weeks back. Apparently there’s a debate as to when to date the beginning of the new era:
“Lewis and his coauthor, University of Leeds geographer Mark Maslin, say the more relevant recent marker came in 1610, when an Antarctic ice core recorded a tiny dip in the amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. ”
vs . .
“By 1610, the arrival of Europeans in the Americas had caused about 50 million deaths due to conflict and disease. Agricultural fields were abandoned, allowing forests, savannas and woodlands to regenerate. Fewer people also meant less intentional burning.
Both of these shifts reduced the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by about 7 to 10 parts per million, the ice core from Antarctica’s Law Dome indicates. [..]
Several other scientists who agree that the Anthropocene has arrived have said the boundary should be 1950, when fossil fuel use accelerated. Still others, including Lewis and Maslin, say the 1960s are a strong candidate, due to the radioactive fallout from nuclear bomb testing. [..]
The International Union of Geological Sciences has convened a working group to make a recommendation on whether to call an end to the Holocene and how to define the beginning of the Anthropocene
The group’s chairman, University of Leicester paleobiologist Jan Zalasiewicz, called the proposed 1610 benchmark “intriguing” and worth consideration by the full panel.”
Personally, I’m in favor of labeling the current era, the Anthropoidiotcene era.
It wasn’t “conflict and disease,” it was disease. By 1610, conflict had been endemic in the Americas for thousands of years, already.
The deification of Man.
Needtobecene
http://scribbler.cz/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/3333951-bec6d4d6-525×300.jpg
Is that a little mustache?
The lead post is a very important and timely one. Thank you Steve Harris. It stimulates discussion of an important topic; to differentiate what is religion, mythology and science.
The elaborate non-scientific and pre-scientific claims published widely that claim man must be the cause of significant ‘climate change’ of an entirely negative nature are stories designed to mimic science.
Religions are fundamentally mythologies. But one must also consider that stories that are designed to mimic science are fundamentally mythologies as religions are fundamentally mythologies.
But, are climate change stories that are designed to mimic science are actually forming a religion? I do not think so. But, the stories are potentially becoming the basis for making mythology the most crucial part of our modern culture thereby increasingly displacing the current rational enlightenment basis of our culture.
I think the climate change stories, that are designed to mimic science and which are fundamentally mythologies, are products of subjective deviations in modern philosophy; specifically products of the parts of those philosophies focused on the philosophy of science. Further, I think that the responsibility for those climate change stories, that are designed to mimic science and which are fundamentally mythologies, lies entirely within a certain community of scientists; namely responsibility for those stories belongs to the community of scientists who base their research on certain modern subjective ‘philosophies of science’ that are displacing the more objectively oriented philosophies of science of people like Feynman, Bacon, etc.
John
Even the notion of “The Holocene” is suspect. What makes THIS interglacial any different from all the other Quaternary interglacials? And now, the nerve to purport that not only is THIS interglacial different, but that we humans have managed to wrest control of it and move into something even more unique. But relatively speaking, neither the Holocene nor purported Anthropocene are more than noise on the signal of the Quaternary.
“Anthropocene” sounds like an ingredient in a 1950’s hair oil advertisement, guaranteed to prevent balding.
This “Global Warming” bull has been going on for a quarter century, and it is high time to bring it to a halt. It was not based on a foundation of Truth, and the founders recognized they were disseminating falsehood from the very start. An entire generation of schoolchildren has been brought up spoon-fed this falsehood by teachers who were too docile and robotic to recognize they were disseminating falsehood. The net result is a foundation “built upon sand”. When you build upon sand you are engineering a structure which will topple. Rather than “the end justifying the means” (which was the excuse the founders of “Global Warming” used to justify their dishonesty) you discover “the ends are a heap of rubble.”
The alternative is demand Truth as a foundation. Over and over and over again.
A “quarter century” Caleb ? Try 40 years:
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2007/sci_techs/3423init_warming_hoax.html
…. and still no real scientific evidence for any effect of purported CO2 on any climate parameter.
So 2 X zero by 2095 ?
With regard to your other point, when does brainwashing become brain-damaging, and when does it become willful and criminal brain-damaging ? Child molesters in Britain have been thrown in jail 30 years or more after their crimes. These vile people should bear that in mind.
That would be “purported anthropogenic CO2”
Hanns Johst – Wikipedia
… fälschlich Hermann Göring
zugeschriebene Aussage:
„ Wenn ich Kultur höre …
entsichere ich meinen
Browning “
____
anthropocenic metaphorics. Let god search them out.
____
fascination of futurism and co.isms
and in the end:
wind parks and solar energie plants instead of agriculture.
monopoliced unreliable energie supplie for a surplus people ‘without a clue’. Hans
Indeed, Hans, “without a clue,” doomed to forever scurry about inside the labyrinth of their imaginations about CO2.
We TRY to help them. They aren’t interested. They KNOW.
‘the land of milk and honey’
in the 50ties we had the ‘montan union’.
Then came EWG * ‘europäische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft’, then EG, now EU.
* in the EG we had ‘milk seas and mountains of butter’ from a post war sustained acriculture – warehouses without consumers.
____
The vision ‘milk and honey’ developed into real surplus.
____
the green agenda changed subsidies to biofuels.
____
‘swords to ploughs’ – revisited. Hans
Well, I think “Hubrisocene” pretty much covers it, the epoch when man knew ALL and it was settled……
Control the climate, sure we can, right after we get finished making life “fair”.
Cheers, KevinK.
I guess that is what CAGW is really all about. Making all life fair especially for the lions tigers and bears oh my. Also we don’t want to hurt no kangeroos.
Okay this strains credulity; no-one has come up with
Misanthropocene.
Adopted.
+1 Now you mention it, it does seem a rather amazing overlook. 🙂
Well Janice, the USSR actually did collapse back in 1992, as we for sure noticed here in Europe, no doubt about it! The main and controlling state within the empire of USSR was indeed Russia and most of the other states that used to belong to USSR, are today members of OSS and some of them are even members of NATO. USA wasn’t the only “United States” back then (and today). I suppose you are refering to existing OSS? There is a big difference between USSR and OSS. In the latter, every state are independed (no controlling Moscow …).
* Russia socialistic? Yes still, but quite different compared to back then and today politically located farther to the right.
* Private business? Well, Moscow is the city in the world that have the highest number of millionairs, since many years back. Before the fall, only the “Elite” and some few that managed to be successful in sports, but the latter had to work for it … (Per capita? No no, try Saudi Arabia or UAE!)
* Infrastructual related business? The Russian government (Duma) like to be apart of this (ex. Gazprom).
* Poverty? Yes, it exist just like before 1992.
* Religion? Yes, it is allowed today. But the “Elite” of the USSR didn’t like this, as they regarded themselves as the most superior ones …
* Political power? Today, Putin is of no/very low consern. Any decision Putin make, has to pass the Duma (government) in a democatic manner. Besides domestic problems and in general, the largest problems Putin have today are USA’s broken agreement of not expanding NATO in Eastern Europe (recruiting OSS members) and associated consequences. (An agreement that was part of the result of the 1989-92 period.) As I implied earlier regarding the Communists, there’s a fight “behind the scene” between the military Communists and the Ortodox Church (aka “the domestic problem”) about who’s going to take control when Putin finally resign. The C’s would like to get back to the “good ol’ days” in full control and the O. Church are more leaning toward like it is today. (Remember, Putin is deeply religious, so it’s not difficult to connect the dots …) Ukraine then? Yes, that’s the next problem, as both Europe and North America has swallowed the false propaganda (“both line, hook and sinker …“) that the Government of U. has generated. Russians have been around far longer than the U’s in the Crimea, despite the U. government claim. (If I remember correctly, even Swedes was there before the U’s during a short period of time …) Remember all the bad rumors related to Putins recent mysterious absence? They all had one and the very same “anti-Putin” source in …
Dear Sasja,
While I disagree on some of the facts cited above (and some not mentioned, like that the governors of each of those OSS states are chosen by the Kremlin…), if there is more freedom today than there was in the former U.S.S.R., then that is good. There are some people sitting in prison who should not be, however….
So! Better is good, but, it could be much better. And I think (even if you cannot say it here) …. you would agree.
Well, I’m just glad you are here and WE AGREE THAT TRUTH IN SCIENCE IS THE WAY TO GO!
#(:))
Your Ally for Science Truth,
Janice
Please disagree! It’s your democratic right to do so! But it doesn’t change that there has been a great improvement for most people over there. Except where (left wing) Nationalistic forces are in control. Bad but different.
Sorry to say, but media in North America and Europe don’t avoid (sensor) the exact same stuff and usually there are paths around that problem, so in the end we get the correct information here anyhow. (Like in the case of Snowden, the US international surveillance [“spying”] was known to the public well before he opened his mouth. The surveillance started in its original shape before the Cold War. One of our “pop” science magazines here published an article in the 1990’s about Echelon and earlier history, so not much news …)
One thing for sure, today the people over in former USSR are allowed to travel abroad. In the past, at best within the empire, usally not at all (except for a long vacations in Siberia or to visit a “Gulag Inn” …).
Regarding prisons, there are several documented cases of people who have been imprisoned on false grounds in western countries too. Some years ago, two Swedish citizens originated from Egypt, who was picked up here by a well known US organization, in violation of International laws. They were accused for terrorism, but nobody could show any kind of evidence at all … One of them got finally back here, well beaten up. (Don’t remember what happen to the other guy) Some cases are known on Cuba.
Well, I’m an agnostic, so science (reality) is my path.
but misanthropocene is okay, read up Karl Kraus ‘last days of mankind’ about WWII or Johann Nestroy.
Never forget – our elites where burnt in Aug, Sep, Oct 1914. Hans
I posted the following on the Geological Society of America’s Connected Community and published it in the February, 2015, AAPG Explorer:
Since proposed in 2000, the concept of the “Anthropocene” has filtered through the geological literature (See Zalasiewicz,, et al, In Press, for a brief summary review). Inevitably, it attracted the attention of the geo-bureaucrats at the IUGS which formed a subcommittee of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) to examine it. Although the base of the “Anthropocene” is diachronous (Edgeworth et al, 2014), the ICS has proposed the “Anthropocene’s” base should be defined now by the isotopic signature of the world’s first nuclear explosion on July 16, 1945, at Alamogorda, NM, (Zalasiewicz,et al, In Press). Other work (Corcoran et al, 2014) shows that the advent of plastic garbage makes an anthropogenic global marker as well.
The real question is, does the “Anthropocene” even have utility? Granted, human reworking is observable at the surface or near surface, but is it geologically regional in scale? How would one map the proposed isotopic marker in the field? Will it mean repeated trips to the field to collect samples, analyze them isotopically in the laboratory, and then go back to the field to place the boundary thus increasing a field geologist’s carbon footprint especially if an SUV or a 4-wheel-drive vehicle is used? Or will geologists now be required to carry a Geiger counter or portable Gamma Ray tool to be sure not to miss the critical basal boundary? (I see a business opportunity here to develop miniaturized versions for field use).
Where will the type section be? Alamogorda, NM, where the original atomic bomb test took place, is a military restricted area requiring extensive security clearances to even visit, much less do field work, if it will even be allowed.
Has the isotopic signature representing the base of the “Anthropocene” ever been identified and correlated in deep sea piston cores recovered by oceanographic institutions? (DSDP, IPOD and ODP cores have disturbed tops so are unusable). Has anyone even checked? Looks like a potential PhD thesis for someone.
What is the long-term preservation potential of any identifying criteria for the so-called “Anthropocene”? Likely it will be small because most of the studies describing evidence of human alterations occur in geomorphic areas that are dominantly erosional. Few examples have been reported from areas of sediment deposition that have larger preservation potential (See references cited above).
A working limestone quarry operates near my residence. Is the changing vertical cut and quarry floor an “excavation surface”? Is the “excavation surface” in a quarry ten miles away and abandoned 50 years ago coeval? Perhaps the IGC should form a subcommittee to evaluate that surface for its utility in “Anthropocene” sequence stratigraphy.
If the reader is offended by my questions and bemusement, please be advised that the following quote,
“A boundary at this time need not have a Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP or ‘golden spike’) but can be defined by a Global Standard Stratigraphic Age (GSSA), i.e. a point in time of the human calendar” (Zalasiewicz et al, In Press),
appears to undermine the standards of the revised Stratigraphic Code that has served us well in various forms since the 1930’s. It also raises substantive questions as to whether geology is well served by “Anthropocene” and whether it has any utility at all. Various isotopes are used to determine rates of surficial, sedimentological, and geomorphic change and a new stratigraphic term really doesn’t improve our understanding of the associated processes. Having completed and published research on modern and ancient sediments, “Anthropocene” adds nothing to my findings and interpretations. However, it may make for longer and “snazzier” titles of these publications. Expressed in another way, Desnoyers, Lyell and Gervais, the founders of Quaternary epochs, must be spinning in their graves.
More than sixty years ago the eminent sedimentary petrologist at Penn State University, Paul D. Krynine, defined stratigraphy as “the triumph of nomenclature over common sense.” Although “Anthropocene” may have utility as a period of human history, using it in geology and the associated ICS pontifications and scholarly papers prove Krynine to be correct.
AUTHOR EXPERTISE: George Devries Klein completed and published research in sedimentology and stratigraphy (including seismic and sequence stratigraphy), taught both topics at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Illinois @ur momisugly Urbana-Champaign, and is Professor Emeritus of Geology at the last-named institution. He also taught sedimentology and sequence and seismic stratigraphy short courses to the petroleum industry.
SELECTED REFERENCES
Corcoran, P.L., et al, 2014, An anthropogenic marker horizon in the future record: GSA Today: v. 24, no. 6, doi: 10.1130/GSAT-G198A.1.
Edgeworth, M., et al, 2015, Diachronous beginnings of the Anthropocene: The lower bounding surface of anthropogenic deposits: The Anthropocene Review: DOI:10.1177/2053019614565394
Zalasiewicz, J., et al, In Press. When did the Anthropocene begin? A mid-twentieth century boundary level is stratigraphically optimal: Quaternary International, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2014.11.045
I think it should be called the Egocene, in honor of how powerful and dangerous we think we are …
w.
Thanks, Steve Harris.
Very good article.
It seems like for some, the world revolves not just around The Earth, but around us!