Scale of human impact on planet has changed course of Earth’s history, scientists suggest
Anthropocene Working Group scientists publish recommendations for formalizing new geological epoch
From the UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER
- Anthropocene Working Group scientists suggest human impact has now grown to the point that it has changed the course of Earth history
- Findings identified a number of changes to the Earth System that characterize the geological Anthropocene including significant impact on factors controlling a changing global climate, sea level and biosphere
- Study suggests that the Holocene no longer serves to adequately constrain the rate and magnitude of changes to Earth System
An audio interview about changes to the Earth with Professors Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams is available here: https:/ / soundcloud. com/ university-of-leicester/ the-earths-technosphere-shows-how-we-are-permanently-reshaping-our-planet
The significant scale of human impact on our planet has changed the course of Earth history, an international team of scientists led by the University of Leicester has suggested.
The researchers suggest that a multitude of human impacts have changed the course of Earth’s geological history, and the scale of these justifies developing a formal proposal that the Anthropocene – a concept improvised by the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen in 2000 – should be made part of the Geological Time Scale.
Rapid changes to the planet include acceleration of rates of erosion and sedimentation; large-scale chemical perturbations to the cycles of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and other elements; the inception of significant change to global climate and sea level; and biotic changes including unprecedented levels of species invasions across the Earth.
This is a summary of the findings and interim recommendations of the international working group that has been studying the Anthropocene since 2009. Initially reported to the 2016 International Geological Congress at Cape Town, South Africa, the findings and recommendations have just been published online in the journal Anthropocene.
Professor Jan Zalasiewicz from the University of Leicester’s School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, said: “Our findings suggest that the Anthropocene should follow on from the Holocene Epoch that has seen 11.7 thousand years of relative environmental stability, since the retreat of the last Ice Age, as we enter a more unstable and rapidly evolving phase of our planet’s history.”
Professor Mark Williams, from the University of Leicester’s School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, said: “Geologically, the mid-20th century represents the most sensible level for the beginning of the Anthropocene – as it brought in large global changes to many of the Earth’s fundamental chemical cycles, such as those of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus, and also very large amounts of novel materials such as plastics, concrete and aluminium, which will help build the strata of the future.”
The Anthropocene Working Group – which includes University of Leicester geologists Jan Zalasiewicz, Mark Williams and honorary chair, Colin Waters, and archaeologist Matt Edgeworth – has been active since 2009, analysing the case for formalisation of the Anthropocene, a potential new epoch of geological time dominated by human impact on the Earth.
Professor Waters said: “The Anthropocene Working Group is now working on such a proposal, based upon finding a ‘golden spike’ – a reference level within recent strata somewhere in the world that will best characterize the changes of the Anthropocene. Once this detailed work is completed, it will be submitted for scrutiny by the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy of the International Commission on Stratigraphy.
“There is no guarantee of the success of this process – the Geological Time Scale is meant to be stable, and is not easily changed. Whatever decision is ultimately made, the geological reality of the Anthropocene is now clear.”
###
A version of the new paper can be accessed (freely, until the end of 2017) at: https:/ / www. journals. elsevier. com/ anthropocene/ news/ summary-evidence-working-group-anthropocene-sumnterim
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“human impact has now grown to the point that it has changed the course of Earth history”
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Depends. If you are human, you think, well its is just us here. It is our planet and we will do with it as we wish. When we are gone, the cockroaches will have to fend for themselves.
If you are an “environmentalist”, you think, OMG, Gaia is angry with us, we must throw more brown babies into the volcano to appease her.
Would the earth even have a history without humans? Who would write and keep that history?
Or could it be neutral? Perhaps it does not matter, at all.
Around here we say “it is what it is, man.”
…..And to all this, I ask one very general question…..SO?
Do you remember the Blood, Sweat and Tears song that has the line that goes, “And when I die and when I’m dead, dead and gone, there’ll be one child born and a world to carry on, to carry on..” http://www.metrolyrics.com/and-when-i-die-lyrics-blood-sweat-tears.html
It is just bizarre that the worry wort contingent of the human race can find so many things with which to worry themselves and each other and to try to share their worries with the few at least semi-sane members of the race who remain.
It’s very bad, our ancestors are now freezing to death as historical temperatures are dropping to record lows.
Yeah, but sustainably. Last time I checked I had less than 700 ancestors in 10 ancestral generations, and the number is dropping as genealogy advances.
The fact I don’t have full 1024 ancestors makes me deplorable, I’m afraid that happens in both leftist and rightist circles. The only who’d accept that are people with religious nature I don’t mind be connected with.
“Findings identified a number of changes to the Earth System that characterize the geological Anthropocene including significant impact on factors controlling a changing global climate, sea level and biosphere”
This is pretty heady stuff since nothing here has been defined as identifiable changes or factors that have been impacted. Nothing has been shown, confirmed, or proven, but they love to sound as if there is something there; but the nothing-burger lives on.
Actually, the Nothing-Burger got bigger. It is now a JumboBS Nothing-Burger.
Yes Gordon J, but the cheese still more than hides it.
news flash to scientists. humans have been changing the planet on a massive scale ever since we learned to domesticate fire, which goes back at least 2 million years, to the invention of cooked food. even to this day humans burn large amounts of the earth’s surface each year, to control the plants and animals using the land, and improve the food supply for humans.
Changing history? Isn’t that from “1984”?
Well, as I see it there are two possible history lines here, one with Humanity and one without. I’ll let your choose your favorite. 🙂
History is a record of what was – it cannot be changed, period. Humans, asteroids and just about anything else on earth (or in space) can perhaps ‘change’ what would have been but that has yet to be written. Nothing different that that which has always been.
Shameful…..Absolute shame on all of us. How dare we motley crew of human beings apply our knowledge and creativity to the planet’s resources and then further, to learn to at least minimally control and apply the planet’s natural processes to devised methods and means that improve the human condition here on planet Earth. Isn’t that just deplorable? Resulting in a F. U. B. A. R. condition, even.
I have my furnace and air conditioner all the clean water I can drink (coffee, beer, ect.) a refrigerator to keep more food longer, I can keep going but you get the picture. Damn straight it’s a good thing. The world has a smaller percentage of its population in poverty then it did 100 or 50 years ago and that is attributable to fossil fuels.
relevant??
From:
professor emeritus of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne, professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide, and the director of multiple mineral exploration and mining companies. He has published 130 scientific papers, six books and edited the Encyclopedia of Geology.
Born February 1946
(age 71 )
Residence
Australia
Nationality
Australian
Fields
Earth Science,Geology, Mining Engineering
Institutions
University of New England,University of Newcastle,University of Melbourne , University of Adelaide
Alma mater
University of New South Wales,Macquarie University
Thesis
The pipe deposits of tungsten-molybdenum-bismuth in eastern Australia (1976)
Notable awards
Where Does the Carbon Dioxide Really Come From?
Professor Ian Plimer could not have said it better!
PLIMER : “Okay, here’s the bombshell. The volcanic eruption in Iceland. Since its first spewing of volcanic ash has, in just FOUR DAYS, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet – all of you. Of course, you know about this evil carbon dioxide that we are trying to suppress – it’s that vital chemical compound that every plant requires to live and grow and to synthesize into oxygen for us humans and all animal life.
I know….it’s very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kids “The Green Revolution” science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, vacationing at home instead of abroad, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your 50 cent light bulbs with $10.00 light bulbs…..well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just four days.
The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere in just four days – yes, FOUR DAYS – by that volcano in Iceland has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And there are around 200 active volcanoes on the planet spewing out this crud at any one time – EVERY DAY.
I don’t really want to rain on your parade too much, but I should mention that when the volcano Mt Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it spewed out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in all its years on earth.
Yes, folks, Mt Pinatubo was active for over one year – think about it.
Of course, I shouldn’t spoil this ‘touchy-feely tree-hugging’ moment and mention the effect of solar and cosmic activity and the well-recognized 800-year global heating and cooling cycle, which keeps happening despite our completely insignificant efforts to affect climate change.
And I do wish I had a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud, but the fact of the matter is that the bush fire season across the western USA and Australia this year alone will negate your efforts to reduce carbon in our world for the next two to three years. And it happens every year.
Just remember that your government just tried to impose a whopping carbon tax on you, on the basis of the bogus ‘human-caused’ climate-change scenario.
Hey, isn’t it interesting how they don’t mention ‘Global Warming’ anymore, but just ‘Climate Change’ – you know why?
It’s because the planet has COOLED by 0.7 degrees in the past century and these global warming bullshit artists got caught with their pants down.
And, just keep in mind that you might yet have an Emissions Trading Scheme – that whopping new tax – imposed on you that will achieve absolutely nothing except make you poorer.
It won’t stop any volcanoes from erupting, that’s for sure.
But, hey, relax…… and have a nice day!”
Scale of human impact on planet has changed course of Earth’s history,……….every time they adjust past temps
Now “scientists” are adjusting everything – past, present, and future.
Hence the more accurate description of this as “the Adjustocene” era.
True, the Anthropocene period was the growth epoch of Humanity. As we enter the Adjustocene, we begin the decline of western civilization and the rise of global governance.
The planet will meanwhile go about its course of healing itself and reducing anything left on its surface to rubble.
History is a human construct, no such thing as “earth’s” history. Words actually do have meanings..
Changing history is tough without a time machine, however influencing the future is within our ability. But that started with the discovery of fire, and became a significant factor in stabilizing the fall of CO2 in the atmosphere with the start of widespread coal and petroleum usage.
Without either the aforementioned time machine or a crystal ball, we’ll never know if we’ve prevented another catastrophic extinction event as sequestration of carbon in limestone and hydrocarbons dropped atmospheric CO2 below the level that could support plant life.
The assumption that we’re changing a set course, the correct “history of Earth,” rather than influencing our approach to the actual broad swath of potential futures seems odd to me.
Relabeling the current era “Anthropocene” seems premature, and really ought to date back to agriculture and coal mining, IMO.
Or just rename the Holocene as the Anthropocene. The only thing that really differentiates the Holocene from the past dozen or so Pleistocene interglacial stages is the impact of humans on Earth.
Then I suggest the “Idiocene” as a sub epoch in which science lost all reason and logic and folklore returned in its place.
This would make a lot more sense. Except for that whole “OMGZ! We’ve wrecked the planet for all time!” agenda that these scienticians seem to have.
Agreed David. Holocene literally translates to ‘entirely recent’, so any current epoch therefore should be called the Holocene.
The entire Holocene should be named the Anthropocene. Humans had far more impact on their environments prior to the mid 19th century then afterwards because relied entirely on biomass and wind for energy, which removed many of the old growth forests of the world (some had even been removed and grown back after civilizations failed). Europe and Asia had certainly altered their drainage basins prior to the mid 19th century.
If you were to argue that the Anthropocene started only when climate and sea level effects from humans began, then you’d need to explain why prior interglacials were warmer and had higher sea level. The real human impacts are on the biosphere, land cover changes, and sedimentation, it just makes for a much more alarming story when you say that climagedon is going to drown us all.
“Aphan October 3, 2017 at 7:24 am
…folklore returned in its place.”
The Italians have turned to tarot card readers and the occult to try to explain why their economy has tanked.
Changing history is a cinch. All you need to control the past is control of the present.
The rise/impact of humans is as natural as that of ants or whales or dinosaurs.
Just more misanthropic claptrap.
One of the earliest known world maps, Babylonian Imago Mundi 600 BCE, covers several cities and is characterised by Euphrates river. Not by a royal palace or king. But, perhaps an anthropocentric model is awaiting for discovery in deeper archeological sediments.
Roflol
“The Anthropocene Working Group is now working on such a proposal, based upon finding a ‘golden spike–”
Oh. My. Cat. The Hunt for the Golden Spke, a tale of daring searches through files and books with a flashlight! A tale full of sound bites and furious arguments over data charts concocted out of whole cloth, signifying nothing! A search for the Mysterious Golden Spike that we can use to get more money, and not have to work at Walmart! Read it and weep, over the way your tax money is being spent!!!
Hudson: Excuse me, sir…
1LT Gore: Yes, Hicks?
Hudson: I’m Hudson, sir. He’s Hicks. (Pointing at Hicks.)
1LT Gore: What is it, Private?
Hudson: Is this a bug hunt, sir, or is it a stand-up fight?
Humans have altered the history of Planet Earth. Yeah, so, what exactly am I supposed to do with this information????? It’s what we do – we create things, we build things, we come up with clever ideas and put them to work. Is it possible to point out the obvious to these people and remind them that their unspecified complaint has no merit, because if we didn’t do these things, they might not exist even as molecules?
Ummm… no disrespect meant, but people who live in the UK and are aware of this nonsense could justifiably hold a protest over this. How long is Twaddle going to be the King of Info?
Isn’t the Anthropocene Working Group attempting to influence the future. Why is theirs any better if it undoes progress?
History is history. What is the past has passed. You can change future events by what happens today but you can’t change history, which is what has already occurred. That is unless your a leftist, because they strive to change history all the time in about every sphere by revisionism. They of course can’t change what has actually already happened, but constantly strive to report that history to suit their own current agendas. Thus this article is not only not science, it is science fiction.
Right. I immediately thought changing history referred to jigging the numbers to make the early 20th century appear colder and the early 21st century warmer. That might be construed as changing or at least rewriting history.
Mammoths, Stegodons and Mastodons loved the Pleistocene but never got acquainted with the Holocene… Maybe they tasted too much like chicken.
The Holocene is the Anthropocene.
Shh….most of the megafauna disappeared when humans got to the continents of North and South America, and Australia. But don’t disturb the narrative: only certain “western” values are destroying the earth. All other cultures are given a pass.
As mentioned…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/28/mystery-disappeared-tasmanian-tiger-finally-solved/
Classic example of the “begging the question” fallacy.
Assemble a team of advocates and name yourselves the “Anthropocene Working Group” and then develop a mission to find the “Golden Spike” to prove Man created a new epoch of geological time.
Do you think they might have assumed an answer to their quest before they started?
I’m sure they did their best to robustly reveal the strongest available evidence on facts they knew to be true beforehand.
In other words, this is a political, not a factual thing per se.
And publish your results in a journal called “Anthropocene”
Hmmm. Sounds like another group i have heard of. Mmm. Oh, yes, the group founded to find out how CO2 is the cause of global warming…or global weirding…or climate change…or something. And was given a helluva lot of money to do so. ….Still looking, as I see it.
Termites changed the course of Earth “history”. Mollusks changed the course of Earth “history”. Plankton changed the course of Earth “history”.
Why are we getting our scientific education from people that don’t understand science?
Bingo. What a waste of resources to perform this study. On the other hand, it keeps them from meddling in science.
We are part of nature, so it changes us, and we change it.
All life does this to some extent, and sometimes to very large extent.
Billions of years ago the first bacteria flooded the earth’s atmosphere with oxygen. If climate alarmists had been there at the time they would have called it pollution and tried to stop it.
Genius!
TDBraun, brilliant! This anthropocene nonsense is offensive to me as a geologist by training. I have difficulty calling the Holocene a geological epoch for that matter. Cyanobacteria truly changed the planet, they deserve a geological period or era. Humans? Not so much. We are in an interglacial, if the next glaciation began tomorrow and was severe, would anyone know we had ever been here in a million years?
As they note, can we put our finger on a point in any rock sequence and say this is the beginning of the anthropocene? Could we find it in another rock sequence somewhere in the world? If we could find such a point, do we think it will be preserved through the next glacial period?
Why does man think he is so important? Isn’t it enough to fantasize that we control the climate, why do we now have to fantasize that we control the geological record of the future?
This. So much this.
(Why does man think he is so important? Isn’t it enough to fantasize that we control the climate, why do we now have to fantasize that we control the geological record of the future?)
Good question Andy, but it is something that has gone on for a very long time. What humans fail to realize is that our species time on earth is finite, as with all species. The genus may or may not continue forward, but if it did,would it even be recognizable to us. In the long run, we are just another small blip on the geologic time scale, which in it’s self is a recent (geologically and historically) human invention, and may have no meaning what so ever once our time is up.
I suppose T-rex probably though itself to be a big deal too.
Excellent Andy!
I suspect some millions of years from now there will be an equivalent to the K-T boundary above which no human fossils are found. That boundary may or may not contain iridium. Most likely it will be radioactive or otherwise indicative of some kind of massive event from our own star or another.
Indeed, if you step back and look at all the evidence, it’s almost as if everything happened for a reason and man is here at this very time and place emitting the life essential molecule CO2 into the atmosphere for a reason.
Winston Smith is coming out of retirement
Yes, see my reply, re “1984”.
“Changing history”? Chilling.
Maybe they meant “affecting earth”?
Its Sociology, Jake…
Last time i check, “History” began when man invented writing, any event before being labeled “prehistoric”.
So men did not altered history, they MADE it.
Precisely.
These people do write p-r-e-h-i-s-t-o-r-y!
This is what happens when Universities change Geological degrees from a BS to a BA with less emphasis on physical sciences. Out of ignorance you get this (what I call) ‘Temporal Arrogance’.
Firstly, Epochs are defined by what has happened, not by what some model predicts is going to happen. Secondly, since the last ice age the seas have risen about 400′. The AGW crowd has attributed at most a few inches to human caused sea level increase. How exactly is the last 3 inches differentiated from the first 399.75′ to justify a new Epoch?
Rapid changes to the planet include acceleration of rates of erosion and sedimentation;
Then out of the Past came Devils Tower. – Devils Tower Uncovered – Until erosion began its relentless work, Devils Tower was not visible above the overlying sedimentary rocks. But the forces of erosion, particularly that of water, began to wear away the soft sandstones and shales above and around the Tower. The much harder igneous rock of the Tower survived the onslaught of erosional forces, and the gray columns of Devils Tower began to appear above the surrounding landscape.
If you have never been there, Devils Tower rises 1,267 feet above the Belle Fourche River. And the high plains are relatively flat, for many, many miles. A lot of sedimentation got moved, enough to fill the Inland Sea of old.
Does this Epoch have its own name?
Diablocene?
Just guessing.
Why not – it’s late.
Auto
Altering history and altering the course of history are not the same thing.
Every major invention has altered the course of history.
Altering history is what the climatologists have been doing for decades.
Every flap of a butterfly wing, every cow fart, every cloud that forms, etc. change the course of history. BFD
Anthropocene is the Age of Chicken and the morons who invented it have chicken brains
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/31/domestic-chicken-anthropocene-humanity-influenced-epoch
wait. we altered something that already happened?
damn…we rock!!
no we didn’t.
we MAY have (and thats debatable) altered the foretasted FUTURE (or diverted ourselves into a different multi-verse plane….) bet it is impossible to alter the actual history.
There actually IS a Golden Spike. It was driven in 1869. Isn’t that right about where they’d want the Anthro-obscene to start anyway? *idiots*
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Spike_National_Historic_Site
Of course, anything humans do is “unnatural”. The conference seems to have been taken over by rogue creationists, as if humans are not part of nature, they must be supernatural. I start to contemplate causes being either a lack or a surfeit of drugs at this conference.
That’s true. The Marxist revisionists are constantly rewriting/altering history to suit their ideology.
Boilivia is about to honor Che Guevara who killed 59 Bolivian reactionaries.
Concrete is not a novel material; it has been around for a couple of thousand years.
Depends if you don’t think humans aren’t natural. When we changed things 10,000 years ago with animal husbandry was that the start or when we started cutting down trees and slash burn agriculture 50,000 years ago or only recently. Does beavers deserve there own time, or ants or many of the successful animals that change their environment. Perhaps this will only a short blimp that only lasts a few hundred years maybe a thousand years, but then we will be stuck with a name for the ages that just shows man’s hubris.
How much taxpayer’s money is spent on The Anthropocene Working Group? Should this expense be discontinued? With their valuable research they should find a new sponsor easily.