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.”
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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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Oh FFS. I have almost given up on the obvious nonsense of all this academic pant wetting pseudo science hysterical assertion. More bad science (BS) propagated at our expense by bat shit crazy academics with no useful deterministic real science to do.
The reality most joined up physicists like wot I am know is that humans have insignificant effects on planet Earth, , human lives are over in a fraction of any natural cycle, so change IS seen as unnatural in their tiny lifespans. The planet and the systems involved are so huge and on such a periodicity, when cyclic, that any effects are truly minimal and generally asymptotic and self correcting, (why doesn’t anyone point out that radiative losses from any temperature increase will increase to power 4 by Stefan Boltzman law, rincreased CO2 effects are asymptotic, runaway unlikely, etc. BS. 10% change, 46% increase in heat required, right? Same as wind and watermills lose energy input with the CUBE of the incident medium’s velocity, 1/2 speed 12.5% output. Basic maths so few know, not their “speciality” . Not realy scientists at all, simple craftsmen peddling belief, the priests of their era..
QUICK SUMMARY OF THE FUTURE: Nostracattus he say: It lies ahead, and, Pr: 0.9999
The next ice age IS coming, we can’t affect that. Clever nations will have the ability to respond to the V E R Y gradual changes and protect their technological civilisation through gradual change, or project the core of it through a disaster, which should be the ONLY significant spend of the economic surplus technology has given us over our long suffering history of brutal and health care free carbo hydrate powered superstition and irrationally fearful religious culture we are stiil trying to rid ourselves of, but are governed by expliting. That may changearound the time the ice returns?
Totally certain: Politicians trying to fix things by voting to change the laws of physics with subsidies only make things worse, except for them and their cronies who get richer at everyone else’s expense. PLus ca C change…….. we need to get rid of these self serving priests for rationality to carry us to a better future, based on provable facts over debateable beliefs. Physics degrees in hard science, not statistical pseudo science, over soft PPE and arts degrees that demand no proof of anything.
Anyone can do that. And anyone does. etc.
When they say, we have altered history, are they referring to the Mandela Effect, or are they confusing ‘being apart of history’ with ‘altering history’?
Beavers too alter the environment + earths history.
The same with grass razoring goats.
Men, beavers and goats belong to nature.
But the Beaverocene doesn’t sound so scary, does it !
I’ve spent many happy hrs in the Beaverzone (:-))
Anthropocene Working Group translates as people with no serious and responsible work to do meeting weekly on Mondays to invent new titles to call themselves and their activities in the expectation that snowflakes funding this nonsense will be duly impressed. I wonder what future historians will say of them when all this nonsense eventually comes crashing down and everyone sees through them. It probably won’t be a very kind judgement.
So what?
Prokaryotes reduced the whole crust.
I wasn’t aware there was a time machine that could take you back in history to pre-human times, then show you what was “supposed” to happen if those pesky humans hadn’t arrived from outer space (they cannot be part of the planet—nope, they are alien definately). Last time I saw anything like that was an alien in the TV show “Andromeda”. She could sort out the best possible future and act on it. I thought it was scifi. Maybe not…..
If there NEVER were any humans, how would the history books read? What would be written. wait a minute. There would be no books. there would be no “history”. History is a strictly human construct. History requires language.
The Earth and all it’s life (sans Humanity) knows only today.
It had to happen. The left has been re-writing history for almost a century. They believe they have that down to an art, actually they probably labeled it a science, now they plan the same thing for the future. If government quit funding such adventures we would all be better off.
I can think of only one area where the argument that humans have changed the course of earth history. Even so, on the scale of hundreds of thousands or a million years, it is probably meaningless. I’m speaking about the transmission of species to other parts of the planet where they are not native. Rats, frogs, insects, plants, bacteria, etc.
By burning up fossil fuels Mankind has contributed to a much needed increase in CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere. The effort may mean that life may not end during the next ice age. But there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of scientific reasoning to suppot the idea that the climate sensivity of CO2 is really zero. Humans have had an effect on the Earth’s albedo but it has been trivial considering all what else had been happening. The biggest problem with humans has been that their out of control population has been contributing to extinctions because of habitat loss. If Mankind is not careful our out of control population my victimize ourselves as well.
The really scary and comical thing in all this, is the alarmists seem to really believe in this nonsense.
The Anthropocene era? Worship the creature rather than the creator. A Limerick.
The Anthropocene is today
an era that entered the fray
of the climate change freaks.
Blame the humans! It reeks
of hubris. Me guilty? Ixnay.
One quote: (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 practice their religion is some kind of barbarian,” says one geologist who asked not to be named. https://lenbilen.com/2015/03/31/the-anthropocene-era-worship-the-creature-rather-than-the-creator-a-limerick/
Isn’t history a record of Times Past? The only time we have is the Present moment and we can only influence the Future by our actions. All actions of everything in the Present moment influence the Future. We can’t influence the Past so we can’t influence History . And we can argue about it “til Kingdom Come “( remembering that this can happen at anytime )
Man altering the history of the earth? Well I certainly hope so and I hope we master that art pretty quickly. We only have one or two millennia before we slip back into a glaciation and I like to think we’ll figure out some way to avoid that. Glaciations aren’t good for civilizations primitive or high tech. Imagine the arguments then between the ‘let’s change the climate and warm things up’ and the ‘man hadn’t ought to be messing around with nature’ camps. Fortunately we won’t be confronted with that and if I’m wrong about this Global Warming thing we probably have the solution at hand. I fear I’m not wrong.
The Confirmation Bias is strong in this one!
The course this Planet is heading is exactly the course it has to be on. There is no other way because the current course is the result of everything that has already happened.
Several people have stated reglaciation at the end of the current interglacial would threaten humans with extinction.
Sheet ice covering all areas poleward of 45 degrees would indeed make Canada, Europe and northern Asia uninhabitable, but how would that threaten humanity? Wouldn’t the change to the climate make the band of deserts roughly aligned with the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn become arable? The Sahara, the Gobi, Etc would become the new breadbaskets. The U.S. Southwest would become even more productive as agriculture would no longer be limited to irrigation projects.
Just imagine Arizona with the climate of current day western Oregon and West Texas with the climate of current day Illinois.
SR
Oops, I should have left the Gobi out, as it is a rain shadow desert, and too far north as well. Substitute “the Kalahari” for “the Gobi”, please.
SR
The course of history can not be changed. History is a record of what happened in the past. It is what it is. It doesn’t have a course. That would imply it was preordained, which is ludicrous. The eruption of Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii. That was history. In the 20th century humans put a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere. That was history.
The sheer hubris of ill educated government funding dependents.
Nothing humans have built, mined, consumed, grown or emitted have changed the world.
Mankind’s largest buildings and cities, with very few exceptions, degrade within a few centuries into mineralized clay and dirt.
Even those cities where man uses rock and stone degrade rapidly into loose stones and gravel.
Looking for relative comparisons is extremely difficult. Fleas on elephants are a far larger size relationship, than man is on Earth. If measured in only one direction, e.g. vertical, mankind’s tallest buildings or deepest mines might start to be a similar size relationship.
Erosion and sedimentation is natural. These terrible excuses for “working group” scientists have not presented any evidence that erosion is different because of mankind.
Cut off their funding!
Don’t be silly. Cities may some day, the way Angkor and the mayan cities did, but right now they are here. Just like we have fields and cattle where forest or swamp and wild species would be if it wasn’t for us. Men surely will disappear some day, the way dinosaurs did (that is, evolving into something else), but right now we are here and do have an impact, a huge one as super-predator and biotope designer. We turn everything into OUR biotope, and other species either adapt or plainly disappear. Nothing wrong with that, every living being does the same
Who is silly?
Angkor and the Mayan cities are built of stone. Even then, the jungle was reclaiming both cities.
Both are heavily damaged by growth, erosion, weathering and earthquakes.
All in less that two millennia.
Angkor, Mexico’s Mayan and the Amazon were densely populated cities.
Those civilizations vanished and wilderness quickly and fully reclaimed those lands.
Man’s enduring effect? Some piled rocks.
A boon to archaeologists who tend to imagine more than they actually discover.
Man will not evolve further. Man pretends that nature no longer controls which people prosper and multiply; temporarily man is correct. That will change someday; but not as long as civilized man treats extra-normal people as defective deviants. It may take a true disaster to force a status change, e.g. asteroid impact, disease outbreaks, war, famine, large scale volcanism, severe temperature drop, etc.
Again, man’s cities are temporary edifices. Urbanites and suburbanites love their living places to be sterile to most wildlife and plants. But that is temporary vanity.
Urban man hates nature and desperately fears natural change. As soon as mankind builds a developed area, man installs a legal system to force mankind’s lifestyle to remain within narrow boundaries.
• Lawns must exist and be mowed.
• Weed’s controlled.
• Houses painted, just so.
• Sidewalks cleared immediately after nature dumps debris upon them.
• Except for singular pets, none, or virtually none domesticated animals; no chickens, turkeys, geese, cattle, sheep, rabbits, etc.
• The only wildlife tolerated are those animals that man fails to eradicate because that wildlife thrives within man’s sterilized world.
In spite of man’s sterilized world insistence, nothing of mankind survives very long. Once man, the caretaker leaves the premises, nature and wildlife fully return.
Roman civilization eliminated many dangerous beasts from Southern Europe and around the Mediterranean.
Roman penchant for staged fights, including fights against beasts, decimated the local populations for lions, aurochs, elephants, leopards and wolves.
Are these animals gone from that region permanently?
No!
When these animal food sources return and man fails to intervene, these predators will return.
Man’s civilizations have proven themselves temporary, only. Man’s civilized world over a very brief few thousand years proves that natural events drive man out of their enclaves returning man’s dwellings to dust and debris.
All that within miniscule portions of time. Geological time.
Man’s permanence over a few millennia is nonexistent.
On Earth, over millennia, over eons man’s constructions have zero permanence.
Hubris, pure and simple.
Whether African bomas or the bark and stick Iroquois longhouses; man builds a temporary shelter then glories himself over living apart from the beasts.
Man’s current urban development is not different or even better, but it is just as temporary.
These urban developments are not oases. They are semi-sterile barren deserts. Whatever affects man’s food supply controls whether man continues to live under ignorant urban bliss.
Yet, even these barren dwelling spots will flourish again some time in the future. Once man stops maintaining his protected area, erosion and sedimentation will return fertility and water-holding ability to the land.
Likely within a millennia.
Man’s current influence on Earth is less than that of a flea on an elephant.
In other words, get over yourselves, you are not all that important. Once people move on from a region nature immediately comes back into primacy. Here in western PA there are areas that had populations in the 10s of thousands, once the oil boom was effectively over those people went away and SHAZAM, within 20-30 years the forest and wild animals took it back.
Aye 2hotel9!
And before the oil boom, there was a timber boom. Most of the timber towns were ghost towns and now mostly no town at all places. Returned to Mother Earth.
Just north of Ricketts Glen State Park in Pennsy are some state game lands. Right off one of the entrances to the gamelands is where the town of Ricketts used to exist.
When I was young, eons ago, it was possible to see house foundations or fall into the occasional basement. The nearby apple orchard was far overgrown and accessing individual apple trees nearly impossible. The stream that passes by is occupied by beaver ponds that are difficult to traverse.
Twenty years ago, most of the apple trees were dead stumps. Vines, brush and trees hid the parts of the ghost town we used to walk through. Rattlesnakes and bears are more common than people. I had trouble finding any foundations, nor did I try to find a basement to fall into.
Mention the ghost town to local residents guaranteed a blank stare. Nothing of the town was visible and without the apple trees, only hunters and fishers had reason to walk the land and discover small remnants of Ricketts town.
A decent hike out of Ricketts Glen State Park, along the Highland Trail or the Cherry Run Trail brings one to the breached dam at ex-Lake Leigh. A crumbling edifice of concrete that is rapidly disappearing.
On a side note: One enters Ricketts Glen across the top of Lake Jean’s dam. Down below the dam are some grasslands and a lot of blueberry bushes.
Generally, these blueberries start to ripen around the Fourth of July, but ripe blueberries can be found for most of the summer.
Pick blueberries with both eyes open! Bears are common around the Ricketts Glen area, and for some odd reason the bears tend to believe the blueberries are theirs.
By all means visit Ricketts Glen falls. If my memory is correct, there are twenty three falls along a few miles of trails. Be aware, these trails can be steep in a number of places.
Ah, over in the Poconos. I’m out west by the Allegheny. Butler and Venango and Clarion and Armstrong counties. Not unusual to find old oil wells with wood casing, oil collection tanks made of wood, soft steel oil pipelines, sucker rods and all manner metal machinery and equipment, railway spurs. Not to mention remains of buildings and vehicles. And that is just hunting. Have friends who work with local historical groups, we go out looking for old homesteads, bridges and mine sites. Found brick making sites in two places that were active in the 1820s. Sites where local people quarried stone are always interesting. The world is full of cool sh*t, just got to be willing to go look for it.
Agreed!
You did mention Western PA upthread. But Western PA was a five hour drive from Eastern PA where I lived.
I could make the Poconos in two hours and have my tent set up in a Rickett’s Glen or Worlds End campsite within three hours.
Ghost houses, wells, coal mines and ghost farms are common in many places. I am glad you explore and find many!
We used to follow the streams and many houses and businesses were built near streams. Sometimes we fished, other times we just liked cooling off in the cold water as we splashed along. While hunting, it is far easier to see distances and spot foundations. Except in rhododendron patches and dense pines.
Those Western PA hills have some mighty steep sides!
Of course the large populations of bison earlier in the USA or even carrier pigeons were not as notable as a human population explosion. Depends on your point of view about what happens in history. What would a bison have thought? Why be solely anthropocentric? Geoff
When you think of all the Hurricanes and Tornadoes caused by those butterrflies in the Amazon, I am not surprised that Mankind has had some effect on the Earth, but how much exactly?
Understanding Anthropocene Working Group and Doomsday Clock Prophets concomitantly requires curving the spacetime itself. The former seems to be moving away at the speed of light while a mere second seems to last an eternity with the latter.
To Anthropocene Working Group
Where’s the rock strata where you found plastics and aluminum cans? Are geologists now digging in garbage dumps? Those are not geologists, they are garbage men looking for your Anthropocene paper and the Anthropocene journal because they know where to find trash
“humans have altered Earth’s history” That sounds a bit meaningless. First, you can’t “alter history”. Atleast not without a time machine. Second, aren’t things always changing? Earth has changed massively multiple times during its history. For example continents are changing constantly, not to mention all the ice ages, mass extinctions, temperature, climate. Things are changing all the time. Also the concept of “history” is a human construct. Are they implying that there is somekind of predetermined path that the Earth will take and now that humans have appeared we are “off the rails”? Is that a good or bad thing? That the asteroid impacts were all meant to happen and the dinosaurs were all meant to die from the beginning? If so, can they tell what would have happened to Earth without humans 100 years from now. How about 1000? 10 000? Million? Maybe there is a God after all.