Guest ridiculing of a professor by David Middleton
The Anthropocene Is Coming to Mars
Humans are about to extend their influence to a second world.
By Dirk Schulze-Makuch
airspacemag.com
January 17, 2019 3:30PAstrobiologist Alberto Fairén of Cornell University and the Center of Astrobiology in Madrid, Spain, asks a provocative question in a paper published recently in EOS: How will our exploration of Mars change the Red Planet?
The term Anthropocene has been widely used for the current period in Earth’s geological history, in which human actions have had enough impact on the planet that we see a clear distinction from the previous period, the Holocene. The geological signatures of that transition include a variety of features such as the extinction of many animal and plant species, an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (resulting in global warming), deposition of plastic in sediments, movements of soil from mining, and the construction of highways, dams, and residential areas.
The Anthropocene as a geological epoch is not formally recognized…
[…]
Dirk Schulze-Makuch is a Professor at the Technical University Berlin, Germany, and an Adjunct Professor at Arizona State University and Washington State University. He has published seven books and nearly 200 scientific papers related to astrobiology and planetary habitability. His latest book (2017) is The Cosmic Zoo: Complex Life on Many Worlds.
Read more at https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/anthropocene-coming-mars-1-180971297/#llYilF9PudKcPkpr.99
“The Anthropocene as a geological epoch is not formally recognized”… So… “The term Anthropocene has” NOT “been widely used for the current period in Earth’s geological history“. It may be frequently used by activists and scientists who are ignorant of basic geology, but geologically speaking the term “Anthropocene” does not exist in any relationship to any period, epoch, age, era or eon in Earth’s geological history.
Amazingly, the Eos article is worse than the Air & Space article… which isn’t surprising.
Figure 1 from Fairén, 2019 looks something like this…
The Phanerozoic, Proterozoic, Archaean and Hadean are eons… The Anthropocene isn’t even a stage or age within an epoch. This is even wronger than splicing instrumental temperature data onto a proxy reconstruction.
This is how bad Fairén’s figure 1 is:
The Anthropocene, if it was adopted, would be an epoch within the Quaternary Period of the Cenozoic Era. It would be right on top of the Holocene Epoch (which probably shouldn’t even be an epoch). Note how similar epochs are to eons (/SARC).
The only organization that can adopt the Anthropocene as a geologic epoch or as a subdivision of the Holocene is the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). The ICS Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS) established the Anthropocene Working Group about 10 years ago. It is populated by zealous advocates of the adoption Anthropocene epoch, including Naomi Oreskes. They have yet to put forward a formal proposal, which was expected in 2016.
The ‘Anthropocene’ is not a formally defined geological unit within the Geological Time Scale. A proposal to formalise the ‘Anthropocene’ is being developed by the ‘Anthropocene’ Working Group for consideration by the International Commission on Stratigraphy, with a current target date of 2016. Care should be taken to distinguish the concept of an ‘Anthropocene‘ from the previously used term Anthropogene (cf. below**).
Fittingly, the AWG has adopted the Hockey Stick as their logo.
The fact that the ICS recently approved the first formal subdivision of the Holocene, without an Anthropocene, it seems increasingly unlikely that they ever will. Yet “scientists”, mostly non-geologists bandy the term about as if it was a genuine geological time period.
The Moon Anthropocene
Guess what? July 20, 2019 will mark the 50th anniversary of start of the Moon Anthropocene… Unfortunately the Lunar Anthropocene lasted less than five years.
Reference
Fairén, A. G. (2019), The Mars Anthropocene, Eos, 100, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019EO111173. Published on 04 January 2019.
Featured Image
Further Reading
“Welcome to the Fabulous Anthropocene!”
Run Away! The Anthropocene Has Arrived!!!
We have SUVs on Mars ???
Not SUVs, but there are a couple of dune buggies.
Diesel or other fossil fuel ?? OMG
Moon Anthropocene??
Lunar Anthropocene
Or just plain
Looney Anthropocene
Though we did leave a Buggy There and six LM landing struts with an ever so slight ammont of unspent fuel
3 electric dune buggies, and 6 lander modules with numerous scientific experiments.
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/solarsystem/f_leftovers.html
Considering the popularity of a certain Internet activity, how about,
the Obscene Anthropocene?
Nuke!!!
Actually the rovers were battery powered, but the landers were powered by RTG’s (Radioisotope Thermal Generators) like the device used in the movie “The Martian”. But, as was poorly explained in that movie they are not dangerous to be around or even near, they are just warm. Of course if you were to split one open….that’d be a whole different story. That would be hard to accomplish though, as they are designed and tested to withstand launch pad explosions of the entire rocket.
And the latest rover, Curosity, is RTG powered
..on the Moon, too. And, the footprints of humanity are still there.
I like to find fossils in odd places. Where I live now was the delta for an ocean during the Carboniferous era/epoch/whatever you want to call it, and I have a shrimp fossil that I found on a museum field trip. But that was several hundred million years ago, and continents moved around and now it’s suburban housing on ancient dunes that used to be the shores of Lake Michigan, and if I dig down deep enough, I can probably find old fossilized clam shells from Waybackwhen.
Things change on this planet all the time. I still don’t understand the bullheaded resistance to that simple fact, and why it panics people. If someone would be kind enough to explain this strange reaction to me, I would be very grateful. It is ridiculous to try to get attention by inflicting research conducted by robots at a great distance as something that disrupts another planet when we aren’t even physically there.
Meantime, I’ll go back to hunting fossils on the shores of Mishi Gamu.
Carboniferous = Period
Sara writes in part “[…] and I have a shrimp fossil that I found on a museum field trip. But that was several hundred million years ago, […]”
I’m not gonna go all pedantic over that, but it did hit my funny bone really hard. That’s a slow pitch softball I let go for a called strike.😜 Thanks, Sara! 😁
Sara: I really like your new geological time period = the Waybackwhenocene!
Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, the nearby planets are already affected by human creations, hence henceforth the long name ‘Inner Solar Planetary System’ shall be replaced by a simple single word Anthropolocus, eventually to be extended to the Ultima Thule and beyond when we name the last rock.
Exheliospherics take note !
Battery powered :
https://www.google.com/search?q=moon+lander+vehicles&oq=moon+lander+vehicles&aqs=chrome.
Astrobiologist? There is no known astrobiology, so how can someone be a Professor of this? Is the term “Astrobiologist” interchangeable with “Scam Artist”? I think I will start a Foundation called “Send All Of Your Money To Ron-Before It Is Too Late”! Yea, that’s it. Maybe David would like to join me? I have detected he has a little bit of the rascal in him? Anthony?
The Idjuts on the left just love to torture the English language almost as much as they love to torture facts….aka .. ” Fake News”
Source
A not very uninteresting field of research.
Krishna, the key phrases are “even if” and “may”.
See my later post to that subject.
Maybe he’s a biologist, and he’s like-really out there, man!
The correct term is “exobiologist”.
“Astrobiologist” implies that there are organisms living in the atmospheres of stars (which might be true if they are cold red dwarf stars or those shrunken white dwarf stars), but finding out about that is off somewhere in some unknown future.
Get a landman and promote it third-for-a-quarter and I’m in… 😎
The age of lunar exploration is just beginning…again. How few and far between were voyages to the new world even after Columbus had ‘discovered’ it …again.
However merely visiting an uninhabited lifeless place has little to no impact other than extremely locally at the landing site.
In the future, we may look back and determine a time when the rush of manned exploration began the settlement of lunar colonies, but only then can an era be recognized, and onset debated.
The age of lunar exploration is just beginning…again.
Or it’s beginning for the first time if you believe in the “moon-landings were faked” conspiracies. Or it’s being faked again, if you believe the conspiracy that the recent Chinese moon landing was (also) faked.
or that we live in 5 macro-spatial dimension universe where our perception of it is simply a holographic projection onto 4 (x,y,z,t). That would be a solution to quantum “spooky action at a distance” as Einstein called it.
“The geological signatures of that transition include a variety of features such as the extinction of many animal and plant species, an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (resulting in global warming), deposition of plastic in sediments”
On a geological scale, the total number of extinctions (even if they all actually do exist) is too small to see. A few hundred species over 200 years is a big nothing burger geologically.
On a geological scale, the increase in CO2 is likewise too small to notice, it is dwarfed by concentration changes in the past.
Do these twits actually expect “plastics in the sediments” to still be there in 1000 years?
Mars is still up for debate regarding life, but I can say with some assurance that humanity’s arrival on the moon will not cause any mass extinctions to lunar flora or fauna. So, that demarcation won’t exist. Hmm…artifacts buried in sedimentation on the moon…not so much either.
MarkW, Interesting observation regarding plastics. I wonder if they can be ‘fossilized’ as they are made of hydrocarbons.
Anaerobic bacteria will take care of any plastics millenia before they have a chance to fossilize.
Why wouldn’t anaerobic bacteria have the same effect on any biologic organism that got buried? We seem to have a whole slew of fossil remains from flora and fauna.
The organic portions of the skeletons are gone long before they fossilize, the vast majority of the time.
If Mars has mudstone, it almost certainly had some form of life at some point 4.5-3 billion years ago.
I think that is still a big leap to make. I am a bit perplexed why, despite thousands of parallel experiments, each running under the ideal conditions, with the right mix of chemicals, and providing just the right amount of energy, with no detrimental conditions (how often, and for how long in each instance, has all that combined at the same time in earth’s history?), no one has been able to spark even the simplest life form solely using the raw ingredients.
Such creation was expected ‘at any time’ over a half century ago when I was a teenager.
The aggregate number of research ‘perfect environment creation years’ must be a respectable fraction what earth experienced naturally before life began on earth. How long was earth completely unsuitable for life? The earth is really old, but the opportunities for life to be spontaneously created was only for a sliver of that time, and existed only for moments at any given time.
I think that the referenced article proves that there is no intelligent live on Earth.
Interesting concept regarding plastic in the sedimentary layers. Is it plausible that plastics may become “fossilized” as they consist of hydrocarbons?
Long after man’s extinction will future visitors be confused by all the strange and intricate ‘life forms’ in the fossil record?
Organic materials can fossilize, but it takes very special gelogic conditions. Such sites are known as Konservatlagerstätten and are extremely rare, so rare that there are whole geologic periods withut a single one.
A couple of well placed meteorites would completely wipe out all evidence of the Moon’s Anthropocene.
Or one big one on earth, think reset.
As a geologist, I’ve come to understand the concept of Anthropocentric Global Warming. Once enough children have been raised to adulthood believing that they are the center of the universe, it is not all that difficult to herd them into the belief that if there is change in climate, that they must be responsible. The extension to a goofy concept like ‘Anthropocene’ is just not that surprising in that light.
And now we have scientists who are still children.
Not if you see the $$ that are available for AGW proponents.
Not if you see the $$ that are available for AGW proponents.
Len Werner wrote: ‘…it is not all that difficult to herd them into the belief that if there is change in climate, that they must be responsible.”
Not them, but the adults who sired and who still support them, I think you mean.
Had a great Geology professor in college. He took us out to the nearby California coast and said “we are now moving toward Alaska” to help us understand plate tectonics.
This bio-astrologist writes fantasy books for a living so not surprising that he wants to participate in roaching out another disciple.
We can send Micky Mann to Mars with a mission to find the One Tree that will prove that humans are responsible for the prevalence of CO2 in the Martian atmosphere.
Well of course we are, It blows there from Earths Atmosphere on borne on the solar wind and arrives supercharged by the Solar SW IR/SnARC
Methinks ol’ Alberto Fairén took his viewing NatGeo’s “Mars” TV series waayyy too seriously, especially the anti-industrial Greenpeace and AGW propaganda segues masquerading as factual information.
Actually the International Commission on Stratigraphy makes the proposal. The final decision is taken by the International Union of Geological Sciences. In practice, yes. The IUGS does not correct the ICS, although who knows what would happen with a controversial Anthropocene.
The Anthropocene would never make it to the IUGS…
It won’t even make it through the SQS.
I doubt the AWG will ever even make a formal proposal to the SQS.
I was convinced most Scientific Societies would resist endorsing AGW for lack of evidence. Man, was I wrong! Ever since I don’t underestimate how crazy this thing can get before we go back to sanity.
I feel your pain… There are elements within the AAPG that want to buy in to the AGW scam.
However, I think Anthropocene is not on the “to do list” of most voting members of the SQS, much less the ICS.
OMG!! The Martian atmosphere is 95% CO2. It’s all mans fault. Mars will reach an atmospheric tipping point any day now, leading to a runaway greenhouse effect!!! Any day now the temperature of Mars will rise so significantly it might turn into a small version of Venus. The dread, the horror… it’s all man’s fault. (Sarc for the sarcasm impaired)
So, I wonder what level of micromanagement of human C02 emissions is required to regulate Mars?
Probably a hefty tax involved. Certainly a change in lifestyle – probably a dramatic one.
But all of US have to make sacrifices.
My guess is we’ll have to outfit Pelosi with her own private rocket so she can go there and ‘assess the situation.’
Trump should appoint Nancy as Ambassador to Mars
She’s halfway there already.
Maybe Elon Musk can send her there in a Tesla 3.
Increasing atmospheric CO2 on Mars is produced by polar warming in summer, releasing gaseous CO2 from solid CO2 (dry ice). So perhaps global warming ought to be forbidden on Mars?
Reading that , I remember Golds “Biosphere in the deep hot earth” and the possible way life on earth began.
Some bacterias have no problem to survive more than 100°C, some even need high temps.
Yes, and interestingly the eukaryotes (like e. g. humans) seem to be descended from such hyperthermophilous organisms
CO2 taxes for Mars and Moon vehicles NOW !
indispensable!
“This is even wronger than splicing instrumental temperature data onto a proxy reconstruction.” No! I will not have the magnificent work of Michael Mann maligned in this manner!!! Its wrongness has no rivals!
Actually in Mars research we use a difference set of names for the geologic time intervals (eg Noachian, Hersperian etc), not the terrestrial labels, so it would be completely appropriate to use ‘Anthropocene’ for when we finally get there. In fact nothing would be more appropriate for a new Mars time interval name.
A “-cene” is an epoch within the Cenozoic Era. Mars doesn’t have epochs or eras… Noachian, Hesperian and Amazonian are equivalent to eons of geologic time on Earth: Phanerozoic, Proterozoic, etc.
http://ops-alaska.com/time/gangale_other/GeologicTimeScales.htm
But David that makes it an even better choice – the ‘cene’ would acknowledge the settlement of Mars occurred (by humans) during their Cenozoic. It will be one of the greatest achievements of humans when it happens.
In that case, it should be the Anthropo-scene… 😎
If it were the next great epoch perhaps:
Noachian
Hesperian
Amazonian
Anthropian
Maybe that should be …
Anthropeeing ?
The new sci-fi show “Mars” (national propaganda channel) is nauseatingly PC. Even sci-fi is ruined now.
“Even sci-fi is ruined now”
Yes, you are right. I just finished watching the new series “Nightflyers”. I didn’t like it very much. I wouldn’t watch it a second time.
I found it very disappointing. It had a lot of potential to be good, great visuals, decent depiction of technology, but polluted with interjections of a bunch of PC nonsense by warmunists.
I don’t understand why it matters that humans are going to leave imprints on Mars after the Martians went and completely destroyed it with their own Global Warming…I mean they boiled off their oceans! Where do you think all that CO2 in the Martian atmosphere came from? – from burning Martian fossil fuels of course!
If only they had used ever efficient Solar Power to run their factories, oh and of course the highly efficient Wind Turbines.
(Let’s see…Mars gets half the sunlight, and has less than 1% as much atmospheric pressure…Oh yeah, this would work really well in the mind of an activist)
Where do you think all that CO2 in the Martian atmosphere came from? – from burning Martian fossil fuels of course!
Nah. It was a result of the development of the Elludium Q-36 explosive space modulator. And it was all for nothing as Earth is still here blocking Marvin’s view of Venus.
Delays, delays, delays…… 🙂
What the Left does very well with the help of a compliant media (I believe bought) is control the narrative. Take the move from AGW to Climate Change for example. Part of their strategy….. keep the enemy on the defensive.
Actually, this stuff is interesting if one looks at the names and reasoning.
On June 14, 2018, the Executive Committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) ratified the subdivision of the Holocene Series/Epoch as follows:
Greenlandian
Lower/Early Holocene Subseries/Subepoch = Greenlandian Stage/Age with a base dated at 11,700 years b2k (before 2000 AD). GSSP = NGRIP2 Greenland ice core.
Northgrippian
Middle Holocene Subseries/Subepoch = Northgrippian Stage/Age with a base dated at 8236 years b2k. GSSP = NGRIP1 Greenland ice core.
Meghalayan
Upper/Late Holocene Subseries/Subepoch = Meghalayan Stage/Age with a base dated at 4250 years b2k. GSSP = a speleothem (specifically a stalagmite) from Mawmluh Cave, Meghalaya, northeast India.
There’s a general system to it.
The Holocene ages refer to the source of the “golden spike” appended with -ian or just -n in the case of Meghalayan.
The the eras of the Phanerozoic (visible life) Eon are Paleozoic (ancient life), Mesozoic (middle life) and Cenozoic (recent life), with -zoic denoting life.
On earth the anthropocene is diachronic, and therefore only can be defined as a lithostratigraphic unit. On the moon however, the first deposit of human origin occured exactly at 21:02 on 14 September 1959 with the impact of Luna 2, and as such an anthropocene on the moon could be defined, even with a golden spike locality. Although it should be called the anthropian period, or more in line with lunar geology the Lunican, after the type locality: Sinus Lunicus.
On Mars the impact of Mars 2 on 27 November 1971 could act as a weldefined start of a new epoch.
A new geologic time period also has to have geological significance and the golden spike has to represent something that can be correlated globally or at least on a large regional basis.
Is EOS mag right next to The National Enquirer at supermarket checkouts?
Perhaps this isn’t so far fetched. I haven’t met an Amazon from Mars for quite a while now, maybe several months sadly, so the Amazonian phase of Martian culture may well be behind us – so why not an Anthropocene. We may be underestimating our power. Millennials especially have been raised on the idea that they can do anything regardless of the laws of physics or economics. I have it on good authority from some Arts undergraduates that Mars has it’s own safe zones with free trade organic coffee beans, and if you fly there in a solar powered balloon, you are certain to be continually bothered by robocalls on your smartphone warning you to sign in and reset your password for VISA/Mastercard/Costco/wholefoods etc. If that isn’t a terrible signal of human degredation of the pristine Martian culture then what is.
https://youtu.be/TSuhi1o_9Cs
Don’t forget Commando Cody and Radar Men from the Moon.
https://youtu.be/FFY4PVyaxV4
http://www.vidinfo.org/video/58551879/radar-men-from-the-moon-1952-full-12-chapter
Retik, Ruler of the Moon, intends to invade earth because the atmosphere of the moon has become too thin to grow food outside of pressurized greenhouses. See? The greenhouse effect decades before UN IPCC thought of it.
They need to get their extinction rates dates straight.
“extinction rates far above background rates since 1500; deforestation” from
https://eos.org/opinions/the-mars-anthropocene
“ Biotic changes include species invasions worldwide and accelerating rates of extinction. ”
“ Fossil fuel combustion has disseminated black carbon, …..” from
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6269/aad2622
So the Anthropocene started when the New World was discovered. Moved around the plates, I guess. And the carbon we burn is or turns black. Need to check my propane.
The rumor is that when you get old you get cynical. So much material to work on.
We’re clearly doomed…
/SARC
The Anthropocene on march
Published seven books?
Published nearly 200 “scientific papers” regarding topics that are pure speculation?
He is a fiction writer.
Just the claim “geological signatures of that transition include a variety of features such as the extinction of many animal and plant species” is proof this character is poorly trained in biology.
Most extinctions do not leave geological signatures.
Yep… The Dodo bird, passenger pigeon and the only confirmed extinction due to climate change (a toad with a habitat measured in cm2) didn’t leave geological signatures. A million years from now, there probably won’t be geological signatures of these extinctions.
A million years from now there probably won’t be epochs either, nor an ICS bureau. 😛
But the first occurrence of human contact will still be there.
+42×1042
GOSH!
Man has how many SUVs on Mars? (One broke down so I guess it doesn’t count.)
And the Moon?
GOSH!
And the Voyagers! (Not the Star Trek based TV show.)
It would seen that Man’s CO2 (lots of CO2 emissions to produce those things) combined with Man’s nuclear (some use nuclear power) is going to destroy all life in the Solar System and maybe even more!! (To Infinity and Beyond!)
“The Anthropocene Is Coming to Mars Humans are about to extend their influence to a second world. By Dirk Schulze-Makuch”
Eco fearology on steroids? Once man’s position in nature is made god-like in terms of destruction and a managerial role in taking care of mother nature and tweeking her temperature and other properties to the correct values, then the sky is the limit.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2010/05/16/171/
I have noted that these leftist eco-warriors seem to have a vehement hatred of humanity.