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POPSEarth Needs Users' Guide To Protect It From People Nature said in an editorial the proposed indicators were a "creditable attempt" to quantify limits on human use of the planet. However, it noted, for instance, that fertilizers caused pollution yet helped feed millions of people. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a co-author of the study, said there were growing risks of abrupt and possibly irreversible changes. "Since the Industrial Revolution, a new era has arisen, the Anthropocene, in which human actions have become the main driver of global environmental change," they wrote.
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POPSSave the Holocene! "I get the utility of using the idea of the Anthropocene to provoke recognition of the mind-bending reality that we are transforming the very planet on which we walk. (emphasis mine) Where the Anthropocene as a concept breaks down, it seems to me, is in the implications it raises, particularly among certain crowds who seem to be saying with increasing frequency, "well, dude, we're in the Anthropocene, anything goes." A worthwhile and important read
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POPSWelcome to the Anthropocene Age continues: “With more than half of all soils on Earth now being cultivated for food crops, grazed, or periodically logged for wood, how to sustain Earth’s soils is becoming a major scientific and policy issue,” Richter said
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POPSHumans causing new extinction event: academic Professor Steffen says the Anthropocene age will continue for some considerable time. "Even if we cut down emissions to zero or close to zero tomorrow, there would be significant amounts of extra CO2 up there for centuries into the future, and I think also in terms of biodiversity loss, there is what some people call committed biodiversity loss, or species that are on their way to extinction and there probably isn't much we can do to turn them around," he said.
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POPSGeologists push for dawn of new age
The effects of the use of coal in around 1800, and then the steam engine, and the accelerated advances in technology since, will leave a marked effect on the geological record. The Holocene Epoch began about 11,500 years ago and we may already be a few hundred years into the Anthropocene Epoch, the period where humanity has dominated the effects on the planet. I was reminded of a question that has occurred to me in the past. With all of our extraction of fossil fuels, and minerals from beneath the Earth's crust, What is left behind? Seems like there would be vast 'empty' spaces left behind where once the ground was being held up by whatever was taken. I have no doubt that for such deposits to exist, there must have been a generally geologically stable capsule for things such as oil to be contained, but even Diamonds have flaws - and the amount of empty space, (apart from volatile natural gas) would seem to be significant. Then of course there are subterranean coal fires
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POPSThe 'Anthropocene Age' ?
To some, it may seem obvious that humans are massively changing the environment, but what Zalasiewicz had to do was show that 10, 100, 500 million years down the line, if you were to slice through a chunk of sediment you would be able to identify a distinct layer that corresponds to our reign on Earth. The group says there is enough evidence around to suggest this will be the case. Ocean acidification, if it continues, could bring an end to corals which will change the nature of ocean rocks. Humans activities have triggered huge amounts of erosion, generating a new layer of sediment. Widespread agriculture is replacing natural vegetation with large expanses of single crops. Cutting down forests, draining marshlands and peat bogs, transforming the prairies have pushed out the animal and plant species that live there and caused them to go extinct. All of the above will mean that one day, the fossil record of our time will look very different to the pre-Anthropocene record.
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