Why do some leading geologists reject the term "Anthropocene"?(newyorker.com)
newyorker.com
Why do some leading geologists reject the term "Anthropocene"?
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/the-epic-row-over-a-new-epoch
38 comments
Also, geology isn’t just sedimentation. Erosion, from various causes, removes layers of rock, sometimes sweeping away thousands of feet of sediment. Our mining industry has removed rock on the scale of a significant meteor bombardment. Future geologists might ask “why is there a massive stratigraphic absence here?” as often as they ask “why is there a weird sedimentary layer here?”
Also movement of large amounts of rocks from one area to another. Our concrete momuments to arrogance and excess, even when theyre rubble, will be hard to explain without the human element.
They won’t be because they are themselves consequences of nature.
> Instead I am pro-anthropocene because even if humanity died today, there would still be an extremely weird layer of rock that would need to be explained and
Would there be enough to make it an epoch rather than just an event though? Most opinions on the "silurian hypothesis" thought experiment seem to suggest not. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-an-industri...
Our current impacts are significantly different from what they were four hundred years ago. They will probably be even more different in another few centuries. Assuming we do not wipe ourselves out, our eventual impact will be very different from our current impact. Maybe we will even reverse many things, and a millennium is just a blip in geological time.
In any case, the Holocene is defined by human impacts on the environment, so really Anthropocene is more of an alternative name for the Holocene than a separate epoch: https://www.britannica.com/science/Holocene-Epoch
Would there be enough to make it an epoch rather than just an event though? Most opinions on the "silurian hypothesis" thought experiment seem to suggest not. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-an-industri...
Our current impacts are significantly different from what they were four hundred years ago. They will probably be even more different in another few centuries. Assuming we do not wipe ourselves out, our eventual impact will be very different from our current impact. Maybe we will even reverse many things, and a millennium is just a blip in geological time.
In any case, the Holocene is defined by human impacts on the environment, so really Anthropocene is more of an alternative name for the Holocene than a separate epoch: https://www.britannica.com/science/Holocene-Epoch
Makes sense to me. What’s the counter argument?
There's some long hashing out of pro's and cons in the Smithsonian link and thread comments here
Myths about the Anthropocene ( 67 points, 2 days ago, 58 comments ) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40079014
Myths about the Anthropocene ( 67 points, 2 days ago, 58 comments ) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40079014
As much as precision is important, I think bickering about what we're scientifically calling the current man-made catastrophe is like arguing whether an aeroplane that's had its wings sheared off is still technically an aeroplane while it's plummeting to the ground.
Have you met taxonomists?
That’s like complaining that lawyers argue, or engineers build things.
That’s like complaining that lawyers argue, or engineers build things.
Except the plane is going to survive. Only the passengers aren’t going to. On the other hand, there are going to be new passengers. Assuming we don’t blow up the plane with nukes.
And if we do blow up the plane with nukes, there will still be new passengers. They’ll just be red-hardened. Maybe even rad-metabolizing. Evolution loves well-adapted organisms!
The idea that we're headed towards extinction due to our impacts on the environment is not supported by any scientific institution I am aware of.
Why do you believe this?
Why do you believe this?
& according to Urban Dictionary we are living in the "Assholocene"
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Assholocene
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Assholocene
This obviously has considerable political implications since it will inevitably be intertwined with climate change. So it's not merely a scientific discussion.
Will be kind of fun if the term becomes institutionalized, then some new groups propose the "Romanocene", the "Coloniocene", the "Industriocene", the "Americanocene" etc etc.
Will be kind of fun if the term becomes institutionalized, then some new groups propose the "Romanocene", the "Coloniocene", the "Industriocene", the "Americanocene" etc etc.
The political implications may be the strongest argument against it. Science should strive for neutrality, to present facts without getting tangled up in politics.
On the other hand, now that the previous commenter mentioned that, I can see an objective reason to be against the term 'Anthropocene' regardless of whether the epoch itself is accepted.
'Anthropocene' implies that it is humanity that is the driving force of the purported geological changes, but humanity's ability to cause such an impact is itself a blip in the biological history of our species. I do see that some proposals as to when the epoch started go as far back as the Neolithic revolution, but I very much doubt that a hypothetical world in which humanity had never progressed past subsistence farming and husbandry could have an effect on the geological scale. Plus, humanity still has more history before the Neolithic than after it.
So, taking the more mainstream arguments stating that a new geological epoch started in modern times, be it with the Industrial Revolution, the Atomic Era, or the 1960s, the fact that this epoch is Anthropic is not necessary and sufficient to describe it.
Instead, I would argue that the defining characteristic of this epoch would be Industrialisation, hence 'Industrocene' or, forgive my Greek, 'Viomechanocene' would be much more descriptive and more objective names.
'Anthropocene' implies that it is humanity that is the driving force of the purported geological changes, but humanity's ability to cause such an impact is itself a blip in the biological history of our species. I do see that some proposals as to when the epoch started go as far back as the Neolithic revolution, but I very much doubt that a hypothetical world in which humanity had never progressed past subsistence farming and husbandry could have an effect on the geological scale. Plus, humanity still has more history before the Neolithic than after it.
So, taking the more mainstream arguments stating that a new geological epoch started in modern times, be it with the Industrial Revolution, the Atomic Era, or the 1960s, the fact that this epoch is Anthropic is not necessary and sufficient to describe it.
Instead, I would argue that the defining characteristic of this epoch would be Industrialisation, hence 'Industrocene' or, forgive my Greek, 'Viomechanocene' would be much more descriptive and more objective names.
Science has always been political, even back in the time of Galileo.
And when the politics of greed and the science of truth come to odds?
Therein lies the rub.
Therein lies the rub.
[deleted]
It seems some geologists don't want stratigraphy speculating about the future.
I can imagine they say, we don't play clairvoyant. That's what I can agree with.
However I think that the concept of the Anthropocene is too important to throw it away. I propose a branch in geology which does research about current effects on stratigraphy. In that branch the Anthropocene would be indispensable.
Disclaimer: I am not a geologist.
I can imagine they say, we don't play clairvoyant. That's what I can agree with.
However I think that the concept of the Anthropocene is too important to throw it away. I propose a branch in geology which does research about current effects on stratigraphy. In that branch the Anthropocene would be indispensable.
Disclaimer: I am not a geologist.
> In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I am an Anthropocene partisan.
It would have helped if the author had mentioned this at the beginning of the article. Or they had let someone neutral write the article entirely.
It would have helped if the author had mentioned this at the beginning of the article. Or they had let someone neutral write the article entirely.
I don’t think journalistic neutrality is either possible or desirable, the more I think about it.
I definitely think an article like this can be written from a neutral mindset. The ideal neutral journalist is one who is not emotionally invested in an outcome. In domestic politics almost everyone has an opinion but a piece about a scientific dispute is not something most have an opinion about.
They might be dispassionate but they are not "neutral", neutrality is a position defined relative to two other positions and will always be a disputable ephemeral target. Even topic choice is an implied opinion.
That’s like saying spheres aren't real because no perfect sphere exists. I think objectively exploring the merits of both sides of an argument is possible, and in many cases laudable.
I’m not saying all arguments on every issue are made in good faith or are worth exploring, and of course some things are simply facts. I’m also not condemning editorials where a writer is expected to try and persuade. However, I do think there is merit in a form of journalism that summarizes the strongest arguments on both sides of an issue in dispute, rather than simply picking one side and running with it.
I’m not saying all arguments on every issue are made in good faith or are worth exploring, and of course some things are simply facts. I’m also not condemning editorials where a writer is expected to try and persuade. However, I do think there is merit in a form of journalism that summarizes the strongest arguments on both sides of an issue in dispute, rather than simply picking one side and running with it.
> That’s like saying spheres aren't real because no perfect sphere exists.
This analogy is deeply flawed. For spheres, we at least have some kind of mathematical model for what a sphere would be. For a “neutral point of view”, we don’t even have a good intuitive model for what that would look like, at least, not one that withstands a little bit of scrutiny.
This analogy is deeply flawed. For spheres, we at least have some kind of mathematical model for what a sphere would be. For a “neutral point of view”, we don’t even have a good intuitive model for what that would look like, at least, not one that withstands a little bit of scrutiny.
There are simply opinions that are not worth the time to summarize or compare. I am not going to give my attention to a journalist who takes a serious look at holocaust denial conspiracies and tries to write about "both sides" of the equation in a neutral way.
Have you read Elizabeth Kolbert before? Or anything in the New Yorker?
richrichie(1)
> But the Anthropocene’s future as an informal time period is assured. It’s too apt—and too important—a term to be abandoned. As Paul Crutzen pointed out in 2002, barring a “meteorite impact, a world war or a pandemic,” humans “will remain a major environmental force for many millennia.” Science recently summed up the situation this way: “the anthropocene is dead. long live the anthropocene.”
If this was all the justification I would be against the anthropocene being accepted. As the anti-anthro crowd says, geology is not the study of "maybes" or "if this trend continues".
Instead I am pro-anthropocene because even if humanity died today, there would still be an extremely weird layer of rock that would need to be explained and the existing human impacts on the enviroment would still take millions of years to dissipate. Further, '1952' is in the past. It's very recent, but it is in the past. Stratigraphy is the study of layers, and humanity has undeniably created a clear and very odd layer in the rock. Therefore, a new age is justified to me.