Guest “Stick a fork to it” by David Middleton
This would “make a fork” in the concept of the Anthropocene Epoch…
Gill’s report co-authors argue that the Anthropocene should be a geological event, not an epoch
November 16, 2021
Scientists studying how human activity has altered the Earth use the term “Anthropocene” to describe a generalized period of time during which humanity has impacted the planet through changing geography. patterns and ecosystems, eradication of species, climate change, and more. However, Anthropocene has no specific scientific definition, leading to it being given a number of conflicting meanings that cause confusion among researchers and the public.
To help reduce ambiguity, some experts suggest that the Anthropocene should be identified as a formal epoch in the Geological Time Scale. Jacquelyn Gill, however, argues that the Anthropocene should be considered a geological event, or significant variation of the Earth marked in its geology.
Gill, associate professor of paleontology and plant ecology at the University of Maine, and other researchers support this argument in a University of Cambridge-led paper published in the journal Nature. Episodes.
According to Gill and her colleagues, defining the Anthropocene as an epoch could hamper scientists’ ability to understand, investigate and discuss how humans have changed the planet. Human action has altered the Earth for thousands of years at different scales and across many cultural practices, so limiting the Anthropocene to a specific time period may limit the amount of activity. to study and discover.
As a geological event, however, the Anthropocene would include many human-induced impacts throughout human history. Labels also more accurately reflect the parallel and shifting nature of human-induced global change, the researchers say. A geological event would also make the Anthropocene more useful in different fields, while still forming the basis for its understanding in the geological record.
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Say hello to Mrs. Middleton for bringing me this article. NS Episodes The paper is very well done and worth reading.
A practical solution: the Anthropocene was a geological event, not armal epoch
by Philip L. Gibbard, Andrew M. Bauer, Matthew Edgeworth, William F. Ruddiman, Jacquelyn L. Gill, Dorothy J. Merritts, Stanley C. Finney, Lucy E. Edwards, Michael JC Walker, Mark Maslin and Erle C. Ellisabstract
The Anthropocene has yet to be defined in a functional way for the international geological community and for the broader environmental and social sciences. Formally defining the Anthropocene as a series of stratigraphic time and geotime epochs with globally precise start dates would greatly reduce the utility of the Anthropocene across domains. We propose instead that the Anthropocene be defined as a geological event, thus facilitating a robust geological definition linked to a more useful and relevant academic framework. related to human-environment interactions. Unlike formal temporal definitions, geological events can recognize spatial and temporal inhomogeneities as well as diverse social and environmental processes that interact to produce human-induced global environmental change. Thus, the Anthropocene Event will cover a broader range of human variable cultural practices and will be more applicable in academic fields than the Anthropocene Era, while still allowing powerful stratigraphic characterization.
The article has a rather odd collection of co-authors. Former Secretary-General of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) Stanley Finney and Lucy E. Edwards have written that the Anthropocene is more of a political concept than a geological one. William Ruddiman has suggestions that early human agriculture did indeed prevent the beginning of the next Quaternary glaciation and consider the concept of the Anthropocene to be superfluous:
Other critics, notably William Ruddiman, a paleontologist at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, have pushed for the start of the Anthropocene when humans first began to terrain the Earth with row-based agriculture. thousands of years ago, or when they wiped out the megafauna in Australia and North America over the millennia. before 1950 (see WF Ruddiman Homeless. Physical. George. Earth Environment. http://doi.org/gd4shx; 2018). Some have argued against the Anthropocene designation, arguing that the Holocene was marked by escalating human influences since the end of the last ice age.
When Erle Ellis and Mark Maslin have been ardent proponents of the formal adoption of the Anthropocene Epoch in the Geological Time Scale. Although Ellis, a member of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), criticized the process:
Erle Ellis, a geographer at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and an AWG member, criticized the committee’s plan to designate the beginning of the Anthropocene. “The AWG decides the timing of the boundary before deciding on the marker, not the other way around,” says Ellis.
Lead author, Phillip Gibbard is the current Secretary General of the ICS and a member of the AWG. The mix of Anthropocene proponents and opponents makes me think a compromise is being made. Here is the conclusion of the article:
The current usage of the term ‘Anthropocene’ conceals a range of conflicting scientific meanings that have caused confusion among scholars and the wider public with which they engage. This situation is unlikely to change without a more precise and useful definition. However, efforts to understand and address Earth’s variability through human social and cultural activities are fundamentally driven by continued efforts to define and formalize the Anthropocene. as an official geographical/geochronic period tightly bound in the GTS. Switching to a geological event framework was a solution to many of the problems in determining the Anthropocene. It
Removes ambiguity in terminology and offers a way to overcome conceptual and disciplinary barriers by freeing concepts from the constraints of geological formalization, as well as their association. its association with established time units in the Holocene/Epoch Series.
Figure 1 from the paper provides a conceptual timeline of how an Era Event can be a useful tool in connecting human activities to the GTS.
Aside from a blinding error, it’s not a bad concept. The error is clearly the notation of the “Mass Extinction” of the last 100 years…
Earth is not in the midst of the Sixth Great Extinction
“As scientists, we have a responsibility to be precise about such comparisons.”By Peter Brannen
JUNE 13, 2017
At the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, Smithsonian paleontologist Doug Erwin took to the podium to speak in front of a ballroom full of geologists about the dynamics of mass extinctions and grid failures. electricity — which, he said, goes the same way.
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Erwin is one of the world’s experts on the late Permian mass extinction, an unimaginable volcanic nightmare that nearly ended life on earth 252 million years ago. He proposes that Earth’s mass extinctions are likely to happen like these grid failures: most of the loss probably comes, not from the initial shock — software glitches in the case of the grid damaged, asteroids and volcanoes in the event of an ancient mass extinction—but from the secondary cascade of subsequent failures. These are devastating chain reactions that no one understands. Erwin argues that most of the mass extinctions in earth’s history — global death waves that killed most of the earth’s animal life — were ultimately the result, not of external shocks. , but rather because the internal dynamics of food webs faltering and failing miserably in unexpected ways, just as the eastern seaboard was darkening in 2003.
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He wrote me in an email. “It is paramount to admit that I do NOT claim that humans have not caused great damage to the [ecosystems], also there aren’t many extinctions that haven’t happened and many more are certain to happen in the near future. But I think as scientists we have a responsibility to be precise about such comparisons. “
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In addition to 86’ing “Mass Extinction” from the conceptual timeline, I’ll also remove “-cene” from the Anthropocene. The current naming convention applies “-cen” to the Cenozoic epochs. Instead of the Anthropocene Event, I’ll call it the City Event… Better yet… The Great City Event!
Presenter
Finney, Stanley C. & Lucy E. Edwards. “The “Anthropocene” Era: Scientific Decision or Political Claim?” GSA Today, 2016; 26 (3): 4 DOIs: 10.1130 / GSATG270A.1
Gibbard PL, Bauer AM, Edgeworth M, Ruddiman WF, Gill JL, Merritts DJ, Finney SC, Edwards LE, Walker MJC, Maslin M, Ellis EC. “A practical solution: the Anthropocene is a geological event, not a formal epoch.” Episodes -0001; 0:-. https://doi.org/10.18814/epiiugs/2021/021029
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