A panel of scientists rejected the term “Anthropocene” to describe a period in which humans have profoundly impacted the environment — but others keep using it.
We’re not in the Anthropocene because the next epoch hasn’t taken shape yet. What humanity has done is create a transition from the holocene to whatever epoch will come next, the nature of which is unknown though we can predict some aspects. The idea that this right now is the new geological epoch is absurd hubristic misunderstanding of what a geological epoch is.
It’s not an epoch any more than the crash that totaled your car is your new car.
This article touches on the idea of an event, which aligns with your language around a transition. That seems appropriate to me, e.g. the industrial revolution would be the event that kicked off the next epoch. Considering the profound impact we’ve had on the planet since the industrial revolution, it seems like a reasonable place in time to assert that a new epoch has begun, however. It has clearly started to take shape. We have already done 1.5C of warming, with all signs pointing to much more to come. Biodiversity is already plummeting and will continue to drop. It’s perfectly reasonable to conclude that we’ve created a deviation from the Holocene normals and are simply calling this new thing something else, something undefined but clearly underway and likely to be as disruptive as any epoch change in the past. It’s an observation that we’ve fucked things up, but it’s not surprising that geologists aren’t ready to make the leap to a formal name, especially one randomly invented by a dude in an off the cuff comment and not through the scientific process.
I mean, I guess? But regardless of what comes next, we know that humanity is having a global impact on geology, so calling it the anthropocene seems reasonable. Even if we reverse anthropogenic climate change and use science and technology to live in a climate utopia, that’s still man-changed. Or if we cause our own extinction, then we were the cause of the next geological epoch. Regardless, “anthro” works.
We’re not in the Anthropocene because the next epoch hasn’t taken shape yet. What humanity has done is create a transition from the holocene to whatever epoch will come next, the nature of which is unknown though we can predict some aspects. The idea that this right now is the new geological epoch is absurd hubristic misunderstanding of what a geological epoch is.
It’s not an epoch any more than the crash that totaled your car is your new car.
This article touches on the idea of an event, which aligns with your language around a transition. That seems appropriate to me, e.g. the industrial revolution would be the event that kicked off the next epoch. Considering the profound impact we’ve had on the planet since the industrial revolution, it seems like a reasonable place in time to assert that a new epoch has begun, however. It has clearly started to take shape. We have already done 1.5C of warming, with all signs pointing to much more to come. Biodiversity is already plummeting and will continue to drop. It’s perfectly reasonable to conclude that we’ve created a deviation from the Holocene normals and are simply calling this new thing something else, something undefined but clearly underway and likely to be as disruptive as any epoch change in the past. It’s an observation that we’ve fucked things up, but it’s not surprising that geologists aren’t ready to make the leap to a formal name, especially one randomly invented by a dude in an off the cuff comment and not through the scientific process.
I mean, I guess? But regardless of what comes next, we know that humanity is having a global impact on geology, so calling it the anthropocene seems reasonable. Even if we reverse anthropogenic climate change and use science and technology to live in a climate utopia, that’s still man-changed. Or if we cause our own extinction, then we were the cause of the next geological epoch. Regardless, “anthro” works.
That’s a great way of describing the nuance of what an epoch is intended to represent.