Anthropocene

Age of Man (National Geographic):

So it's disconcerting to learn that many stratigraphers have come to believe that we are such an event—that human beings have so altered the planet in just the past century or two that we've ushered in a new epoch: the Anthropocene. Standing in the smirr, I ask Zalasiewicz what he thinks this epoch will look like to the geologists of the distant future, whoever or whatever they may be. Will the transition be a moderate one, like dozens of others that appear in the record, or will it show up as a sharp band in which very bad things happened—like the mass extinction at the end of the Ordovician?

That, Zalasiewicz says, is what we are in the process of determining.

The Anthropocene: a new epoch of geological time? (Royal Society A):

This issue examines the nature, scale and status of the Anthropocene as a potential new geological Epoch. Key themes addressed are the effects of human influence on climate, landscape, the oceans, and biodiversity, and how these are producing a distinctive geological record, that will be preserved into the far future. The phenomenon of ongoing, human-driven environmental change may be compared with the great environmental perturbations of the geological past.

How hard are we pushing the land? (PhysOrg / NASA):

We may be becoming an ever more technologically advanced society, but we remain as dependent as ever -- if not more and more so -- on the natural world that surrounds us.

That is one takeaway from new NASA research that has found humans are using an increasing amount of the Earth's total land plant production each year for food, fiber, building and packaging materials and biofuels.

This remains a young data record, as one of the first global measurements tied to satellite data was published in 2004. That baseline-setting measurement was for the year 1995, when humans needed 20 percent of all plant growth for our various products. But the early returns are in, and despite uncertainties in the measurement, the signal is headed in a clear direction: up. From 1995 to 2005, global annual plant consumption rose from 20 percent to 25 percent of all plant production in those years.

As the human population continues to grow and more societies develop modern economies, this rate of consumption is increasing both as a whole and on a per capita basis globally, a NASA research group led by Marc Imhoff at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., has found.

Blind date with disaster (Guardian / David Suzuki 2008)

[I]n 1992, a remarkable document called World Scientists' Warning to Humanity was signed by more than 1,500 senior scientists, including more than half of all Nobel prizewinners alive at that time.

Here is some of what the document said: "Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future we wish for human society . . . and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about."

The document goes on to list the critical areas of the atmosphere, water resources, oceans, soil, forests, species extinction, and overpopulation. Then the words grow even more urgent: "No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished. . .

A great change in our stewardship of the Earth and life on it is required if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated."

This is a frightening document; eminent scientists do not often sign such a strongly worded missive. But if the Scientists' Warning is frightening, the response of the media in North America was terrifying - there was no response. None of the major television networks bothered to report it, and both the New York Times and Washington Post dismissed it as "not newsworthy".

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