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We humans have a strong tendency to anthropomorphize things. Witness all the stupid talking-pet commercials. But when scientists tread into this arena, expect reaction.
Regarding my story yesterday about a proposal to label the past 200 years as the beginning of the Anthropocene Epoch in geologic time, what with all the changes to this planet humans have wrought, some tidbits from the mailbag:
Shari writes: It seems so….hmmm, “anthrocentric” and shortsighted of us to name an epoch after ourselves while it is (allegedly) occurring. “Scientists of the future will have no trouble deciding if the proposal was timely.” Maybe not, but that doesn’t make it logical for scientists of the present to decide that in advance, does it?
Don writes: The arrogance of humanity in general, and the “scientific” community in particular amazes me. First, that we think the planet needs saving, and second that we think we are capable of doing so. My guess is that if we could see 100,000 years into the future, the planet would be doing just fine. We may not be here, like thousands of other “dominate” species before us. But there will still be life on this planet. So get over it!
John, the most acerbic of all, writes: Endangered dirt??? Oh please, spare us. … Get a life and find some real research, like how to fix something for once. And quit whining for government grants.
Erik has a totally different take on human arrogance. He writes: Somebody writes a story about the earth and what we are doing to cause such damage. Nobody ever suggest how to change human behavior, raping the earth. The French statesman and thinker Chateaubriand once said:
“The forests preceded civilizations, after their demise only deserts and wasteland were left.”
What has changed? The forests left today are being cut as we speak, eventually leaving the whole earth totally denuded.
The people of this earth are too lazy to do the obvious: to replace every tree that has been cut. Some countries actually have laws that require cut trees to be replaced with seedlings within three months after cutting.
The US government gives the lumber companies about ten years to do that. Have you ever seen the soil that has been washed off the mountains of Washington State? After ten years there is no soil left to plant trees in (after clearcutting).
The Sahara desert once was green with trees, bushes, and grass. Did you ever see the resorts in Egypt? The desert there was changed back into little paradises there.
It can be done if the will is there. For that these stories by scientists of new ecological epochs are pure hogwash.
January 28th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Arrogance isn’t the right term, ignorance fits better. Recently a couple of U.C. scientists determined that mass extinctions occur about every 62 million years. The KT event was about 65 million years ago. The proper name for the current era then technically is the End Holocene event or the 6th great extinction.
January 28th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
I think this is a very astute geological action. Whenever there are great changes in the chemical or physical makeup of a strata, that’s usually where you put the “ice age ended here” mark. If you take a core from any industrialized part of the earth, you’ll find marked differences in the appearance of layers from the past two hundred years compared to pre-industrial ages. It won’t be a very thick strata yet, but I think it should be a new one.
Consider this - if between 1200 AD and 1600 AD it rained trash everyday, there would be inches or feet of trash covering the earth underneath the soil. That little time period might be called the Wasteocene. It would certainly mark a difference from the time before it rained trash and the time after it rained trash. Well, its sort of raining trash now, but in the form of sulfer, mercury and other pollutants that don’t stack up quite the way trash does, but still stack up. It wasn’t there before, and after we leave it will be gone. Thus, you name it something new because its a new set of circumstances.
If the shoe fits right?
For those remaining Ditto-heads who question whether we can affect the world around us: Arrogance or Ignorance - you’ve clearly made your choice.
January 28th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Somebody please tell Erik to read up a little on geographic history. The Sahara has gone back and forth from desert more than a few times in the last 100,000 years. The last green period between 8000 BC and 6000 BC was notable for it’s lack of chain saws. Climate changes radically over time. We really don’t have that much influence. No more than dinosaurs passing gas caused the end of that epoch.
January 29th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
While the terminology “Anthropocene Epoch” is a correct statement, I would have to agree that actually naming a New Epoch should be left to the Scientific and Anthropological Communities. Having read the current article from GSA Today, v. 18, no 2. by Zalasiewicz and William, I found the article informative and descriptive upon the classification of the new Epoch.
Not only has this species entered into the 21st Century, but entering into a new Epoch is, to say the least, historical.
This should be on the front page of every Newspaper across the Globe, as humans are a global species. What would Malthus say about us?
January 30th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
As far as infertile dirt goes, that is quite true. One major crop that causes the soil to be infertile are sugar beets. After the beets are harvested the soil is “no good” for about 5 years unless you “super-fertilize” it.