Dawn of a New Epoch

[LizzieMaine]

We talk here all the time about "Ages" and "Eras," but here's the real deal. Scientists are discussing the possibility that, since the postwar era, we have been living in a whole new geological epoch -- The Anthropogenic Epoch.

The argument is that only since that time has humanity's presence on Earth resulted in permanent geological changes to the planet, changes that will be detectable millions of years hence. Use of nuclear energy is one factor, but they also cite the explosive growth of mass consumption since the 1950s as something which is leaving permanent tracks behind in the geological record.

I wonder if, millions of years hence, the super-evolved cockroaches then running the place will unearth the fossilized remains of the Boys From Marketing and wonder...

(And for that matter, should we change our mission statement to "Keepers of the Culture of the Holocene Epoch?")

 

[sheeplady]

I find this totally depressing for reasons I can't even begin to put into words.

Having an epoch's start defined by human waste and weapons of war is just.... tragic.

 

[HudsonHawk]

At least one person has argued that it's inaccurate to ascribe man-made changes to the earth to humankind on the whole, and suggests the term "capitalocene" is more appropriate. Jason W. Moore, a sociologist, recently published Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital where he outlines his theory on how modern business has forever altered the planet. I guess "boysfrommarketingocene" doesn't really roll off the tongue.

 

[Stanley Doble]

A few months ago I read a book on trees and the clearing of trees by civilization. We have been altering the landscape and weather patterns for thousands of years by clearing forests and planting crops. Ancient Greeks complained about the ecological damage done by deforestation. In late Roman times, Rome imported their ceramics from France because there were not enough trees left in Italy to fire the kilns. Red oak was the structural steel of the British Isles and northern Europe in pre Roman times. Those great forests were mostly gone 1000 years ago or longer. Similar clear cutting took place in North America from colonial times to now.

Even trapping of beavers resulted in radical changes to the landscape. Large areas of the western US that were meadows and cottonwood trees, are now sagebrush and tumbleweeds because the beavers are gone. Some suggest that the California droughts would be a lot less severe if beaver were reintroduced.

We have been messing with the planet for a long time. It is possible it is LESS messed up now than it was a hundred or 200 years ago. I believe forests have grown back in the eastern US and Europe, since we substituted oil and coal for firewood and plastic and metal for wooden gadgets.

We are far more concerned about conservation, ecology and nature than even 100 years ago. In the richer more developed parts of the world great strides have been made and as the third world no doubt they will do the same once the problem of poverty has been solved.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

And what if we weren't living in a new epoch but at the end of an old one, our one & we don't yet realize it..

 

[Tiki Tom]

Humanity is very good at creating problems (as it seeks to solve other problems), realizing its mistakes, and then trying to solve the problems it has created ...only to again create new and innovative problems that were unforeseen. If only we could get ahead of the curve!

 

[Trenchfriend]

Humans are primates. First munching, then morality.

And now the final era of geo-engineering.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Other primates certainly aren't doing that well these days. All of the rest of the apes -- 22 different species -- are endangered, mostly due to human activity. Ought to make us think. Our turn will come.

 

[philosophygirl78]

There is much misinformation and erroneous attribution of blame to humans alone as the causes of 'climate change'... While climate change is real, the fact is its Always been real... Humans are responsible for accelerating the depletion of the ozone layer according to NASA, however, to state that climate change by way of definition would not have otherwise occurred is not correct and a far stretch that only lives in reason with political and vested group propaganda.

Global warming is a trend that could change tomorrow influenced by factors that we, or scientists may not even be aware of as of yet. An asteroid could hit us (a very realistic possibility) and affect the planet's temperatures more so than anything we have done in the last 250 years...

As with most human debates, much blame and pejoratives in the subject of Climate Change are the result of misunderstood knowledge and a psychological scapegoat of other, more ingrained issues involving the overall human condition.

People love to listen to media and 'news' instead of picking up a book and actually learning, or arriving to their own conclusions without first researching.

http://climate.nasa.gov/causes/

 

[LizzieMaine]

Step carefully, please. Climate change debate can easily slide into Specific Modern Day Politics, which is not allowed here and is certainly not the intention of this thread. Note that the original linked article is about geological impact more than climate.

Climate aside, I think it's the height of hubris to think that humanity is somehow insulated from the danger of eventually going extinct. In fact, I think it's pretty much inevitable. Eventually destiny will catch up with us, whether thru an asteroid hitting us or a self-created disaster or a superinfection that spreads too fast to control. Our overweening sense of our own invulnerability could very easily be our downfall. We are, when you cut thru all the malarkey, just several billion fragile organisms spinning thru space on a ball of compressed dust. We think we know what it's all about, but all it takes to kill one of us is to fall out of bed the wrong way.

Read "Earth Abides," by George R. Stewart, written in 1949. Overall a very realistic look at a possible near-extinction event that destroys civilization without so much as a whimper, leaving only a few scattered survivors to try and rebuild the species. No atomic disasters or zombie cannibal bikers or any of the rest of that foolishness, just a serious meditation on the relationship between mankind and the rest of the planet. Stewart was an environmentalist long before the term became a perjorative in some circles, and he understood a key point: every species has a population saturation point, beyond which it becomes increasingly likely that something will happen -- often some sort of plague -- to drastically reduce that population.

You can look out your backyard window and see that happen all around you -- one year you seem to be overrun with squirrels or rabbits or raccoons, and suddenly they're gone, wiped out by some disease or parasite or predation. Humanity, Stewart argued, has been pressing its luck for a very long time. Eventually that luck will run out.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

Global warming & climate change are very real as is the fact that the speed of global warming is faster than the boffins predicted a decade ago. It would be very naive to believe, that the billions of tons of greenhouse gases the industrialized countries have spewed out into the atmosphere over the last century & in particular, the last 50 years, wouldn't have any effect on climate. Likewise, it would be equally naive to believe that all the pollutants we have dumped into the enviroment, won't have any effects on our health.
In America & Europe we are reasonably protected from the effects of Global warming, which allows a certain clima-skepticism & bad harvests or freak droughts won't cause the collapse of our nations, at least for the moment but there are already millions of people in more vulnerable enviroments, who are suffering full whack the effects of climate change & at least a billion more will be drastically effected by it within the next 20 years.
True enough the climate on the planet Earth has changed throughout it's past but to suggest that human activity isn't responsible for the current rise in the global temperature is rather hard to swallow. It's a bit like claiming intensive fishing isn't responsible for emptying the seas of fish as the fish would have disappeared anyway.

 

[Fading Fast]

Step carefully, please. Climate change debate can easily slide into Specific Modern Day Politics, which is not allowed here and is certainly not the intention of this thread. Note that the original linked article is about geological impact more than climate.

Climate aside, I think it's the height of hubris to think that humanity is somehow insulated from the danger of eventually going extinct. In fact, I think it's pretty much inevitable. Eventually destiny will catch up with us, whether thru an asteroid hitting us or a self-created disaster or a superinfection that spreads too fast to control. Our overweening sense of our own invulnerability could very easily be our downfall. We are, when you cut thru all the malarkey, just several billion fragile organisms spinning thru space on a ball of compressed dust. We think we know what it's all about, but all it takes to kill one of us is to fall out of bed the wrong way.

Read "Earth Abides," by George R. Stewart, written in 1949. Overall a very realistic look at a possible near-extinction event that destroys civilization without so much as a whimper, leaving only a few scattered survivors to try and rebuild the species. No atomic disasters or zombie cannibal bikers or any of the rest of that foolishness, just a serious meditation on the relationship between mankind and the rest of the planet.

I always pause and think hard before I disagree with anything you write, but I would disagree with the view implied (and maybe you didn't imply this - if so, I apologize in advance) that the majority of humans believe we are "insulated from the dangers of eventually going extinct." I certainly don't feel that way and I know many others who don't. And I'd say many in the climate debate argue just such a point, that we risk extinction if we don't take action. Are there many who do think we are somehow "touch from above" to survive - yes, but my impression is that there are sizable number of people on both sides of the issue.

I do agree with your view that it is highly likely we will become extinct for the reasons you noted. If we have a chance, scientific advancement might provide us some hope as a much more scientifically advanced society might be able to, for example, address an asteroid hit ahead of time. But as we know, science cuts both ways and might do more harm than good. But the possibility of it helping us survive exists.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'm thinking more along the lines of the general belief Western civilization, especially, has in the "inevitability of progress," the idea that if we just keep going on the course we're going, we'll figure everything out and everything will be hunky-dory all around. I think the idea of humanity as being firmly in control of its own destiny is as much whistling in the dark as it is anything else.

There are a lot of technocrats in the world today -- I don't mean in the 1930s Howard Scott sense of the world, but in the sense of believing that technology will always mean improvements in mankind's situation -- who seem to be awfully sure that civilization will just keep on marching into infinity as long as people keep upgrading their phones and downloading the new version of Java. But their vision depends on mankind, as Stewart put it, "continuing to roll an unbroken line of sevens." Common sense tells us that eventually, it's got to come up snake eyes. In the end, the house always wins.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

If we have a chance, scientific advancement might provide us some hope as a much more scientifically advanced society might be able to, for example, address an asteroid hit ahead of time. But as we know, science cuts both ways and might do more harm than good. But the possibility of it helping us survive exists.

The belief that science will help us is very similar to the belief in an interventionist god. Scientists are only human & science it's self is limited & if a large asteroid was only days away from colliding with us, there is little science could do about it. There probably isn't enough time left for humanity to make any significant scientific advances, after all, we've had over 200,000 years of existance & what have we achieved scientifically? .....cured a few diseases, found some more efficient ways of killing each other & destroying the enviroment, invented TV & the internet & put a few chaps on the moon.
Also believing in science as some kind of saviour just allows us to relinquish our own responsibilities.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

I'm thinking more along the lines of the general belief Western civilization, especially, has in the "inevitability of progress," the idea that if we just keep going on the course we're going, we'll figure everything out and everything will be hunky-dory all around. I think the idea of humanity as being firmly in control of its own destiny is as much whistling in the dark as it is anything else..

I think there may be some kind of implanted auto destruction device in the human genome. Even though we know we are heading for oblivion, we are unable to act to prevent it. Good news for the planet but not for the other life forms we will take with us.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The belief that science will help us is very similar to the belief in an interventionist god. Scientists are only human & science it's self is limited & if a large asteroid was only days away from colliding with us, there is little science could do about it. There probably isn't enough time left for humanity to make any significant scientific advances, after all, we've had over 200,000 years of existance & what have we achieved scientifically? .....cured a few diseases, found some more efficient ways of killing each other & destroying the enviroment, invented TV & the internet & put a few chaps on the moon.
Also believing in science as some kind of saviour just allows us to relinquish our own responsibilities.

I think faith in science is very much a substitute for religion in the minds of a lot of people in "advanced societies," but it's not so much faith in actual science, since the overwhelming majority of people aren't in fact scientists, and base most of what they understand about science on what they read on the internet or see on TV. It's faith in the *idea* of science, which is just as much faith as any other kind of faith -- "the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not seen."

Any real scientist will tell you flat out that even with all that we know about the universe and our place in it, there is so overwhelmingly much more that we do *not* know, and possibly never will.

 

[Fading Fast]

The belief that science will help us is very similar to the belief in an interventionist god. Scientists are only human & science it's self is limited & if a large asteroid was only days away from colliding with us, there is little science could do about it. There probably isn't enough time left for humanity to make any significant scientific advances, after all, we've had over 200,000 years of existance & what have we achieved scientifically? .....cured a few diseases, found some more efficient ways of killing each other & destroying the enviroment, invented TV & the internet & put a few chaps on the moon.
Also believing in science as some kind of saviour just allows us to relinquish our own responsibilities.

I would point out that I said I lean to the belief that we will become extinct. I also only said that science might provide an answer - and maybe a hundred years from now our science will have advanced to the point that we could address the asteroid problem. That does not, to my thinking, imply a interventionist God, only a belief that sometimes we do make advances that could help. My guess is we - mankind - are doomed over a long enough period, I just make allowance for the possibility that I could be wrong and we will "figure a way out."

 

[HudsonHawk]

True enough the climate on the planet Earth has changed throughout it's past but to suggest that human activity isn't responsible for the current rise in the global temperature is rather hard to swallow. It's a bit like claiming intensive fishing isn't responsible for emptying the seas of fish as the fish would have disappeared anyway.

The biggest issue in the climate science debate is whether or not global temperatures have actually even risen or not. The data are sporadic, and everything more than a few decades old isn't a direct measurement. Completeness of the data is a much bigger issue than their interpretation. The other issue is that people tend to focus on the most very recent, looking only a few thousand or tens of thousands of years. That's minutiae in geologic time.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I do agree with your view that it is highly likely we will become extinct for the reasons you noted. If we have a chance, scientific advancement might provide us some hope as a much more scientifically advanced society might be able to, for example, address an asteroid hit ahead of time. But as we know, science cuts both ways and might do more harm than good. But the possibility of it helping us survive exists.

Humans will become extinct, one way or another. I don't see how you can reasonably argue otherwise. It's just a matter of time.

 

[Fading Fast]

I think faith in science is very much a substitute for religion in the minds of a lot of people in "advanced societies," but it's not so much faith in actual science, since the overwhelming majority of people aren't in fact scientists, and base most of what they understand about science on what they read on the internet or see on TV. It's faith in the *idea* of science, which is just as much faith as any other kind of faith -- "the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not seen."

Any real scientist will tell you flat out that even with all that we know about the universe and our place in it, there is so overwhelmingly much more that we do *not* know, and possibly never will.

I see the religion-like-faith also in the anti-science crowd as well - if only we got back to a "natural" way of living, organic this, no burning of fossil fuels, etc. - then we'll be in harmony with the earth. That didn't work so well for the dinosaurs. My point is not to support or argue against fossil fuels or organic this or that, my point is that I see a religious type of faith in some segment of the organic / anti-fossil fuel (as a shorthand) crowd as you (and I) do in the science-will-solve-it crowd.