That’s quite a list of human-caused harms. … Phenomena associated with the Anthropocene include: an order-of-magnitude increase in erosion and sediment transport associated with urbanization and agriculture marked and abrupt anthropogenic perturbations of the cycles of elements such as carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and various metals together with new chemical compounds environmental changes generated by these perturbations, including global warming, sea-level rise, ocean acidification and spreading oceanic ‘dead zones’ rapid changes in the biosphere both on land and in the sea, as a result of habitat loss, predation, explosion of domestic animal populations and species invasions and the proliferation and global dispersion of many new ‘minerals’ and ‘rocks’ including concrete, fly ash and plastics, and the myriad ‘technofossils’ produced from these and other materials. This impact has intensified significantly since the onset of industrialization, taking us out of the Earth System state typical of the Holocene Epoch that post-dates the last glaciation. The ‘Anthropocene’ is a term widely used since its coining by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000 to denote the present geological time interval, in which many conditions and processes on Earth are profoundly altered by human impact. But human activity has likely brought that lengthy period - one of climate stability - to an end, explain the smarties of the Anthropocene Working Group :
Now look, the Holocene had a good run, a stretch of nearly 12,000 years since the last major ice age. From a certain point of view.Īccording to a panel of earth scientists from around the world, humanity in the 1950s seems likely to have entered a new geological era. Welcome, Anthropocene Epoch (from Greek, meaning “human” and “new”). Goodbye, Holocene Epoch (from Greek, meaning “entirely new”).
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