Science Mag: ‘Panel rejects a proposed geologic time division reflecting human influence’ – The vote, first reported by The New York Times, is a stunning—though not unexpected—rebuke for the proposal, which has been working its way through a formal approval process for more than a decade.
Excerpts: Science magazine “has confirmed that a panel of two dozen geologists has voted down a proposal to end the Holocene — our current span of geologic time, which began 11,700 years ago at the end of the last ice age — and inaugurate a new epoch, the Anthropocene.
“Starting in the 1950s, it would have marked a time when humanity’s influence on the planet became overwhelming.”The vote, first reported by The New York Times, is a stunning — though not unexpected — rebuke for the proposal, which has been working its way through a formal approval process for more than a decade… [S]ome felt the proposed marker of the epoch — some 10 centimeters of mud from Canada’s Crawford Lake that captures the global surge in fossil fuel burning, fertilizer use, and atomic bomb fallout that began in the 1950s — isn’t definitive enough. Others questioned whether it’s even possible to affix one date to the start of humanity’s broad planetary influence: Why not the rise of agriculture? Why not the vast changes that followed European encroachment on the New World?
Stanley Finney, a stratigrapher at California State University Long Beach and head of the International Union of Geological Sciences, said “It would have been rejected 10 years earlier if they had not avoided presenting it to the stratigraphic community for careful consideration.”Finney also complains that from the start, AWG was determined to secure an “epoch” categorization, and ignored or countered proposals for a less formal Anthropocene designation…. The Anthropocene backers will now have to wait for a decade before their proposal can be considered again…
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From the New York Times: Geoscientists don’t deny our era stands out within that long history. Radionuclides from nuclear tests. Plastics and industrial ash. Concrete and metal pollutants. Rapid greenhouse warming. Sharply increased species extinctions. These and other products of modern civilization are leaving unmistakable remnants in the mineral record, particularly since the mid-20th century. Still, to qualify for its own entry on the geologic time scale, the Anthropocene would have to be defined in a very particular way, one that would meet the needs of geologists and not necessarily those of the anthropologists, artists and others who are already using the term.
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International group of geologists rejects notion of significant "climate change":
1. A panel of scientists has rejected notion that climate has sufficiently changed to warrant concluding Earth has exited the Holocene geologic epoch and entered the 'Anthropocene.'
2. Watch for… pic.twitter.com/5IqKwt0NyL
— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) March 5, 2024
