{"id":2079,"date":"2009-09-30T13:54:10","date_gmt":"2009-09-30T17:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=2079"},"modified":"2009-09-30T13:54:10","modified_gmt":"2009-09-30T17:54:10","slug":"anthropocene-the-shortest-geological-epoch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/anthropocene-the-shortest-geological-epoch\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthropocene: the Shortest Geological Epoch?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Interesting speculations in this week&#8217;s <em><strong>New Scientist<\/strong><\/em> cocnerning what Earth will look like after we are through with it (&amp; it with us, of course). Below, the opening paragraphs of Bob Holmes&#8217; piece. You can read the full article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/mg20427281.300-posthuman-earth-how-the-planet-will-recover-from-us.html?full=true\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h3>Post-human Earth: How the planet will recover from us<\/h3>\n<ul><\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">WHEN Nobel prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen coined the word <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mpch-mainz.mpg.de\/%7Eair\/anthropocene\/\" target=\"nsarticle\">Anthropocene around 10 years ago<\/a>, he gave birth to a powerful idea: that human activity is now affecting the Earth so profoundly that we are entering a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/mg19726413.800-have-humans-created-a-new-geological-epoch.html\">new geological epoch<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Anthropocene has yet to be accepted as a geological time period, but if it is, it may turn out to be the shortest &#8211; and the last. It is not hard to imagine the epoch ending just a few hundred years after it started, in an orgy of global warming and overconsumption.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Let&#8217;s suppose that happens. Humanity&#8217;s ever-expanding footprint on the natural world leads, in two or three hundred years, to ecological collapse and a mass extinction. Without fossil fuels to support agriculture, humanity would be in trouble. &#8220;A lot of things have to die, and a lot of those things are going to be people,&#8221; says Tony Barnosky, a palaeontologist at the University of California, Berkeley. In this most pessimistic of scenarios, society would collapse, leaving just a few hundred thousand eking out a meagre existence in a new Stone Age.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Whether our species would survive is hard to predict, but what of the fate of the Earth itself? It is often said that when we talk about &#8220;saving the planet&#8221; we are really talking about saving ourselves: the planet will be just fine without us. But would it? Or would an end-Anthropocene cataclysm damage it so badly that it becomes a sterile wasteland?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The only way to know is to look back into our planet&#8217;s past. Neither abrupt global warming nor mass extinction are unique to the present day. The Earth has been here before. So what can we expect this time?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Take greenhouse warming. Climatologists&#8217; biggest worry is the possibility that global warming could push the Earth past two tipping points that would make things dramatically worse. The first would be the thawing of carbon-rich peat locked in permafrost. As the Arctic warms, the peat could decompose and release trillions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere &#8211; perhaps exceeding the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/dn17051-humanitys-carbon-budget-set-at-one-trillion-tonnes.html\">3 trillion tonnes that humans could conceivably emit from fossil fuels<\/a>. The second is the release of methane stored as hydrate in cold, deep ocean sediments. As the oceans warm and the methane &#8211; itself a potent greenhouse gas &#8211; enters the atmosphere, it contributes to still more warming and thus accelerates the breakdown of hydrates in a vicious circle.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<ul>\n<li> 30 September 2009 \t\t\t \t\t  \t\t by \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/search?rbauthors=Bob+Holmes\"><strong>Bob Holmes<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<li>Magazine issue <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/issue\/2728\">2728<\/a>.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/subscribe?promcode=nsarttop\"><strong>Subscribe<\/strong><\/a> and get 4 free issues.<\/li>\n<li> For similar stories, visit the \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/topic\/endangered-species\"><strong>Endangered Species<\/strong><\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/topic\/climate-change\"><strong>Climate Change<\/strong><\/a> Topic Guides<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><!-- pgtop --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Interesting speculations in this week&#8217;s New Scientist cocnerning what Earth will look like after we are through with it (&amp; it with us, of course). Below, the opening paragraphs of Bob Holmes&#8217; piece. You&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,28,31,41,46,49,50,783],"tags":[160,199,552,619],"class_list":["post-2079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-pollution","category-carbon-dioxide","category-climate-change","category-environment","category-fossil-fuel","category-global-warming","category-greenhouse-gas","category-permafrost","tag-anthropocene","tag-bob-holmes","tag-new-scientist","tag-post-human-earth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}