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Dr. John Ray's
GREENIE WATCH
Bravo-Sierra
Posted on 01/31/2008 9:37:24 AM PST by forkinsocket
Humans have altered Earth so much that scientists say a new epoch in the planet's geologic history has begun.
Say goodbye to the 10,000-year-old Holocene Epoch and hello to the Anthropocene.
Among the major changes heralding this two-century-old man-made epoch:
Vastly altered sediment erosion and deposition patterns. Major disturbances to the carbon cycle and global temperature. Wholesale changes in biology, from altered flowering times to new migration patterns. Acidification of the ocean, which threatens tiny marine life that forms the bottom of the food chain. The idea, first suggested in 2000 by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen, has gained steam with two new scientific papers that call for official recognition of the shift.
Vivid metaphor
In the February issue of the journal GSA Today, a publication of the Geological Society of America, Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams of the University of Leicester and colleagues at the Geological Society of London argue that industrialization has wrought changes that usher in a new epoch.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Ping
Oh and this is bunk, but that’s where government grants are going these days.
GMTA
Yes, Mankind has to be worse for the planet than billions of reptiles passing gas, dying by the millions in the open, and crapping all over the place when alive.........
Eventually it will be renamed the “Goreobscene” Epoch.
Twenty years ago we called it the Cocacola-zoic since that will be a major marker for the sedimentary units.
In yer face, all the marine life that died and became chalk! You little guys absorbed all the CO2 there has ever been, but guess what, WE got the geological epoch named after us!
And I for one am loving it. Lets hear it for the Anthropocene Age.
I can see that agriculture, with its water use patterns, intensive livestock grazing, and promotion of erosion and degradation of the soil, could have a huge impact. We’ll just have to wait a few million years to see.
Farewell, Holocene, we hardly knew you.
The evolution guys tell us that 10,000 years is a blink of an eye. Compared to 6 billion (or whatever the current estimate is), this is hubris. Was there ever an epoch so short?
The human race should just commit mass suicide and get it over with.
I call BS and for stripping these people of their accreditation.
The politicizing of science must end.
The most adamant of the ecoterrorists demand just that.
Either this stuff is emanating from a new cult, or it's from another planet. Maybe both.
When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Anthropocene
age of Anthropocene!
Anthropocene!
Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind's true liberation
Anthropocene!
Anthropocene!
When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Anthropocene
The age of Anthropocene
Anthropocene!
Anthropocene!
Here’s a link:
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2005/01/28/disaster-averted/
It is the era of the Red Tide rising. Red as in Communist-Socialist, and former “Democrat state victory” color.
They threaten to drown all dissent.
Scientology, Nation of Islam, and Uforians are examples of cults that admitedly originate on another planet...
Check Wikipedia for the composition of the atmosphere. You have a better chance of finding Waldo in a puzzle, than you do of finding a CO2 molecule in the air. CO2’s negligible effect is completely buried by changes in the sun’s temperature and earth’s axis.
Thank you for that. I getting kind of misty-eyed right about now.
“Anthropocene Epoch”
Our Anthrophagous governments will fit right in!
Bravo-Sierra
__________________
Romeo-India-Gulf-Hotel-Tango.
Yeah, man! It's a new age.
I think it would be interesting to see the Empire State building fossilized in a sedimentary road cut about 50 million years from now.
I remembered all of the words!
A new rage.
The only way to fix this problem....is to kill off 99 percent of the human population...to save the earth. I would suggest we reserve the earth for Texans and let them repopulate the earth.
This is supposed to be a democracy, right?
Let me get to my ping list < /s >
It’s all subjective so they can move their goalposts all they want until another scientist finds their math (if any) and finds it faulty.
What if you held a conference, and no (real) scientists came?
Global Warming on Free Republic
I guess the whole "global warming/climate change" hysteria is running out of steam, so now they need a new and improved crisis to keep the fear factor up....
OK, it’s a little early to make THAT call.
Actually, I’m going to pull the ultimate in anthrocentric arrogance -
every epoch prior to ours existed to provide us with the environment and resources for us to thrive.
That includes water, oxygen, and fossil fuels.
Provided that the ice-age cycle continues eventually with another glacial period, it could be argued by humans 50-100,000 years in the future -- that's looking a long way out -- that the Holocene was just a long interglacial in the Pleistocene. I think that the Holocene is given special status becauze it happens to be the first interglacial featuring organized human civilization.
I see the ‘gods’ of knowledge are at it again.
Poppycock! To set it right, the AGW crowd only need to stop breathing for 20 minutes and the harmonic balance will be restored.
How long will our interglacial be?
One of the talking points I take from the article is that CO2 concentrations would have had to drop from 280 ppm to at least 250 ppm to allow for the "inception" of continental glaciation. (For those who think that CO2 is not a major control on world temperatures, if you believe Ruddiman, then it sure the heck is!) Another talking point is that the pre-industrialization human CO2 factor maintained a positive CO2 feedback -- CO2 flux from the oceans -- to provide sufficient CO2 to maintain 280 ppm. I.e., pre-industrial humans weren't enough to maintain 280 ppm. This is deemed an "open question" in the last paragraph.
Also, for critics of point #5 of my profile, this article discusses the relationship between Milankovitch-forced solar insolation at high latitudes and glacial inception.
We have plenty of debate about whether or not there is global warming; and, if so, whether or not humans are a cause of GW. We also have debate about how bad GW is; and plenty of debate about what to do about it.
Ruddiman fills in a gap: he’s saying that there is AGW happening — and that it’s been happening for thousands of years. He differers from the mainstream GW crowd in that he also thinks that the natural trend toward an ice age has been delayed by the AGW factor. Point 5 on your profile page seems to be perfectly consistent with Ruddiman.
Thanks for the link to the article — I am particularly impressed that the authors have the humility to say there is an “open question”. That sounds much more like scientists than the true believers who claim that “the debate is over”, and call anyone with doubts a “denier”. I’ll give it a closer read later today.
You get muy vote.
I don't follow. Ruddiman is asserting a more significant impact of AGW going back before recorded history. Atmospheric CO2 is still the major driver -- he is postulating that humans affected atmospheric CO2 concentrations significantly thousands of years before industrialization. I guess there could be a question of how strong the CO2 sink/cooling influence would be.
Did you know about this?
Debate over the Early Anthropogenic Hypothesis
This is a significant comment directly from Ruddiman in that article/comments:
"#2, 28: the fact that good arguments based on carbon and carbon-isotope budgest led to a revision of part of the hypothesis. I conceded that humans can only explain perhaps 1/3 of the 40-ppm CO2 anomaly by direct emissions (specifically, the rise from the natural peak of ~268 ppm 10,000 years ago to the pre-industrial value of ~282 ppm. Still, the same 40-ppm difference remains between the pre-industrial value of 282 ppm and the natural peaks of 240-250 ppm reached in previous interglacials, and it still needs explaining. I still think that humans are the explanation. I now think that our methane and (smaller) CO2 emissions kept climate warm enough to produce feedbacks in the climate system that stopped the large CO2 drops that had occurred in previous interglaciations at similar times."
I find it interesting that there was a pre-industrial rise from 268 to 282 ppm (14 ppm) during the Holocene.
Point 5 on your profile page seems to be perfectly consistent with Ruddiman.
Yes, I think so too. The reason that the article cited is interesting is that it succinctly describes the Milankovitch triggering mechanism for the initiation of a glacial-interglacial transition.
My two quick points are that if Ruddiman is right, then atmospheric CO2 is a real important influence on global climate (a view I support); and two, if a 40 ppm difference is sufficient to keep a new glaciation from happening, then adding another 170 ppm on top of that is very likely overkill, but quite a bit. Too much of a good thing, you know.
” if a 40 ppm difference is sufficient to keep a new glaciation from happening, then adding another 170 ppm on top of that is very likely overkill, but quite a bit. Too much of a good thing, you know.”
What if the underlying cooling trend is accelerating? In that case, increasing amounts of CO2 would be required to maintain an equilibrium.
Also, the effect of CO2 is logarithmic, not linear. If the first unit of CO2 contributes one unit of warming; it would take four units to double the amount of warming. Not as much of an “overkill” as the raw numbers would imply.
True, but Ruddiman's concept is based on Milankovitch forcing. Even if the absolute magnitude of Milankovitch forcing isn't known, the rate of change is an easy calculation.
Also, the effect of CO2 is logarithmic, not linear. If the first unit of CO2 contributes one unit of warming; it would take four units to double the amount of warming.
That factor could be used to figure out the optimum level.
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