Scientists say a new epoch marked by human impact—the Anthropocene—began in 1950s

Science! <<---- Link!

Indeed, a very special team they are.
It's not exactly my thing, geology, so I'm spit-balling here quite a bit I admit.
But in terms of this discipline it's my understanding that geologic epochs have a specific role within the geologic time scale system, and this idea doesn't come close to passing muster as geologic science.

Nope, to repeat myself, Not My Science, Not Geology.

 

And most Geologists are disagreeing with this, stating that even to this day there is absolutely no evidence that humans will leave any mark at all in the geological record.

There is a damned good reason why most periods in geological history started and ended with catastrophic events. They are easily visible in the strata of the planet, and generally are catastrophic events. Massive volcanology, impacts form space, global glaciation, things like that.

The only other geological era which comes even close to this proclamation would be when the Proterozoic periods of the Paleoproterozoic gave way for the Mesoproterozoic. That is really the only one in the entire history of the planet where geologists can point and say "Living creatures did this".

Of course, it also was the start of the "Bring Billion", and the entire change happened because Blue-Green Algae which took in Carbon Dioxide and released Oxygen. Replaced Purple Algae which released Sulfur Dioxide, and this left clear records in the strata. Oxygen replaced sulfur dioxide as a major part of the atmosphere, and left the great rust deposits that cover huge parts of the planet even today. And even some changes in our current Quaternary goes way beyond this. And most of that is defined by the current cycles of glaciation going back over 2.5 million years.

Neither the International Commission on Stratigraphy or the International Union of Geological Sciences recognizes it, and even those arguing for it can not agree. Some saying it should start in 1945, others in the mid 19th century. Still others saying it should date back to 15,000 years ago.

As far as I am concerned, this is simply another example of mental masturbation and almost none of those involved are actually geologists at all. And all of this is primarily centered around the beliefs and writings of a Dutch meteorologist. Yes, a meteorologist and not a geologist. Oh, and he was also a huge believer of the TTAPS model, and stated at the time it was one of the most important discoveries of all time. And a decade later was one of those leading the charge in claiming that if Iraq blew up even a percentage of the Kuwaiti oil fields, a global nuclear winter would result.

However, most of the creators of the TTAPS model which is what was used to predict "Nuclear Winter" have since then gone on to admit that their model was a failure and that was proven during the Gulf War. One of those that outright rejected it later in his life was none other than Carl Sagan (the S in TTAPS). He also believed the model, but when far more oil wells were blown up that even they had predicted and the effect on the atmosphere was minimal and insignificant he was one of the first to admit it was a busted theory.

Yet, until he died the main advocate for this "Anthropocene" was a strong believer in TTAPS. And much of the claims in TTAPS was what caused him to start pushing for this being declared.



This is very much a case where I wish that "Climatologists" would "stay in their lane", and not try to push their views into other aspects of science.

 

Probably the most significant change that will be the primary marker of the Anthropocene will be the unprecedented global temperature changes and sea level rises combined with a massive die off of plant and animal life on land and the seas dying which in turn results in a massive loss of sea life.

Since humanity won't exist when future sentient species are debating the cause and effect of these Anthropocene events it is unlikely that there will be sufficient remains to reach a definitive answer for them.

We are only fooling ourselves if we cannot see the cumulative negative impact 9 billion consumers has on the limited resources of the planet.

 

My complaint my friend is that this is not geology. This is not my opinion, not a matter of opinion - geology is rocks, the study of rocks, the history of rocks, the layers of the Earth.

Presupposing that there will be a layer in the permanent record of the Earth due to humans burning fossil fuels is the main feature of this crap idea, this anthrocentric supposition that the top of the ape/chimp chain is so f'g important as to deserve geologic recognition of a new epoch not yet even recorded in the geologic record.

It's not about overpopulation and contrary to popular belief, there is no f'g way to infer atmospheric temperatures in real time or historically using f'g core samples. This is just dumb. Infer the atmospheric temperature from trapped gas bubbles in a magma based core sample is not happening, but the same thing being applied to ice cores is somehow being bought hook line and sinker.

Tell ya what, when indeed we brainy chimps eradicate ourselves with nukes and there is a trace maybe 1 to 100 mm layer distributed around the Earth laced with the dust then there will be a great I told you so record for you to gloat about. But, it will not be an Epoch. It won't even amount to an Age.



https://worldtreasures.org/assets/uploads/documents/Geologic_Time_Periods.pdf

 

Here is the thing, it is not "unprecedented" at all, and has happened countless times in the past. This is not the first Ice Age. Heck, it is not even the first Ice Age that humans have gone through. And at every single one, at both the start and the end there are mass die offs. As plants and animals adapted specifically for the heat can not survive in the cold during the start, then the reverse at the end. Heck, this is something that all should know from Charles Darwin.

And hell, a lot of species went extinct long before "global warming" was even a thing. Are you even aware that the Great Pyramid existed before the last of the mammoth's went extinct? The stag-moose? The long horn bison? Smilodon? All went extinct because they were specifically adapted to a cold climate, and could not continue in a warm one. Most of the herbivore megafauna that died off lived in an area of bogs and tundra, which 12kya actually covered huge areas of North America. When those dried up and became the "Great Plains", they lost their food source and died off. And with the prey gone, the predators were not far behind.

Oh, and if you think things are bad now, look back at the Quarternary Extinction Event. That is the one that started from the end of the previous ice age to the current one which we are still in. And I do not even mean "now", I mean from 50-10kya. Where globally around 75% of land animals died. Wave after wave of mass extinctions, all related to the cycle of the planet warming from an ice age, then falling into another one.

And if our planet follows the trends of all interglacials, things are going to get a hell of a lot warmer, and wetter. Because in most interglacials, the "Palm Tree Line" moved north, way north. As in movies to Central Alaska warm. Not like it is now, where it barely moves into central California.

But one thing about the last wave of extinctions, almost all megafauna over 100 pounds died off. The larger the creature, the more likely it was to die. During extreme cold, being a large mammal is actually a benefit. During warmer periods, being a large mammal is a detriment. And the few large mammals that have survived were all in unique niches at the time. Like the remaining elephants, which were all largely hairless and the smallest of the species and lived in more jungle and forest environments than in tundra. North America lost its own Rhinoceros, for the same reason. The NA Rino was hairy and adapted to a cold tundra environment, not the warm dry grasslands that replaced their wet boggy marshes and permafrost habitat.

But what the planet is going through is not "unprecedented" at all. In fact, for the vast majority of live on this planet there were no ice caps at all. That is how marsupials were able to travel from South America through Antarctica to reach Australia. All three land masses were connected, and we know Antarctica was ice free and largely had a temperate rainforest environment. And yes, it indeed was at roughly the same location it was in now.

That is the problem when people who do not understand geology throw around words like "unprecedented", because those of us that do study it know that is a lie.

 

You can to a degree, but it is hardly exact at all. And at most it gives only a very general guideline and only locally and not globally. And much of them have to be extrapolated because it is only a single measure of a much larger puzzle.

Kinda like examining tree rings. We know trees grow wide rings during optimal growing conditions, thinner dense rings at other times. And if you get thin rings, what is the cause? Drought? Cold temperatures? Reduced sunlight due to a volcanic winter event? Hot winds leeching out the water from the atmosphere? There can be dozens of reasons, so one can not simply look at once reference and use that to base everything off of.

And many question ice core samples the farther you go back in time for many of the same reasons. As more layers pile up, the deepest ones get compressed so much that the data they do have becomes mashed together and distorted. And many have brought up the fact that they could very well be gaps in the record that we would never know about. Ice is not stone, and does not remain if a period of excessive wind removes layers, or heat melts it away.

And as those that study geology, we know all to well how that can happen. If people think the layers of ice are as good as looking at layers of stone, then they are idiots. Because even in the rocks themselves, we have huge gaps in the geological record. One of the most well known is called "The Great Uncomformity", and can be seen in the Grand Canyon. And it is not only there, it is global in scale but is easily visible there to anybody. Where almost all record from the pre-Cambrian to the Cambrian are simply gone. Where rocks that are only around 550 million years old are sitting directly on top of rocks 1.7 billion years old. Almost a billion years of our planets geological record simply does not exist.




And if that can happen to solid stone, it can happen to ice as well. Even more so.

 

Just watched an interesting discovery of 480,000 year old wooden artifacts found in Africa. We do have evidence of fossilized wood, an example stood outside the museum when I was a kid, and wood that has become part of the fossil fuels that we abuse nowadays.

But this was still almost original to the point where it is possible to identify the markings of the stone tools used to work the wood. It was also preserved under water which might explain how it survived.

But what makes it remarkable is that there is a hand worked notch in the wood, similar to the Lincoln Log Cabin toys for children only this is a full sized notch that could have been part of a bridge, roof strut, table, or bench or whatever was needed by whomever made this artifact. This PREDATES homo sapiens so either tool making and use existed prior to our own evolution of the dates are off significantly because this artifact represents a great deal of knowledge that would be required in order to make it.

So feel free to disparage to your heart's content because the great thing about Science is that it is SELF CORRECTING.

I could be wrong that our use of fossil fuels will result in sea level rises and massive die offs due to climate change and that there will be no trace of our presence in a epoch or two.

The earth is going to be around for a few more billions of years, the possibilities of traces of ourselves existing in the future given that we are a global species is at least as good as the ancient wood artefact being found were given all the odds against it's preservation and survival.

 

I stand corrected, my use of the term unprecedented was/is inaccurate.

Mea culpa.

Good catch on your part.

 

Yes, there is a lot of fossilized wood around. I have a chunk in my bathroom that weighs about 5 pounds that I use as a doorstop.

However, I am not aware of any "fossilized wood tools" made by humans, unless it was actually made out of fossilized wood itself. The process to fossilize wood is very specific, and almost never occurs in the same layers that human habitation is found in.

To be specific, one of the most common ways wood becomes fossilized relates to volcanic activity and/or submersion in water. Most human artifacts simply do not exist in those kinds of conditions and are too new.

This is also because it takes from hundreds of thousands to millions of years for wood to fossilize. And at that time period human "tools" were little more than one rock being used to hit a nut to crack it open, or to smash a bone to remove the marrow.

 

To be honest, it is the kind of nonsense about the "Global Warming" crowd that drives me almost shatbit crazy. Because they are almost all essentially lying, and anybody that has any kind of training or experience in geology knows it.

Like one of the biggest ones, that most of the planet will become a desert as it warms up. That huge areas of land will become sand dunes, rains will stop, and most life will die.

Which in reality is not only completely wrong, it is completely backwards. It is an absolute fact, the warmer the planet is, the wetter it is. Hot air not only evaporates more water, it retains more water. So when it dumps that water the amounts are immense. Just think about it, what are the largest and wettest storms on the planet? Not the winter ones, it is the hurricanes and tropical cyclones we get in the summer. When the warm air allows them to suck up huge amounts of water over the oceans, then dump them onto the land.

Hell, California just recently got one of their "Century Storms" that was the result of one of the rare hurricanes that lasted long enough to dump their cargo of water at the start of the month. In the first week of September, much of the SW US saw their entire annual rainfall amounts come in a single storm in September. I have been through tons of hurricanes when I lived in North Carolina, Alabama, and Texas. And the summer was when we saw the most rainfall by far, not the winter.

The problem is that so much of the AGW crowd really is pushing bad science. To them, hot means dry so they push that global warming is creating deserts. And they also refuse to recognize that technically, we are still in an ice age. That is not a meterological term, it is a geological term. And to geologists, as long as there is a permanent ice cap over the Arctic and huge areas of tundra and permafrost over much of North America, we will remain in an ice age.

Probably for yet another 7-10,000 years.

And no, I am telling the absolute truth here. And any geologist can back up what I am saying.

Want to know what one of the most common fossils found in Alaska is?

Palm fronds.



Now granted, that was during the Eocene, around 50 million years ago. However, this becomes even more of an issue when one considers that at that time, the continents were in a different place.



Welcome to the Earth during the Eocene, around 50 mya. Looks pretty familiar, right? The continents are close to where they are now, so things should be roughly the same, right?

Well, compare to the planet today:



Notice something? Many will not, but I do almost immediately. North America is unquestionably farther north then than it is today. Just look at where 60 degrees north is 60 mya, that is below Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. And 30 degrees north is somewhere in what is now Central Mexico. Today, those lines are hundreds of miles to the south when compared to today. 60n is at roughly Anchorage, and 30n is now at around EL Paso. Not roughly Mexico City like it was then. If one laid the current "Palm Tree Line" over an actual map of the Eocene, then there should be no palm trees farther north than say roughly Los Angeles.

Yet there were massive palm fronds from a semi-tropical forest that grew in Alaska during that time.

And back to the original topic, this is a perfect case of people stepping outside of their area of science. It is geologists that stratify the long timeline into eons and eras. Not "climatologists" and the like. And geologists are almost universally rejecting this, because that is their area of specialization. To me, this is like if a computer scientist who works with microprocessors suddenly tries to describe to a doctor about a new family of bacteria. It is so far outside of their area of work that they really have no business even trying to get involved.

But these are just some of the outright fabrications by the AGW crowd. Much like their lies that anybody that refuses to accept it is a "denier". Hell, I am by their definition both a denier, and am predicting that things will get a hell of a lot hotter than they are now. Humans as we know them today may very well live in an era where there is no Arctic Ice Cap at all, if we do not evolve into something else first. We may also see northern Canada more closely resemble the Great Plains of Nebraska and Kansas than the tundra and permafrost of today.



And hell, in just the blink of an eye geologically we had a huge land mass between England and Europe called "Doggerland". That all flooded as the ice age started to end. Just as much of Florida will once again sink below the water. That is what always happened before, why would anybody think this time would be any different?

 

I think you aren't directing your comments toward the IPCC assessment of impact.

As for CA, the recent deluge did not solve issues of water security in CA or the US Southwest. Plus, CA is of interest to the USA, of course, but it doesn't represent the Earth, as water insecurity is about people and the whole USA has a small percent of Earth's population.

IPCC assessment:

The change in CA demonstrates this. The dry spell experienced was a serious problem. Then, the deluge was a serious problem. There is no possibility of claiming that the two serious problems somehow managed to miraculously cancel. Moving toward the extremes of droughts followed by floods is a serious problem.


I'd add that your comments on geological terminology don't address the issues of water security. The melting of ice and tundra is a problem for those in the region. The benefits of there having been glaciers in the USA are running out as north central farming has depended on glacial aquifers that are expiring. And, as for our warming Earth, the melting of tundra is a feedback loop that boosts warming by two mechanisms - reducing Earth's reflectivity and by allowing tundra to rot (emitting methane) or burn (emitting CO2). This isn't a fight with geologists, as I'm sure their terminology wasn't chosen to reflect impact on humans.

So yes. Let's work to represent the climate change driven by our warming Earth - in CA, NC, TX and the 7.5 billion people who don't live in America.

 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...-the-oldest-known-wooden-structure-180982942/

 

We agree, there are areas that will become much wetter and hotter, I live in one of those areas.

 

A wood structure is not exactly the same as a wood tool. And it is only a theory that may be. And at that age, it is not even anything special as we already knew that H. heidelbergensis was building wood and stone structures dating back to around 700 kya.

But once again, waterlogged wood is not fossilized. One is preserved due to probably resting in hypoxic water which retarded bacteria and decomposition, the other is when the cells of a former living structure are replaced by minerals. Not all artifacts are fossils.

 

Quite a lot of areas, actually. Now it will not help the areas that are in the rain shadow of mountain ranges, but other areas (especially coastal ones) will become much wetter as warmer weather systems bring increased amounts of precipitation. By the time we reach the full interglacial Coastal California through to the Sierra-Nevada Range might even start to more closely resemble the SE USA like Alabama and Mississippi. Most of the reason their weather is so temperate most times is that the water off the coast comes down from Alaska. That tends to break up most major storms long before they reach that far north. But as things warm up, expect the storms to grow larger and stronger, until the ones that hit a month ago will happen about as often as hurricanes on the East Coast.

Now that will not do a hell of a lot for the area east of there, as that is beyond a rain shadow. But west of there? An environment not unlike the Louisiana bayous would not be unexpected. Much of the Central Valley could return to being wet and marshy again.

 

It’s amusing to see folks complaining about aquifer depletion and extreme precipitation events in the same post.

I was also entertained by the IPCC statement that more folks live in long term drought areas than in the past. Well, duh. The global population is increasing the fastest in desert areas and areas with well defined dry and monsoon periods.

SMH.

 

This is particularly funny when looking at California.

There the amount of precipitation is largely the same as it was over 400 years ago, and is only fractionally higher today. Yet where once there was an overabundance of water they are now in a serious deficit.

But that has not a damned thing to do with the climate. It is because in the last century it has exploded from a population of just over 4 million in 1923 to just under 40 million in 2023. With that much population growth, there is absolutely no way a Mediterranean like climate can support so many people with the water available. Even if it was a subtropical climate like Florida it would be a strain on the environment to support so many people (Florida has just over half the population of California). And even Florida is getting to that point, even with an average annual rainfall of over 54" (137 cm).

If Florida is starting to experience a lack of water with over 1.3 meters of rainfall a year and 21 million people, imagine California with twice the population and less than half the precipitation (22" or .55 cm). They have only been getting by for the last 8 decades by taking water from other states in order to support their own population. But the growing populations in those other states is making that less and less viable every year.

 

Yes California is a perfect example.

I would also add over allocation of groundwater in coastal areas is responsible for much of observed relative sea level rise through subsidence. Yet most climate nutters have never heard the term.

 

I think it's arrogance. The AGW folks simply believe that the way it is today is what must then always be what happens. The notion is ridiculous on its face, but, it seems to be the method. They seem willing to adopt a Malthusian notion of scarcity and then try to adopt it as public policy to the effect that it creates the scarcity that they so fear in the first place. It's ironic at best, and evil in the most casual of malignancies.

The real problem is that folks believe in it. This isn't science, it's orthodoxy. It's religious fervor. When you ask why the last glaciation of the Larentian Ice sheet melted, you can't get these folks to even pretend to offer an actual answer. When you point out that "suddenly", and I mean relatively in geologic terms, over the course of less than 100 years or so, the Ice sheets covering the N American continent melted. That wasn't caused by global warming, it was caused by a catastrophic asteroid hit if we're to believe the Younger Dryas impact data. And things changed. Rapidly. Lots of extinction in lots of species across the spectrum.

Someday, soon I hope, folks will see through the use of AGW as a method to induce tyranny on the world and consolidate power into the hands of the very few. This has to end.

 

Which is why CA has to steal water from other states to keep all the plates spinning there. On the flip side, if 40 Million folks didn't live there, the elite couldn't comfort themselves in the smug that their mansions are worth more than entire swaths of other states real estate.... Think about it, one house, in a hill and roughly 20K sq ft was purchased for about the same amount of money that hundreds of thousands of acres would sell for.

 

Climate change—turning progressives into conservatives one erroneous news story at a time.

NOW is the time to stop climate change and the evolutionary process climate change drives. We MUST stop evolution NOW as we have reached the evolutionary pinnacle and further change is unacceptable! Ninety-nine percent of species that have existed are extinct. But NOW is the time to stop it. The species we have NOW are what should exist indefinitely going forward.

Yep. Ego and arrogance.

 

In short, the Colorado River was over allocated in 1922 based on flows during a VERY wet anomaly that occurred between 1905 and 1922. Prior to this wet anomaly the flow of the river had several times been much lower than historical records we have today. This is common knowledge to those who look to science.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060529082300.htm

Current climate change, if a factor at all, resulted in the wettest 100 years the Colorado River has seen since 1490. Only fools would expect a wet anomaly to last forever.

 

Oh hell, I can even go one better.

The house I grew up in was in the San Fernando Valley. And it was just a 700 square foot 2 bedroom bungalow, like tens of thousands other in that area. Built in WWII, my parents sold it for just over $35k in 1975.

Today, that exact same house is around $850k. And almost the entire state is that way, with home prices so far away from reality that it has been in the long run destroying their economy for decades.

When my parents bought that house in the late 1960s they did not even need a mortgage, they borrowed the money from my grandfather. And they were a fairly typical family of the era, one kid and a stay at home mom that was attending night school as my dad worked in a warehouse. And that kind of home was perfectly affordable to them. Today, almost nobody can afford a house like that without a six figure income. That is why for over 4 decades it has been owned by an small investment company and rented out.

An increasing number of single family homes each year are becoming owned by investors and rented. A lot of the time simply because they are the only ones that can actually afford to buy them. A small family like mine that would normally be interested in a small 2 bedroom 1 bath bungalow can in now way afford to pay over three-quarters of a million dollars for one.

That was why a few years ago when they first started floating the idea of a "wealth tax" on the "super rich", they hit a hell of a lot of feedback because a lot of people suddenly started to discover they were sitting on million dollar homes. Oh, the homes were not worth that much at all, but the speculation bubble that has spread through almost the entire state had pushed them well beyond common sense. Where most areas might see an increase of 50-100% in a decade or more, California was seeing often 20% or more per year in value appreciation with no connection to the actual value of the property.

And now in much of it that is coming home to roost. As ever increasing swathes of overinflated commercial and industrial real estate is now vacant. Multi-million dollar properties that nobody can or will buy because it is grossly overinflated. That is why increasingly large chunks of San Francisco are vacant and will likely remain so for years.

Meet the new Detroit if they can't fix that soon.

But the insanity of California is that they actually like it that way, and think that is good and healthy. That alone shows how warped their sense of reality is. They literally live in a desert, and in the last few decades have been screaming increasingly louder that they do not have enough water. Well, if you want a lot of water don't move into a desert.

 

I find that the most extreme arrogance of the anti-science crowd there is.

One moment they scream at others that elect to believe some kind of divine being guided life, then they turn right around and try to preach some kind of static model of the world where nothing should ever change. The climate should never change, life forms should never change, nothing should ever change and remain forever exactly as it is now. To me that really is a classic example of insanity.

And it is not like this is the first ice age that humans have gone through. And huge land masses the size of large European nations have already vanished in an amazingly brief period of time geologically speaking.



And one can look at the rocks under Florida to know that during interglacials, almost the entire peninsula becomes submerged. And during an ice age when the ocean levels are lower one can almost walk to Cuba from there. This is known, this is a proven fact. In none of the previous interglacials in the past 2.5 million years has it been otherwise. Yet somehow this is a magical interglacial that the warming has already ended. And almost insanely many are trying to get people to believe that things should be cooling if not for humans.

Sorry, over 2.5 million years of geological records show that is a lie. It has been a lie ever since Panama rose up from the sea and cut off the current that used to pass between the Atlantic and Pacific through that region and had moderated our planet's climate for tens of millions of years. They can't even accept that permanent ice caps are an extreme aberration on our planet and almost never existed outside of the past couple of millions of years outside of the other extreme of when we had "snowball earth" conditions.

And I especially love when others try to claim that none of the "Warm Periods" of the last 6,000 years ever happened at all. The Late Bronze Age Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, the Medieval Warm Period, none of those ever existed. They are fabrications by the fossil fuel industry to lie to people to think the planet is warming.

And the insanity is that their conspiracy laden minds actually believe that nonsense.

 

But it was also when the population of that region was almost insignificant.

During that time period, the entire population of the state of Nevada was less than 80,000 people. Las Vegas had less than 2,500 people. So they needed to take almost no water from their environment that was not readily available locally and had a huge excess of it.

Today, the state has a population of over 3 million people, and Las Vegas has a population of almost 650,000. So they now need that water and can't get it.

I keep seeing reports of the "decline of water in the Colorado", but what they almost all skip over is that the actual amount of water entering the river has barely changed. What has changed is that humans have been increasingly pulling water out of it to the point where it is starting to damage the environment. That is not "global warming", that is gross overpopulation.

It would be like building a large kennel for holding dogs, and giving two dogs a gallon of water a day. And yes, that is going to be more than enough to keep two dogs alive and healthy in normal conditions. But when you suddenly put 40 dogs into that same kennel with the same gallon of water per day, suddenly that is nowhere near enough and you are going to have major problems. And sure, you can take some of that water from a kennel next door that still has only two dogs, taking half their water is not going to cause them any problems. But when you add another 6 dogs to that second kennel, now they are having issues with water also.