Anthropocene Working Group honorary chair Colin Waters says the geological reality of the Anthropocene is now clear.(NASA Photo)

From an Article by Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams, October 2, 2017

From climate change to invasive species to changes in the planets fundamental chemical cycles, the markers indicating profound change make clear that the Holocene is over.

A group of scientists says that the scope of human impact on planet Earth is so great that the “Anthropocene” warrants a formal place the Geological Time Scale.

“Our findings suggest that the Anthropocene should follow on from the Holocene Epoch that has seen 11.7 thousand years of relative environmental stability, since the retreat of the last Ice Age, as we enter a more unstable and rapidly evolving phase of our planet’s history,” said Professor Jan Zalasiewicz from the University of Leicester’s School of Geography, Geology, and the Environment, in a statement released Monday.

The scientsts write:

We conclude that human impact has now grown to the point that it has changed the course of Earth history by at least many millennia, in terms of the anticipated long-term climate effects (e.g. postponement of the next glacial maximum: see Ganopolski et al., 2016; Clark et al., 2016), and in terms of the extensive and ongoing transformation of the biota, including a geologically unprecedented phase of human-mediated species invasions, and by species extinctions which are accelerating (Williams et al., 2015, 2016).

Defining characteristics of the period include: marked acceleration of rates of erosion and sedimentation; large-scale chemical perturbations to the cycles of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and other elements; the inception of significant change in global climate and sea level; and biotic changes including unprecedented levels of species invasions across the Earth.

Many of these changes are geologically long-lasting, and some are effectively irreversible.

The findings from the international team led by the University of Leicester were presented last year at the International Geological Congress at Cape Town, South Africa, but were just published online in the journal Anthropocene.

Use of the word coined by Nobel Prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen in 2000 is not new, but so far it’s been merely an informal description of the time period when human activity started significantly altering the planet. The Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), which comprises experts from a range of fields, has been tackling the issue of whether it should be a formal declaration since 2009.

According to the group, the answer is clear: the Anthropocene is real; it should be formalized; and it should be defined as an epoch (rather than another classification such as a sub-age or era). The group suggested that the new epoch’s “golden spike” (or physical reference point) that marks its start is the plutonium fallout from nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s.

Going forward, they write, it seems likely that “human impacts will become increasingly significant.”

Getting the formal classification is not a done deal, as more analysis is needed, and a stamp of approval from the International Commission of Stratigraphy (ICS) could be years off. Still, says honorary chair of AWG, Colin Waters of the Geology Depart of the University of Leicister, “Whatever decision is ultimately made, the geological reality of the Anthropocene is now clear.”

Official 2015 NASA Photo of EARTH

President Obama Releases First Blue Marble Earth Photo in 43 Years

From an Article by Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch.com, July 21, 2015

NASA’s new Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite has released a stunning, new Blue Marble photo for the first time in four decades, prompting President Obama to tweet a gentle reminder “that we need to protect the only planet we have.”

The image above was taken on July 6 literally one million miles away and is the first Blue Marble photo of our planet since 1972, when the now-iconic photo of our glistening world was snapped by the American crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft.

“Turns out,” as NASA astronaut Scott Kelly wrote on the White House’s Medium page, “It’s quite tricky to take a good photo of the entire Earth.” Other images you’ve seen of Earth are composites assembled from multiple different shots.

EcoWatch readers know that it’s more important than ever to preserve our environment from the dire effects of climate change, and President Obama has spoken out on this issue many times before.

At his Earth Day speech delivered at the Everglades National Park this past April, the commander-in-chief emphasized this message clearly: “This is a problem now. It has serious implications for the way we live right now. Stronger storms. Deeper droughts. Longer wildfire seasons. The world’s top climate scientists are warning that a changing climate already affects the air that our children are breathing.”

At the end of his speech, Obama concluded that we must all be planetary stewards to ensure the safety of future generations:

“We are blessed with the most beautiful God-given landscape in the world. It’s an incredible bounty that’s been given to us. But we’ve got to be good stewards for it. We have to take care of it. We only get to enjoy things like our amazing national parks because great Americans like Teddy Roosevelt and Marjory Douglas and a whole bunch of ordinary folks whose name aren’t in the history books, they fought to protect our national inheritance.

And now it’s our turn to ensure that this remains the birthright of all Americans for generations to come. So many people here are active in your communities, doing what’s needed. The young people who are here, the next generation, they’re way ahead of us in understanding how important this is. Let’s make sure we don’t disappoint them. Let’s stand up and do what’s right before it’s too late.”

>>>>> See the following recent articles:

7 Climate Records Broken in 2014 Indicates Earth Is ‘Gravely Ill’

Exxon Exposed for Spending Millions on Climate Change Denial

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Presentation on the Future

FACE THE FACTS AND SAY IT LIKE IT IS

Commentary by Paul B. Brown, August 9, 2013

We may have the technical means to reverse global warming, mass extinction, and overpopulation, but I don’t think we have the societal means. Commonly proposed solutions are far too little, too late.

For perspective, here are just a few stories from one day in my free daily esamizdat newslink service (contact me to subscribe): Oregon Fires To Burn Half-Million Acres, 5 Months; Climate change pushing marine life towards the poles; Powerful California water district backs tunnel plan; ‘Drip, Jordan’: water supply as a focal point of occupation; Monsanto and Big Food Pull Out the Big Guns; Bagram: Torture, Detention Without End at US Military’s ‘Other Guantanamo’; What It’s Like to Spend Years in Solitary Confinement; Why ALEC Fabricated Public School Failures; Cache of spent fuel rods grows at Comanche Peak; German and US Spy Agencies Share Vast Metadata Trove; Is U.S. Exaggerating Threat to Embassies to Silence Critics of NSA Domestic Surveillance?; A way of life on the brink of extinction in the Louisiana bayous; EPA Fracking Study Rebukes Agency’s Own Safety Claims; Fracking Gas Flares Double In Bakken Oil Fields of North Dakota; Oil companies frack in coastal waters off California.

These are all related: can you see the connections?

Hint: the one percent are consolidating their power over the 99 percent so they can continue business as usual in the military-corporate state, at the cost of other humans’ lives, the environment, and perhaps our very species.

What are the real problems that are no longer scientifically debatable? The planet is heating up from insufficient reflection of solar energy due to lost reflectivity (caused by loss of ice cover, caused by global warming) and trapping of more heat by greenhouse gases (caused mostly by burning fossil fuels). Positive feedbacks such as loss of reflectivity, desertification, increased forest fires, and emission of methane from warming tundra and the ocean floor, are speeding up this process. Destructive weather events are increasing, sea level is rising and oceans are becoming acidic as a result of these processes. As a result of these processes and loss of habitat, pollution and over-killing of life forms, species we depend on are going extinct at least as fast as they did in the largest recent extinction, which wiped out the dinosaurs. The planet is on its way to becoming uninhabitable for human beings.

The underlying cause of these trends is undeniably clear: Humans are consuming resources unsustainably, that is faster than they can be replenished by natural processes. Many resources, such as rare elements, can’t ever be restored. The equation describing this defines our total consumption as the product of number of people times per capita consumption, and both are skyrocketing.

That’s all established fact. The following are my personal opinions, largely shared by experts.
    
Consider tax schemes proposed to use market forces to reduce CO2 emissions. None would work because they would be too little, too late, especially because market solutions provide little incentives for the one percent, who do the most harm. The best tax scheme I’ve seen for reduction of CO2 emissions is one that’s rarely discussed. Everyone would be taxed for carbon combustion in any form, from fossil fuels to “renewable” fuels, for any purpose including the transport of food (an average of about 1500 miles). At the end of the tax year, everyone gets an equal share of the revenues as a tax credit. Those who used the most carbon would have a net loss, those who used the least would have a net gain.

But we are out of time for such a slow method to work, if it would work at all. The one percent would still have little incentive, although we could expect major changes such as the rebirth of small farms for local food consumption. We have to stop making carbon available for combustion by ending fossil fuel wars and using the money previously devoted to military support of oil supply lines to re-employ military personnel to rebuild infrastructure for carbon-free electric energy supply and storage; divert all carbon waste to biochar (inactive elemental carbon) which we would use for farming, construction, and sealing of coal mines and gas and oil wells; and convert all vehicles (including trucks, rail, ships, airplanes) to renewable electricity with swappable batteries.

With current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases, the planet would continue to heat up for centuries, species will continue going extinct at record speed, and we would be fried, especially in the case of runaway warming caused by positive feedbacks – even if we stopped burning carbon today. Therefore we need to do much more: increase albedo by painting manmade surfaces white; pull carbon out of the air as fast as we can with rapid-growth trees, algae, whatever will do it fastest (and converting that biomass to biochar); reduce forest fires with better management of forests and more aggressive fire fighting; reverse desertification and return as much land to forest as possible; and neutralize acidification of oceans.


None of this will be adequate unless we reverse the mass extinction. We have to reduce our footprint to restore habitat for endangered species, and perhaps use genetic engineering techniques to restore important extinct ones; reduce fertility to one child or fewer per woman; and reduce heroic efforts to prolong the lives of those very elderly and terminally ill who are capable of informed consent. That’s how bad things are. A sustainable population might be four billion very modest consumers on a healthy planet. A recovery-mode population is undoubtedly less than a billion, and quickly, on a badly wounded planet that needs all our efforts to heal.

The longer we wait, the lower that number will get. In order to reduce our footprint, we also need a tax scheme to reduce all forms of consumption, similar to the one for carbon combustion, and to encourage home production of energy and food. It will take more than a tax scheme to achieve this, however (think one percent again). Money saved can be used to increase energy efficiency and go to all-electric energy use (e.g., to heat homes).
    

This can’t happen in our current society. The one percent won’t allow it. I don’t know how to overcome them, because only an informed citizenry can do that and implement the changes I suggest. Information itself is controlled by the one percent, so our citizens aren’t informed. I don’t think there is enough time left for, and our government may be unresponsive to, civil disobedience or other forms of non-violent action. Insurrection is unlikely to succeed in our militarized surveillance state. 
    

Maybe there are adequate societal changes that are possible, but they need to be based on facing reality and saying it like it is. People will die just for doing that, but people will die anyway. Here we go-o-o.




Paul B. Brown, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Physiology, WVU, Morgantown, WV.
EMAIL: pbrown4348@comcast.net