by When people talk about the “anthropocene”, they usually imagine the enormous effects of human societies on the planet, from rapid declines of biological diversity to increases in the earth temperature by burning fossil fuels.
Such massive planetary changes started at any point or time at once.
For this reason, it was controversial when an international committee of scientists – the Anthropocene working group – suggested the Anthropocene as an epoch in the geological time, which had started in 1952. The marker was radioactive failures from hydrogen bombs tests.
On March 4, 2024, the Commission, which was responsible for the recognition of time units in our last geological period – the sub -commission for the quarterly stratigraphy. These are the scientists who reconstruct most experts for reconstruction of the earth from the evidence in rocks. They found that adding an anthropocene era – and the termination of the Holocene era – was not supported by the standards used to define epochs.
In order to be clear, this voice has no influence on the overwhelming evidence that human societies actually change this planet.
As an ecologist who examines global changes, I worked from the beginning of 2009 to 2023 in the Anthropocene working group. I stepped down because I was convinced that this proposal defined the anthropocene so closely that it would damage a wider scientific and public understanding.
By improving the beginning of human age to such a recent and devastating event – follow – this suggestion, this proposal risked confusion about the deep history of how people transform the earth, from climate change and loss of biodiversity to environmental pollution from plastic and tropical escape.
The original idea of the anthropocene
In the years in which the term Anthropocene was shaped by Paul Cruzen with the Nobel Prize in 2000, it has increasingly defined our times as an age of the planetary conversion caused by humans, from climate change to the loss of biological diversity, plastic pollution, megafires and much more.
Cruzen originally suggested that the anthropocene began in the second part of the 18th century as a product of the industrial age. He also noticed that setting a more precise start date would be “arbitrary”.
According to geologists, we humans have been living in the Holocene era since the end of the last ice age for about 11,700 years.
The human societies influenced the biological diversity and the climate of the earth through agriculture thousands of years ago. These changes accelerate about five centuries ago with the colonial collision of the old and new worlds. And as Crruzen found, the earth’s climate really changed with the increasing use of fossil fuels in the industrial revolution, which began at the end of the 18th century.
The anthropocene as an era
The reason for the definition of an anthropocene era from 1950 resulted from overwhelming evidence that many of the most consistent changes in the human age in a so-called “great acceleration”, which was identified by climate researcher, shift upwards and others.
Radioisotopes such as plutonium made of hydrogen bomb tests carried out at this time left clear traces in floors, sediments, trees, corals and other potential geological records on the entire planet. The Plutonium -Peak in the sediments of the Crawford Lake in Ontario, Canada -selected as a “Golden Spike” for the start of the Anthropozene -Epoche -is well marked in the exceptionally clear sediment data data data.
The Anthropocene Epoche is dead; Long live the anthropocene
Why was the Anthropocene era rejected? And what happens now?
The proposal to add an anthropocene era to the geological time scale was rejected for a variety of reasons, whereby none of them have to do with the fact that human societies change this planet. In fact, the opposite is true.
If there is a main reason why geologists have rejected this proposal, this is because its latest date and flat depth are too tight to grasp the deeper evidence for humans. As the geologist Bill Ruddiman and others wrote in Science Magazine in 2015: “Does it really make sense to define the beginning of a man -dominated millennia after most forests in arable regions have been cut for agriculture?”
Discussions of an anthropocene era are not over yet. However, it is very unlikely that there will soon be an official Anthropocene declaration.
The lack of a formal definition of an anthropocene era will not be a problem for science.
A scientific definition of the anthropocene is already widespread in the form of the anthropocene event, which the anthropocene basically defines in simple geological terms as “complex, transformative and continuous events analogously to the great oxidation event and others in geological recording”.
Despite the “no” voice about the Anthropocene Epoche, the anthropocene will continue to be just as useful as for more than 20 years in stimulating discussions and researching the nature of the human transformation of this planet.
This article has been updated to clarify that a new attempt at an official explanation of the Anthropocene Epoche is unlikely.
This article will be released from the conversation, a non -profit, independent news organization that brings you facts and trustworthy analyzes to help you understand our complex world. It was written by: Erle C. Ellis, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
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Erle C. Ellis is a former member of the Anthropocen working group of international stratigraphy. He is a member of the American Association of Geographer.
