[HN Gopher] Myths about the Anthropocene
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Myths about the Anthropocene
Author : lehi
Score : 31 points
Date : 2024-04-18 18:08 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| eimrine wrote:
| Can I have an answer to the quession in the heading according to
| the article? This English is too complicated for me.
| mikestew wrote:
| Scroll halfway down to find a numbered list, with headings.
| Personally, I couldn't simplify it anymore than that.
| germinator wrote:
| You're basically walking into the middle of a niche debate
| about semantics. There is a faction that dislikes the use of
| the word "anthropocene" to refer to the current geological era
| - and specifically, the past 100 years or so. Their main
| argument is that it's an imperceptible blip on the radar
| compared to the scale of other geological eras we study.
|
| This article is a response that can be summed up as "no, we're
| changing the environment faster than anything before, so it
| counts". It's framed not as a genuine debate, but as an attempt
| to dispel "myths".
|
| "Why this matters" is left as an exercise for the reader...
| lainga wrote:
| Related:
|
| Geologists reject declaration of Anthropocene epoch
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/mar/22/geologists-r...
| Clamchop wrote:
| This makes it sound like the designation is latent, even if
| rejected by committee right now. They acknowledge an
| anthropogenic "event" is under way but aren't admitting the
| anthropocene because of its recency and unclear boundaries.
|
| But the boundaries of other epochs are also only estimated and
| didn't unfold completely overnight, not even for the K-Pg
| impactor, probably the most sudden change in the geological
| record. It still took thousands of years for the consequences
| to shake out into a steadier state.
|
| If we were studying the current transition hundreds of
| thousands or millions of years from now starting with zero
| knowledge, the disappearance of megafauna (ongoing and has been
| for tens of thousands of years), the large scale transformation
| of forests to grassland, the invasion of species to every
| corner of the earth, the mass extinction most severely in the
| tropics and oceans, the appearance of so much carbon, plastic,
| and other pollution in the geologic record, and the
| disappearance of glaciers (tens of thousands of years to go
| there, even in worst case scenarios) would appear virtually
| instantaneous. There'd be error bounds on it but eventually no
| disagreement that the Earth took a corner.
|
| So the argument starts to sound a bit like denial. But that's
| OK. We've been through lots of denial around whether extinction
| happens, if mass extinction happens, if the K-Pg impact
| happened, if it caused a mass extinction, or whether continents
| move around. All settled now.
| lainga wrote:
| > They acknowledge an anthropogenic "event" is under way but
| aren't admitting the anthropocene because of its recency and
| unclear boundaries.
|
| You mean aren't admitting the anthropocene as an epoch?
| That's not what the article says. The reason it's not
| admissible as an epoch is because we might blow ourselves up
| tomorrow and wipe out industrial civilisation. And the whole
| layer of steel and concrete we laid down would be very thin
| in the record, like the K-Pg impact. The banded iron
| formations are kind of on the boundary, they're associated
| with the Great Oxygenation Event but you could also maybe
| call it the Jatulian period. That was a couple hundred
| million years.
|
| > There'd be error bounds on it but eventually no
| disagreement that the Earth took a corner.
|
| Those are classified as events, not epochs. The K-Pg impact
| was an event.
|
| Ed. I guess you could also say why can't we have a new
| Anthropocene period caused by an Anthropocene event, but I
| don't know what to tell you, it's just confusing to do that.
| That's why the K-Pg impact is followed by the Danian age, not
| the The-Start-Of-This-Period-Has-A-Lot-Of-Iridium age. I
| don't get why the proposal didn't want to call it the
| Crawfordian if that's where the canonical marker is found
| arduanika wrote:
| Huh. That looks like really important context. I wonder why the
| Smithsonian article neglected to mention it. Do they just not
| want to admit that there's any dissent?
| lainga wrote:
| I think the proposing team ran out of options on the formal
| track so now they're going the ad-hominem track against the
| IUGS (they're uncomfortable with the Anthropocene, they're
| climate-change deniers, etc.)
| neonate wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240418201615/https://www.smith...
| Nevermark wrote:
| It does seem pointless to avoid naming a new era for dramatic
| irreversible changes that would have defined a new era if they
| happened millions of years ago.
|
| How many common assumptions about the Holocene are already
| broken?
|
| --
|
| With much less at stake, I think it was out of touch and
| impractical to choose scientific terminology at odds with
| existing common language, when "dwarf planet" was defined as
| _not_ a subcategory of "planet".
|
| It defies common usage, and also common language forms. Prefixed
| nouns usually refer to subcategories, not excluded categories.
|
| What science fiction story is going to carefully distinguish
| "dwarf planets" as being a completely separate category from
| "planets" because one didn't completely clear its orbit of
| debris?
|
| A better (equivalent, and just as useful) nomenclature would have
| left the common definition of "planet" alone: i.e. a body
| circling a star, too small to be a star or brown dwarf (no
| continuous or aborted fusion), but large enough to form a near
| sphere based on its own gravitational field.
|
| THEN, subdivide "planets" into "major planets" and "minor
| planets". We have 8 major planets, and it turns out, many many
| dwarf planets.
|
| Pluto is a "planet", specifically a "dwarf planet". Earth and
| Jupiter are "planets", specifically "major planets".
|
| "Rogue planets" are "planets" that left their systems. Some were
| originally major, some dwarf. "Protoplanets" are new "planets"
| actively accumulating mass by clearing their orbital field. They
| may stabilize as "major" or "dwarf" planets.
|
| The new exlusionary definition of "planet" also opens the doors
| to inevitable conundrums:
|
| Some day a huge planetary type body will be discovered in the
| outreaches of a solar system where it has not cleared its area of
| debris. So not a "planet"?
|
| Some day a small planetary body with a cleared orbital field will
| be found between the orbits of larger planetary bodies that
| haven't cleared their fields. So it is a planet, but the larger
| bodies surrounding it are not?
| runeofdoom wrote:
| We already had 'minor planets' (asteroids). Planets are a
| continuum, from small rocky or icy ones the size of large
| moons, to "terrestrial" ones, to ice giants and gas giants.
| Nevermark wrote:
| Yes, that is how I think "planets" should be used. A root
| category over any number of subcategories defined over
| continuums and combinations of other features.
|
| As it is used in common langauge.
| arduanika wrote:
| "Planet" derives from the Greek word for "wanderer", so it's
| totally on brand if the category keeps moving around.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Yes. The entire Pluto thing seemed like a pedantic waste of
| time. Or, at least grandfather it in. Now everyone still thinks
| of it as a planet, but we have to qualify it when talking : "Oh
| hey I read an interesting story about the 9th planet Pluto,
| ooops, sorry, I mean 'dwarf', don't crucify me".
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| This seems like a reverse logic article. Here are 'myths', but
| really 'Not'.
|
| It isn't against naming this the Anthropocene, all of the myths
| are followed by reasons why they aren't myths and this is
| probably the Anthropocene. "From a certain point of view".
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