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Miocene Anthropocene Future

Life in the Anthropocene, Field Notes From The Santa Rosa Fi

Unread postby AdamB » Wed 01 Nov 2017, 11:58:29


Anthropocene: relating to or denoting the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. The call came a little before 5 am, the morning of Monday, October 9. I stumbled toward the phone and retrieved the message. A neighbor’s voice, “Get ready to evacuate!” Huh? A quick look at the computer reveals the firestorm that began the night before in a neighboring county, moving through the night, across mountains, east to west, propelled by 60 mile per hour winds, already burning through entire neighborhoods, headed in the general direction of our home. My husband bangs on doors in our neighborhood, awakening those who are not already awake. He pulls out the hand-crank radio I had just bought, turns it to a local station, puts on water for tea. I start piling things into


Life in the Anthropocene, Field Notes From The Santa Rosa Fires
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Re: Life in the Anthropocene, Field Notes From The Santa Ros

Unread postby AdamB » Wed 01 Nov 2017, 12:02:23

Not to be too picky, but anyone who says we are currently in the Anthropocene, as this article implies, is either ignorant, or a liar. Sometimes, ya just gotta call a spade a spade. Half baked bloggers, amateurs, climate enthusiasts who can't be bothered to understand how, when or IF the Anthropocene is called deserve derision and it immediately calls into suspicion everything else they write. Either you tell it as it is, or you make it up, and when you knowingly mix the two, you don't get to pretend that the facts you do use validate the ignorance or deliberate deceit you threw into the writing as well.
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Re: Life in the Anthropocene, Field Notes From The Santa Ros

Unread postby asg70 » Wed 01 Nov 2017, 12:03:22

Why does the word bother you so much?

BOLD PREDICTIONS
-Billions are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues. (yoshua, 5/20/20)

HALL OF SHAME:
-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.
-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.
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Re: Life in the Anthropocene, Field Notes From The Santa Ros

Unread postby AdamB » Wed 01 Nov 2017, 12:14:51

asg70 wrote:Why does the word bother you so much?


The word bothers me not in the least. I find the use of as though it now exists professionally irritating. As soon as the people responsible for calling such things call it, then I'm in. Until then, it just making stuff up.

Intellectually (as opposed to the more personal feelings listed above) I don't like the idea of something as ephemeral as human civilization as even being worthy of a "geologic age" name, because human effects aren't geologic in nature. The Azolla Event changed the climate of the globe so fundamentally that we are still in the icebox configuration it gave us 49 million years ago. But that isn't called the Azollacene. Instead, it was just a climate change event in the Eocene.

We are no different than that fern, just another biologic, haven't caused ANYTHING like what it did, and yet we are all so get out important that we deserve our own GEOLOGIC name? When other biologics didn't budge the geologic needle?

Human hubris, nothing more.
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Re: Life in the Anthropocene, Field Notes From The Santa Ros

Unread postby asg70 » Wed 01 Nov 2017, 12:19:05

AdamB wrote:We are no different than that fern, just another biologic, haven't caused ANYTHING like what it did, and yet we are all so get out important that we deserve our own GEOLOGIC name? When other biologics didn't budge the geologic needle?
Human hubris, nothing more.


Your rant just sounds like AGW denialist rhetoric as far as I'm concerned. I've got morning glories still blooming in November in New England. It may take a while for all us frogs to realize we're boiling in the pot, but we've wrecked the climate already. What people call it is inconsequential. The causes and effects are clear to see.

BOLD PREDICTIONS
-Billions are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues. (yoshua, 5/20/20)

HALL OF SHAME:
-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.
-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.
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Re: Life in the Anthropocene, Field Notes From The Santa Ros

Unread postby AdamB » Wed 01 Nov 2017, 12:34:13

asg70 wrote:
AdamB wrote:We are no different than that fern, just another biologic, haven't caused ANYTHING like what it did, and yet we are all so get out important that we deserve our own GEOLOGIC name? When other biologics didn't budge the geologic needle?
Human hubris, nothing more.


Your rant just sounds like AGW denialist rhetoric as far as I'm concerned.


It is a free country, you are allowed to think of me as you wish. But I didn't say a thing about current climate change issues, or other potentially civilization ending issues we face. But I can be particular about an earth science that has obviously set a precedent in terms of how it views past climate change in relation to geologic names, and note that the amateur/blogger/advocates don't get to spew nonsense without some folks a little more anchored in the particulars calling them out on their gibberish.

asg70 wrote: I've got morning glories still blooming in November in New England. It may take a while for all us frogs to realize we're boiling in the pot, but we've wrecked the climate already. What people call it is inconsequential. The causes and effects are clear to see.


Glad to hear about your pleasant weather. And if you consider a degree or 2 wrecked, you would have died from lack of superlatives if you had been living where you are now, about 12,000 years ago when the ice sheet covering the area vanished. Like I said, enjoy the weather because what ISN'T where you are is an ice sheet a mile high.
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby dohboi » Thu 02 Nov 2017, 15:34:19

https://phys.org/news/2016-08-anthropoc ... tists.html

...after seven years of deliberation, the 35-strong Working Group has unanimously recognised the Anthropocene as a reality, and voted 30-to-three (with two abstentions) for the transition to be officially registered.

"Our working model is that the optimal boundary is the mid-20th century," said Jan Zalasiewicz, a geologist at the University of Leicester.

"If adopted—and we're a long way from that—the Holocene would finish and the Anthropocene would formally be held to have begun."

Scientists refer to the period starting from 1950 as the "Great Acceleration", and a glance at graphs tracking a number of chemical and socio-economic changes make it obvious why.

Concentrations in the air of carbon dioxide, methane and stratospheric ozone; surface temperatures, ocean acidification, marine fish harvesting, and tropical forest loss; population growth, construction of large dams, international tourism—all of them take off from about mid-century.

One of the main culprits is global warming driven by the burning of fossil fuels.

A telltale surge in the spread of invasive plant and animal species is also a legacy of our species.


Clearly many serious scientists (not just "amateur/blogger/advocates") consider the Anthropocene to be a valid term, though, given the geological rate :) at which established scientific bodies as the International Commission on Stratigraphy nor the International Union of Geological Sciences move, it is not surprising that they have not yet officially endorsed the terminology to date.

And indeed, the notion that humans are too insignificant to have a lasting effect on the living and geological planet is in fact a standard denialist meme: https://www.skepticalscience.com/Are-hu ... limate.htm

On the broader issue T raised at the beginning of the thread that we are now essentially entering the mid-Miocene, a recent comment at RealClimate lends support:


#346 MA Rodger says:
30 Oct 2017 at 5:34 AM
...
The mid-Pliocene Warm Period (mPWP) 3 million years ago is certainly an interesting lesson for us. Yet I’m not sure we tackle it properly. One tiff such discussion can generate (and one that can raise passions) is how much CO2 was there during the mPWP? And a missing piece of discussion seems to be the mechanisms that raised CO2 levels causing the mPWP and why temperatures were then reduced ending the mPWP.

On CO2 levels, we get the likes of Hayward et al (2016) saying “atmospheric CO2 concentration is estimated to have ranged between 350 and 450 p.p.m.v.” citing a list of rather old references. (This is pretty much repeating IPCC AR5 which timidly gives credence to each and every data point of every study shown in AR5 fig 5.2a) So what was it? 350ppm? 400? 450?

Myself, I am more inclined towards the idea that CO2 was likely not above 400ppm, as set out in Zhang et al (2013) (not cited by Haywood et al) which shows only error bars topping 400ppm.

We have to go all the way back to 14 million years ago to find a central point topping 400ppm
...


http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... /#comments
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby jedrider » Thu 02 Nov 2017, 23:15:20

I say Anthropocene, you say Holocene, let's call the whole thing off!

Probably doesn't matter what you call it, but we did it.
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby Tanada » Sat 11 Aug 2018, 10:58:22

Speaking of our hothouse future check out this graph of CO2 levels through the last 40 million ybp.
IMAGE LINK
Image

The blue are the new reconstruction data the red the older data. The new methods demonstrate a considerably higher CO2 ppmv during the Miocene and Oligocene removing the confusion over how the CO2 level could have been so low without causing glaciation in the Northern Hemisphere as has taken place the last 2.5 million ybp.

The new reconstruction indicates CO2 ppmv between 400-500 for the Miocene rising to the 700-800 ppmv range from the later Oligocene when the Antarctic ice cap first formed.

At the current world levels of 407 ppmv we are inside the window where Greenland was ice free for most of the last 40 million ybp, and if we keep growing the atmospheric load at current rates it won't be long before we start serious melting in Antarctica around the 500 ppmv mark. Antarctica was ice free above 750+/- ppmv and who knows if we will get that far in boosting CO2 levels, but 500 ppmv seems likely to me. The only thing helping us so far is thermal inertia, but any system under stress can only coast on inertia so long before the shift is profound.
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby dissident » Sat 11 Aug 2018, 11:20:28

We are guaranteed over 7 meters of sea level rise. Since Antarctica will partly melt as well it will probably be over 10 meters in the coming centuries. The question is how stable is the Greenland ice sheet. Hysteresis may delay the melt, but the stability of the ice is critical. Greenland has an interior depression which means that the glaciers will not simply slide into the sea. But a substantial amount of glaciers are sitting on the seaward slopes. This ice could disappear in extremely rapidly.
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby rockdoc123 » Sat 11 Aug 2018, 12:34:41

Clearly many serious scientists (not just "amateur/blogger/advocates") consider the Anthropocene to be a valid term, though, given the geological rate :) at which established scientific bodies as the International Commission on Stratigraphy nor the International Union of Geological Sciences move, it is not surprising that they have not yet officially endorsed the terminology to date.


On July 8 the IUGS announced the formal subdivision of the Holocene:

1. Greenlandian

2. Northgrippian

3. Meghalayan

The Meghalayan age (4200 ya) would be more or less equivalent to the age which some would have liked to call Anthropocene. Note that the definition of Meghalayan age :

The Late Holocene Meghalayan Age, newly-ratified as the most recent unit of the Geologic Time Scale, began at the time when agricultural societies around the world experienced an abrupt and critical mega-drought and cooling 4,200 years ago.
Agricultural-based societies that developed in several regions after the end of the last Ice Age were impacted severely by the 200-year climatic event that resulted in the collapse of civilizations and human migrations in Egypt, Greece, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and the Yangtze River Valley. Evidence of the 4.2 kiloyear climatic event has been found on all seven continents.


so sorry, no anthropocene recognized by the only group that matters when it comes to the stratigraphic chart divisions and sub-divisions.
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby GHung » Sat 11 Aug 2018, 12:53:46

so sorry, no anthropocene recognized by the only group that matters when it comes to the stratigraphic chart divisions and sub-divisions.


Meaning what, exactly? That humans aren't affecting global climate in significant and lasting ways? Somehow, I'm not very relived.
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 11 Aug 2018, 13:29:28

At the current world levels of 407 ppmv we are inside the window where Greenland was ice free for most of the last 40 million ybp, and if we keep growing the atmospheric load at current rates it won't be long before we start serious melting in Antarctica around the 500 ppmv mark. Antarctica was ice free above 750+/- ppmv and who knows if we will get that far in boosting CO2 levels, but 500 ppmv seems likely to me

Related to this quote by T, and what the prognosis is for the climate into the future, I think we must account for the fact that the Sun is hotter now than 50 million years ago.
But greenhouses gases like CO2 are so named for their ability to magnify the sun’s energy, and 50 million years ago the sun wasn’t as hot— our star is getting hotter with age. 
So,

During the Eocene, it took more atmospheric CO2 to influence temperatures than it does today. In fact, if we don’t change our behavior, 2100 will be as hot as the Eocene with much less atmospheric CO2 than was present at the time. A hotter sun means we get more bang for our CO2 buck.

“Climate change denialists often mention that CO2 was high in the past, that it was warm in the past, so this means there's nothing to worry about,” said lead study author Gavin Foster, a researcher in isotope geochemistry and paleoceanography at the United Kingdom’s University of Southampton. “It's certainly true, that the CO2was high in the past and that it was warm in the past. But because the sun was dimmer, the climate wasn't being forced as much [as it will be] in the future if we carry on as we are.”


https://www.popsci.com/carbon-emissions-warming
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby rockdoc123 » Sat 11 Aug 2018, 13:57:03

Meaning what, exactly? That humans aren't affecting global climate in significant and lasting ways? Somehow, I'm not very relived.


meaning exactly what I said:

no anthropocene recognized by the only group that matters when it comes to the stratigraphic chart divisions and sub-divisions.


the rationale for calling a new age anthropocene and the reasoning behind it had zero rationale when it comes to what actually defines stratigraphic horizons and hence age sub-divisions. I'd spoken to this previously.
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby GHung » Sat 11 Aug 2018, 14:19:07

rockdoc123 wrote:
Meaning what, exactly? That humans aren't affecting global climate in significant and lasting ways? Somehow, I'm not very relived.


meaning exactly what I said:

no anthropocene recognized by the only group that matters when it comes to the stratigraphic chart divisions and sub-divisions.


the rationale for calling a new age anthropocene and the reasoning behind it had zero rationale when it comes to what actually defines stratigraphic horizons and hence age sub-divisions. I'd spoken to this previously.


.... and this is important in what way?
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby Cid_Yama » Sat 11 Aug 2018, 16:26:19

Nice try, Rockdoc. There are two working groups on the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy,
One group working on the subdivision of the Holocene, the other on the determination if the Holocene has ended and when.

There is a political battle going on between Geologists who are loathe to recognize man's impact, and those that recognize man's impact, which has created a deep political polarization within the organization.

The subdivision working group reported first. That is all. Anti-Anthropocene geologists are declaring victory, but whether the Holocene has ended has yet to be determined.

The subdivision working group exceeded their mandate when they stated the Holocene continues in their report.

That is to be determined by the Anthropocene working group who have yet to report.
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 11 Aug 2018, 16:28:11

pstarr wrote:
GHung wrote:
rockdoc wrote:the rationale for calling a new age anthropocene and the reasoning behind it had zero rationale when it comes to what actually defines stratigraphic horizons and hence age sub-divisions. I'd spoken to this previously.


.... and this is important in what way?

Perhaps because the term 'anthropocene' lacks scientific validity.

It's pop science. Fake popular science, created by the news media, science interns and wannabees to fluff up their resumes and sell advertising. It says we are changing the earth. Not really. Species come and go. Continents shift. Worlds change. We will also go.

It is hardly any of that. This is the simple definition I found "relating to or denoting the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment." So, I think this is a valid point. Anyone dispute it?
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby GHung » Sat 11 Aug 2018, 16:33:53

Species come and go. Continents shift. Worlds change.


And sometimes species, or groups of species, have made major changes to the planet. Some slow, some not so slow, but just because we weren't around to give those periods names doesn't mean those changes weren't occurring. Nature, and the universe for that matter, are indifferent to whether or not we label global biospherical changes, or the causes. I still don't see the importance of whether or not some group decided to give this period of human-caused changes a name at this point in time.
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby Cid_Yama » Sat 11 Aug 2018, 17:18:13

The Triassic-Jurassic boundary is determined by a major carbon-cycle perturbation, i.e. a carbon isotopic excursion. How is that different from the current carbon isotopic excursion taking place today, which is more massive and far faster?

Are you arguing that the stratigraphic layer being lain down today is not yet observable, as in you can't make the determination until you see it in the rocks? You know it's happening. You know what it WILL look like.

Are you arguing the CAUSE of the major carbon-cycle perturbation matters? It doesn't in the stratigraphic record, so why would it now?

I just think you don't like the idea that man could be a force behind geologic change. It causes cognitive dissonance with your political or religious ideology.
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby rockdoc123 » Sat 11 Aug 2018, 19:04:47

The Triassic-Jurassic boundary is determined by a major carbon-cycle perturbation, i.e. a carbon isotopic excursion. How is that different from the current carbon isotopic excursion taking place today, which is more massive and far faster?


No, it is not. What defines the Triassic Jurassic boundary according to the IUGS is the sudden presence of one ammonoid species and disappearance of others along with a globally recognized extinction event.

Abstract - The criterion for definition of the Triassic-Jurassic boundary should be a marker event of optimal global correlateability. Only an ammonite event meets this criterion, and the lowest occurrence of Psiloceras tilmanni in the New York Canyon area of Nevada, USA provides the most globally correlatable datum. Other potential marker events for definition of the Triassic-Jurassic boundary (bivalve, conodont and radiolarian bio-events, mass extinction and a carbon isotope excursion) have less correlation potential.


Lucas, S.G. et al, Definition of the Triassic-Jurassic boundary. Albertiana 32 pp 12 – 16.

Are you arguing that the stratigraphic layer being lain down today is not yet observable, as in you can't make the determination until you see it in the rocks? You know it's happening. You know what it WILL look like.


a few pages back I outlined what the requirements are for stratigraphic nomenclature and divisions. Having a global representation in the stratigraphic column is one of the main requirements. The stratigraphic column does not address what might happen only what there is evidence for. Which is why the ruling went the way it did.
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