Scientists declare: planet Earth has entered the ‘Age of Humans’

A panel established to determine whether or not Earth had entered a new epoch known as the Anthropocene or the “Age of Humans” has recommended that the new time segment officially be recognized during a recent geology conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

Speaking at the 35th International Geological Congress (IGC) earlier this week, representatives from the UK-led Working Group on the Anthropocene (WGA) delivered preliminary evidence which they said supports the notion that humanity’s influence on the planet has been significant enough to warrant entering a new geological age characterized by our activities.

“We’ve got to a point where we’ve listed what we think the Anthropocene means to us as a working group,” AWG secretary Colin Waters, who presented the findings, told BBC News. “The majority of us think it is real; that there is clearly something happening; that there are clearly signals in the environment that are recognizable and make the Anthropocene a distinct unit; and the majority of us think it would be justified to formally recognize it.”

Furthermore, as University of Wollongong geography professor Noel Castree explained in an article written for Live Science and The Conversation, the group believes that the new epoch began in the 1950s, when the first nuclear bomb tests were conducted, disposable plastics were invented and the human population boom started. The goal now, BBC News said, is to find the “golden spike(s)” that scientists can use to signal the dawning of the new age.

‘Not a decision that is taken lightly’

Ten out of the 35 members of the working group believe that the best marker will be plutonium fallout that resulted from 1950s bomb tests and which was left behind in marine sediments, ice layers and possibly even stalagmites and stalactites, the British news agency said. Others believe that leftover plastics or carbon signatures would be more significant spikes.

While AWG members disagree on exactly what should serve as the marker, 28 of them believe that it should reflect events that took place during the so-called “great acceleration,” the time in which human influence began to spread and become more intense during the 1950s. The group expects to spend as much as three years determining which factor was the most critical.

Castree called the group’s declaration that we have likely entered the Age of Humans “literally epoch-defining news,” emphasizing in his article that “if the Holocene has now truly given way to the Anthropocene, it’s because a single species – us – has significantly altered the character of the entire hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, and atmosphere.”

“Making this call is not straightforward,” Castree said, “because the Anthropocene proposition is being investigated in different areas of science, using different methods and criteria for assessing the evidence.” Scientists have “amassed considerable evidence about changes to everything from nutrient cycles to ocean acidity to levels of biodiversity across the planet,” he continued.

“Comparing these changes to those occurring during the Holocene, they concluded that we humans have made an indelible mark on our one and only home,” he added. “We have altered the Earth system qualitatively, in ways that call into question our very survival over the coming few centuries… It’s not a decision that is taken lightly.”

So what does this all mean, and what happens now?

Once members of the AWG reach a consensus on  their “golden spike(s),” they will the set to work on a final assessment, and once completed, that report will be reviewed by members of the international geological community, noted BBC News. For it to be added to the planet’s official timeline, the Chronostratigraphic Chart, it will first have to be ratified by the International Union of Geological Sciences’ (IUGS) executive committee.

Before that can happen, Waters and his colleagues will have to either recruit scientists who have obtained cores of ocean sediment, coral specimens, stalactites and stalagmites to analyze as part of their ongoing investigation. Should they be unable to do so, they will then need to obtain such samples on their own – an expensive process that could delay the group’s final report.

Why the declaration of the Anthropocene epoch so important? As Castree explained, it would allow researchers “to assemble a set of large-scale human impacts under one graphic conceptual banner. Its scientific status therefore matters a great deal if people worldwide are at long last to wake up to the environmental effects of their collective actions.”

“Even more than the concept of global warming,” he added, “the Anthropocene is provocative because it implies that our current way of life, especially in wealthy parts of the world, is utterly unsustainable… It means that science knows enough to sound the alarm, without knowing all the details about the unfolding emergency” and “deserves to become part of our lexicon – a way we understand who we are, what we’re doing and what our responsibilities are as a species.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

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