
The Anthropocene epoch: scientists declare dawn of human-influenced age - okket
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/29/declare-anthropocene-epoch-experts-urge-geological-congress-human-impact-earth
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lagudragu
Related Nature link regarding this interesting topic:
[http://www.nature.com/news/anthropocene-the-human-
age-1.1708...](http://www.nature.com/news/anthropocene-the-human-age-1.17085)

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api
I think we can set the exact date and time. The holocene ended and the
anthropocene began at precisely July 16, 1945, 5:29 am

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(nuclear_test)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_\(nuclear_test\))

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mVChr
Ugh, can't we just use the Unix epoch? Time's already too difficult to
program.

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InclinedPlane
I understand the sentiment of these sorts of things, but they end up coming
off as quite ignorant of history.

There has definitely been a change in the nature of mankind's relationship
with the Earth's environment, such that human actions have become a dominant
factor. However, that happened at some time during the bronze age. Humans have
been completely changing biomes and drastically impacting the environment for
thousands of years. Huge swaths of forests were cut down, much of the
remaining forests were managed, farmland and grazing lands replaced natural
habitats, numerous megafauna were hunted to extinction, etc. The difference
between the bronze age and today is merely that it's become much more obvious
how significant our impact on the world is today.

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woodandsteel
You are right that the Bronze age produced huge changes. However, most of the
planet, like the oceans, the rain forests, the Arctic, and the deserts, stayed
basically the same. Now great changes are happening everywhere.

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InclinedPlane
I don't have time to fully answer this, because it's a big topic, but I think
you missed what I was saying.

There's this zeitgeist that mankind was largely at the mercy of nature until
the industrial age, but that's based primarily on our foggy view of history,
not on reality.

During the neolithic and bronze ages, humans cut down and/or "managed" most of
the forests of the world. Read that again, it's accurate. There's almost no
such thing as a primeval forest that hasn't been touched by human hands
anywhere on Earth, nor has there been for a very long time. In Europe there
was a significant reduction in forested land during the bronze age. Not only
were forests cut down to make room for planting, but the forests that were
left standing were managed for timber et al and for game hunting. In the
Americas and Africa, for example, it was quite common for the locals to use
fire on huge scales to modify the environment, either for slash and burn
agriculture, or for forest management (e.g. to make game hunting easier). The
image of the primeval American frontier is one that is based on a recently
depopulated post-Columbian exchange New World, which hides the massive extent
of the impact that the native americans had on their environment.

This is true for the rain forests, the arctic, the deserts, etc. Which saw
massive changes due to the presence of humans. They affected rates of
desertification, they became the apex predators in many cases, driving out
others, and they extensively modified the local environment (as in the case of
rain forests).

We see such things as untouched by human activity primarily because we don't
know any better. Our knowledge of ancient history is limited due to lack of
record keeping and the difficulty of piecing together data from just artifacts
(if we are lucky enough that the artifacts survived and were found during a
research dig, which requires luck stacked on top of luck stacked on top of
luck), and we often lack the context to know the difference between what a
landscape that has seen the impact of pre-industrial human activity looks like
and what a truly pristine landscape looks like. There are a lot of areas which
people think are natural but are the result of the activities of prehistoric
humans (such as many of the unforested regions in Scotland, which were
deforested and made into farmland but have lain fallow for centuries and
reverted to a semi-wild state, though not a pristine natural state).

The difference today is that we can more readily see the changes happening
directly, because we have much better record keeping and can compare
observations over recent decades and centuries. And, of course, the pace of
change has been accelerating, with impacts on new things. But the _start_ of
mankind having a dominant role in the environment happened a long, long time
ago.

Of course, there are folks who have a vested interest in denying this fact for
a variety of reasons. Environmentalists (and I count myself one, for the
record) might find this fact somewhat disconcerting, because if mankind has
been a driving force in environmental change for 5 thousand years, maybe that
implies that its nothing to worry about, right? I can understand wanting to
avoid having that discussion, but it's no excuse for denying the reality. And
indeed, sometimes the impact of humans on the environment has had extreme
negative consequences in the past, on human beings and on the environment,
even going back thousands of years (but, of course, such things can be hard to
suss out because of that pesky spotty historical record).

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woodandsteel
That's a good reply, and you clearly know much more about this topic than I
do.

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socmag
Let's skip forward a few years and look for the HN post regarding when
precisely the dawn of the AI-influenced age occurred.

Since I'm pretty sure it already happened, and quite some time ago, depending
on your metric.

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swalsh
I'm not sure it's the same scale. AI has the potential to change human lives
quite a bit, even expand humanities reach. Our actions since 1950 though have
altered the earth's climate. Steel comes in 2 forms Pre-1945 steel, and new
steel. In less than 100 years we have left an unmistakable mark on the planet.
It affects everything. AI will be most impactful to humans.

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hyperbovine
In case you are curious:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-
background_steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel)

