
The Arrogance of the Anthropocene - Sandman
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/arrogance-anthropocene/595795/
======
CoreSet
As an addendum, the author, Peter Brannen, published another article with The
Atlantic titled "What Made Me Reconsider the Anthropocene" four days ago.

In it, he responds to criticism and ultimately comes to the conclusion that -
even if no trace of humanity is left (no civilization, tools, etc) in "deep
time" \- the biosphere itself has been changed by humanity, and that gives the
concept of the Anthroprocene validity.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/10/anthropo...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/10/anthropocene-
epoch-after-all/599863/)

~~~
FooHentai
I think this should be front-and-center rather than an addendum point - Can't
help but question the good faith of an author putting this article up while
only recently having published one that appears to take an opposite view.
Frankly, smells like click bait dressed up as high-brow op-ed.

I was going to post a comment in response to some of the points in the
article, but upon seeing that the other article existed... what's the point?

~~~
nostrademons
I read both and think that the second supports the point made in the first.

The point of the anthropocene, as presented in the second article, is to
acknowledge the effect humans have already had on the earth. The point of the
first is to acknowledge _how little_ an effect that is, relative to other
events in geologic time. The events described in that article still stand -
global temperature differences of 8C over a few tens of thousands of years,
sea levels 400 feet lower (and that was a blink of an eye ago in geologic
time), a 90M year long ice age.

~~~
acqq
> The point of the first is to acknowledge how little an effect that is,
> relative to other events in geologic time.

And speaking only about that geologic time is deceptive, without mentioning
context: for the biggest part of the whole geologic time, not even multi-
cellular life existed. Half of the whole geologic time, nothing was able to
depend on oxygen as the modern life does -- there wasn't much of it in the
atmosphere.

The time human civilizations existed is microscopic in comparison to these
spans, but that much shorter time is what defines us.

And in that time, the climate was indeed quite stable. Until the last hundred
or two years.

And humans did make immense impact on the life forms, and will continue to
make.

~~~
nostrademons
I thought that was actually the point of the article. The author freely admits
that from a _human_ perspective, climate change and habitat destruction and
the bleaching of coral reefs are a big deal. The point he's making is that
from a _planetary_ perspective, humans are insignificant. Indeed, from a
planetary perspective multi-cellular life is insignificant, and life at all is
a minority.

The thing is that much of the debate over global warming has been framed in
planetary terms. If you frame it in human terms, you already have a good
argument: climate change will cause mass migrations, historically mass
migrations have caused massive wars and the collapse of civilizations, I don't
want to die in a war while my whole civilization collapses, ergo it's probably
a good idea to solve or at least adapt to this climate change thing before
shit hits the fan. But if you frame it in terms of "climate change will make
the earth uninhabitable" or even "climate change will lead to the extinction
of humanity", a.) you're probably wrong - our species is remarkably resilient,
and we have lived through large planetary-scale shifts in the earth's climate
b.) the earth has been made uninhabitable to much of life in the past, and yet
we're here and c.) so what, we'll all be dead.

~~~
AstralStorm
From planetary perspective, multicellular life was and is huge. Oxygen
catastrophe is not called that because it was invisible from space. Nor are ok
deposits geologically insignificant.

It is big timeframe though compared to anthropocene.

The warming is indeed planetary, but not the magnitude of the earlier
atmospheric changes. The crust changes are more visible for now, especially
mining. The temperature will be pretty important at about +1 C out more
globally - not quite yet. At that level moisture circulation would get
affected a lot...

------
gameswithgo
>If, in the final 7,000 years of their reign, dinosaurs became
hyperintelligent, built a civilization, started asteroid mining, and did so
for centuries before forgetting to carry the one on an orbital calculation,
thereby sending that famous valedictory six-mile space rock hurtling
senselessly toward the Earth themselves—it would be virtually impossible to
tell.

I consider this claim to be complete nonsense. Change my mind. There are 4
billion year old rocks still on the earth to be found. 7,000 years of
civilization is not going to be completely erased in a few million.

~~~
CoreSet
What about if dinosaurs got to the point of early hunter-gatherers -
establishing communities, language, basic tools - but were then wiped out?

It's different from the case he cites, but tracks the general point that there
are limits to what we can learn about prehistory / "deep time"

~~~
api
Think of it this way: distance in time is like distance in space. It's just
another dimension (with the catch that apparently we can't actually move
backward). The dinosaurs are as far from us as Alpha Centauri, maybe further.

~~~
jerf
This is a reasonable way of looking at time for certain purposes, and the
conversion factor is c. So, 65 million years "ago" is also 65 million light-
years "away" in the -t direction.

------
ilaksh
It's obvious that human history is very short but it's less obvious that all
of our buildings and trash will be so hard to find underground in five million
years or so.

Wouldn't there at least be some places where ruins or landfills were largely
exposed? And aren't there lots of materials that would stand out since they
degrade slowly?

For example, what is going to happen to all of the concrete and steel in
Manhattan in the course of five million years? Will it really be compressed to
a thin layer that is barely noticeable or something?

~~~
ncmncm
It will all wash away, sand grain by sand grain. You can see the erosion of
stone temples even a thousand years old, made of harder stuff than concrete.

~~~
ilaksh
The steel will wash away?

~~~
ncmncm
It will rust first, and the rust will wash away. The _glass_ will wash away.
Water conquers all.

------
Donald
>Will our influence on the rock record really be so profound to geologists 100
million years from now, whoever they are, that they would look back and be
tempted to declare the past few decades or centuries a bona fide epoch of its
own?

Yes, there will be a thin but noticeable layer of hydrocarbons and odd
pollution signatures in the crust that will act as a permanent geologic record
of our existence.

~~~
ncmncm
"Humanity: it was thin but noticeable."

If you were specifically looking for it.

Somebody might notice a lack of elephant teeth above a peculiar boundary, or a
reduction in fish bones and corals, and look closer at the boundary. But to
notice a lack is much harder than to notice the advent of something new. A
layer of paperclips might not attract much attention, once oxidized, or be
interpreted with anything like fidelity.

------
nostrademons
The holocene always struck me as odd. Here we have the final geologic epoch,
and it's 10,000 years old, and every other geologic epoch is ~50M years long.
And it just happens to coincide with the rise of our species, who just happens
to be the one creating the taxonomy.

Paleohistory is pretty fascinating, and it's easy to forget just how small we
are on this big earth and how much things differ from today. For example:

We're technically in an icehouse age. An icehouse age is defined as "any
period of time where glaciers exist _anywhere_ on the planet". For about 80%
of geologic time, there is no such thing as a glacier, or of snow and ice for
that matter. The entire earth's surface is above freezing, even the North and
South poles. What we know of as an "ice age" (a glaciation) is a feature only
of icehouse states. We currently happen to be in an interglacial of an
icehouse age, which is why we think of this as being a warm period. But
geologically, the earth is _well_ below its temperature average.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earth)

It's likely that the earth has completely frozen over on at least two
occasions, with the entire planet being encased in a gigantic ice sheet like
Europa:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth)

The larger of these two incidents may have been triggered by the evolution of
photosynthesis and the addition of oxygen into the earth's atmosphere, which
also likely caused a major mass extinction among the dominant anaerobic
bacteria of the time:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event)

Sea level over time has fluctuated by 300-400 meters. That means that anything
at an altitude of less than about 1000 feet (which is the vast majority of
human settlements) was once underwater. (Well, technically _land_ level
fluctuates more than sea level, so most of these low-lying areas are actually
sediment weathered off of nearby mountains.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level)

There've been some massive outburst floods in the past, like the draining of
Glacial Lake Missoula (a pleistocene lake roughly half the volume of Lake
Michigan, held in by an ice dam on the Clark River nearly 2000 feet tall)
which released an outflow 13 times the size of the Amazon River:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_Floods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_Floods)

~~~
ncmncm
And produced the whole Columbia Gorge in just two weeks.

Most likely almost all of human history in the Americas, and maybe too in
Africa, is 200 feet under the sea.

------
namirez
It seems to me this person is missing the point. When people talk about
Anthropocene, they're not talking about geological or fossil evidence left
behind by humans in million of years. Anthropocene refers to the Holocene or
the sixth mass extinction on the planet.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction)

~~~
chimi
My understanding is that the Anthropocene is definable because human gas
emissions have created a visible layer in the rock strata that will be evident
for millions of years. Geological time from now, there will be a black line in
the rocks that will include the toxic chemicals coming from our industrial
processes and tail pipes.

~~~
ncmncm
He makes the point in the article that there are innumerable unnamed razor-
thin layers in the rocks already. What's one more? Why would anyone be drawn
to study that one?

~~~
chimi
Okay, now I get it. I missed that part of the article. That's the arrogance. I
like the ideas in a lot of these articles, I just don't have time to read them
all. I miss the old days of tldr's.

