Poll of a Billion Monkeys

Friday, October 17, 2014

THE ANTHROPOCENE ANALYSIS

Well now, decisions-decisions.

Sometimes when it comes to modern people I don't know whether to laugh out loud or just to myself, but either way I know there will be a good belly laugh involved.

I breathlessly await their decision. For otherwise, and without their erudite analysis, how would we ever truly know?

I'm just thanking God that there is at least one lawyer in the lot for this momentous decision. There should always be at least one lawyer in the lot when decisions of this magnitude are reached.

One thing is for sure, whatever happens, it's gonna be absolutely amazing. And a fundamental shift in both our world and in human nature...

Right? Ain't I right on this people?

Anthropocene: We might be about to move from the Holocene to a new epoch

Experts meet to discuss humanity's devastating effect on our planet
After 11,700 years, the Holocene epoch may be coming to an end, with a group of geologists, climate scientists and ecologists meeting in Berlin this week to decide whether humanity's impact on the planet has been big enough to deserve a new time period: the Anthropocene.

The term, coined in the 1980s by ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer, takes its prefix from the Ancient Greek word for human because its proponents believe the influence of humanity on the Earth's atmosphere and crust in the last few centuries is so significant as to constitute a new geological epoch.

The Anthropocene Working Group assembles in Berlin on Friday, an interdisciplinary body of scientists and humanists working under the umbrella of the International Commission on Stratigraphy and "tasked with developing a proposal for the formal ratification of the Anthropocene as an official unit amending the Geological Time Scale".

 
The AWG will examine the shift in the biophysical conditions of the Earth humans have brought about (Picture: Getty)

The 30-strong group, which includes a lawyer, has outlined two key questions which it will address during deliberations at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt:

"How does the recent cognition of the immense quantitative shift in the biophysical conditions of the Earth affect both scientific research and a political response to these changes?" and "Does the Anthropocene also pose a profound qualitative shift, a paradigm shift for the ways in which science, politics, and law advance accordingly?"

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