The age of nuclear weapons, human-caused climate change and the proliferation of plastic and garbage could soon be included in the official history of Earth.
The present is what we're talking about.
A panel of scientists on Saturday took a big step towards declaring a new interval of geologic time called the Anthropocene.
The end of the last ice age gave rise to the current geologic epoch. We have spent the past few decades in a brand-new time unit, one characterized by human-generated, planetary-scale changes that are unfinished but very much underway.
If you were in 1920, you would have thought that nature was too big for humans to influence. The past century has changed that thinking. It has been like an asteroid hitting the planet.
On Saturday, the members of the working group completed the first in a series of internal votes on when the Anthropocene started. The final proposal from the panel will be submitted to three other committees of geologists who will either approve or disapprove it.
Sixty percent of the committees need to approve the proposal for it to move forward. The Anthropocene may not have another chance if it fails in any of them.
The previous chapter of Earth's history would be officially recognized if it makes it all the way. The effects will be visible in the rocks for a long time to come.
The humans took over the planet.
The human population has grown by leaps and bounds. Fossil fuels that formed over millions of years were burned in a few decades to heat the planet.
Anthropocene.
The beginning would be a proposed one.
70 Years ago.
There are 2.5 billion humans.
There is a MEGHALAYAN age.
4, 200 years ago.
The number of people is 27 million.
There is a hexagonal structure.
11,000 years ago.
There are millions of people.
He was 11,700 years old.
Human beings evolve.
350,000 years ago.
2.58 million years ago, the TERNARY PERIOD.
The late Cenozoic era.
The ice age began.
Thirty four million years ago.
Dinosaurs are no longer alive.
65,000,000 years ago.
67 million years ago.
Dinosaurs are seen.
About 250 million years ago.
The first mammals appeared.
180 million years ago.
541 million years ago, the PHANEROZOICEON.
It's the first life on the planet.
Microorganisms.
3.8 billion years ago.
The first thing to happen is fungi.
Multicellular life.
1.5 to 2 billion years ago.
An astronomer.
Four billion years ago.
PROTEROZOICEON
2.5billion years ago.
The humans took over the planet.
The human population has grown by leaps and bounds. Fossil fuels that formed over millions of years were burned in a few decades to heat the planet.
Anthropocene.
The beginning would be a proposed one.
70 Years ago.
There are 2.5 billion humans.
There is a MEGHALAYAN age.
4, 200 years ago.
The number of people is 27 million.
There is a hexagonal structure.
11,000 years ago.
There are millions of people.
He was 11,700 years old.
Human beings evolve.
350,000 years ago.
2.58 million years ago, the TERNARY PERIOD.
The late Cenozoic era.
The ice age began.
Thirty four million years ago.
Dinosaurs are no longer alive.
65,000,000 years ago.
67 million years ago.
Dinosaurs are seen.
About 250 million years ago.
The first mammals appeared.
180 million years ago.
541 million years ago, the PHANEROZOICEON.
It's the first life on the planet.
Microorganisms.
3.8 billion years ago.
The first thing to happen is fungi.
Multicellular life.
1.5 to 2 billion years ago.
The humans took over the planet.
The human population has grown by leaps and bounds. Fossil fuels that formed over millions of years were burned in a few decades to heat the planet.
Anthropocene.
The beginning would be a proposed one.
70 Years ago.
There are 2.5 billion humans.
There is a MEGHALAYAN age.
4, 200 years ago.
The number of people is 27 million.
There is a hexagonal structure.
11,000 years ago.
There are millions of people.
He was 11,700 years old.
Human beings evolve.
350,000 years ago.
2.58 million years ago, the TERNARY PERIOD.
The late Cenozoic era.
The ice age began.
Thirty four million years ago.
Dinosaurs are no longer alive.
65,000,000 years ago.
67 million years ago.
Dinosaurs are seen.
About 250 million years ago.
The first mammals appeared.
180 million years ago.
541 million years ago, the PHANEROZOICEON.
It's the first life on the planet.
Microorganisms.
3.8 billion years ago.
The first thing to happen is fungi.
Multicellular life.
1.5 to 2 billion years ago.
The humans took over the planet.
The human population has grown by leaps and bounds. Fossil fuels that formed over millions of years were burned in a few decades to heat the planet.
Anthropocene.
The beginning would be a proposed one.
70 Years ago.
There are 2.5 billion humans.
There is a MEGHALAYAN age.
4, 200 years ago.
The number of people is 27 million.
There is a hexagonal structure.
11,000 years ago.
There are millions of people.
He was 11,700 years old.
Human beings evolve.
350,000 years ago.
2.58 million years ago, the TERNARY PERIOD.
The late Cenozoic era.
The ice age began.
Thirty four million years ago.
Dinosaurs are no longer alive.
65,000,000 years ago.
67 million years ago.
Dinosaurs are seen.
That's more than 250 million.
A long time ago.
The first mammals.
179 million.
A long time agos.
541 million years ago, the PHANEROZOICEON.
The first thing to happen is fungi.
Multicellular life.
1.5 to 2 billion years ago.
It's the first life on the planet.
Microorganisms.
3.8 billion years ago.
A human.
Population.
Billions.
The humans took over the planet.
The human population has grown by leaps and bounds. Fossil fuels that formed over millions of years were burned in a few decades to heat the planet.
Anthropocene.
The beginning would be a proposed one.
70 Years ago.
There are 2.5 billion humans.
There is a MEGHALAYAN age.
4, 200 years ago.
The number of people is 27 million.
There is a hexagonal structure.
11,000 years ago.
There are millions of people.
He was 11,700 years old.
Human beings evolve.
350,000 years ago.
2.58 million years ago, the TERNARY PERIOD.
Dinosaurs are no longer alive.
65,000,000 years ago.
67 million years ago.
Dinosaurs are seen.
That's more than 250 million.
A long time ago.
The first mammals.
179 million.
A long time ago.
541 million years ago, the PHANEROZOICEON.
The first thing to happen is fungi.
Multicellular life.
1.5 to 2 billion years ago.
The humans took over the planet.
The human population has grown by leaps and bounds. Fossil fuels that formed over millions of years were burned in a few decades to heat the planet.
Anthropocene.
The beginning would be a proposed one.
70 Years ago.
There are 2.5 billion humans.
There is a MEGHALAYAN age.
4, 200 years ago.
The number of people is 27 million.
There is a hexagonal structure.
11,000 years ago.
There are millions of people.
He was 11,700 years old.
Human beings evolve.
350,000 years ago.
2.58 million years ago, the TERNARY PERIOD.
The late Cenozoic era.
The ice age began.
Thirty four million years ago.
Dinosaurs are no longer alive.
65,000,000 years ago.
67 million years ago.
Dinosaurs are seen.
About 250 million years ago.
The first mammals appeared.
180 million years ago.
541 million years ago, the PHANEROZOICEON.
The first thing to happen is fungi.
Multicellular life.
1.5 to 2 billion years ago.
It's the first life on the planet.
Microorganisms.
3.8 billion years ago.
The humans took over the planet.
The human population has grown by leaps and bounds. Fossil fuels that formed over millions of years were burned in a few decades to heat the planet.
Anthropocene.
The beginning would be a proposed one.
70 Years ago.
There are 2.5 billion humans.
There are MEGHALAYAN age groups.
4, 200 years ago.
The number of people is 27 million.
There is a hexagonal structure.
11,000 years ago.
There are millions of people.
He was 11,700 years old.
Human beings evolve.
350,000 years ago.
2.58 million years ago, the TERNARY PERIOD.
The late Cenozoic era.
The ice age began.
Thirty four million years ago.
Dinosaurs are no longer alive.
65,000,000 years ago.
67 million years ago.
Dinosaurs are seen.
About 250 million years ago.
The first mammals appeared.
180 million years ago.
541 million years ago, the PHANEROZOICEON.
It's the first life on the planet.
Microorganisms.
3.8 billion years ago.
The first thing to happen is fungi.
Multicellular life.
1.5 to 2 billion years ago.
The member of the working group said that she teaches the history of science. She said that they were doing it. The history of science is being lived by us.
Even though we all have experience with the Anthropocene, the knives are still out for it.
A small nation is making diplomatic moves. The nation of Vanuatu has a population of over 300,000 people. The president wants the International Court of Justice to weigh in on whether nations are legally bound to protect themselves against climate risks.
There is a transition to renewable energy. According to the International Energy Agency, there will be double the amount of renewable power in the world in the next five years. Coal is expected to be the biggest source of electricity generation by early 2025, according to the agency.
The Saudi plan. Despite the scientific consensus that the world must move away from fossil fuels to avoid the worst consequences of global warming, Saudi Arabia is using lobbying, research funding and diplomatic activity to keep oil at the center of the world economy.
Climate threats in the U.S. The effects of climate change are already far-reaching and worsening throughout the United States, posing risks to virtually every aspect of society. The United States has warmed more quickly than the rest of the world over the past 50 years.
Stanley C. Finney is the secretary general of the International Union of Geological Sciences.
The Anthropocene would be a blip within the vast expanse of geological time. Other geologic time units help orient scientists because they leave no written records and sparse scientific observations. Humans have been documenting the history of Earth for a long time.
"For the human transformation, we don't need those terminologies, we have exact years."
Martin J. Head is an earth scientist at Brock University.
He said that people would ask if the geological community was denying that the planet had changed dramatically. Either way, we'd have to justify our decision.
The secretary general of one of the committees that will vote on the proposal is Philip L. He is worried about how the proposal is going to turn out.
It won't be an easy ride.
Like the zoologists who regulate the names of animals or the astronomer who decides what constitutes a planet, geology's timekeepers work conservatively. For generations to come, academic studies, museums and textbooks will reflect classifications set by them.
Lucy E.Edwards is a retired scientist with the United States Geological Survey. This isn't long in geological time.
The 4.5 billion-year story of Earth is divided into grandly named chapters. The chapters contain sub-chapters which are similar to the ones that contain the actual chapters. The chapters are called eras, eras, periods, and ages.
According to the current timelines, we are in the middle of the Meghalayan Age of the Cenozoic Era of the Phanerozoic Eon and have been for 4,200 years.
It has been difficult to draw lines in Earth time. The rock record has a lot of gaps and many parts missing. It's difficult to know when one chapter ends and the next begins. There have not been many times when the planet changed at the same time.
A meteorite hitting the Yucatn Peninsula is a good marker. There is only one best line in the geologic world.
The early Cambrian Period, around 540 million years ago, saw Earth explode with an amazing diversity of animal life, but its precise starting point has been disputed for decades. The current geologic period, the Quaternary, was redrawn in 2009.
Jan A. Zalasiewicz is a geology professor at the University of Leicester. There is a new range of dimensions to the messiness and disputatiousness.
It took a decade of debate to nail down a key part of the Anthropocene Working Group's proposal.
The group voted to recommend that the Anthropocene began in the 20th century. That's when human populations, economic activity and greenhouse gas emissions began to rise worldwide.
The golden spike is where the rock record clearly sets it off from the interval before it, which is what defines the Anthropocene.
Nine candidate sites for the Anthropocene were voted on by the working group on Saturday. They represent the range of environments into which human effects are etched, such as a coral reef off the Louisiana coast.
It is possible to walk around Crawford Lake in 10 minutes. The bottom layer of water doesn't mix with the upper layer. Whatever sinks to the floor accumulates into a tree-ring like record of change.
The members of the working group voted this month on what age of the Anthropocene should be included in the timelines.
The group isn't releasing the results of these or the other votes until they are all complete and it has finalized its proposal for the next level of timekeepers There could be a much more heated debate about the Anthropocene.
The cutoff for the mid-20th century isn't right for many scholars. Archeologists and anthropologists would have to start referring to World War II artifacts as pre-Anthropocene.
Nuclear bombs are used to mark a geologic interval, which some scientists find offensive. Erle C. Ellis is an ecologist at the University of Maryland.
It might be possible to use the industrial revolution. millenniums of planet-warping changes from farming are not included in that definition.
Naomi Oreskes is a member of the working group. It is also for geology and the world as a whole.
Dr. Oreskes is a historian of science at Harvard. She said that the human impact is part of geology as a science. We have to realize that our influence on the planet is more than just the surface.
The working group may be diminishing the significance of the concept by trying to add the Anthropocene to the geologic timescale. The group has strict rules that force them to impose a single starting point on a long story that has changed over time.
He and others think the Anthropocene should be called an event. There is no bureaucracy that regulates events on the timelines. They have changed the world for the better.
The filling of Earth's skies with oxygen was called the Great Oxidation event. Mass extinctions and the burst of diversity in marine life occur at the same time.
Emlyn Koster, a former director of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, said that the term Anthropocene should not be defined too narrowly.
He said that the Anthropocene panel's work could be beneficial to the world at large.
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