Topic: Anthropocene

[erik]

I decided to open a new topic on the "age of humans". It is not necessarily about getting or being stuffed at every turn of the road, but more about the broad picture of what this age comprises.

Human impact has pushed Earth into the Anthropocene, scientists say
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/07/human-impact-has-pushed-earth-into-the-anthropocene-scientists-say

New study provides one of the strongest cases yet that the planet has entered a new geological epoch. There is now compelling evidence to show that humanity’s impact on the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and wildlife has pushed the world into a new geological epoch, according to a group of scientists.

The question of whether humans’ combined environmental impact has tipped the planet into an “Anthropocene” – ending the current Holocene which began around 12,000 years ago – will be put to the geological body that formally approves such time divisions later this year.

The new study provides one of the strongest cases yet that from the amount of concrete mankind uses in building to the amount of plastic rubbish dumped in the oceans, Earth has entered a new geological epoch.

“We could be looking here at a stepchange from one world to another that justifies being called an epoch,” said Dr Colin Waters, principal geologist at the British Geological Survey and an author on the study published in Science on Thursday. “What this paper does is to say the changes are as big as those that happened at the end of the last ice age. This is a big deal.”



He said that the scale and rate of change on measures such as CO2 and methane concentrations in the atmosphere were much larger and faster than the changes that defined the start of the holocene.

Humans have introduced entirely novel changes, geologically speaking, such as the roughly 300m metric tonnes of plastic produced annually. Concrete has become so prevalent in construction that more than half of all the concrete ever used was produced in the past 20 years.

Wildlife, meanwhile, is being pushed into an ever smaller area of the Earth, with just 25% of ice-free land considered wild now compared to 50% three centuries ago. As a result, rates of extinction of species are far above long-term averages.

But the study says perhaps the clearest fingerprint humans have left, in geological terms, is the presence of isotopes from nuclear weapons testing that took place in the 1950s and 60s.

“Potentially the most widespread and globally synchronous Anthropogenic signal is the fallout from nuclear weapons testing,” the paper says. “It’s probably a good candidate [for a single line of evidence to justify a new epoch] ... we can recognise it in glacial ice, so if an ice core was taken from Greenland, we could say that’s where it [the start of the Anthropocene] was defined,” Waters said.

The study says that accelerating technological change, and a growth in population and consumption have driven the move into the Anthropocene, which advocates of the concept suggest started around the middle of the 20th century.

“We are becoming a major geological force, and that’s something that really has happened since we had that technological advance after the second world war. Before that it was horse and cart transporting stuff around the planet, it was low key, nothing was happening particularly dramatically,” said Waters.

He added that the study should not be taken as “conclusive statement” that the Anthropocene had arrived, but as “another level of information” for the debate on whether it should be formally declared an epoch by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS).

Waters said that if the ICS was to formally vote in favour of making the Anthropocene an official epoch, its significance to the wider world would be in conveying the scale of what humanity is doing to the Earth.

“We [the public] are well aware of the climate discussions that are going on. That’s one aspect of the changes happening to the entire planet. What this paper does, and the Anthropocene concept, is say that’s part of a whole set of changes to not just the atmosphere, but the oceans, the ice – the glaciers that we’re using for this project might not be here in 10,000 years. “People are environmentally aware these days but maybe the information is not available to them to show the scale of changes that are happening.”

The international team behind the paper includes several other members of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy’s Anthropocene working group, which hopes to present a proposal to the ICS later this year. The upswing in usage of the Anthropocene term is credited to Paul Crutzen, the Dutch Nobel prize-winning atmospheric chemist, after he wrote about it in 2000.

Prof Phil Gibbard, a geologist at the University of Cambridge who initially set up the working group examining formalising the Anthropocene, said that while he respected the work of Waters and others on the subject, he questioned how useful it would be to declare a new epoch.

“It’s really rather too near the present day for us to be really getting our teeth into this one. That’s not to say I or any of my colleagues are climate change deniers or anything of that kind, we fully recognise the points: the data and science is there. “What we question is the philosophy, and usefulness. It’s like having a spanner but no use for it,” he said.

Gibbard suggested it might be better if the Anthropocene was seen as a cultural term – such as as the Neolithic era, the end of the stone age – rather than a geological one.

[Michael]

Hard to say. On one hand, the change is certainly dramatic. On the other, it has happened primarily in the last 1-2 hundred years, the worst of which is measured in decades. On the long scale, we a screen blimp of nano-seconds.

[erik]

Refugees - by mid-2015 there were about 60 million displaced persons around the world, i.e. around 1% of world population (UNHCR).
http://www.unhcr.org/56701b969.html

By the end of 2014, 59.5 million individuals were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, generalized violence, or human rights violations.(1) An updated figure on global forced displacement was not available at the time of writing this report. As the number of refugees, asylum-seekers, and internally displaced persons (IDPs) worldwide continued to grow in 2015, it is likely that this figure has far surpassed 60 million.

Countries hosting refugees as of mid-2015 (source: UNHCR):


Countries - sources of refugees as of mid-2015

[Jahn]

Well, this similarity between human reproduction and how bacteria sometimes reproduce is a part of a larger discussion.
I shall only show two graphs this time. 1st the number of people on this Earth (despite genocide, wars, the Spanish flu and you name it), and 2nd along with a typical growth of bacteria.

It is easy to see the high correlation between these two phenomenas.

This is the poulation graph


This is the bacteria graph


If the number of people on this planet is one of the greatest threat to the eco-system. My only advice is "stop flowering" :-)

[Michael]

I've pondered this a little. I don't think it's the sex drive so much as the family drive. Most people want to have a family of their own, which is going to be hard to stop. Having said that, the population is actually falling now in most wealthy countries. As they become educated, they have less children, for numerous reasons.

[Nick]

As they become educated, they have less children, for numerous reasons.

I've heard this argument. I've also heard a related argument that increased life expectancy leads to reduction in birthrate, as people are less afraid of dying. 

[Nick]

This is the poulation graph


This is the bacteria graph

Here is a similar graph.

In the Global Brain, by Howard Bloom; he makes an intriguing argument that we are all part of a collective brain, not just all humans, but humans, animals, plants, and even bacteria all one brain.

[erik]

There are several reasons for explosive population growth since 1950s: antibiotics, fertilizer revolution, etc. They all reduce mortality rates faster than birth rates decline. Hence, the explosive growth of population.




The picture above illustrates the argument - at least half of the most populous countries are what used to be called "third world" and are presently known as "developing states".

The argument about declining birth rates is supported by statistics. The birth rates are dropping everywhere - but slower than mortality rates. UN data (2015) says that the highest fertility rate is in Africa - 4.7 children per woman. In Asia and Latin America that figure equals 2.2, in Europe 1.6, in North America 1.9, and in Oceania 2.4. The world average is 2.4.



This is what is generally expected to happen in terms of births:

However, the population is expected to keep growing.

[Jahn]

Here is a similar graph.

In the Global Brain, by Howard Bloom; he makes an intriguing argument that we are all part of a collective brain, not just all humans, but humans, animals, plants, and even bacteria all one brain.

Or one connected form of life, within a hologram.
Who knows.
The greater the understanding and knowing, the greater the not understanding and unknownable.

[Michael]

Population continuing to increase or not, I personally can vouch for the reality that we have plagued this earth like rats. Can't see it ending well.

[Jahn]

Population continuing to increase or not, I personally can vouch for the reality that we have plagued this earth like rats. Can't see it ending well.

Rats or bacteria, we have at least fulfilled the scripture ... to fill the Earth.

Moses 1:27-28

1:27 And God created man after his likeness, after the likeness of God created he him: male and female created he them.

1:28 ¶ And God blessed them, and God said unto them: Grow and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and over the fowls of the air, and over all the beasts that move on the earth.

.

[erik]

The total number of refugees in the world broke through the level of 60 million.

http://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2016/6/5763b65a4/global-forced-displacement-hits-record-high.html

GENEVA, June 20 (UNHCR) – Wars and persecution have driven more people from their homes than at any time since UNHCR records began, according to a new report released today by the UN Refugee Agency. The report, entitled Global Trends, noted that on average 24 people were forced to flee each minute in 2015, four times more than a decade earlier, when six people fled every 60 seconds.

The detailed study, which tracks forced displacement worldwide based on data from governments, partner agencies and UNHCR’s own reporting, found a total 65.3 million people were displaced at the end of 2015, compared to 59.5 million just 12 months earlier.

It is the first time in the organization’s history that the threshold of 60 million has been crossed.

“More people are being displaced by war and persecution and that’s worrying in itself, but the factors that endanger refugees are multiplying too,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi. “At sea, a frightening number of refugees and migrants are dying each year; on land, people fleeing war are finding their way blocked by closed borders. Closing borders does not solve the problem.”
...
To put it in perspective, the tally is greater than the population of the United Kingdom – or of Canada, Australia and New Zealand combined. It is made up of 3.2 million people in industrialized countries who, at the end of 2015, were awaiting decisions on asylum – the largest total UNHCR has ever recorded.

Also in the tally are a record 40.8 million people who had been forced to flee their homes but were within the confines of their own countries, another record for the UN Refugee Agency. And there are 21.3 million refugees.

Forced displacement has been on the rise since at least the mid-1990s in most regions, but over the past five years the rate has increased.
The reasons are threefold:

1) conflicts that cause large refugee outflows, like Somalia and Afghanistan – now in their third and fourth decade respectively – are lasting longer;
2) dramatic new or reignited conflicts and situations of insecurity are occurring more frequently. While today’s largest is Syria, wars have broken out in the past five years in South Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Ukraine and Central African Republic, while thousands more people have fled raging gang and other violence in Central America;
3) the rate at which solutions are being found for refugees and internally displaced people has been on a falling trend since the end of the Cold War, leaving a growing number in limbo.
...
The study found that three countries produce half the world’s refugees. Syria at 4.9 million, Afghanistan at 2.7 million and Somalia at 1.1 million together accounted for more than half the refugees under UNHCR’s mandate worldwide. Colombia at 6.9 million, Syria at 6.6 million and Iraq at 4.4 million had the largest numbers of internally displaced people.

[erik]

We live in an urbanised world



Cities are the manifestation of the cultural, economic and social acceleration that we have experienced in our modern history. In 1950 about 2/3 of the population worldwide lived in rural settlements and 1/3 in urban settlements. By 2050, we will observe roughly the reverse distribution, with more than 6 billion people living in the messy, burgeoning athmosphere of urbanized areas.

According to the Sustainable Urbanization Policy Brief, urban centres currently occupy less than 5% of the world’s landmass. Nevertheless they account for around 70% of both global energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission. Innovation in urban infrastrucure and technology is essential when addressing this issue. For instance, greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced by up to 1.5 billion CO2e annually by 2030, primarily through transformative change in transport systems in the world’s 724 largest cities.

Between now and 2050, 90% of the expected increase in the world’s urban population will take place in the urban areas of Africa and Asia. In other words the projected urban growth will be concentrated in cities in the developing world where the correlation of the rate of urbanization with economic growth has been weaker.

The global trends of urbanization in the first decades of the 21st century are significantly different from what we have experienced so far in terms of urban transition. Urbanization is taking place at lower levels of economic development and the majority of future urban population growth will take place in small- to medium-sized urban areas in developing countries. Expansion of urban areas is on average twice as fast as urban population with significant consequences for greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

According to this year’s United Nations report on World Urbanization we will observe the following trends:

.Continuing population growth and urbanization are projected to add 2.5 billion people to the world’s urban population by 2050, with nearly 90% of the increase concentrated in Asia and Africa.
- The fastest growing urban agglomerations are medium-sized cities and cities with less than 1 million inhabitants located in Asia and Africa.
- Most megacities and large cities are located in the global South.
- Just three countries — India, China and Nigeria – together are expected to account for 37 per cent of the projected growth of the world’s urban population between 2014 and 2050. India is projected to add 404 million urban dwellers, China 292 million and Nigeria 212 millions.
- Close to half of the world’s urban dwellers reside in relatively small settlements of less than 500,000 inhabitants, while only around 1/8 live in the 28 mega-cities with more than 10 million inhabitants.
- The number of mega-cities has nearly tripled since 1990; and by 2030, 41 urban agglomerations are projected to house at least 10 million inhabitants each.
- Tokyo is projected to remain the world’s largest city in 2030 with 37 million inhabitants, followed closely by Delhi where the population is projected to rise swiftly to 36 million.

[erik]

I stayed back and simply watched the rapid staccato of news of the last eight weeks:

1) Americans decimated Russian mercenaries in Syria
2) Russian embassy in Argentine and planes carrying top-level Russian officials involved in smuggling of cocaine for years
3) Russian president told the world that Russia has nuclear-powered cruise missiles that can fly almost indefinitely and anywhere in the world
4) Russian defector poisoned in Salisbury, UK with an extremely lethal military-grade nerve agent
5) UN summit in Colombia told the world that the number of species keeps falling and the UN conservation plans are moving ahead only very slowly
6) Russian president Putin elected for the 4th term
7) Americans almost decimated Russian mercenaries again in Syria
8 ) Trump troubled by various scandals
9) Over 150 Russian diplomats expelled from 24 countries to which Russia responds with its own expulsions
10) US willing to engage in trade war with China and possibly with the EU
11) Northern white rhino went extinct as the last living male died
12) Chinese turn their president into Emperor by allowing him to rule for life. He gives a speech where he promises to fight to the bitter end anyone who tries to do anything against and to China
13) Fire in Russian trade centre killed according to official information 60-70 people, according to social media and anonymous medics 300-400 people who were mostly children
14) Russia will carry out naval exercise in the middle of the Baltic Sea so that there will be disruption in international air traffic

The only sane person in the midst of all of it seems to be Kim Jong-un who is desperate to get nukes, while the US is governed by a ’stable genius’, China seems to be hellbent to become an Empire again, and Russia poisons people abroad, whereas its president rants about missiles that do not exist. 

[Michael]

Impressive