Good news and bad news from scientists this week. And also news which requires some debate and some analysis. But first, the weather!
It looks like it will snow in London today. That should remind you not to confuse the weather with the climate. Why?
Because even though it may snow in London today, scientists in the journal Nature have concluded that man-made climate change will delay the onset of the next ice age by about 100,000 years.
Break out the sunscreen Britain!
Delaying the next “glacial cycle” seems like just the sort of thing that would promote human life on planet earth. If you believe human beings are a virus destroying the Earth’s ecosystem, then today’s news is not good news. But because we’re talking geological time scales, it’s probably not going to affect you anyway.
Wear a beanie, but hope for sun.
In the meantime, another study published by the journal Science last week made a far more important and controversial claim: a new and distinct geological age began with the first atomic bomb. That, plus carbon dioxide emissions and the industrial (energy) revolution, have made humans the “dominant geologic force shaping the planet”, according to Colin Waters, a geologist at the British Geological Survey.
We have entered “the Human Age”
Now, everything I learned about geology I learned from my friend Byron King (a geologist) and from living in the Rocky Mountains and travelling through the American southwest (New Mexico, Utah, Arizona and parts of Colorado). It’s not much. But geological timescales are long; tens of millions of years. They also involve measurable shifts from one period and era to another. Those shifts can be found in rocks (or the sedimentary record, to use a more precise term).
Why does it matter? Well, geologists would say we’re currently living in the Holocene Epoch of the Quarternary Period of the Cenozoic Era of the Phanerozoic Eon. From smallest to largest, then, it goes like this: ages, epochs, periods, eras, eons and supereons. Shifts from one age to another usually mark a big change in the course of the planet (I’m talking to you, dinosaurs)
The Holocene Age – the Age scientists claim we have left to enter the Anthropocene – marks the rise of human beings and agriculture. We’ve been around the planet for a while (in human terms) but not long at all (in geological terms). What’s interesting about the studies published recently is the claim that the Anthropocene Age – the Human Age – is a distinct period in which our impact on the planet exceeds that of the sun, the wind, water, glaciation and erosion.
A modest human being would shrink from the claim. “All we are is dust in the wind”, as the song goes from Kansas. “Carry on my wayward son”. But the geologists are serious. The “Human Age” is the time in geological history where we can make or break the planet, from nuclear fallout to CO2 emissions.
It’s a pretty big claim
So big that I won’t even try to “unpack” it in today’s letter. But there are two sides of it. One is the obvious environmental side: we are altering our planet in measurable ways and that those ways are morally and ethically “bad” or, at the very least “unsustainable”.
The other side of it is that humans have been altering and changing their environment since they showed up on the geological scene. Our brain is our chief evolutionary advantage. Modern man makes his mark on the world by changing it.
The project Nick has set for himself this year – involving artificial intelligence and massive technological changes in energy, medicine, and computing – is the other side of the “Human Age”. Maybe we can change our world for the better, solve the problems of scarcity, ageing, and hunger.
Or maybe none of those things will happen. But the pace of change is certainly accelerating, no matter what we call it. For the brief little window of time we have on this earth, you can either prosper or suffer from that change. Probably both. More on living with it – and trying to profit from it – tomorrow.
Category: Geopolitics