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AbruptSLR

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #50 on: January 09, 2016, 03:15:20 AM »
Terry & JMP,

Apparently, as this will define a new geologic time unit, there needs to be "golden spike" that can be dug-up from the Earth (like fallout radionuclides or particulates from fossil fuel combustion) rendering the Anthropocene stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene and earlier epochs.  I imagine that before the full geologic society votes to create the Anthropocene one of the many possible stratigrahic layers deposited between 1945 & 1964 will be selected and the year in which that layer was deposited will be the starting point for the Anthropocene.

Best,
ASLR
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

Juan C. García

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #51 on: January 09, 2016, 05:49:28 AM »
From my point of view, the Anthropocene should start when humanity generate a great event on the planet. Even that atomic bombs, per example, where an important event, they did not have a great effect on Earth. We can talk about the ozone hole, that is a great influence of humanity on our planet, but I believe that the greatest effect that humanity is going to make on our planet, that could change our lifestyle on very different ways, is the melt of the Arctic Sea Ice. This event can (and I believe it will) be the starting point to the melt of Greenland, to change the coastlines of the continents, it will accelerate global warming in different ways, etc.
So, from my point of view, 2007 should be considered the starting point to the Anthropocene.
I recommended you to see the following presentation of Mark Serreze on the 2007 AGU Fall Meeting and considered how he finds 2007 as a possible “point of no return” or “tipping point”, at the same time that he forecast 2030 as a year with a possible Arctic ice-free on summer. He also affirms that the Arctic sea ice will disappear abruptly, ¿so why a linear trend on all the NSIDC monthly graphs? After having 2007, 2011 and 2015 with almost the same level of ASI, and after 2012 with remarkably lower ice, shouldn´t we considerer 2007 as the year that mark the point of no return?

http://www.agu.org/webcast/fm07/Serreze/index.html
Which is the best answer to Sep-2012 ASI lost (compared to 1979-2000)?
50% [NSIDC Extent] or
73% [PIOMAS Volume]

Volume is harder to measure than extent, but 3-dimensional space is real, 2D's hide ~50% thickness gone.
-> IPCC/NSIDC trends [based on extent] underestimate the real speed of ASI lost.

ael

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #52 on: January 09, 2016, 07:27:35 AM »
With so much fossil fuel having been burned, it has made carbon 14 aging useless for "modern" artifacts.   That is almost a golden spike.

LRC1962

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #53 on: January 09, 2016, 11:08:03 AM »
Each specially named period of time has a name because there is a defining layer in the fossil record that can be found. This layer is either defined by a mass extinction event or a mass diversification in the plants and animals. The exact period is also farther defined because the understanding of what was happening climatologically.
IMHO the Holocene period should have its own distinct period because climatologically it was unusually very stable and allowed humans to become the dominate species in the world. As far as this latest time period I believe it should have its start at the beginning of the Industrial revolution. Why?
There will be a very distinct layer in the fossil record because it was a start of global geoengineering in that valleys were filled in and mountains flattened. Also you had the development of massive garbage disposal on a global scale which includes dispersal of very human engineered chemicals.
The final nail will be the very obvious signature of the start of exponential growth of FF CO2. The result of that would the the very rapid rise in global temperatures, which combined the with the geoengineering efforts and industrialization of food production results in the mass extinction of a large percentage of the living organisms.
There will be obvious geoengineering efforts to 'fix' the problem, but results of that will be as yet to be determined because we have no idea what path will be attempted and how successful it will be. In any case it would still be part of the new named period of time because it would be humans trying to still be the dominate force over what is happening over nature.
Granted how geologists will end up determining what type of time period it will be, it will still be a unique time period because it will have its own unique features that 'broke' the 'normal' flow of geological events.
Arguments can be made for the start of agriculture, start of city dwelling, start of large empires, but in each of those cases global impact was still minimal because nature could still reclaim what man had done. The Industrial Revolution changed all that because the scale of what was being done was global and what has been and is still being done to the climate is global and permanently is changing nature on a global scale, ie we can not return nature and climate to what it was like in the 1700's. Large, thick ASI will not return until CO2 and temperatures return to pre-industrial levels.
"All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second,  it is violently opposed; and Third, it is accepted as self-evident."
       - Arthur Schopenhauer

AbruptSLR

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #54 on: January 17, 2016, 05:24:06 PM »
The linked reference supports the case that early anthropogenic agricultural activity sustained the Holocene for a longer period than would naturally occur; which supports the argument for an early date for the beginning of the Anthropocene:

A.Ganopolski, R.Winkelmann and H. J.Schellnhuber (2016), "Critical insolation–CO2 relation for diagnosing past and future glacial inception", Nature, doi:10.1038/nature16494

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v529/n7585/full/nature16494.html

Abstract: "The past rapid growth of Northern Hemisphere continental ice sheets, which terminated warm and stable climate periods, is generally attributed to reduced summer insolation in boreal latitudes. Yet such summer insolation is near to its minimum at present, and there are no signs of a new ice age. This challenges our understanding of the mechanisms driving glacial cycles and our ability to predict the next glacial inception. Here we propose a critical functional relationship between boreal summer insolation and global carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration, which explains the beginning of the past eight glacial cycles and might anticipate future periods of glacial inception. Using an ensemble of simulations generated by an Earth system model of intermediate complexity constrained by palaeoclimatic data, we suggest that glacial inception was narrowly missed before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The missed inception can be accounted for by the combined effect of relatively high late-Holocene CO2 concentrations and the low orbital eccentricity of the Earth. Additionally, our analysis suggests that even in the absence of human perturbations no substantial build-up of ice sheets would occur within the next several thousand years and that the current interglacial would probably last for another 50,000 years. However, moderate anthropogenic cumulative CO2 emissions of 1,000 to 1,500 gigatonnes of carbon will postpone the next glacial inception by at least 100,000 years. Our simulations demonstrate that under natural conditions alone the Earth system would be expected to remain in the present delicately balanced interglacial climate state, steering clear of both large-scale glaciation of the Northern Hemisphere and its complete deglaciation, for an unusually long time."


Caption for first image: "Best-fit logarithmic relation (black line) between the maximum summer insolation at 65° N and the CO₂ threshold for glacial inception; grey shaded area indicates ±1s.d. Blue dots correspond to the coldest model version and red dots to the warmest."

Caption for second image: "The timing of past and future glacial inceptions can be explained by the CO2 concentration and the insolation–CO2 relation. The thin grey line depicts the CO2 threshold value for glacial inception, derived as a function of the maximum summer insolation at 65° N. The CO2 concentration from ice core data for the past 800,000 years is shown (blue line), along with the CO2 scenarios of 0 Gt C cumulative anthropogenic emissions (blue line), 500Gt C (orange line), 1,000Gt C (red line) and 1,500Gt C (dark red line). Pale blue vertical bars indicate the time periods when the reconstructed value is below the critical CO2 concentration, and the light blue bar shows the timing of a possible next glacial inception. The horizontal dotted line indicates the present-day CO2 level. The lower curve depicts a proxy for the global ice volume (thick grey line)."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #55 on: February 06, 2016, 08:46:24 PM »
The linked, open access, reference discusses the nature of the Anthropocene and how different it is from most other known biospheric relationships:

Mark Williams, Jan Zalasiewicz, Colin N. Waters, Matt Edgeworth, Carys Bennett, Anthony D. Barnosky, Erle C. Ellis, Michael A. Ellis, Alejandro Cearreta, P.K. Haff, Juliana A. Ivar do Sul, Reinhold Leinfelder, J.R. McNeill, Eric Odada, Naomi Oreskes, Andrew Revkin, Daniel deB Richter, Will Steffen, Colin Summerhayes, James P. Syvitski, Davor Vidas, Michael Wagreich, Scott L. Wing, Alexander P. Wolfe & An Zhisheng (2016), "The Anthropocene: a conspicuous stratigraphical signal of anthropogenic changes in production and consumption across the biosphere", Earth's Future, DOI: 10.1002/2015EF000339

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015EF000339/abstract

Abstract: "Biospheric relationships between production and consumption of biomass have been resilient to changes in the Earth system over billions of years. This relationship has increased in its complexity, from localised ecosystems predicated on anaerobic microbial production and consumption, to a global biosphere founded on primary production from oxygenic photoautotrophs, through the evolution of Eukarya, metazoans, and the complexly networked ecosystems of microbes, animals, fungi and plants that characterise the Phanerozoic Eon (the last ~541 million years of Earth history). At present, one species, Homo sapiens, is refashioning this relationship between consumption and production in the biosphere with unknown consequences. This has left a distinctive stratigraphy of the production and consumption of biomass, of natural resources, and of produced goods. This can be traced through stone tool technologies and geochemical signals, later unfolding into a diachronous signal of technofossils and human bioturbation across the planet, leading to stratigraphically almost isochronous signals developing by the mid-20th century. These latter signals may provide an invaluable resource for informing and constraining a formal Anthropocene chronostratigraphy, but are perhaps yet more important as tracers of a biosphere state that is characterised by a geologically unprecedented pattern of global energy flow that is now pervasively influenced and mediated by humans, and which is necessary for maintaining the complexity of modern human societies."


Caption for: "Figure 1. Produced energy and the pattern of human population growth from 1750.  Utilization of these energy sources, together with the energy used by humans from  net primary production, is now approaching the entire energy available to the global ecosystem before human intervention (Barnosky, 2015). Key to colours: dark blue = coal; dark brown = oil; green = natural gas; purple = nuclear; light blue = hydro; orange brown = biomass (e.g. plants, trees). Data source from: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8936


Caption for: "Figure 4. A chronology of the human influence on patterns of primary and secondary production, and consumption, and on energy use from fossils fuels, from the late Pliocene to present. The figure identifies key factors in the human appropriation of primary and secondary production, via technology (and technofossils), migration (see Fig. 5), cultural evolution (from circa 70,000 years ago, culturally modern humans), forest clearance and farming, industrialization (and use of fossil fuels), and the consequent 20th – 21st century surge in population growth. These changes are reflected in physical strata through the manifestation of ‘Boundary A’, sensu Edgeworth et al. (2015), the diachronous bounding surface which marks the base of anthropogenic deposits, above which is a lithostratigraphic entity that contains novel materials and remains of domesticated animals and plants found as inclusions in anthropogenic ground - a direct signal of the increasing impact of humans. Right hand column shows selected and illustrative (but not exhaustive) major impacts on charcoal for iron smelting at his Shropshire Coalbrookedale factory, often viewed as the ‘birthplace’ of modern industry. Jethro Tull’s development of the horse drawn seed drill and hoe contributed to what is called the British Agricultural Revolution, and forms part of a broader continuum of agricultural developments beginning in medieval and early modern Europe and elsewhere."

Caption for: "Figure 5 The pattern of global migration exhibited by homo sapiens from the Paleolithic culture to present"
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #56 on: March 17, 2016, 04:39:49 PM »
In the linked reference Ruddiman et. al. (2016) provide more evidence of the Early Anthropocene theory:

W. F. Ruddiman, D. Q. Fuller, J. E. Kutzbach, P. C. Tzedakis, J. O. Kaplan, E. C. Ellis, S. J. Vavrus, C. N. Roberts, R. Fyfe, F. He, C. Lemmen & J. Woodbridge (15 February 2016), "Late Holocene climate: Natural or anthropogenic?", Review of Geophysics, DOI: 10.1002/2015RG000503

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015RG000503/full

Abstract: "For more than a decade, scientists have argued about the warmth of the current interglaciation. Was the warmth of the preindustrial late Holocene natural in origin, the result of orbital changes that had not yet driven the system into a new glacial state? Or was it in considerable degree the result of humans intervening in the climate system through greenhouse gas emissions from early agriculture? Here we summarize new evidence that moves this debate forward by testing both hypotheses. By comparing late Holocene responses to those that occurred during previous interglaciations (in section 2), we assess whether the late Holocene responses look different (and thus anthropogenic) or similar (and thus natural). This comparison reveals anomalous (anthropogenic) signals. In section 3, we review paleoecological and archaeological syntheses that provide ground truth evidence on early anthropogenic releases of greenhouse gases. The available data document large early anthropogenic emissions consistent with the anthropogenic ice core anomalies, but more information is needed to constrain their size. A final section compares natural and anthropogenic interpretations of the δ13C trend in ice core CO2."


See also:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/03/the-early-anthropocene-hypothesis-an-update/
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

sidd

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #57 on: March 17, 2016, 07:22:21 PM »
I am disappointed that the source for Fig 1 in the Williams paper is given as the (almost defunct) oildrum website, instead of the primary sources listed there. The Barnosky, Haberl and Erb papers in the references are very well worth reading, perhaps more so than Williams. I note that the list of authors for the Williams paper include both Revkin and Oreskes ...

Laurent

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #58 on: March 22, 2016, 12:04:24 PM »
Rate of carbon emissions put in context
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35867438
Quote
We are now putting carbon into the atmosphere at a rate unprecedented since at least the age of the dinosaurs, scientists say.

The researchers have examined ocean sediments laid down during the so-called Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum - a dramatic warming event some 56 million years ago.

They find the amount of CO2 going into the air at its onset was four billion tonnes a year at most.

Today's figure is 10 times as big.

The work is published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The PETM has been extensively studied by scientists because it is regarded as a possible "analogue" for what is happening on Earth now.

But the team argues that the scale of human-produced carbon emissions means that the lessons we could learn from the ancient event may actually have limited relevance.

"We have effectively entered an era of a no-analogue state, which represents a fundamental challenge to constraining future climate projections," they write in their paper.
Carbon pulse

The PETM was an extraordinary occurrence in Earth history.

Previous research has shown that ocean surface temperatures rose by about five degrees in a relatively short timescale, in the geological sense.

This phase of global warming drove a rapid turnover in species, both in the sea and on land.

CO2 concentration in the atmosphere very probably went above 1,000 parts per million by volume, compared with the 400ppm it stands at today.

The big pulse in emissions has been attributed to a range of factors, including a comet impact and prodigious volcanism. Some scientists suspect buried methane stores on the ocean floor were also released, amplifying the warming.

In their paper, Richard Zeebe and colleagues do not concern themselves with the cause; what they wanted to pin down was simply the rate of emissions.
Catch-up

The team achieved this by studying the remains of tiny marine organisms from the PETM known as Foraminifera.

The different types, or isotopes, of carbon and oxygen atoms in these fossils can be used to reconstruct likely CO2 levels and temperature 56 million years ago.

Analysis of this chemistry, together with some modelling work, suggests that temperature during the PETM rose in lock-step with carbon emissions.

Contrast this with the modern era where carbon emissions are rising so fast the "equilibrium temperature" lags behind.

Zeebe and colleagues calculate that it took at least 4,000 years for the PETM warming to take hold, with carbon going into the atmosphere at a rate of between 0.6 to 1.1 billion tonnes of carbon per annum.

At present, human emissions of CO2 are approaching 40 billion tonnes a year.
Time to cope

"If you go back to the [impactor] that killed off the dinosaurs (66 million years ago) - that was obviously an incredibly quick climate change," observed co-author Andy Ridgwell from Bristol University, UK.

"It wasn't driven by carbon emissions per say, but it was still an incredibly quick climate change. And so there has been a lot of searching around for what was the next most rapid event, and people have latched on to the PETM because it has all the characteristics of current warming and anthropogenic emissions - except it turns out the emissions in the PETM were actually an order of magnitude slower than they are today," he told BBC News.

Just how fast the planet might warm over the next two centuries is a topic of live debate because this likely be a big factor in how well species are able to adapt to changing conditions.

"The rate of change is as important as the magnitude of an event for determining particularly terrestrial ecosystem disruptions," Prof Ridgwell said.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos

AbruptSLR

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #59 on: March 26, 2016, 06:24:24 PM »
The linked reference discusses various frameworks (including those in different disciplines) for considering the Anthropocene as a rupture:

Clive Hamilton (February 22, 2016), "The Anthropocene as rupture", The Anthropocene Review, doi: 10.1177/2053019616634741

http://anr.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/02/19/2053019616634741.abstract

Abstract: "I argue that Earth System science – a recent paradigm shift in the earth and life sciences (Hamilton C and Grinevald J (2015) Was the Anthropocene anticipated? The Anthropocene Review 2(1): 59–72) – named the Anthropocene as the very recent rupture in Earth history arising from the impact of human activity on the Earth System as a whole. Many have mistakenly treated the new concept of the Earth System as if it were equivalent to ‘the landscape’, ‘ecosystems’ or ‘the environment’. The new paradigm of Earth System science is erroneously understood as no more than a variation or development of established ecological sciences. Various attempts to invent new starting dates for the new epoch are based on these misconceptions, as are a number of arguments deployed to reject the Anthropocene altogether. In this context I consider the early Anthropocene hypothesis, three readings of the Anthropocene as instances of ecosystem change, and the notion of the ‘good Anthropocene’. Using this frame I also assess the arguments of those who do not accept the idea of the new epoch. I defend the view that disciplines other than Earth System science distort the idea of the Anthropocene when they read it through their own lenses."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
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Laurent

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #60 on: April 04, 2016, 10:19:47 AM »
About absorbing non CO2 green house gazes :
http://www.centerforcarbonremoval.org/blog/2016/4/2/nonco2ghgremoval

The data they use is about CO2e on 100 years time frame but when will scientists start to write (not talk) about CO2e on 10 years time frame, plus they use old data for CH4 for example, 28 instead of 34 (time green house effect compare to CO2) on 100 years time frame in the last IPCC report. The reality is that methane has increased 250% for 200 years, if in laboratory we have reduction in reality that is not the case, so we must take into account a 10 years (20 if you want) frame.

Laurent

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #61 on: April 19, 2016, 06:35:03 PM »
Study: humans have caused all the global warming since 1950
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/apr/19/study-humans-have-caused-all-the-global-warming-since-1950

Quote
A new study published in Climate Dynamics has found that humans are responsible for virtually all of the observed global warming since the mid-20th century. It’s not a novel result – in fact, most global warming attribution studies have arrived at the same general result – but this study uses a new approach.

AbruptSLR

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #62 on: June 18, 2016, 10:09:52 AM »
The linked reference discusses the synergistic roles of climate warming & human occupation in Patagonian megafaunal extinctions in a narrow phase 12,280 ± 110 years ago:

Jessica L. Metcalf, et. al. (17 Jun 2016), "Synergistic roles of climate warming and human occupation in Patagonian megafaunal extinctions during the Last Deglaciation", Science Advances, Vol. 2, no. 6, e1501682, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1501682

http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/6/e1501682

Abstract: "The causes of Late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions (60,000 to 11,650 years ago, hereafter 60 to 11.65 ka) remain contentious, with major phases coinciding with both human arrival and climate change around the world. The Americas provide a unique opportunity to disentangle these factors as human colonization took place over a narrow time frame (~15 to 14.6 ka) but during contrasting temperature trends across each continent. Unfortunately, limited data sets in South America have so far precluded detailed comparison. We analyze genetic and radiocarbon data from 89 and 71 Patagonian megafaunal bones, respectively, more than doubling the high-quality Pleistocene megafaunal radiocarbon data sets from the region. We identify a narrow megafaunal extinction phase 12,280 ± 110 years ago, some 1 to 3 thousand years after initial human presence in the area. Although humans arrived immediately prior to a cold phase, the Antarctic Cold Reversal stadial, megafaunal extinctions did not occur until the stadial finished and the subsequent warming phase commenced some 1 to 3 thousand years later. The increased resolution provided by the Patagonian material reveals that the sequence of climate and extinction events in North and South America were temporally inverted, but in both cases, megafaunal extinctions did not occur until human presence and climate warming coincided. Overall, metapopulation processes involving subpopulation connectivity on a continental scale appear to have been critical for megafaunal species survival of both climate change and human impacts."


See also:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/06/rising-temperatures-and-humans-were-deadly-combo-ancient-south-american-megafauna

Extract: "now, most researchers think that people were already in the Americas by at least 15,000 years ago. That means that people and megafauna actually coexisted for a few thousand years before the mass extinctions began. What changed to drive these animals out of existence?
To find the missing ingredient, Alan Cooper, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia, radiocarbon dated nearly 100 fossils from Patagonia and sequenced their mitochondrial DNA, genes found in the power plants of cells and passed down only from the mother. When he lined up their ages with global climate records, he noticed a pattern: Many species of megafauna seemed to disappear during a period of extreme warming around 12,300 years ago, Cooper and his team write today in Science Advances. Ice cores from Greenland and West Antarctica suggest that average global temperatures quickly shot up during that time. Patagonia warmed by about 2°C over 1000 years, and the effects were devastating: All but one of the species Cooper studied went extinct."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #63 on: June 18, 2016, 10:22:56 AM »
The linked reference is related to the research cited in my immediate prior post, in that "Cooper et al. report a close relationship between Pleistocene megafaunal extinction events and rapid warming events at the start of interstadial periods. Their analysis strengthens the case for climate change as the key driver of megafaunal extinctions, with human impacts playing a secondary role."

Alan Cooper, Chris Turney, Konrad A. Hughen, Barry W. Brook, H. Gregory McDonald & Corey J. A. Bradshaw, (07 Aug 2015), "Abrupt warming events drove Late Pleistocene Holarctic megafaunal turnover", Science, Vol. 349, Issue 6248, pp. 602-606, DOI: 10.1126/science.aac4315


http://science.sciencemag.org/content/349/6248/602

Abstract: "The mechanisms of Late Pleistocene megafauna extinctions remain fiercely contested, with human impact or climate change cited as principal drivers. We compared ancient DNA and radiocarbon data from 31 detailed time series of regional megafaunal extinctions and replacements over the past 56,000 years with standard and new combined records of Northern Hemisphere climate in the Late Pleistocene. Unexpectedly, rapid climate changes associated with interstadial warming events are strongly associated with the regional replacement or extinction of major genetic clades or species of megafauna. The presence of many cryptic biotic transitions before the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary revealed by ancient DNA confirms the importance of climate change in megafaunal population extinctions and suggests that metapopulation structures necessary to survive such repeated and rapid climatic shifts were susceptible to human impacts."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #64 on: August 18, 2016, 10:58:48 PM »
Clive Hamilton authored the linked article entitled: "The Anthropocene Belongs to Earth System Science"; in which he elaborates on the meaning of the new formal definition (starting after 1945) of the Anthropocene, as opposed to researchers who have supported earlier starting dates:

https://theconversation.com/the-anthropocene-belongs-to-earth-system-science-64105

Extract: "The idea of the Anthropocene was conceived by Earth System scientists to capture the very recent rupture in Earth history arising from the impact of human activity on the Earth System as a whole.

The Anthropocene is not defined by the broadening impact of humans on “the environment”, “ecosystems” or “the landscape”, that is, as an extension of what humans have been doing for centuries or millennia. It is defined by human interference, over recent decades, in the functioning of the Earth System, that is, the planet as a whole understood as a unified, complex, evolving system beyond the sum of its parts.
The components of the Earth System are integrated so that climate change, for example, affects not just the atmosphere but also the functioning of the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the biosphere and even the lithosphere. (Arguably, anthropogenic climate change is more of an oceanic than an atmospheric phenomenon.) Only in recent decades, or at most the last two centuries, have humans begun to change the way the Earth System operates."

See also:
http://www.nature.com/articles/536251a.epdf?author_access_token=Jy5IKcJrga-YuJ4q7tFbKNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PDpktllxwIwQQg8F9lEF1veN4vxSN6JcLcVPlVuG0G7iVaHH4s_UfpLq-O3Asm_c0A5-r_nzOYJtz6SA22zhLf

“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #65 on: August 24, 2016, 09:49:27 PM »
The definition of the Anthropocene may soon become official:

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/atomic-bombs-and-oil-addiction-herald-earth-s-new-epoch-anthropocene

Extract: "Just after World War II, when the atomic bombs fell and our thirst for coal and oil became a full-blown addiction, Earth entered the Anthropocene, a new geologic time when humanity’s environmental reach left a mark in sediments worldwide. That’s the majority conclusion of the Anthropocene Working Group, a collection of researchers that has spent the past 7 years quietly studying whether the term, already popular, should be submitted as a formal span of geologic time.

After tallying votes this month, the group has decided to propose the postwar boom of the late 1940s and early 1950s as the Anthropocene’s start date. The group will ask the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), the bureaucracy that governs geologic time, to recognize the Anthropocene as a series, the stratigraphic equivalent of an epoch, on par with the Holocene and Pleistocene that preceded it. Colin Waters, the group’s secretary and a geologist at the British Geological Survey in Keyworth, will reveal the group’s recommendations on 29 August at the International Geological Congress in Cape Town, South Africa."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #66 on: October 19, 2016, 03:30:20 AM »
Along the way to 9595 posts, I kept remembering lyrics from: "In The Year 2525", by Zager & Evans


Quote:

"In the year 9595, I'm kinda wonderin' if Man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give, and he ain't put back nothin', whoa-whoa...,
Now it's been 10,000 years, Man has cried a billion tears,
For what, he never knew. Now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night, The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away, Maybe it's only yesterday."
 
If one considers that the Early Anthropocene began with a combination of megafaunal extinctions, slash & burn agriculture & methane emissions from rice cultivation some 10,000 years ago (see the attached plots); then maybe it will have been 10,000 years of man's reign over the environment between 2050 & 2060.

Read more lyrics at:
http://www.metrolyrics.com/in-the-year-2525-lyrics-zager-and-evans.html


Edit: W.R.T. Megafauna extinctions see Replies: #21, 24, 25, 37, 38, 62 & 63,
« Last Edit: October 19, 2016, 01:10:49 PM by AbruptSLR »
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budmantis

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #67 on: October 19, 2016, 07:12:45 AM »
ASLR: When you reach 10,000 posts will you be elevated to ASIF "deity" or is ASIF royalty as far as it goes? All kidding aside, I've enjoyed your prodigious and very detailed contributions to the Forum.

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #68 on: January 24, 2017, 12:34:19 AM »
The linked open access reference supports the idea of an early anthropocene:

van der Kaars et. al. (2017), "Humans rather than climate the primary cause of Pleistocene megafaunal extinction in Australia", Naturel Communications, doi:10.1038/nconns14142

http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14142


See also
http://www.vocativ.com/395348/ancient-poop-humans-drove-australias-giant-animals-extinct/

“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
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jai mitchell

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #69 on: April 08, 2017, 08:30:47 PM »
This is an excellent resource that describes the ins and outs of the early glaciation offset hypothesis by ruddiman.  just found it and wanted to share.

http://environmentalscience.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199389414.001.0001/acrefore-9780199389414-e-192

some images follow







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jai mitchell

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #70 on: May 26, 2017, 05:12:52 PM »
I am calling this here as "beaver force" after the Clovis period North Americans who believed that there were beavers underneath the Foxe-Laurentide Ice Dome that lifted it up to cause sudden, unpredictable (Jokullhaup) floods.

VeilAlbertKallio,

I have not heard of any oral tradition history from the Clovis people, do you mean another tribe or group of peoples in the early americas?  do you have a source for this information?

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guygee

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #71 on: May 27, 2017, 03:01:27 PM »
I am calling this here as "beaver force" after the Clovis period North Americans who believed that there were beavers underneath the Foxe-Laurentide Ice Dome that lifted it up to cause sudden, unpredictable (Jokullhaup) floods.

VeilAlbertKallio,

I have not heard of any oral tradition history from the Clovis people, do you mean another tribe or group of peoples in the early americas?  do you have a source for this information?
Indeed, VeilAlbertKallio is undoubtedly mistaken about any historical knowledge of Clovis-period oral tradition; they are only known from their stone artifacts and evidence of habitation from archaeological sites. One could fill pages of references to peer-reviewed journal articles on this point, but the bare outline is given in this blog post by  anthropologist Greg Laden in light of the highly debated and dubious claims for evidence of hominid activity in the Americas in the previous inter-glacial period, which I found to be interesting, http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2017/05/02/about-that-130000-human-occupation-in-california/?utm_source=widgets
P.S. For those interested in more detail, see this review paper:
RM Ellsworth, "The Paleoindian Occupation of the Americas"
https://anthromuseum.missouri.edu/minigalleries/clovistools/EllsworthPaleoindianPaper.pdf
quote: "In contrast to the European Paleolithic archaeological record from the same time period, the Clovis record is largely barren in terms of non-lithic, organic artifactual remains." Further, "Other than a few scratch marks generally accepted to be human-made modifications, there is no portable artwork, carved figurines, cave paintings or petroglyphs that are clearly and definitively dated to the Clovis era..."
« Last Edit: May 27, 2017, 04:14:48 PM by guygee »

VeliAlbertKallio

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #72 on: May 28, 2017, 05:39:57 AM »
I apologize for taking a substantial time to respond. Despite a very comprehensive system how I keep my science library, it has over 40,000 items and even with my best efforts tracing records takes time and sometimes things simply can also get lost. However, I am now fortunately in a position to answer to you with some considerable. It is also to my understanding the position accepted by the museum of the said nation and presented there as a fact by the said nation.

First of all, I am pulling things out of my memory and there is always a possibility that inaccuracies can arise over time, but for the most part, I think my mental image was not too departed when I put forward the idea of Clovis people associating Jokullhaups from the Foxe Laurentide Ice dome, or the Laurentide Ice Sheet glacial lakes with 'bearver trickster' imaginary creatures under its ice.

Secondly, I labelled it as the Clovis period for the reason that it is the earliest culture that is widely recognized and geospatially covering the territories involved and generally understood as the source population of the later Native American Indians. The association to the collapse of the Lake Agassiz described associates the people of the period to the Clovis which is not the way the people contemporarily called of themselves. Thus Lage Agassiz time stamp associates it to Clovis.

Thirdly, the association of the event in question, the beaver-trickster (phenomenon) unleashing the collapse of Lake Agassiz took in a place from where these tribe had resided, Mackinac Island. The habitation of the area is through the Archaic Period hunter-gatherers of Clovis culture who "tended to settle along rivers and lakes in both coastal and interior regions for maximum access to food resources." Fiedel, Stuart J. (1992). "Prehistory of the Americas, 2nd Edition." Cambridge Univeristy Press. Then the Woodland Period follows these Archaic hunter-gatherers (but preceded the agriculturalist Mississippian cultures). The Middle Woodland period cultures of Hopewellian traditions covers St. Lawrence and Missisippian basins. The late Woodland Indians became known as the Menominee (who were forcibly moved from Mackinac Island by the US settlers who are the people with the recollection about the sudden collapse of Lake Agassiz and it becoming the present-day Lake Michigan and other lesser lakes:

"In Menominee mythology, Manabus, the trickster, "fired by his lust for revenge" shot two underground gods when the gods were at play. When they all dived into the water, a huge flood arose. "The water rose up .... It knew very well where Manabus had gone." He runs, he runs; but the water, coming [to McKenzie Island] from Lake Michigan, chases him faster and faster, even as he runs up a mountain and climbs to the top of the lofty pine at its peak. Four times he begs the tree to grow just a little more, and four times it obliges until it can grow no more. But the water keeps climbing "up, up, right to his chin, and there it stopped": there was nothing but water stretching out to the horizon. And then Manabus, helped by diving animals, and especially the bravest of all, the Muskrat [beaver], creates the world [the Great Lakes area] as we know it today." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mackinac_Island_topographic_map-en.svg

"Ancient Waterfall Discovered Off Mackinac Island's Shoreline
>
 An ancient 100-foot waterfall off the shore of Mackinac Island was discovered underwater last week by the crew aboard the training and research vessel The Pride of Michigan. They came across the 10,000-year-old waterfall while taking soundings in the area. The waterfall is part of an ancient and now-submerged river, called the Mackinac Channel, that flowed through the Straits before the existence of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. "It is not as large as Niagara," said Captain Luke Clyburn, "but it is a very, very significant waterfall." Now lying 110 feet beneath the surface of Lake Huron, just off the east shore of Mackinac Island, the site shows that water flowed from west to east along the channel before plunging nearly 100 feet from a limestone cliff. Soundings recorded Thursday, August 16, revealed the cliff and sharp drop in the riverbed.
>
 "This is a major find for this area," said Captain Clyburn. "To be able to come in and say, 'Here was a waterfall,' it kind of brings a name to this whole river channel." From research in the area two years ago, Captain Clyburn speculated that a rapids or a waterfall might exist. While testing new sounding equipment Thursday, his suspicions of a waterfall were confirmed based on readings from the site. "We'll be back up doing more work in this area," he said, "now that we've pinpointed the waterfall." In conjunction with training for U.S. Naval Sea Cadets, the ship conducts underwater research and is on a mission to learn about and find areas inhabited by cultures 10,000 years ago.
>
The discovery of the waterfall on the former 80-mile-long river, said Captain Clyburn, increases the probability that people lived nearby, and it increases the chances of finding evidence of them on future dives. The existence of the ancient river channel was found on soundings taken in the 1930s and later confirmed when spruce stumps discovered about 120 feet beneath the surface of the Straits were carbon-dated to 10,000 years ago. "
http://www.mackinacislandnews.com/news/2007-08-25/Front_page/003.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackinac_Island#cite_note-Waterfall-29
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/1fff893f54ba4e7d9165f8de953cba78/MI--Mackinac-Island-Remains/
http://www.9and10news.com/Category/Story/?id=309192&cID=1



I am calling this here as "beaver force" after the Clovis period North Americans who believed that there were beavers underneath the Foxe-Laurentide Ice Dome that lifted it up to cause sudden, unpredictable (Jokullhaup) floods.

VeilAlbertKallio,

I have not heard of any oral tradition history from the Clovis people, do you mean another tribe or group of peoples in the early americas?  do you have a source for this information?
« Last Edit: May 28, 2017, 11:36:21 PM by VeliAlbertKallio »
"Setting off atomic bombs is considered socially pungent as the years are made of fleeting ice that are painted by the piling up of the rays of the sun."

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #73 on: May 28, 2017, 06:27:09 AM »
The site, Mackinac Island, where the recollection described comes is the precise point where the Lake Agassiz broke waters and redirected the Laurentide Ice Sheet drainage from the River Missisippi to the Gulf of St Lawrence. Menominee were forcibly removed from their ancient habitat here in the 19th century. (See the citations and references on the previous post).
« Last Edit: May 28, 2017, 11:37:24 PM by VeliAlbertKallio »
"Setting off atomic bombs is considered socially pungent as the years are made of fleeting ice that are painted by the piling up of the rays of the sun."

jai mitchell

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #74 on: May 28, 2017, 07:45:15 AM »
Thank you, that was an excellent and insightful read! 
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Hyperion

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #75 on: May 28, 2017, 09:40:21 AM »
I wouldn't be so sure that humans were not in the Americas in the last interglacial. Though perhaps not homo sap. These ones have up to 2 or 3 times as big a brain as us. Though its not just in the Americas that the conehead type is found. There is also the matter of raised garden type geoglyphs of very large scale in the Altiplano with glacial period sediment fans over them. Not to mention extensive submerged Megalithic structures in the Caribbean etc.

The Mitochondrial  DNA maps show a Ice age civilisation spanning the tropical Pacific. Not so the Y chromosome ones. The men tend to invade new territories while the women stay put.
Policy: The diversion of NZ aluminum production to build giant space-mirrors to melt the icecaps and destroy the foolish greed-worshiping cities of man. Thereby returning man to the sea, which he should never have left in the first place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGillicuddy_Serious_Party

bbr2314

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #76 on: May 28, 2017, 09:54:56 AM »
I wouldn't be so sure that humans were not in the Americas in the last interglacial. Though perhaps not homo sap. These ones have up to 2 or 3 times as big a brain as us. Though its not just in the Americas that the conehead type is found. There is also the matter of raised garden type geoglyphs of very large scale in the Altiplano with glacial period sediment fans over them. Not to mention extensive submerged Megalithic structures in the Caribbean etc.

The Mitochondrial  DNA maps show a Ice age civilisation spanning the tropical Pacific. Not so the Y chromosome ones. The men tend to invade new territories while the women stay put.
I believe those head shapes were caused by molding via whatever torturous devices they had, but more important re: humans/hominids in the Americas is this recent discovery which pushes arrival back to 130K yrs ago!

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/unknown-humans-were-in-california-130000-years-ago-say-scientists/

Hyperion

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #77 on: May 28, 2017, 11:36:09 AM »
Certainly it was not head binding. Though that is a common claim, stemming from the practice surviving culturally in some places from times when mothers wanted their kids to look like they were the offspring of these chaps. One that must have had its head bound in the womb below. ::)

And I wouldn't be too sure we are the first with Nuclear, Space technology etc. Cultures from China to the Americas, to Scandinavia talk of artificial suns in orbit around the earth and mars and moons of the giant planets. And throwing them at their enemies on the other side of the world. Engraving of them doing that attached also.

Heres some Flood stories attached. just a small sample.
I think the Welsh one sounds like a Agassiz Event: 8)

 The lake of Llion burst, flooding all lands. Dwyfan and Dwyfach escaped eastward in a mastless ship with pairs of every sort of living creature. They landed in Prydain (Britain) and repopulated the world. [Gaster, pp. 92-93]
Policy: The diversion of NZ aluminum production to build giant space-mirrors to melt the icecaps and destroy the foolish greed-worshiping cities of man. Thereby returning man to the sea, which he should never have left in the first place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGillicuddy_Serious_Party

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #78 on: May 28, 2017, 07:46:25 PM »
Brien Foerster has long studied those people with giant skulls, somewhere on his site are photos of a foetus with the same skull type. https://hiddenincatours.com/ here it is. https://hiddenincatours.com/two-american-doctors-examine-elongated-skull-mother-baby-fetus-bolivia/

guygee

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #79 on: May 28, 2017, 11:34:30 PM »
I wouldn't be so sure that humans were not in the Americas in the last interglacial. Though perhaps not homo sap. These ones have up to 2 or 3 times as big a brain as us. Though its not just in the Americas that the conehead type is found. There is also the matter of raised garden type geoglyphs of very large scale in the Altiplano with glacial period sediment fans over them. Not to mention extensive submerged Megalithic structures in the Caribbean etc.

The Mitochondrial  DNA maps show a Ice age civilisation spanning the tropical Pacific. Not so the Y chromosome ones. The men tend to invade new territories while the women stay put.
Nobody is "sure", but as G. Laden points out in the link I posted, there is a lack of evidence.

As for contact between Austronesian peoples with the Americas, I think there is strong evidence, not just from human DNA studies but also from plant DNA, e.g. pre-European existence of coconuts on the west coast of Central America, sweet potatoes in the Cook Islands. But again, we do not know when that contact took place, whether it was a founding event or much later. "Invading men" may travel without women (although I think that is a culturally-biased assumption) but that strategy would surely fail for colonists.

 There is quite a lively debate ongoing between linguists, geneticists, archeologists and anthropologists on these issues, and nothing has been settled.  I am none of these, count me in as an interested observer of these sciences, with an emphasis on Science.

There is no 'scientific consensus' as there is with AGW on the origin and details of the first peopling of the Americas.
« Last Edit: May 28, 2017, 11:41:16 PM by guygee »

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #80 on: May 29, 2017, 12:26:21 AM »
Brien Foerster has long studied those people with giant skulls, somewhere on his site are photos of a foetus with the same skull type. https://hiddenincatours.com/ here it is. https://hiddenincatours.com/two-american-doctors-examine-elongated-skull-mother-baby-fetus-bolivia/
Further reading on Brien Foerster: https://badarchaeology.wordpress.com/tag/brien-foerster/

AbruptSLR

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #81 on: June 15, 2017, 01:26:57 AM »
The linked reference indicates that climate model projections of the Holocene were/are more accurate than Shaun Marcott's reconstruction of this period.

Jonathan L. Baker, Matthew S. Lachniet, Olga Chervyatsova, Yemane Asmerom & Victor J. Polyak (2017), "Holocene warming in western continental Eurasia driven by glacial retreat and greenhouse forcing", Nature Geoscience, Volume: 10, Pages: 430–435, doi:10.1038/ngeo2953

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v10/n6/full/ngeo2953.html
&
http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/ngeo2953

Abstract: "The global temperature evolution during the Holocene is poorly known. Whereas proxy data suggest that warm conditions prevailed in the Early to mid-Holocene with subsequent cooling, model reconstructions show long-term warming associated with ice-sheet retreat and rising greenhouse gas concentrations. One reason for this contradiction could be the under-representation of indicators for winter climate in current global proxy reconstructions. Here we present records of carbon and oxygen isotopes from two U–Th-dated stalagmites from Kinderlinskaya Cave in the southern Ural Mountains that document warming during the winter season from 11,700 years ago to the present. Our data are in line with the global Holocene temperature evolution reconstructed from transient model simulations. We interpret Eurasian winter warming during the Holocene as a response to the retreat of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets until about 7,000 years ago, and to rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and winter insolation thereafter. We attribute negative δ18O anomalies 11,000 and 8,200 years ago to enhanced meltwater forcing of North Atlantic Ocean circulation, and a rapid decline of δ13C during the Early Holocene with stabilization after about 10,000 years ago to afforestation at our study site. We conclude that winter climate dynamics dominated Holocene temperature evolution in the continental interior of Eurasia, in contrast to regions more proximal to the ocean."

See also:

"New research may resolve a climate ‘conundrum’ across the history of human civilization"

https://www.skepticalscience.com/research-resolve-holocene-conundrum.html

Extract: "… the overall temperature change during the Holocene matched pretty well in reconstructions and models, but the pattern didn’t. The best proxy reconstruction from a 2013 paper led by Shaun Marcott estimated more warming than models from 12,000 to 7,000 years ago. Then over the past 7,000 years, Marcott’s reconstruction estimated about 0.5°C cooling while model simulations showed the planet warming by about the same amount.

A new paper led by Jonathan Baker may help to resolve that discrepancy. The scientists examined stalagmites from a cave in the southern Ural Mountains of Russia. The ratio of oxygen isotopes in the stalagmites can be used to estimate past winter temperatures. The Marcott study had one known shortcoming – the proxy temperature data they used mostly represented the summer season. And as Baker explained, changes in the Earth’s orbital cycles have caused summer cooling and winter warming during the Holocene:

Because our orbit is elliptical, we’re not always the same distance from the sun. About 10,000 years ago, Earth was closest to the sun during summer and farthest during winter. Today it is the opposite. Based on this variable alone, we would expect winter warming and summer cooling in the northern hemisphere (and vice versa in the southern hemisphere) over the last 10,000 years."

During the period from 15,000 to 7,000 years ago, temperatures were rising because large ice sheets were disappearing. That was especially true in the summer because back then, the Earth was closest to the sun during that season. So the Marcott temperature reconstruction, which was predominantly based on summer temperature proxies, estimated a lot of warming from 15,000 to 7,000 years ago (more than in model simulations), then a small cooling thereafter, while models simulate a slight warming over the past 7,000 years due to a slow rise in greenhouse gases.

The stalagmite data in the Baker study show that winter temperatures behaved differently and can reconcile the discrepancies between the Marcott reconstruction and model simulations. This suggests that the climate models are right – Earth’s surface temperature warmed rapidly at the end of the last ice age, from about 17,000 to 7,000 years ago, then the rate of warming slowed as the climate stabilized. However, it didn’t reverse into a cooling trend, because atmospheric greenhouse gas levels were rising.
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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #82 on: June 15, 2017, 07:05:37 AM »
I wouldn't be so sure that humans were not in the Americas in the last interglacial. Though perhaps not homo sap. These ones have up to 2 or 3 times as big a brain as us. Though its not just in the Americas that the conehead type is found. There is also the matter of raised garden type geoglyphs of very large scale in the Altiplano with glacial period sediment fans over them. Not to mention extensive submerged Megalithic structures in the Caribbean etc.

The Mitochondrial  DNA maps show a Ice age civilisation spanning the tropical Pacific. Not so the Y chromosome ones. The men tend to invade new territories while the women stay put.

Was a bit skeptical about the turn this thread took in late May, but in the spirit of keeping an open mind upon further research it does appear that several specimens of these early Americans survived into the 1970s.


AbruptSLR

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #83 on: August 19, 2017, 06:42:57 PM »
The linked reference indicates that evidence for an early Anthropocene date takes many different forms, including increase sedimentation in the Dead Sea:

Title: "Earliest human-made climate change took place 11,500 years ago"

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170605110059.htm

Extract: "A new Tel Aviv University study has uncovered the earliest known geological indications of humanmade climate change from 11,500 years ago. Within a core sample retrieved from the Dead Sea, researchers discovered basin-wide erosion rates dramatically incompatible with known tectonic and climatic regimes of the period recorded."

See also:

Yin Lu, Nicolas Waldmann, Dani Nadel, Shmuel Marco. Increased sedimentation following the Neolithic Revolution in the Southern Levant. Global and Planetary Change, 2017; 152: 199 DOI: 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2017.04.003

&

https://www.sciencedaily.com/news/fossils_ruins/early_climate/
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AbruptSLR

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #84 on: December 17, 2017, 05:23:32 PM »
Ruddiman (2017) adds geographic evidence for the early anthropogenic hypothesis:

William Ruddiman (2017), "Geographic evidence of the early anthropogenic hypothesis", Anthropocene, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2017.11.003

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213305417300504?utm_content=buffer4f59e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Abstract: "The early anthropogenic hypothesis claims that millennia ago farming began to transform landscapes sufficiently to emit greenhouse gases and extend the natural warmth of the current interglaciation that had been initiated by orbital variations. Part of the debate over the hypothesis during the last dozen years has centered on determining the best orbital analog to the Holocene among prior interglaciations, all of which must have been natural (non-anthropogenic) in origin. Since 2009, dozens of papers have assembled physical geographic evidence that points to the kind of large early agricultural impacts posed by the early anthropogenic hypothesis. These new findings include: pollen and archaeological evidence of carbon dioxide (CO2)-emitting early forest clearance in Europe and China, along with archaeobotanical and archaeological evidence of methane (CH4)-emitting rice irrigation and livestock tending across southern Asia. In addition, mapping of 14C-dated peat deposits has revealed an important CO2 sink of 12C-enriched terrestrial carbon during the last 7000 years that countered the δ13CO2 imprint of emissions from early deforestation. This viewpoint article provides a current perspective on this ongoing debate in the context of these recent findings."
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AbruptSLR

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #85 on: February 02, 2018, 04:44:55 PM »
The linked reference adds information about the early Holocene/Anthropocene:

Marsicek et al. (2018), "Reconciling divergent trends and millennial variations in Holocene temperatures", Nature, doi:10.1038/nature25464

http://www.nature.com/articles/nature25464.epdf?referrer_access_token=tmj4qyALYcUtbsXwmRfBDdRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0OajynsiI4jXncpU7EXgTD5wtNO6KcGzz2TL79FU1hfvNZLGYihDDKFxMAC-ScTr8Ni4_yGK1hSAjnKpIhlXldty34TemiGWYOq43nqFFVTAsC513276OenLhbbl20ABswN6jRSoiwtZbl30ANNbojj1M0ka6BZ_Ix9kDe7iwDcE5idmonYzLUNHxXpokolZDvjXAMfqLOxMqrWVg_-t6bVKgG5XAklpNKBPd2BfUzF5yohgGAVQbAzMOw7gnODu77y9j3QcM5tgG8KVS_v1rT8&tracking_referrer=thinkprogress.org

Overall, our reconstructions indicate that the on-going warming today would have started from a baseline approximately 0.5 °C higher  than observed had millennial-to-centennial-scale variations not produced cooling over the past two millennia that deviated from Holocene trends. The reconstructions support the ability of models such as CCSM3 to capture large-scale climate responses to external forcing and important internal dynamics. Although additional transient climate simulations and new, detailed palaeoclimate records are needed to further understand the processes involved, millennial-to-centennial-scale climate variability such as occurred during the Holocene could continue to amplify or modulate future temperature trends."
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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #86 on: April 20, 2018, 01:43:51 AM »
These finding make sense to me:

Title: "New Study Says Ancient Humans Hunted Big Mammals To Extinction"

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/19/604031141/new-study-says-ancient-humans-hunted-big-mammals-to-extinction

Extract: " Over the past 125,000 years, the average size of mammals on the Earth has shrunk. And humans are to blame.

That's the conclusion of a new study of the fossil record by paleo-biologist Felisa Smith of the University of New Mexico."

See also:

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6386/310
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

sidd

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #87 on: April 20, 2018, 02:58:44 AM »
Yes, i'm afraid we killed everything, and probably ate only a small fraction of what we killed. As we do today. I attach fig 3 from the Smith paper showing the rapid killing when humans appeared. Bear in mind the y axis is logarithmic, making it even more shocking.

sidd

AbruptSLR

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #88 on: May 10, 2018, 11:10:46 PM »
Terry & JMP,

Apparently, as this will define a new geologic time unit, there needs to be "golden spike" that can be dug-up from the Earth (like fallout radionuclides or particulates from fossil fuel combustion) rendering the Anthropocene stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene and earlier epochs.  I imagine that before the full geologic society votes to create the Anthropocene one of the many possible stratigrahic layers deposited between 1945 & 1964 will be selected and the year in which that layer was deposited will be the starting point for the Anthropocene.

Best,
ASLR

Scientists are slowing converging to sometime between 1952 and 1955 in their attempts to define a 'Golden Spike':

Title: "Scientists home in on a potential Anthropocene 'Golden Spike'"

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180115095158.htm

Extract: "A new study suggests that key geological markers align towards a start for the Anthropocene somewhere between 1952 to 1955, based on signals from nuclear testing and fossil fuel burning.

Scientists within the Anthropocene Working Group are working towards developing a proposal, based upon finding a 'golden spike', more technically known as a Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP).

This is a reference level within recent strata somewhere in the world that will be proposed to most clearly and consistently characterise the changes as the Holocene, which represents the last 11,700 years of geological time on this planet, gave way into the Anthropocene about 65 years ago.

Once this detailed work is completed in a few years' time -- a required part of the process in seeking formalisation of the term by a number of geological bodies -- it will first be submitted for scrutiny to the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy of the International Commission on Stratigraphy. There is no guarantee, though, that the proposal will be accepted."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #89 on: October 15, 2018, 10:20:30 PM »
Move evidence that Ruddiman (2003) roughly knew what he was talking about:

Title: "Pre-industrial anthropogenic CO2 emissions: How large?"

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/10/pre-industrial-anthropogenic-co2-emissions-how-large/

Extract: "Fifteen years after publication of Ruddiman (2003), the early anthropogenic hypothesis is still debated, with relevant evidence from many disciplines continuing to emerge. Recent findings summarized here lend support to the claim that greenhouse-gas emissions from early agriculture (before 1850) were large enough to alter atmospheric composition and global climate substantially."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

Forest Dweller

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #90 on: October 21, 2018, 12:22:12 PM »
This is a great topic, that i somehow managed to miss so far.
I personally like to see a scientist such as Ruddiman present their own work so here is a link for that:

Convincing to say the least.

I'd be cautious drawing any conclusions concerning our anthropological background.
We're barely scratching the surface yet it seems, dates and theories are adjusted all the time therefore.
Just a few surprising discoveries from the past year alone:

- Sapiens not 200,000 years old but 300,000 at Jebl Irhoud, Morocco
  (notice the location is also completely unexpected)

- Neanderthal man began the famous cave art in Europe, not our species. 60,000 + years dated.

- Neanderthal man did not just have sex with us, but also with the Denisovans:
  http://siberiantimes.com/science/profile/features/peek-inside-the-siberian-cave-where-inter-species-love-child-denny-lived-90000-years-ago/

More and more the picture emerges that well...everybody had sex with anybody.
It would not surprise me to see a discovery being made that concludes the same for H. Erectus or others.
Dmanisi, Georgia finds are very interesting in that context as well.
They don't fit anything well at all and even differ greatly from each other, yet are found together.
Sex is a pretty big thing after all, or to put it more in biological terms, reproduction is probably the primary driving force in nature.
Where there is a possibility, inter-species reproduction can be seen occurring today in cases such as the coywolf or the "grolar" for example.(grizzly x polar bear)
I'm pretty sure that if i were stuck on an island with a nice Neanderthal or Denisovan girl there would be some hanky panky going on... ;D

I do tend to agree about the terminology of the anthropocene being roughly equated to the holocene.
It is not unusual to divide these periods up so perhaps we should speak of "early anthropocene", "middle/late anthropocene" and so on.

The post WW2 spike is indeed interesting as well and i have a very simple explanation for myself about that.
As industrial activity ramps up in the 20th century it's first kept busy by 2 enormous(and horrendous) world wars.
Then the atomic bomb is used for the 1st time scaring the living crap out of everybody...war takes a step back.
This is when industrial focus shifts to our daily lives, this is when we all start getting our cars, tv sets, motorized lawnmowers, washing machines and so on.
A huge impact among a growing population results...the late anthropocene perhaps?
« Last Edit: October 21, 2018, 12:37:15 PM by Forest Dweller »

Forest Dweller

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #91 on: October 21, 2018, 01:28:33 PM »
Concerning the Americas i find it entirely plausible there was earlier human presence than that of acknowledged Siberian origins leading up to Clovis culture.
There's a few theories out there, the well known Polynesian theory of course, genetic matches between Japan and Chile, even a poorly based theory of aboriginal people from Australia reaching South America 40,000 years ago.

It's worth noting that in South America especially, traces of occupation disappear very quickly.
Percy Fawcett the famous explorer was looking for cities in the jungle carved from stone which is of course not present over there.
Thus, only recently have we surmised that pre-columbian culture was not so much nomadic hunter-gathering but actually an enormous sedentary agricultural society as well including roads and water management.
Their "cities" were just not like our centralized versions of them with agriculture around them but rather a network incorporating both everywhere.
The Amazon is not the virgin wild forest we tend to think it is, but also shaped by man.

Most interesting for early occupation of America is the Solutrean hypothesis as presented by Dennis Stanford.
I do believe there is some contradictory DNA evidence but it fails to explain some of the dates going back to 18-20,000 years, and the lithic evidence which is very striking indeed...you be the judge:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkrbIc-OMtE&list=PL6NU1Ai2Hnmqacx7LCfgqNOMDlkMDxNiz

The "megafauna extinction" by immigration of early hunter-gatherers, as pointed out in Terry's post indeed seems very flawed.
There is a similar one for Australia which seems to match chronologically but has little else going for it as well.
In America, we're talking a handful of primitive people wiping out 37 species, predators and prey, species of no interest whatsoever to humans.
Highly unlikely and not, as often thought happening overnight but over thousands of years.
The other main argument against this theory being of course, that if arrival of a few primitive people could have such massive effect then why is this not the case everywhere?
Why are there elephants, hippo's and lions in Africa when it is the cradle of mankind?


Sebastian Jones

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #92 on: October 21, 2018, 06:03:08 PM »


The "megafauna extinction" by immigration of early hunter-gatherers, as pointed out in Terry's post indeed seems very flawed.
There is a similar one for Australia which seems to match chronologically but has little else going for it as well.
In America, we're talking a handful of primitive people wiping out 37 species, predators and prey, species of no interest whatsoever to humans.
Highly unlikely and not, as often thought happening overnight but over thousands of years.
The other main argument against this theory being of course, that if arrival of a few primitive people could have such massive effect then why is this not the case everywhere?
Why are there elephants, hippo's and lions in Africa when it is the cradle of mankind?

I hesitate to wade into this topic, as, for some reason, folks get really worked up over it. Probably because it speaks to something fundamentally unsavoury about our species and poses serious issues about how we can achieve true sustainability.
But, well, here goes.
While we may never have real time video of early humanity causing mass extinctions whenever they arrive in a new place, it beggars belief that EVERY TIME a new land is colonized, the indigenous mega fauna is decimated.
Forest Dweller characterizes early Americans as primitive. In actual fact, early Americans were no more primitive than all of us on this forum.
Also, a very small amount of ecosystems science education shows us that the animals that are characterized as being of little interest to humans are dependent on an ecosystem disrupted by the removal of the easy prey.
And, finally to answer the question about why mega fauna persisted (until modern times) in Africa and South Asia- that is where humanity evolved, and so the animals were able to learn coping strategies over hundreds of thousands of years.
I could bang on but I shan't!
For a deeper yet accessible examination one could do a lot worse than read "The Call of Distant Mammoths " by Professor Peter D. Ward, University of Washington.
ISBN 0-387-98572-7

wili

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #93 on: October 21, 2018, 06:09:09 PM »
Try: "Why large, fierce animals are rare" (outside of Africa)

https://press.princeton.edu/titles/11307.html

Basically, large, fierce animals co-evolved with humans in Africa, and grew to instinctually fear and avoid them. Large animals elsewhere did not have sufficient evolutionary time to adapt to the new 'exotic invasive' that was humans.

I'm not saying that there aren't reasons for questioning the theory of humans as the/a cause for these extinctions, but just saying 'why weren't African large animals wiped out' doesn't necessarily by itself disprove the theory.

(Ah, I see Sebas answered the same time I did, and more eloquently and with a more recent source... Thanks.)
"A force de chercher de bonnes raisons, on en trouve; on les dit; et après on y tient, non pas tant parce qu'elles sont bonnes que pour ne pas se démentir." Choderlos de Laclos "You struggle to come up with some valid reasons, then cling to them, not because they're good, but just to not back down."

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #94 on: October 22, 2018, 01:22:24 AM »
There are also other local reasons involved.

In drier places you are more likely to run into each other around the water places. This was a factor in North America (and i guess Australia). No link just a recollection from some youtubed lecture. 

Europe is pretty crowded so our large fierce animals are long gone.

Africa is big and it had many not overly exploited habitats for a long time.

One possible nice example of animals co-evolving is the hippo. They charge humans at slightly over the length a human can effectively throw a hunting spear (according to the spear people/anthropologists but it makes sense).
Þetta minnismerki er til vitnis um að við vitum hvað er að gerast og hvað þarf að gera. Aðeins þú veist hvort við gerðum eitthvað.

Human Habitat Index

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #95 on: October 22, 2018, 02:18:37 AM »
There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. That principle is contempt prior to investigation. - Herbert Spencer

Forest Dweller

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #96 on: October 25, 2018, 04:32:12 PM »


The "megafauna extinction" by immigration of early hunter-gatherers, as pointed out in Terry's post indeed seems very flawed.
There is a similar one for Australia which seems to match chronologically but has little else going for it as well.
In America, we're talking a handful of primitive people wiping out 37 species, predators and prey, species of no interest whatsoever to humans.
Highly unlikely and not, as often thought happening overnight but over thousands of years.
The other main argument against this theory being of course, that if arrival of a few primitive people could have such massive effect then why is this not the case everywhere?
Why are there elephants, hippo's and lions in Africa when it is the cradle of mankind?

I hesitate to wade into this topic, as, for some reason, folks get really worked up over it. Probably because it speaks to something fundamentally unsavoury about our species and poses serious issues about how we can achieve true sustainability.
But, well, here goes.
While we may never have real time video of early humanity causing mass extinctions whenever they arrive in a new place, it beggars belief that EVERY TIME a new land is colonized, the indigenous mega fauna is decimated.
Forest Dweller characterizes early Americans as primitive. In actual fact, early Americans were no more primitive than all of us on this forum.
Also, a very small amount of ecosystems science education shows us that the animals that are characterized as being of little interest to humans are dependent on an ecosystem disrupted by the removal of the easy prey.
And, finally to answer the question about why mega fauna persisted (until modern times) in Africa and South Asia- that is where humanity evolved, and so the animals were able to learn coping strategies over hundreds of thousands of years.
I could bang on but I shan't!
For a deeper yet accessible examination one could do a lot worse than read "The Call of Distant Mammoths " by Professor Peter D. Ward, University of Washington.
ISBN 0-387-98572-7

Sebastian, i wasn't necessarily characterizing the 1st Americans as primitive beings, it's just the general term people use for those hunter-gatherers and i agree they were far from it.

Looking at some of the other recent comments;
I also did not say it is a good argument how megafauna in current Africa disproves the American megafauna diaspearance by humans.
I just said it is the main argument being used, not necessarily mine.
Some of the comments are really good, mentioning water sources, co-evolution versus new arrival of humans, regional differences and so on.

And you are correct Sebastian, why does this topic get people so worked up often?
Your suggestion about the implications concerning our species and sustainability is the best i can think of too, although it's not exactly like we feel very close to those early ancestors.
Maybe we just also like to think our modern "civilized" people are doing better, smarter...bit of vanity involved?

Safe to say, that either side of the discussion about human megafauna extinction requires a lot more evidence...video would be nice yes haha! ;D
Of course we haven't even mentioned any scenario with several contributing factors, including arrival of humans or not....
The best argument against the human caused extinction(as the only or decisive reason) to my mind would actually be how small human population was at the time, and the involved time span of the extinction.
2nd best argument would be the variety of species gone as i mentioned.
And sure, i understand cascading effects can affect species not of interest to humans too but that is still a lot of species.

Anyway, thanks all for your input.
The less we know, the more interesting it gets....
Full breakdown by our friends at Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_extinction_event
« Last Edit: October 25, 2018, 05:33:03 PM by Forest Dweller »

vox_mundi

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #97 on: October 28, 2018, 09:16:45 PM »
A divertimento on why our species is not long for this earth ...

Anthropocene: Why the Chair Should Be the Symbol for Our Sedentary Age

Quote
Why are there no chairs in the Bible, or in all 30,000 lines of Homer? Neither are there any in Shakespeare's Hamlet – written in 1599. But by the middle of the 19th century, it is a completely different story. Charles Dickens's Bleak House suddenly has 187 of them. What changed? With sitting being called "the new smoking", we all know that spending too much time in chairs is bad for us. Not only are they unhealthy, but like air pollution, they are becoming almost impossible for modern humans to avoid.

... If I was asked to make even a conservative estimate of the number of chairs in the world, I'd find it hard to go lower than 8-10 per person. Applying that logic, there could be more than 60 billion of them on the planet. Surely chairs should be one of the universal signals of the arrival of the Anthropocene? Just like the data required to justify the change in the name of our geological epoch, they are to be found on every continent.

For centuries before, chairs had persistently been associated with power, wealth and high status. They were about as widely used by the peasantry as a crown. The idea of chairs as a symbol of status still persists today. The highest attainment in my own profession, academia, is called "a chair". The individual that runs a meeting is called "a chair". The head of a company is also a chairman or woman. And it is a truth, universally acknowledged, that the best chair in any office building always belongs to the boss.

They are so necessary to leading a modern life that most of what we do seems unimaginable without them. Research conducted by the British Heart Foundation suggests that we enjoy about 9.5 hours per day of sedentary time. This means that modern humans are inactive for about 75% of their time.

Our bodies do their best to be the kinds of body that we need. Wolff's Law and Davis's Law can be boiled down to the adage "use it or lose it" for the body's hard and soft tissues respectively. In both cases they tell us that muscle or bone will respond either to increased load or the cessation of use. Bones become thinner or denser. Muscles, stronger or weaker. Seated so much, with most of the musculature in our backs disengaged as they recline in a chair, it is little wonder that with our weakened spines, back pain is now the number one cause of disability, globally.

Just as we have an Anthropocene environment, we might equally class ourselves as Anthropocene humans. Palaeolithic humans died most frequently in infancy. Violence and injury were also common causes of mortality in later life. Modern humans, though, overwhelmingly die as a result of metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and some cancers – all strongly linked with inactivity: namely, chair use.

Arise!

“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

oren

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #98 on: October 29, 2018, 02:32:59 AM »
Quote
Why are there no chairs in the Bible
Seriously?
I always wonder why someone which seems smart would start a write-off with a completely bogus claim, so easily falsifiable. Just google "chair in the bible"...
There are chairs (and thrones) - both in English and Hebrew versions of the bible, so it's not a translation issue either.

vox_mundi

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Re: Early Anthropocene
« Reply #99 on: October 29, 2018, 04:12:53 AM »
Lighten up oren

It was a divertimento: def: (n) a light and entertaining composition.

It was Vybarr Cregan-Reid's thesis according to the book review of his/her book 'Primate Change', quoted from the link I posted from phys.org. see https://phys.org/news/2018-10-anthropocene-chair-sedentary-age.html

 It's a different way of saying we spend to much time on our butt, a signature of our modern era.

Though, the fact that there are 7 billion more asses than we had a couple thousand years ago might have something to do with it.

I didn't take it as the last word in peer-reviewed analysis of seats and sitting. It's not going to matter a million years from now.
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late