New epoch in the planet's geologic history has begun

[lonestarnot]

http://www.yahoo.com/s/793424

Humans Force Earth into New Geologic Epoch Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Managing Editor
LiveScience.com
Sun Jan 27, 1:46 PM ET



Humans have altered Earth so much that scientists say a new epoch in the planet's geologic history has begun.
Say goodbye to the 10,000-year-old Holocene Epoch and hello to the Anthropocene.

Among the major changes heralding this two-century-old man-made epoch:

Vastly altered sediment erosion and deposition patterns.
Major disturbances to the carbon cycle and global temperature.
Wholesale changes in biology, from altered flowering times to new migration patterns.
Acidification of the ocean, which threatens tiny marine life that forms the bottom of the food chain.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. "There is no safety in the cosmos." Alan Watts

Overpopulation is eating the host.

[teenagebambam]

2. Silly! Don't you know

that Earth is only 6,000 years old?:sarcasm:

[Red Zelda]

3. Stupid Quaternary Period!

[iamthebandfanman]

4. isnt it weird?

whats stranger is i get this feeling inside me ... like i can feel it changing. ive felt strange for years. lol.

[IDemo]

5. I believe this was mentioned on a History Channel show last night

"The History of Oil", which showed the beginnings of the creation of our beloved bubbling crude supply. It was largely the result of a heavily CO2 saturated atmosphere (because of volcanoes, not Hummers or dinosaur farts), eventually resulting in the death of the oceans due to a lack of oxygen (anoxia).

Ironically enough, we may be repeating that process and creating the beginnings of the next oil age by burning the product of the last one.

[Radio_Lady]

12. Wasn't it METHANE that will be released? I must have snoozed during that part of the show.

[ladjf]

6. The human made "death machine" is running full blast and is

totally out of control. Humans are far too dumb to survive in a complex world. When we become extinct, we will have had the shortest tenure as a species in the history of Earth.

Why? Our extraordinary mental ability to think abstractly has unfortunately allowed us to subjectively imagine that we are the center of the cosmos and that is was all put there for our use.
Out of that has sprung a fatal case of egotism, leading to destructive greed.

[Indenturedebtor]

8. Sad but true

And well put. Maybe we'll get off this rock before we completely destroy it's life support system. We have to spread like a virus and go out to consume other worlds.

[ladjf]

9. The greatest irony if the situation is that we are almost smart

enough to figure out how dumb we've been. I hold out a thread of hope that we will come to our senses in time. The human race needs to understand that they could live good lives on Earth without making up the truths and without feeling that they are gods.

[Squatch]

7. Good name for it.

[Swamp Rat]

10. We are slowly asphyxiating ourselves as we usher in a new era of hypoxia in our oceans

Ex. Recall the massive extinction during Permian-Triassic era.

http://www.tulane.edu/~bfleury/envirobio/enviroweb/DeadZone.htm

[Coexist]

11. Anthropocene

fitting

[lonestarnot]

13. Word origin

http://www.reference.com/search?q=Anthropocene
"Anthropocene is a neologism coined in 2000 by the Nobel Prize winning scientist Paul Crutzen. "I was at a conference where someone said something about the Holocene. I suddenly thought this was wrong. The world has changed too much. So I said: 'No, we are in the Anthropocene.' I just made up the word on the spur of the moment. Everyone was shocked. But it seems to have stuck. Crutzen first used it in print in a 2000 newsletter of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), no.41. "