Erle Ellis on the Anthropocene

Yes its true. I miss natural life. I have never seen a snake do you know? Yes I never and its not normal! porno

As a concerned citizen of Earth, I see carbon labeling as the first step towards real and accurate accounting of the true cost of greenhouse gases. Currently, greenhouse gases (GHGs) have little to no price whatsoever, yet they have an enormous cost.

To those who question the financial efficacy of institutionalizing such an accounting program, I ask you: how much money will future generations have if there is no life on Earth?

Think I'm exaggerating the future possibilities for our planet? Take a look at Venus, Earth's sister planet. Venus [naturally] reached and exceeded a tipping point in its concentrations of GHGs in the atmosphere, and for the last 7 million years it has been experiencing what astronomers call a Runaway Greenhouse Effect. Just google "Venus, runaway greenhouse effect" if you want to educate yourself on this. Scientists have estimated that Earth's tipping point of GHG concentrations is around 450 parts per million (ppm). Depending on where the measurement is taken, we are currently at 385-391ppm. After we reach 450ppm, too many negative feedback loops will come in to play (atmospheric warming methane released from permafrost, melting peat bogs, subocean releases of GHGs, lack of glaciers to reflect sunlight back into space, etc.) and the rate of warming will increase and increase every year. We are currently on target to reach 1000ppm by 2100. The decisions that we make in my lifetime will determine if there is life on Earth 400 years from now.

We need myriad changes to the way that the world economy functions. This includes not only decreasing the amount of GHGs released into the atmosphere, but also sucking some of them back out and "sequestering" them below the atmosphere (in the Earth's Crust or below). Renewables are only one piece to the solution - a band-aid.

A price on carbon will have the single greatest impact for encouraging a new sustainable global economy. If we can integrate true GHG accounting directly into the foundation of the global economy, then I believe we will still be around long enough to discover some of the really big questions - life on other planets anyone?

Since the Rothshild's took control of The Economist we have been privileged to get weekly lectures about how we need some world action to control all human activity. (Catastrophic Global Warming etc. etc.)

The agenda is clear - things are so bad that we need a new world government to control everyone for the good of everyone.

This is fascism.

I am sorry but The Economist has really gone way off the deep end in suggesting that humans are causing a new geologic time. We are irrelevant as far as geology goes.

I have visited the oil sands myself and it is no more industrial than driving through Le Havre or Port Talbot. The suggestion that the Syncrude mine is so massive as to be significant to our planet is such a complete and utter stretch of the imagination as to be pure hyperbole.

It would take about one week of solid driving to get from the tip of Florida to the Alberta oil sands - The Economist. it seems, simply cannot comprehend the size of North America, let alone our planet! You folks need to go back to kindergarten and learn some Geography before writing such nonsense.

Why not do an article on the CERN CLOUD experiment! Why not learn how we humans are rather at the mercy of mother nature and NOT the other way round. You have fallen for the oldest myth in the book - that man is the center of everything. I suggest you read up on Galileo and Copernicus.

Whether this is a new era or not the thing is: depending on our choices, this might be the last!
Given places like Brazil, one of the few countries that had really embraced the fight against the global warming and the deforestation, doing a U turn on this way (yeap our politicians are great to screw up things, but this time they topped the expectations).
That makes me believe that Anthropocene might be the last.
Several researchers has been showing data that suggest an increasing of up to 5oC on the average temperature by 2011. That's not only 5oC! That's a huge change!
It's going to be hard to live on the surface of this planet after that!
That will be a huge challenge for our adaptability.
We're screwing up this place really well!
Well done "Homo sapiens" (?)

To put in more realistic terms, the anthropocene era will be a quirk of nature and known mostly for its brevity in geologic time.

I think it's pretty safe to say that, though humans aren't necessarily the first species to domesticate other organisms, no one can doubt that we are in an era in which humans are the first species to have, as a result of this ability, adapt the biosphere to ourselves, rather than the other way around. The Industrial Revolution (and probably even the 200 years prior to it) is the first of its kind. And I would go on to say that we are the ONLY species in history to have developed the ability to actually consciously alter our evolutionary paths. That being said, we are inevitably tied to the planet (as cliche and New Age-ish that may sound). Unless we can somehow figure out how to become completely self-sustaining lifeforms, we will always in one way or another get our sustenance from the Earth--oil, coal, animals and crops for food, oxygen for breathing, etcetera.

He is wrong that humans are the only species to domestic other species. Ants have domesticated both aphids, which they herd onto particular types of plant and then milk for the sap (referred to as husbandry in the scientific literature), and species of fungus which leaf cutter ants grow on cut leaves and harvest the fruits (mushrooms).

These relationships between ant and their the domesticated species have persisted for over 40 million years in some cases, certainly affect their environment and have clearly led to artificial selection on the domesticated species, which can in general no longer survive without their ant masters.

Im glad that this is being recognized in a serious way. Although, Im not convinced that humans are the first species to have such a profound effect on their environment or even the entire planet system. Take trees, or better yet the earliest bacteria. They are the ones to credit for the atmosphere and both have changed it in dramatic ways. I think that if you use other models of determining the dominant species on the planet (instead of the classic "biggest predator in the food chain"), there is convincing evidence to suggest that trees are in fact on top. Indeed, one day the forests will likely conquer the cities...