An op-ed in today’s New York Times, How We Know It Was Climate Change, is well worth reading. The author of the op-ed, N.S. Diffenbaugh, lays out the rationale for a link between climate change and extreme weather events. Diffenbaugh’s op-ed is based on a journal article written by himself and others that was published…
Category: anthropocene
A Second Warning – Forcing Earth’s Ecosystems Beyond Their Breaking Point
Twenty-five years after the Union of Concerned Scientists and over 1700 independent scientists published their “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity”, a new group of scientists (bolstered by 15,364 scientist signatories from 184 countries) have again issued a warning that humanity has not made significant progress in mitigating environmental challenges. The recently published viewpoint of these…
Odyssey to the Anthropocene
I came across a good posting on Carbon Brief that gives a succinct historical background for designating the new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, and thought I’d pass it on. As defined by the English Oxford Living Dictionaries, the Anthropocene is: Relating to or denoting the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human…
IPCC Hones Its Language on Climate Change
Yesterday the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest Synthesis Report (SYR5) – a summary of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) on the state of knowledge on climate change. The big news with the SYR5’s release is the change in language used within the report – words like “unequivocable” and “clear” now…
Dead Mud Encroaches On To Maine’s Shellfish Flats
“Dead mud” is not a geologic term that I had heard before. But it well describes a geologic event that may have catastrophic implications for coastal areas as oceans continue to acidify. The Maine coastal areas are being particularly hard hit with dead mud: The spread of “dead mud” among Maine’s shellfish flats could have…
Sagan 2013 Lecture: Terra Sapiens -The Role of Science in Fostering a Wisely Managed Earth
So you couldn’t go to the 2013 American Geophysical Union’s Fall meeting in San Francisco? Now at least we can listen to the Carl Sagan Lecture by Dr. David Grinspoon, entitled “Terra Sapiens: The Role of Science in Fostering a Wisely Managed Earth” that is now posted on YouTube. It’s well worth the hour’s time: [embedplusvideo…
The Anthropocene Is Here
The last 250 years of human history have vastly changed out planet. During this time, human activities have greatly transformed geologically significant conditions and processes. The change is so immense that many geologists now refer to our current time as the Anthropocene – a word coined in 2000 by Eugene Stoermer and Paul Crutzen, a Nobel-winning Dutch chemist. The word…
Anthropocene: Is there a new human-based geological age?
Geologists are well known for separating the geologic time scale into many time units. The most recent time division, the Holocene, has now lasted about 11,700 years, during which time the climate has been fairly stable. However, at several recent geological meetings, geologists have discussed the premise that because human activity has so irrevocably changed…