The concept of the Anthropocene

The concept of the Anthropocene

Anthropocene is not linked to any official “Geological time scale,” usually used by geologists to the past based on rock period. Anthropocene is not an upheaval but a gradual change transforming the planet that started centuries ago. A professor argued that things began to evolve rapidly with global industrialization and the second world war. As factories and machinery spread around the planet, the U.S.S.R. and the united states prepared for the cold war, carbon and methane pollution accelerated, forcing several extinctions and invasive species to move around the planet.

Surface level radiation, plastics in the ocean, and other environmental pollution have dramatically contributed to Anthropocene. Before the year 1750, forests were already cleared by humans to produce 300 billion tons of carbon emissions. Deforestation since 1950 has only added to 75 billion tones of emissions. Around 12000 years ago, humans drove away lots of American mammals, which includes giant ground sloth leading into their extinction. Humans started engaging with crops, livestock while domesticating them and taming their genome. Between 7,000 and 6000 years ago, humans began clearing forests to create new agricultural lands, and in about 1000 years ago, humans had engaged in disposing wastes, dirt, and rock around the surface more than it could have happened naturally. It’s not possible to have an exact date on the Anthropocene as it goes on continuously for 12,000 years, and a breakpoint cannot be traced. Instead, Anthropocene can be considered as lower-a Anthropocene, which are profound changes that happened throughout a span of years across several places and modern Anthropocene, which is a human-caused climate change. The biggest Anthropocene of all is the modern, human-caused climate change that has been observed over a span of years. Humans already shifted the climate at some point, and about a decade ago, several theories were stated to explain more on the Anthropocene and effects of humans on climate change around the planet. Anthropocene can be seen by differentiating between what happened before and what happened now. In 2009, no one could have thought that the Anthropocene could have been clear as it is right now. More evidence is accumulating as time goes that during the mid-20th century, a new era lurched into existence. Methane pollution, carbon pollution, and world pollution all manifested a sharp increase after 1950 as they had before.

Humanity impact on earth is now clear, and the Anthropocene needs to be declared. This new period in the earth’s history began in about 1950. It was likely defined by the radioactive elements disposed on the planet through nuclear bomb tests, plastic pollution, concrete disposal, soot from power stations, deforestation, and many other activities affecting the environment. The experts argue that the climate has been stable in the 12000 years where human civilization developed but a mass increase of carbon dioxide emissions, sea-level rise, the transformation of land by deforestation and global mass extinction of species on the mid-20th century has marked the end of what can be referred to as geographical time.

The earth has rapidly changed, and the Holocene should give way to the Anthropocene. The evidence on how humans have contributed towards changing the planet is overwhelming. However, changes across the globe are very recent, where epoch spans ten million years. In 1870, s an Italian geologist named Antonio had a proposal that people had introduced a new era and which he called Anthropozoic. His proposal was ignored as other scientists found it unscientific. By contrast, the Anthropocene has struck a chord. Human impacts in the world have been observed, and the human population has quadrupled to almost eight billion, making it a hundred times larger than any other animal species walking on the planet.

The period of Anthropocene is a pivotal moment as this was when biosphere transformations, sediment fluxes, and global climate change was experienced. Beyond several scientific usages, whether informal or formal, the Anthropocene has splattered outs its planet system sciences origins and has been perceived as a contemporary cultural and environmental icon. Anthropocene has turned to be a tool for re-examining and discussing the role of humans in the geological world, starting from deep past to the future and on scales from the closely reflective and personal to the geological and the planet. This impression has stipulated a fresh thinking across humanities and sciences and has been adopted and turned to be a wider cultural debate. The period has been seen as “Boundary object” or “Charismatic mega-category” that stifles discussion and interaction across a range of perspectives and disciplines. Beyond the academic journals and articles, the Anthropocene has featured in numerous popular art exhibitions, tv shows, a podcast series, newspaper headlines, and many publications. Scientists have realized the importance of basing their research on Anthropocene and using the concept to understand the planet and anticipations in the near future. Anthropocene acts as a useful interdisciplinary umbrella to which interactions between humans and the natural world are considered placing humanity of both earth system and historical context. When Anthropocene is perceived in an earth system perspective, the key aspect of the Anthropocene is that human domination in the planet has contributed to the emergence of feedback between social and nonhuman systems based on a planetary scale such as energy use actions, food consumptions and industrial activities which have consequences for basic planet functioning and could potentially destabilize geological function. Human activities have altered the distribution, diversity, abundance, and interactions between humans and earth through conversions of ecosystems to urban and agricultural setups through activities such as direct harvesting, exclusion of species, mixing different species, and environmental changes.

Although Anthropocene concepts came forth from environmental sciences and the earth system, much of the formal debate can be derived from on geological perspective, and most part of the Anthropocene has focused on geological and in peculiar stratigraphic arguments and evidence for its definitions. Anthropocene has made the geologists concentrate on the presence of any detectable stratigraphic signature supporting Anthropocene, which signature best helps Anthropocene and how it ended up supporting the basic concepts and facts. This age of Anthropocene is a pivotal moment as its recent origin can be traced back to the twentieth century, meaning that humans are still immersed in what might be the earliest transition phases of the Anthropocene. This is the best moment to understand how this will proceed in the upcoming centuries and identify the best steps towards ensuring an Anthropocene period that is better for the planet and the humans.

The impact and spread of man-made activities have multiplied through the Holocene, and several dates have been proposed, which marks the start of the Anthropocene. One case can be tied to centuries ago, where the occurrence of several well-organized societies substantially clearing and altering lands at regional scales for farming and mining heavy metals disrupting the planetary system. Several Anthropocene dates have been proposed with evidence proving human activities on the planet, causing climate change and a new era.

Humans are the most powerful influence on global climatic change. The accelerating usage of energy, greenhouse emissions, and population growth has led the planet to go to an uncontrollable experiment. This acceleration has brought consequences to the role of human activities, urbanization, and environmentalism to climate change. The human dependence of fossils launched the Anthropocene.

Centuries ago (before 1700), humans practiced little use of fossil fuels, but in the next 200 years, humans adopted coal as an energy source, making it account for 75% energy use globally.

This improved people’s standards of living, build the economy but also caused an excessive ecological disruption. Carbon dioxide emissions have tripled since then, and the number of people on the planet has nearly tripled. The humans so far have altered planet biogeochemical systems without consciously controlling them.

Anthropocene emerged to enclose the concept of a time which is characterized by the human activities’ effect on the natural function of the planet. This concept is just a ground incorporating scope of human influences on the earth and well as climate change, including waste production, climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource limitations. Humans can be seen as the “chief agents of change” in the natural world and have caused the extinction of various large species, climatic change, and disruption in the ecosystem. Anthropocene has stimulated new thinking across many disciplines and has stipulated a broader awareness of new perspectives to nature and planetary transformation.