From Holocene To Anthropocene Epoch

Humans are creating a whole new epoch in Earth history. Click thru and read the ways humans are altering the planet. This isn't about CO2 emissions. For instance, we've created large quantities of synthetic materials and spewed them all over. Consider the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (aka Pacific trash vortex) in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre in the Pacific ocean. Large quantities of floating trash, especially plastics. The plastics are not biodegradable, though they photodegrade. Industrialization has also expanded the human capacity to drive species to extinction. We've created a far larger land footprint for our structures, roads, farms, and other uses of land. We've become far more efficient at hunting and killing. Our overfishing has reduced the mass of...

Source: FuturePundit - January 11, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs