Geologic naming body rejects Anthropocene proposal

Sediment history from Crawford Lake, Ontario, is part of 
the Anrthropocene epoch proposal. (Wikipedia photo)

"Monday night, the group of scholars responsible for delineating the past 2.6 million years of geologic history rejected a proposal that would mark the start of the Anthropocene epoch in the mid-20th century, when global trade, nuclear weapons tests and rampant fossil-fuel consumption radically altered the Earth," reports Sarah Kaplan of The Washington Post.

"But Anthropocene advocates — including two leading members of the panel that just voted — say the decision by the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy violated the rules for naming new geologic time spans. Subcommission chair Jan Zalasiewicz and vice-chair Martin Head on Wednesday called for an investigation into the voting process that could lead to the decision being overturned.

"The contested vote, which was first reported by The New York Times, has exposed a deepening rift in the hidebound world of stratigraphy — the science of measuring geologic time. Researchers overwhelmingly agree that people have transformed the climate and put ecosystems in peril. But most members of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy felt this 'Age of Humans' should not be rigidly defined as an epoch — a stretch of geologic time that typically spans thousands or even millions of years."

The International Commission on Stratigraphy could overturn the decision, sending it to the International Geological Congress. But they could also define the Anthropocene "as a geologic event — a looser term that can describe phenomena that unfold in multiple places at different times," Kaplan notes.