The conclusion is far from unanimous in the scientific community; It has yet to be submitted to the ICS and examined by the International Union of Geological Sciences
Peter POWER / AFP
Crawford Lake, near the Canadian city of Toronto, is the site that shows that the Anthropocene, the geological epoch that defines human impact on Earth, has already begun. announced a group of scientists this Tuesday, April 11. “The data indicate a marked change since the mid20th century that caused the Earth to surpass the normal limits of the Holocene,” a period that began 11,700 years ago said Andy Cundy. Professor at the University of Southampton and member of the working group. However, this conclusion is far from unanimous in the scientific community, particularly among geologists. It must first be submitted to the ICS, the International Commission on Stratigraphy (a branch of geology that studies the age and composition of the subsurface from its layers), and then examined by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS). Stanley Finney. “This vote in the working group is a regular step, the first step in the decisionmaking chain,” warned IUGS Secretary General Stanley Finney.
The term Anthropocene has been circulating among experts for more than two decades. while planet Earth’s calendar began about 4.6 billion years ago. The main difficulty for geologists and scientists concerned with the cause of the Anthropocene is the relative importance of these impacts compared to our planet’s very long chronology. The history of planet Earth is divided into aeons, epochs, periods, epochs and geological ages. We are currently in the Cenozoic, Quaternary and Holocene. The debate among experts is whether the undeniable human influence is important enough to bring about this crucial epochal change.
Why Crawford Lake?
According to the Anthropocene Working Group, this small freshwater reservoir contains sediments with trace amounts of microplastics, ash deposited from decades of burning oil and coal, and even traces of distant nuclear explosions. Crawford Lake was part of a list of up to twelve important geological deposits for the Anthropocene Working Group. Its importance lies in the fact that its sediments show a confluence of tracks that had not previously occurred so synchronously. Earth “wasn’t behaving the way it had for the last 11,700 years,” said Francine McCarthy, a Brock University professor who led research at the site.
“Sediments found at the bottom of Crawford Lake provide a pristine record of recent environmental changes over the last millennium.”said working group chair Simon Turner, who teaches at University College London. The concept of the “epoch of man” was first proposed in 2002 by Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Paul Crutzen. which he estimates could have been used since the middle of the 20th century. It coincides with rising levels of greenhouse gases, microplastic pollution, radioactive waste from nuclear tests, and a dozen other signs of our species’ growing impact on the planet. From a demographic perspective, humanity has experienced an unprecedented explosion: from 2.5 billion people in 1950 to over 8 billion in 2022, according to UN data.
Most experts in the field assume that we are simply in an interglacial period, like so many others that Earth has experienced. And that includes large fluctuations in the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere. Most likely at the next big ICS meeting to classify the Anthropocene as a “geological event”, according to Phil Gibbard, the secretary of this commission. “The conditions that caused the glaciations a dozen cycles in the last million years have not changed,” this expert claimed in 2022.
*With information from AFP