Anthropocene Era

I heard a new term the other day. In the eras of the Earth there are names for the vast expanses of time. Jurassic, Cretaceous, Mesozoic. These are huge expanses of time to describe the way the Earth is during that time. Mesozoic Era is 252-65 million BC. That boggles the mind. That one era covers 187,000,000 years.

The Anthropocene Era was named recently. In 2011 if Wikipedia is to be trusted. It is the era where man's actions have effected the world's climate. This era has no precise start date, but some have placed it around the start of the industrial revolution which was the 1800s. Some link it to the rise of agriculture around 12,000 BC. So the era where man has impacted the planet to such a degree that we are changing the climate is as little as 200 years old or maybe as much as 14,000.

Um... Fuck. Let's just say that in 200 years we have thrown up so much CO2 into the atmosphere that the Earth is getting warmer. And despite what climate deniers say, it's warmer. I was in Norway a few years back and I was talking to a woman in her 60s. She told me that the weather is not as harsh in the winter time as it was when she was young. In Norway where they have crazy amounts of snow and cold, warming is probably more noticeable than in Los Angeles.

A climactic milestone was reached this month. 400 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. That is the supposed tipping point for climate change. There has not been a concentration in the atmosphere like this for millions of years. CO2 traps heat. So this could cause a chain reaction of hotter and hotter temperatures. It will be slow, but could have been reversed.

The Jurassic period was 56,000,000 years. Man changed the planet in a scant 200.

Go Man! To Mars. It's closest.