Chapter 3: The Anthropocene

Question 1

What is the Anthropocene?

Answer 1

• A new geological epoch
• Coined in 2000 by Paul Crutzen an Eugene Stoermer
• Since the industrial revolution, humans have so altered planetary systems that they mark a new geological era

Question 2

What are the defining markers of the Anthropocene?

Answer 2

• Human population and energy use growth
• Accelerating greenhouse gas emissions
• ozone destroying chlorofluorocarbons
• deforestation
• exhausted fisheries
• nitrogen fertilizers
• mass extinctions

Question 3

Mass Extinction

Answer 3

Total reshuffling of living organisms, radioactive elements, synthetic materials, and pure metals

Question 4

What do Lithostratigraphists look for?

Answer 4

appearance and global distribution of pure metals that require human smelting such as brick, ceramic, tungsten carbide, and plastics

Question 5

What do chemostratigraphists look for?

Answer 5

• Human changes to chemical cycles like carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus
• Long-lasting synthetic chemicals like DDT, aldrin, and cesium

Question 6

What do biostratigraphists look for?

Answer 6

Human-caused species extinction and biota redistributions, human development of new species, and global agriculture

Question 7

Of 96% of mammals, what percentage are wild?

Answer 7

4%

Question 8

Keystone Bioturbator

Answer 8

A species that decisively alters the biosphere as an outcome of its nature

Question 9

What animals signal the anthropocene?

Answer 9

rats, cats, and chickens

Question 10

What is another word for humans?

Answer 10

“Super-hero species”

Question 11

What is important to know about plastics?

Answer 11

• They are generally unrecyclable
• after a few times, the material becomes too contaminated to be reformed
• The average US citizen consumes 74,000-121,000 particles of microplastic annually

Question 11

Why are we blind to the effects of our actions on planetary systems?

Answer 11

our impact is either microscopic or macroscopic; it is either too small for us to see, or too big for us to imagine

Question 12

What does Amitav Ghosh say about human destructiveness?

Answer 12

It could be due to our culture, not our nature

Question 13

Stratigraphy

Answer 13

• Measures the way rocks, chemicals, and organisms are layered in the Earth’s crust
• Reconstructs Earth’s history by marking how changes in these things tell a story of how everything came to be

Question 14

Which geological era do we live in? When did it start?

Answer 14

• The Cenozoic
• Began 66million years ago when the asteroid destroyed the dinosaurs

Question 15

What is a golden spike?

Answer 15

• A global marker of an event in stratigraphic material like rocks, chemicals, and organisms
• ex: the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs caused a golden spike

Question 16

What is our current golden spike? What caused it?

Answer 16

• the Great Acceleration (1945)
• after 1945 industrial capitalism spread, causing global stratigraphic changes in the Earth

Question 17

Geoengineering

Answer 17

• large scale modification of Earth’s systems to solve problems like global warming
• Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR): using natural/mechanical means to remove CO2 from the atmosphere
• Solar Radiation Management (SRM): Reduce global temperatures without changing current lifestyle expectations

Question 18

What do the Anthropocene’s golden spikes usually center around?

Answer 18

changes in human settlement patterns

Question 19

Sostalgia

Answer 19

• the complex emotions felt when someone experiences profound and irreversable change to one’s homeland
• nostalgia, loss, distress, and confusion resulting from a loss of familiar landscapes of belonging and identity