Friday, 14 November 2025

#517: Anthropocene - are we living in it?

The Anthropocene is an era which is contested - some believing we are still in the Holocene, which began at the end of the last Ice Age, 11, 700 years ago. Others believe that we have changed the planet in many ways which mean humanity has changed the planet's surface and atmosphere (along with our plastic charged oceans).

This piece in the Observer from January 2023 is well worth reading.




It mentions the Anthropocene Working Group.

They are working out the location of some places where the Anthropocene may have started.

There are nine trial sites

1. Marine sediments in Beppu Bay, Kyushu, Japan

2: Mud layers in Crawford Lake, Ontario, Canada

3: Coral in Flinders Reef, Coral Sea, Australia

4: Marine sedimens in Gotland Basin, the Baltic Sea

5: Ice from the Palmer Ice Core, Antarctica

6: Silt from the Searsville Lake, California

7: Mud from Sihallongwan Lake, Jilin Province, China

8: Peat from bogs in the Sudetes mountains, Poland

9: Coral from West Flower Garden Bank, the Gulf of Mexico

One site proposed in this paper here is the Trinity Site. (PDF download)

This was the site for the testing of the first atomic bomb as profiled in the Christopher Nolan film "Oppenheimer".

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