Tuesday 5 February 2008

Humans now rival nature's forces.


Paul Crutzen, the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist who first proposed the term Anthropocene four years ago, wrote "Scientists are beginning to accept that Earth has entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, so named because humans have come to rival nature in their impact on the global environment. The EuroScience forum in Stockholm heard on Thursday that climate change was the most obvious of a complex range of man-made effects that is rapidly changing the physics, chemistry and biology of the planet."

Now we hear again from another set of scientists whose research backs Crutzen’s thesis. The study conducted by Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams of the University of Leicester and colleagues at the Geological Society of London shows evidence of disruptions to the planet’s carbon cycles, sediment patterns, and animal and plant populations because of human economies and population growth. Among the major changes heralding this two-century-old man-made epoch: Vastly altered sediment erosion and deposition patterns. Major disturbances to the carbon cycle and global temperature. Wholesale changes in biology, from altered flowering times to new migration patterns. Acidification of the ocean, which threatens tiny marine life that forms the bottom of the food chain.

Mankind was created to tend the garden, to serve the earth and so we have to start recreating our human way of life, our human economies, with the goal in mind of restoring as quickly as possible our humble place within the balance of God's creation before Hildegarde of Bingham's prophecy on this blog's heading becomes reality.

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