this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024

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silence7

Geologists Make It Official: We’re Not in an ‘Anthropocene’ Epoch (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 7 months ago by silence7 to c/climate

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[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 25 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This is kind of interesting to me because there are several absolutely a clear mineralogical change that meets this requirement:

But to merit inclusion on the geological scale, any time interval needs to meet certain criteria, such as having a clear, objective starting point in the mineral record.

With maybe the undoubted introduction of plastics into the earths crust as a mineral. Future scientists will absolutely be able to time this change globally because in geological terms, plastics will have been introduced 'everywhere' at about the same time. It will be a distinct marker that can be used to effectively time mass extinctions and a massive change to the atmospheric concentration of CO2.

[–] naeap@sopuli.xyz 6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Just because I have no clue about the definition:
Does plastic count as a mineral?

[–] merthyr1831@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Mineral => A naturally occurring inorganic solid

So yes it's a mineral, just not the dietary mineral we think of when we consider "vitamins and minerals" (though even then we kinda already absorb loads of it as we do other minerals)

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago

I mean, plastic is organic. C-C bonds and all that. But there are recognized organic minerals.

[–] naeap@sopuli.xyz 1 points 7 months ago

Thanks for the explanation!

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Why wouldnt it?

[–] zout@fedia.io 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Because it is made from organic compounds, not minerals?

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_mineral

Mississippian

The Mississippian was proposed by Alexander Winchell in 1870 named after the extensive exposure of lower Carboniferous limestone in the upper Mississippi River valley. During the Mississippian, there was a marine connection between the Paleo-Tethys and Panthalassa through the Rheic Ocean resulting in the near worldwide distribution of marine faunas and so allowing widespread correlations using marine biostratigraphy. However, there are few Mississippian volcanic rocks, and so obtaining radiometric dates is difficult.

Mississippian

The carboniferous Mississippian is defined by a strata of what is effectively of organic origin.

[–] naeap@sopuli.xyz 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I don't know the definition
I was of the opinion that some specific chemical properties must be met.

And that was the reason why I asked in this humble way

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I'm not trying to push back against the humility, but I asked it that way to try and get you to consider some underlying assumptions you might have. Its more of a rhetorical approach, not meant in rudeness. Imagine it to have a /c or 'casual' or curious tone.

[–] Deebster@programming.dev 2 points 7 months ago

I like the idea of having more "intent" markers; /s seems to be the only one people recognise (and I've seen some on here push back against it as a Reddit thing).

[–] naeap@sopuli.xyz 1 points 7 months ago

All good
Text based communication misses many layers, so it's sometimes hard to see what the other side actually wanted to say.
I completely get your approach though, because I'm basically doing the same, when it comes to SW dev.

To be honest, I've never really thought about the definition of minerals. I just understood it as stones and salts. So I was pretty confused that plastics should be minerals as well.
Was just looking for a easy to swallow definition of them.
If you want to go deeper and explain more, that would be very much appreciated :-)

[–] survivalmachine@beehaw.org 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

We measure geological epochs in millions of years. We just barely started the Holocene 12k years ago. While speaking about human impact makes sense in shorter timescale fields like sociology, I'm not sure we need to start a new geological timescale. Humanity is just a brief blip in the holocene that may not even survive to another epoch if whatever intelligence that follows us continues to use the same systems we developed.

[–] meyotch 1 points 7 months ago

Just as a counterpoint, brief moments of large meteor impacts are of great interest to geologists. I bring that up just to say that the brevity of the event isn’t a disqualifying factor, even for a science that usually has to think about the deepest of deep time.

[–] dillekant 5 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Geologists? Don't mining companies own them?

[–] silence7 4 points 7 months ago

A big chunk are funded by or work for the fossil fuels industry for obvious reasons.

[–] KISSmyOS@feddit.de 3 points 7 months ago

Yes, in the same way that all biologists are owned by Monsanto and all computer scientists are owned by Microsoft.