![Goodbye, Anthropocene? Scientists vote against new epoch](https://i.cbc.ca/1.3393890.1681923814!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/16x9_620/mushroom-cloud-of-first-hydrogen-bomb-test.jpg)
Goodbye, Anthropocene? Scientists vote against new epoch
CBC
For the past two decades, geologists have wrestled with whether humans have changed the planet enough to kick off a completely new epoch in geological time called the Anthropocene. Now, a subcommittee of Earth scientists has reportedly made a decision: No, we haven't.
The results mean we're still living in the Holocene, an epoch that started with the end of the last ice age 11,700 years ago.
The Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS) voted on the proposed Anthropocene epoch over the past month, and the results were released to subcommittee members on Tuesday, the New York Times reported. The newspaper saw the internal document listing the votes: 12 against, four in favour and two abstentions.
The SQS is a constituent body of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), which decides what divisions are included on the official geologic time scale, and when they begin and end.
The proposal for the Anthropocene epoch was first popularized by the Dutch Nobel-prize-winning chemist, Paul Crutzen, in the early 2000s. In 2009, the ICS convened a group of geologists, paleontologists and other scientists called the Anthropocene Working Group.
"We were asked to determine whether or not there was evidence in the geologic record of that shift in the Earth system that this atmospheric chemist threw out there," said Francine McCarthy, a professor of Earth sciences at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., who was a group member. "And our answer was a resounding yes."
The scientists in the working group found evidence that the epoch started in 1950. That's when they say human impact on the planet accelerated, as seen in plastics, elemental aluminum (which is found only as ores in nature), black carbon from fossil fuel combustion and plutonium from hydrogen bomb tests, chosen as the "primary" marker for the start of the Anthropocene.
Some of the best preserved evidence was found in layers of sediment at the bottom of Crawford Lake in Milton, Ont., which was named last year as the proposed "golden spike" marking the start of the new proposed epoch.
A statement from the Anthropocene Working Group emailed to CBC News on Tuesday said "there remain several issues that need to be resolved about the validity of the vote" and that until they're resolved, "it would be inappropriate to talk directly on this matter at present."
McCarthy said the group hasn't received any feedback on the evidence that was voted on — not even in the New York Times article.
"At least I would have liked to have read in the article that they found this unconvincing," she said.
Instead, subcommittee members pointed out that human impacts began well before 1950, with events such as the onset of agriculture or the Industrial Revolution.
Some Canadian scientists who study the geological record in sediments and rocks aren't surprised by the results of the vote.
Joe Desloges, a professor in the geography and Earth sciences departments at the University of Toronto, said scientists have been debating the Anthropocene for well over a decade. "Which means it's not a slam dunk."