O Brave New World  

     I would like to take some time to talk about what many would consider to be a fringe science science. If you're a natural philosophy hard-liner you would most likely consider the extent of the human understanding of nature encompassing knowledge from the apparent "holy trinity" that is physics , chemistry and biology all of which is held together by the language of mathematics (if you're a gamer then probably "Triforce of science" would be a more fitting metaphor). The subject in question is geology and the story we can tell by looking at the structured layers of rock beneath our feet. While on this quest through the depths of deep time and the long planetary history of our terrestrial abode I would also like to take some time to explore some of the impacts that homo sapiens affect on that world similar to what I did in my Home 2.0 video (links down below). Hopefully this journey will help to shed more light on the consequences of human actions on much longer time scales.

Home 2.0

http://bit.ly/xhSZZK

     First an introduction to a familiar but strange world (I'll be quick by jumping into the story at a little less than 65 million years ago as to not bore the reader). Just like our perception of our place in the grand scale of time and space our current understanding of nature is shaped by the evidence we have through investigation, each measurement taking us closer to the truth. So its no surprise that there will always be a number of people still discontent with what answers we have for some of the more perennial questions of life, I wouldn't blame them, it is within human nature to question and doubt, but still after hundreds of years of searching here's what we have, here's what we know...

      We begin the journey at the end of the Cretaceous Period, the last of the dinosaurs had just died out and the age of mammals is about to begin. Massive puzzle pieces that represent the ark of the continents are still not arranged the way they are today.  The Earth begins to cool, The first homo sapiens are still 61 million years away. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels fluctuate and global temperatures along with it, the Earth is punctuated by ice ages. A colourful procession of mammals and flowering plants begin to diversify and conquer the major land masses. The Quarternary Period, our Period begins.

     It is still 2.6 million years before the advent of humans, the new epoch is marked by the end of the last great ice ages. However, when the first primitive humans do arrive a major environmental catastrophe strikes that drives the hominids to near extinction*, with merely 10,000 humans left it appears as if the future rulers of the planet are bound to join the vast majority of species that have gone extinct, if not for the decision of a reckless few to seek more habitable climates. Later on as the descendants of that solitary band of survivors reconstruct their past they discover that they owe their very survival to that small band wanderers that decided to meander to cooler temperatures.

     Finally, after all of that wandering a species of mammalian primate of Genus Homo not more than 2000 centuries old changes the surface of an entire planet to the one seen below ...

*The great catastrophe is not made up, its true just look up Toba catastrophe theory and the evolutionary bottleneck of Early humans ...

That's what 7 Billion people breathing the same air as the dinosaurs look like

     It really is in my opinion one of the greatest stories that can ever be told. It has got everything a good story needs a challenger facing impossible odds, daring perseverance against adversity and a willingness to adapt, traits that characterize the human resilience ...


There is a story in the rocks

A million year old Epic discovered by humans in less than a century of investigation

     The phrase "Deep Time" is normally associated with the vast geological time scales that tell the story of our plant's long history. In order to truly appreciate the long time periods that have led up to today geologists have divided this "record of the rocks" (no pun intended) into several distinct phases categorically named eras, periods, ages and aeons etc, The further down you go into Earth's crust the farther back you go in time. (I wont go "too deep" (another pun if you know what I mean) into that because I'm not a geologist and that is not what I intend for the main point of this article to be). We currently live in the Quartenary Period of the Earth that started 2.6 Million years ago, long before any of our ancestors took their first crucial steps out of Africa in their quest to colonize the Earth.

     The more recent geological time spans defined as epochs include the  Pleistocene  , the Holocene and a newly coined term, one that we will take a more in depth look at exploring, the Anthropocene. The matter is still a very radical and debatable idea but its is commonly agreed upon by the scientific community that we currently inhabit the Anthropocene era of geological time.

     The Anthropocene "Anthropo" being the biggest give-away as to what the epoch is defined for is the latest in a series of geological epochs that date the history of the Earth through subtle observation of geological strata. In short it is the age of humans and the geological time span that will showcase many changes in the environment due to human actions. The Anthropocene takes its place in the geological records right after the previous epoch known as the Holocene.

Moving mountains and "intelligent design"

     Most religious texts and ideologies would paint the picture of our planet as immovable , static , almost eternal and that at the end of time the Earth will be destroyed as with the rest of the Universe. I am not here to criticize the anthropocentricism of these ideas only to observe them in the light of a more modern perspective. In many an eschatology particularly in the three Abrahamic religions the End Times will be marked with fire and destruction as all of human kind is brought to an end and civilization is left to die in order to usher in the next phase of existence. Talk about painting a very grim picture if you ask me. In most of these mythologies you find that in the end the very ground of which Humanity had arisen from will be torn asunder and the mountains themselves will be crumble to dust, not a very happy time to live in I assume.

     But what does this have to do with geology and the end of the introduction of a new epoch?

     Well as I mentioned earlier, we live in an epoch newly defined  but informally known as the anthropocene, a time of which the actions of modern day humans will depict an entirely new story written in the rocks, one that future geologists (human or otherwise) will be able to discern by looking at the layers of strata of the Earth's crust. One might wonder what will these future detectives find some hundreds of millions of years from now.

Believe it or not, that's gonna leave a mark.

     Just as the presence of a technological civilization can be discernible from orbit by observing the stunning lights that they display at night or by the sensors of vigilant spectrometers, human civilization will no doubt leave trace remnants of all its success and follies within the very ground it had built that civilization from. A species does not simply get away with having 7 billion members and not leave a trace of it behind. Some very obvious pieces of evidence that we will leave behind include mass extinctions and global climate change. The evidence will be very subtle. Future geologists and palaeontologists will discover a layer of rock where a great number of species cease to exist within the fossil record, their genetic lineage abruptly ended within a single epoch. Global warming resulting in the acidification of the world oceans will decrease the number of choral reefs, thus marking their disappearance from the geological record as well.

You have probably seen this chart a thousand times, luckily though growth is expected to cap as  resource reserves are limited.

     Even stranger still will be the evidence of our inventions , industries and the means we use to provide sustenance for own continued survival. Agriculture gave us our first surpluses, where there was once varied fields of wild flora, future geological records will read of massive plantations of crop bearing plants of similar type, representing widespread farmland and productivity. The multitudes of nuclear weapons detonated in an attempt to control Oppenheimer's now slumbering "destroyer of worlds" (who is to say that it would not awaken) will leave tell tale signs of an irradiated strata. Hiroshima , Chernobyl , The Marshall Islands will all become pieces of evidence to be uncovered millions years from now. There will no doubt be a geological signature of when humanity began to unlock the secrets of the atom.

Feeding Humans has always come at a price.

     In a way modern human beings have brought about change to their environment through their own form of "intelligent design", given enough time I wouldn't be surprised if this terraformation will lead to a planetary environment unlike any other we will ever come across save for those inhabited by a similarly intelligent species. It has been said time and again, you reap what you sew. but I ask you now, what are we really planning to reap ?

     So, returning to those iron age doctrines of the end times,of which always presupposes the notion that man can never be larger than life. I will submit to you that this contention does haves some merit to it, but here in I would like to raise an argument. Time has passed long enough for all of humanity to be idle and ignorant with respect to their actions as a civilization, So I will not accept it when someone blatantly says that  "It dosen't matter" or "Someone else is going to fix it" or "Its not like I can do a thing about it" , worst of all from some religious people that I have debated and believe me I have heard of this one used as a contention against an argument "Its all going to end someday anyway, why should I bother ..." Yes it has ended my friend, It has ended at the hand of man not due to divine intervention.

     There is no evidence that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

     We really are on a one shot thing here on planet Earth, sort of like a ticking time bomb with a short fuse, but what can we do about it?

The new age and "New Man"
     Carl Sagan once said that left to its own devices every society  on Earth would eventually discover Science. Lets take this idea and extrapolate it it for an emergent technological civilization, a species shaped by evolution to dominate an entire planet in its struggle for survival. Human beings. Could we comprehensively say that left to our designs we would have eventually made the same decisions that impacted the planet and the environment to such an unalterable extent.

A bi-product of convergent social evolution or just necessity ?

     This is were I would like to implore a different approach to solving the multitudes of global conundrums that we have accumulated over the years. We just cant solve the problems of Tomorrow with the solutions of Yesterday or even Today for that matter. If we are to survive the anthropocene we might just have to go beyond certain limits that humans today might consider impossible, sort of like a "transhumanist" approach if you will. In order to prosper we need to be proactive, not just inventive.

     "More than machinery we need humanity, more than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness."
                                                                                           -Charlie Chaplin from The Great  
                                                                                             Dictator

Given hundreds of thousands of years from now there will be no more humans, we would have either gone extinct or  evolved into something completely different but evidence of modern humans will persist in the artefacts we leave behind.

               
     It would definitely be within the best interests of all of humanity to learn from both our actions and inactions in dealing with the advent of our influence on the world we live in, if not for economic benefits and the preservation of precious resources then at the very least for the survival of our species. As the human race moves forward into an uneasy future where the forces of nature and civilization become intertwined, continued survival will not only depend on our intelligence at crafting machines but also wisdom at handling change. 

Where to next ? You decide ...

Start thinking and start living =)