2024-03-06 16:07:33
A Viennese researcher is part of the Anthropocene working group.
In view of the influence that humanity has on the Earth, a group of experts has long been trying to designate the current geological era as the “Anthropocene”. The official recognition of the “Age of Man” as a new epoch in geological history now seems to be off the table for now. The responsible expert committee, the so-called Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS), voted once morest the proposal.
This was confirmed by expert Reinhold Leinfelder from the German Press Agency on Wednesday. Like the geologist Michael Wagreich from the University of Vienna, Leinfelder is a member of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), which is behind the push to officially proclaim the human age. Leinfelder said he was not aware of the reasons for the rejection. Initially, other media reported on the vote.
Geologists divide the earth’s history into different eras. Accordingly, we are currently living in the Holocene, which began almost 12,000 years ago. Since humanity has recently massively changed the earth – including through the emission of greenhouse gases and the destruction of ecosystems – experts from various disciplines see the dawn of the human age. However, there are controversial discussions regarding this in the professional world.
The term Anthropocene is already used to emphasize humanity’s immense influence on the Earth. However, the era has not yet been defined according to geological standards and not officially recognized.
This would require several steps. First the SQS would have had to agree, then the International Commission for Stratigraphy (ICS) and finally the Executive Committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS).
The term Anthropocene was introduced by the Dutch meteorologist Paul Crutzen. The Nobel Prize winner and former director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz proposed the term at a conference in 2000. Since then, experts have been discussing whether the global changes caused by humans justify a new stage on the geological time scale – and how this might be defined.
In a statement, the AWG expressed reservations regarding the result of the SQS vote. The results were published without the approval of the SQS chairman. Questions also remained regarding the validity of the vote and its surrounding circumstances.
In order to be able to proclaim the “geological Anthropocene”, a place is needed where humans have already systematically immortalized themselves in rock layers. The AWG agreed last year on Crawford Lake in the Canadian province of Ontario. There were originally twelve proposals for such a globally valid main reference point (“Golden Spike”) for the Anthropocene under discussion. Karlsplatz in Vienna was also in the running. However, he was already eliminated in an earlier round of voting among the experts.
The proposal was based on samples taken at the construction site for the redesign of the Vienna Museum on Karlsplatz together with the city archeology department. Among other things, plutonium 239 and 240 from the atomic bomb tests between 1950 and 1964 were detected in the city sediments there. In contrast to Crawford Lake, the annual stratifications at Karlsplatz are no longer undisturbed due to various construction works. “We have a good sequence there,” but this is more continuous in other places, explained Wagreich, who has been studying the “Anthropocene waves” in the subsurface for a long time the capital was investigated by the APA last July. Nevertheless, Karlsplatz remains one of the reference points for the Anthropocene – if the proposal is still accepted.
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