The recent International Union of Geological Sciences decision to reject the proposed “Anthropocene epoch” might seem confusing. Here’s a piece of draft material from my forthcoming book-in-progress, The New Lives of Images: Digital Ecologies and Anthropocene Imaginaries in More-than-Human Worlds, that attempts to bring the situation up to date. Comments welcome! Please note that the […]
Posts Tagged ‘Anthropocene Working Group’
Anthropocene dust-up: what it means
Posted in Anthropocene, Science & society, tagged Anthropocene epoch, Anthropocene Working Group, Erle Ellis, geological time scale, geology, IUGS, Jan Zalasiewicz, Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy on March 22, 2024 | 1 Comment »
White smoke
Posted in Anthropocene, tagged Anthropocene Working Group, Erle Ellis on March 5, 2024 | Leave a Comment »
Everyone sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for geologists to finally decide whether or not we have entered the Anthropocene epoch can now breath a sigh of relief. They’ve sent up their white smoke signal to indicate that yes, they’ve decided. (Oh, maybe I’m mixing it up with the Vatican.) They’ve decided no. […]
The event that might be big
Posted in Anthropocene, tagged Anthropocene Working Group, science studies on December 19, 2022 | 1 Comment »
The New York Times’ Raymond Zhong summarizes the latest deliberations on the Anthropocene in an article called “For Planet Earth, This Might Be the Start of a New Age.” The article features some good implicit sociology-of-science: Like the zoologists who regulate the names of animal species or the astronomers who decide what counts as a planet, […]
Welcome to the… Meghalayan?
Posted in Anthropocene, tagged Anthropocene, Anthropocene Working Group, controversies, geology, geosemiosis, Holocene, Meghalayan Age, semiotic Earth, stratigraphy on August 12, 2018 | 8 Comments »
Geology watchers were more than a little surprised last month to learn that we are living in a new age called the Meghalayan, which apparently began about 4200 years ago. After all the excitement over the Anthropocene, it seems that a rival group of geological stratigraphers — one tasked with naming the sub-parts of the Holocene — has […]
Anthropocenic reckoning
Posted in Anthropocene, Philosophy, tagged Anthropocene, Anthropocene Working Group, Clive Hamilton, Revkin on January 17, 2015 | 2 Comments »
With environmental and eco-political news in the front pages daily, it’s easy to get back into the swing of regular, even daily, posting after the winter holiday lull. Here’s more on the “dating the ecocrisis” theme… Andy Revkin is reporting that the Anthropocene Working Group has concluded that the middle of the twentieth century makes […]