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US ABomb use identified as a cause of Anthropocene Destruction

June 4, 2019 By Bob Kinsey

From Commondreams.org comes this important perspective on the impact of the Nuclear Age on Human behavior

In a step toward formally recognizing that humankind—with its incessant burning of fossil fuels, use of nuclear weapons, and more—has dramatically altered the state of planet Earth, a panel of prominent scientists voted last week to designate a new geological epoch titled the “Anthropocene.”

The 34-member Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) is expected to submit a proposal to the International Commission on Stratigraphy to officially recognize the Anthropocene—which means “age of man”—by 2021.

According to Nature’s Meera Subramanian, 29 members of the AWG voted “in favor of starting the new epoch in the mid-twentieth century, when a rapidly rising human population accelerated the pace of industrial production, the use of agricultural chemicals, and other human activities.”

“At the same time,” Subramanian reported, “the first atomic-bomb blasts littered the globe with radioactive debris that became embedded in sediments and glacial ice, becoming part of the geologic record.”

Last week’s vote, which was over a decade in the making, was just the first step in the process of formally recognizing the Anthropocene epoch.

The AWG is now tasked with identifying a “golden spike,” a geological marker that best identifies the dawn of the “age”.

“For the First time, our power to Destroy outstrips Earth’s power to Restore”   –Daniel Maguire

of man.”

As Subramanian reported, the AWGis considering ten candidate sites from around the globe, including a cave in northern Italy, corals in the Great Barrier Reef and a lake in China. Next

week, many of the scientists involved will gather in Berlin to coordinate the next two years of research. They hope to identify a single site to include in their formal proposal. They must also define the type of physical evidence in the sedimentary record that represents the start of the epoch. The group

is considering whether to choose the radionuclides that came from atomic-bomb detonations from 1945 until the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963.

Jan Zalasiewicz, geologist at the University of Leicester and chair of the AWG, told Inverse that while we are still technically in the Holocene—an epoch which began around 12,000 years ago—”in reality many important geological conditions of Earth are now outside the envelope of conditions that have characterized the great bulk of the Holocene.”

“Getting an official designation of the Anthropocene would reflect this new reality,” said Zalasiewicz, “and help us analyze it more effectively.”

Filed Under: Perspective

About Bob Kinsey

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Disarmament Quotes

Viewing Trinity Test July 16,1945: "Now we are all Sons of Bitches"

Kenneth BainbridgeDeputy Director Manhatten Project

“Everything I did at Kings Bay was a result of my faith and my commitment to challenge the idols whose only purpose is to destroy human life on an unimaginable scale. I went to Kings Bay to use my body to refuse to bow down to these idols. I went to try to bring attention to the idolatry that it is requiring of our nation and its people. I went in a spirit of prayer and repentance. I went in hope that this witness might invite other people to reflect on the obscenity and on the idolatry that it is before God.”

Liz McAlisterKings Bay Protestor 2019

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending he sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children...This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." --spoken to the American Society of Newspaper Editors 1953

Dwight EisenhowerUS President 1953-1961

We are prone to self-righteousness if we call ourselves peacemakers, and yet do not perceive how the peace issue cuts through all the economic and social issues that we often try to keep separate. If the race for nuclear arms is encouraged by our fear of losing the affluent ways of life that we have taken for granted, then we must see how our fears and desires have left so many other human beings naked and hungry.

Malsolm Warford"The Church's Role in a Nuclear Age

A world free of the threat of nuclear weapons is necessarily a world devoid of nuclear weapons…. Nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat to humanity and our habitat…. Others subscribe to Churchill’s assertion ‘Peace is the sturdy child of terror.’ For me, such a peace is a wretched offspring, a peace that condemns us to live under a dark cloud of perpetual anxiety, a peace that codifies mankind’s most murderous instincts….The beast must be chained, its soul expunged, its lair laid waste.

General Lee ButlerFormer Commander, Strategic Air Command, April 28, 1996

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