WEBVTT - Anthropocene: The Age of Man 0:00:03.840 --> 0:00:06.720 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.720 --> 0:00:13.560 Works dot Com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:13.600 --> 0:00:16.320 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:20.000 We just recorded an episode about the Ordovician period and uh, 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:22.239 and you don't need to listen to that one to 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:24.400 understand what we're going to talk about in this episode. 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:28.440 But we did spend a lot of time discussing a 0:00:28.520 --> 0:00:33.000 certain period in earth ancient history that we look at 0:00:33.040 --> 0:00:36.239 through geology. We look at the various layers of sediment 0:00:36.320 --> 0:00:38.640 that have accumulated on the Earth. We look at the 0:00:38.680 --> 0:00:41.440 chemical signatures from the past and trying to piece together 0:00:41.479 --> 0:00:44.400 exactly what the world was like, what caused it to 0:00:44.440 --> 0:00:47.480 be like that, and what made it in What ended 0:00:47.520 --> 0:00:50.720 that period? What catastrophic events ended that period in Earth 0:00:50.800 --> 0:00:56.040 history and gave birth to a new age. So inevitably 0:00:56.080 --> 0:00:58.800 we end up looking at our own period of time 0:00:59.400 --> 0:01:02.200 and what happened when we look at the age of 0:01:02.280 --> 0:01:07.280 humans as a geologic period, what indeed of aliens in 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:13.080 the distant future? Time travelers, what have you travel to 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:15.959 the Earth and find this world devoid of humans, but 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:20.040 are able to look back through geology through chemistry and 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:22.959 peer at our age, what would we make of it? Well? 0:01:23.000 --> 0:01:25.319 And I think it's a very interesting question because I 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:28.800 think so often we are preoccupied with the past, particularly 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:30.720 when we look at the time scale, we just think 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:34.760 about everything that has happened before us. We understand ways 0:01:34.840 --> 0:01:37.960 in which we are affecting the earth, global climate change 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:40.160 or something that comes up quite a bit. But as 0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:42.520 you say, I don't think that we have taken this 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:46.240 stance before. We've tried to go out ten thous years 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:50.640 from now and visit the geologic time scale and see 0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:53.680 what it would look like with the age of man. 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:56.280 And this is what we're gonna talk about today, this idea, 0:01:56.440 --> 0:02:01.440 this anthroposyn this age of man that is replacing the 0:02:01.480 --> 0:02:04.880 current Holocene that we are in, this period of time 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:08.760 um that has been relatively stable in terms of climate 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:13.600 and resources, and trying to take a look at how 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:16.200 we are actually going to how we are affecting the Earth, 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:18.880 and what it will look like many years from now. 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:20.600 And this is going to be kind of a dust 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:23.880 statement to to talk about, because you know, we all 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:26.800 know this. At some point Homo sapiens were not the 0:02:26.840 --> 0:02:30.320 dominant species and we're not quite as accessible as we 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:34.400 are now. But there was a time um during life 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:38.560 when Homo sapiens really had to be careful about the 0:02:38.600 --> 0:02:41.680 way that they conducted themselves because they could easily be 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:47.040 a meal for megafauna, for a large predator. Or there 0:02:47.040 --> 0:02:49.720 were times in history where you've seen something called bottlenecks, 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:52.360 and this is when the population, the Homo sapien population 0:02:52.440 --> 0:02:55.680 went below two thousand people. If you can imagine where 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:59.040 the population dives down so far that the chances of 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:03.040 the species can tinuing really diminishes, and then also you 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:06.840 get into increasing problems of genetic diversity as well, and 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:09.080 the population begins to get down that low, and of 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:11.160 course you've got circumstance us during that time, that's thought 0:03:11.240 --> 0:03:15.640 that there weren't as many resources available. But now we 0:03:15.720 --> 0:03:18.120 take it for granted that Homo sapiens, you know, have 0:03:18.160 --> 0:03:21.239 always been strong and here and and been the dominant 0:03:21.280 --> 0:03:24.120 force on Earth. But really this is a fairly new 0:03:24.240 --> 0:03:27.720 in the full geologic time scale view of things. This 0:03:27.840 --> 0:03:30.919 is a fairly new development. Yeah, because we're as humans 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:33.960 were still afraid of things. We're still afraid of sharks 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:37.320 seating us, we're still afraid of of stray dogs, biding us. 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:40.920 We're afraid of diseases. We're afraid of the death that 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:44.440 we haven't exactly figured out how to defeat yet. I mean, 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:47.200 and and everything has come into this humans versus this, 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:51.760 humans versus that scenario. But we look back in the past, right, 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:54.280 and there was a time when animals were a definite 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:56.720 threat to humans. There was a time when disease was 0:03:56.840 --> 0:03:59.440 more of a threat. Now it's still a threat, but 0:03:59.480 --> 0:04:01.440 there were times when an outbreak of disease could potentially 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:06.800 wipe out the species. And today, to too many modern observers, 0:04:06.920 --> 0:04:09.560 you might think, well, we basically haven't have it knocked right, 0:04:09.840 --> 0:04:11.600 outside of the chance that the shark might eat me, 0:04:11.880 --> 0:04:14.600 outside of the chance that the disease might topple some 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:18.599 of us, humanity is here to stay, right, Yeah, humanity 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:21.200 is here to stay. And you have to look at 0:04:21.240 --> 0:04:24.359 it this way that when we began to hunt wooly mammoth's, 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:27.520 we began to change the landscape. Um, you know, from 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:32.279 ancient aqueducts to cloud seating for Beijing Olympics to try 0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:36.159 to have better weather. We have been trying to alter 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:41.640 our landscape. And geographers Earl Ellis and Navin Ramakuti argue 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:44.919 that we are no longer disturbing natural ecosystems. Instead, we 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:47.880 are now we now live in human systems with natural 0:04:47.960 --> 0:04:51.320 ecosystems embedded within them. Yeah, the mammoth thing is really 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:54.080 interesting because generally when you start thinking about, okay, when 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:57.200 did humans really start tinkering with things, you tend to 0:04:57.200 --> 0:04:59.960 think back twelve thousand years to this, this turning point 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:03.880 when we begin to develop agriculture. Because this this allows 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:06.120 a number of things to take place. We've discussed this before. 0:05:06.360 --> 0:05:09.160 Suddenly you're able to grow a surplus of food, You're 0:05:09.200 --> 0:05:12.640 able to stay in one spot, You're able to devote 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:16.600 certain members of society to specialist tasks, be that task 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:22.039 the development of essentially the early sciences, to culture, to religion, 0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:26.839 to star or naval gazing, to fine tuning the agricultural 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:29.839 processes that society is depending on the birth of the city. 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:32.080 All of these things rise up from that turning point. 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:35.480 But you go back much farther in history and you 0:05:35.560 --> 0:05:39.799 find that the mammoth populations are dropping, in part because 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:42.679 you have natural climate change taking place, but also mammoths 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:45.480 are tasty, mammoths are useful, use every part of it right, 0:05:45.520 --> 0:05:48.960 it's it's a fabulous product. Early humans couldn't get enough 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:52.240 of it, and so they were hunting it to extinction. 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:56.400 And without the mammoths around to graze and eat the 0:05:56.440 --> 0:06:00.640 birch that grew, um, that kept everything kind of a grassland. 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:05.960 Suddenly you have forests ringing up, darker forests absorbing more light. Right, 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:08.400 So you end up with a warmer climate because of it. 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:12.920 So here already due to the things humanity wants, the 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:15.440 things that it feels it needs to combat in the 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:17.640 world around it and take from the world around it, 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:21.880 that contributes to changes in the planet. Yeah, and I 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:24.640 guess some people would argue that that was really the 0:06:24.640 --> 0:06:27.960 beginnings of when we began to alter the landscape. Um. 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:31.600 You know, was thought that it was the more agrarianxieties 0:06:31.720 --> 0:06:34.520 societies that cropped up ten thousand years ago, that that's 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:37.920 when humans really began to change the landscape for better 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:39.760 or worse. But you can point to this, You can 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:43.200 point to rolling manloths in the hunting of them that 0:06:43.320 --> 0:06:47.400 had a direct correlation with how the environment changed. Um. 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:49.719 So if you kind of fast forward a bit and 0:06:49.800 --> 0:06:52.240 you had, you know, to to modern day and you 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:55.880 had mentioned um, extra terrestrial life forms, if they were 0:06:55.880 --> 0:07:00.000 to cruise by our planet, they would see a very 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:04.040 human stratigraphical signal. And when I'm thinking of, are the 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:07.680 satellite photos of the Earth at night lit up by 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:10.440 fossil fuel combustion. I mean, you could cruise past our 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:12.640 planet and say, oh, there's something up, there's something going 0:07:12.640 --> 0:07:15.600 on there. Yeah, they're burning their past to create this 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:19.480 present lit electric world of power and energy. And if 0:07:19.640 --> 0:07:22.160 in fact, as we've discussed before, as we're trying to 0:07:22.200 --> 0:07:25.400 figure out where extraterrestrial life may exist in the universe, 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:28.200 we're looking for the same type of signals because we 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:31.440 look to ourselves as the only model of intelligent life 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:32.960 in the universe is the only one we have. So 0:07:33.040 --> 0:07:37.160 therefore the simplest equation to follow is that what exists 0:07:37.160 --> 0:07:41.520 here would exist elsewhere if there is anything alive elsewhere. 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:44.160 So we look for that same level of fossil fuel 0:07:44.200 --> 0:07:49.200 consumption of energy, uh, energy consumption and energy output. Yeah, 0:07:49.240 --> 0:07:51.480 so it looks so So think about those satellite photos 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:54.560 and think about the fossil fuel combustion and the beautiful 0:07:54.600 --> 0:07:57.880 sort of fireworks display of light throughout the world that 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:01.120 actually has real time signatures in the Earth settlement, and 0:08:01.160 --> 0:08:03.120 that's we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna talk about 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:06.040 this idea again that we are now in the age 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:09.760 of man. And if you doubt this, there's a statistic 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:11.560 out there that says that there will be a million 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:15.240 person city built every ten days over the next eighty 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:18.200 seven years. So you have to start to think about 0:08:18.200 --> 0:08:21.400 the implications of that. And we discussed in the Ortivisian 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:25.440 podcast this idea that when when you live on the 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:27.800 earth here, you just continue to build up layers and 0:08:27.880 --> 0:08:30.960 layers of sediment. So now we are building up these 0:08:31.080 --> 0:08:33.720 layers of human sediment. Yeah. To see, it's just a 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:36.280 simple example of that. If you've we've mentioned London in 0:08:36.280 --> 0:08:38.640 the past and how London has all these various levels 0:08:38.640 --> 0:08:41.600 of Like walking down one street in London, a particularly 0:08:41.600 --> 0:08:44.280 long street in London, you encounter bits of architecture from 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:47.440 throughout that city's history, and if you take down into 0:08:47.440 --> 0:08:50.400 the earth, you'll travel down through the layers of history 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:52.480 for this one city. The same way that we look 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:56.240 at geologic time, and we're trying to figure out exactly 0:08:56.240 --> 0:08:59.920 how future analysis of geologic time will look at this 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:02.480 age of humans. Yeah, so we should probably talk about 0:09:02.480 --> 0:09:05.440 the Holascene period, because this is what we have identified 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:08.480 the period that we are in up until about I 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:11.800 guess the nineties, when this idea of antipascene came onto 0:09:11.840 --> 0:09:13.880 the scene. Here. Ye, so Earth was emerging from an 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:15.880 ice age, So we had the end of a period 0:09:16.080 --> 0:09:19.880 of of cold entering a period of a summer, if 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:24.520 you will, a very long summer in which humans yea. 0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:27.880 So we have about something what twelve thousand years now 0:09:27.960 --> 0:09:32.400 in this Holocene period. And uh, some scientists will say 0:09:32.440 --> 0:09:35.839 that they think that this era ended and they think 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:38.360 they can pinpoint it to about two hundred years ago 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:41.599 with the advent of the steam engine. And this is 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:43.959 according to Ken called the Ara. He is a climate 0:09:44.000 --> 0:09:47.600 scientist at the Carnegie Institute of Science in California. He 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:52.199 says that steam engines allowed the extraction and transportation of coal, 0:09:52.280 --> 0:09:56.360 which ushered in the Industrial age. So previous to this development, 0:09:56.400 --> 0:10:00.000 it would take huge acts of nature to drastically all 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:04.520 to the earth settlement. Yeah, you really can't overstate the 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:08.840 importance of steam power for human civilization. It affected our 0:10:08.880 --> 0:10:11.800 ability to travel around the world. It affected our ability, 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:14.720 like you said, to change the landscape around us. It 0:10:14.880 --> 0:10:18.080 affected our ability to grow things, It souped up our 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:21.079 ability to depend on agriculture, It changed our ability to 0:10:21.120 --> 0:10:23.000 wage war on each other. I mean it really a 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:26.560 manufacturing and affect every level of of human society and 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:28.880 human culture. That's right. If you had to choose one 0:10:28.920 --> 0:10:31.439 thing that you would say hinged on that that changed 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:33.839 technology for better or words going forward, I guess you 0:10:33.880 --> 0:10:36.959 could point to the steam engine. And uh, I actually 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:40.000 wrote an article on how Stuff Works about the steam technology. 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:44.360 So put steam technology, steam power into how stuff works 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:46.559 dot com search bar and you find out what I 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:48.959 can feel is a pretty good article that goes through 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:51.640 the history of it and how it really changed the 0:10:51.640 --> 0:10:53.920 world as we know it. Yeah, and if you doubt this, 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:58.480 um consider that there has been data retreat from glacial 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:00.880 ice cores and it shows the big of a growth 0:11:00.920 --> 0:11:04.640 in the atmosphere at concentrations of several greenhouse gases, in 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:07.880 particular c O two and c H four, And the 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:11.600 data coincides with James Watt's invention of the steam engine 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:15.720 in seventy four. So that's just one human marker of 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:18.680 these sort of ways that we have scarred or shaped 0:11:18.720 --> 0:11:22.200 the earth. Think about fiber optics, lining in the ocean floors, 0:11:22.960 --> 0:11:27.600 manufactured materials like aluminum and steel. Essentially these are new 0:11:27.840 --> 0:11:30.600 this is a new layer of human made strata. Yeah, 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:34.880 it's estimated by at least eight three of the earth 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:38.839 verse land surface had been directly affected by humans. That's 0:11:38.880 --> 0:11:42.719 everything from cutting down a forest and planning a bunch 0:11:42.760 --> 0:11:46.280 of crops, to erecting a city, to turning what was 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:49.960 formerly a grassland and into asphalt, to laying down cables 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:53.520 to running power lines across the wilderness and the meaning 0:11:53.640 --> 0:11:58.959 name of the world pretty significant, right and the earth 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:02.160 land right, but still you still have some significant changes 0:12:02.160 --> 0:12:04.559 going on underneath the water as well. And then again 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:08.840 these are sedimentary and geochemical signals that are exactly the 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:12.160 kind that geologists used to mark where one period of 0:12:12.240 --> 0:12:16.240 Earth history ends and another begins. And in the BBC 0:12:16.400 --> 0:12:21.240 program The Age We Made, geologist gen Zala Suits actually 0:12:21.240 --> 0:12:24.280 shows a reporter where a railway cutting exposed a clear 0:12:24.400 --> 0:12:27.320 line in rocks made one dred and eighty million years 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:31.480 ago and this um actually mark the Torracian extinction event 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:34.640 in the early Jurassic when dinosaurs is beginning to dominate. 0:12:35.040 --> 0:12:39.440 And Zala Suit says that in a similar way, we 0:12:39.480 --> 0:12:42.679 will see clear marks in the rocks that will show 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:47.720 us where one one age was divided into another and 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:52.120 and where you can see the human handprint on the earth. Um. 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:54.320 He's saying that the rocks of the ant Passyne would 0:12:54.320 --> 0:12:59.000 show an accumulation of novel chemicals like artificial PCBs, among 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:01.440 many other things. Yeah. I mean that it's an important 0:13:01.440 --> 0:13:04.240 thing to mention. We're chemically altering the world as well. 0:13:04.280 --> 0:13:06.520 It's not just we took a bunch of stone and 0:13:06.559 --> 0:13:09.000 a bunch of metals and we built a city out 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:12.240 of it, or that we live up the night. Uh. Chemically, 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:15.640 we're changing what the earth is. Yeah. And before we 0:13:15.679 --> 0:13:18.320 talk about how we we've changed the earth chemistry, let's 0:13:18.320 --> 0:13:20.640 talk about humans as a force of nature. We talked 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:25.080 about this idea of sediment being moved around, but again 0:13:25.200 --> 0:13:28.120 it wasn't you know, previous to humans, it was really 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:33.559 ice ages, supervolcanoes, um, huge events that changed the landscape, 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:37.800 mass extinctions of animals. You know. Again, this was something 0:13:37.840 --> 0:13:41.240 that we attributed to nature in the past. But now 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:44.520 again with sediment changes, here is a very clear picture 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:48.120 of how we are the largest force in the movement 0:13:48.120 --> 0:13:51.319 of sediment on our planet, and that is compared with 0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:54.280 what's moved by ice, wind and rivers. And this is 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:57.000 according to James Vitski, he's an earth scientist at the 0:13:57.080 --> 0:14:01.040 University of Colorado, Boulder. He says that that rivers carry 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:04.120 thirteen billion tons of settlement to the ocean, and we 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:07.720 now mine eight to nine billion tons of coal, and 0:14:07.760 --> 0:14:11.160 that by thirty's predicted that we will reach thirteen billion 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:14.480 tons of coal mining. And that does not include aggregate 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:19.000 materials like gravel and sand, which is another thirteen billion tons. 0:14:19.240 --> 0:14:25.040 Hydraulic cement and iron ore both each another two billion tons. Yeah. 0:14:25.360 --> 0:14:28.360 On the point about water, as of two thousand and five, 0:14:28.440 --> 0:14:31.600 humans had built so many damns, then nearly six times 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:34.320 as much water was held in storage as flowed freely 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:36.840 in rivers, right, And this is important because again you 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:39.960 don't want necessarily your rivers to overflow into your cities, 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:42.160 and that's why we try to control it. But it 0:14:42.280 --> 0:14:45.120 is another example of how we are sculpting the earth 0:14:45.160 --> 0:14:47.800 and changing it to meet our needs. And you cannot 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:50.880 deny that there there is the hampret of humanity on 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:53.360 the earth now, right, I mean, it's it's kind of 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:56.120 the idea of a damned river like that is what 0:14:56.200 --> 0:14:58.880 we have done to the planet. The planet itself as 0:14:58.920 --> 0:15:01.720 a damned river with the natural flow of things, has 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:04.120 been messed with so that we can get something we 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:07.720 want out of it, damned and not damned. Right. Yeah, 0:15:08.000 --> 0:15:11.720 and then we've got agriculture. We produce food for the 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:14.800 seven billion of us, and that's the earth surface that's 0:15:14.920 --> 0:15:18.400 used for production of crops and pastures. And this doesn't 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:21.040 actually take into account how the land around it is 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:25.120 also influenced by agriculture, whether it's runoff um or the 0:15:25.160 --> 0:15:28.280 chemical trace of synthetic nitrogen. So again, think back to 0:15:28.400 --> 0:15:31.960 that example of the mathoths. Without the mammoths, forests sprang 0:15:32.080 --> 0:15:35.840 up and change the atmosphere. Eventually humans get around to 0:15:36.440 --> 0:15:38.360 knocking down a lot of those forests so that they 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:40.920 can grow crops, and this is also going to have 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:44.080 a huge effect on the atmosphere. Yeah. And I had 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:46.600 read somewhere that the reason why some of this is 0:15:47.040 --> 0:15:49.040 hard to get our heads around is because we have 0:15:49.120 --> 0:15:52.040 abstracted so many of what, so much of what we 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:55.800 do and how we see ourselves apart from animals um 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:58.000 that we no longer see ourselves as animals. And this 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:00.480 is just something that is an indirect pros says, Yes, 0:16:00.560 --> 0:16:03.520 we build cities, we build homes. Oh, by the way, 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:07.680 you know, we're taking away the habitats of certain creatures 0:16:07.680 --> 0:16:10.280 and it's just leading to extinction. Well, and then I 0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:12.760 to a certain extent, I feel like people also look 0:16:12.840 --> 0:16:15.040 to animal models and they're like, well, a bird has 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:18.360 a nest um, an it's built a colony. These are 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:21.720 all just versions of what we are doing. But you 0:16:21.840 --> 0:16:24.720 don't see in the animal world. You don't see it 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:26.760 too to thee the extent that we carry it out, 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:30.400 to the extent that it is, it is changing the planet. 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:34.400 I mean about it really about the only the only 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:36.120 things that as far as life goes when when you 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:40.160 look back through a lot of time, see early emergence 0:16:40.200 --> 0:16:43.360 of organisms that changes the atmosphere, that that contributes to 0:16:43.400 --> 0:16:46.320 a huge change in the atmosphere. And then you also 0:16:46.400 --> 0:16:49.600 see as vegetation takes hold that also has an atmospheric 0:16:49.680 --> 0:16:51.880 effect and also cuts down on the weathering that can 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:54.360 take place on the planet. But outside of a lot 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:56.800 of those early changes like this is this is the 0:16:56.840 --> 0:17:00.320 one like beavers were not changing the lens gape in 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:03.240 a significant way. Leave it to the humans. Right. Yeah, well, 0:17:03.240 --> 0:17:05.840 and I'm thinking too, even something like the collapse of 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:08.639 the honeybee colonies, which has been in the news a 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:11.800 lot in the last five or so actually ten years. Um, 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:14.680 this is a great mystery. Now there are some ideas 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:17.639 about the cause of it, and they're pointing to pesticide, 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:20.960 saying that this is changing the pesticides are actually changing 0:17:20.960 --> 0:17:24.000 the behaviors of honey bees. And we already know that 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:27.560 honeybees are central to the way that our ecosystem plays 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:32.040 itself out. So again it's it's just problematic because these 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:36.040 are indirect things that are happening. Um, but it's hard 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:38.400 for us to, i think, get our heads around it 0:17:38.480 --> 0:17:41.600 and see it for the actual damage that is doing 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:45.040 to the land, into the ecosystem. Yeah. I mean to 0:17:45.119 --> 0:17:49.280 say nothing of most of the various invasive species that 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:52.160 we're having to worry about in the world today, A 0:17:52.240 --> 0:17:54.280 vast number of those can be laid at the feat 0:17:54.280 --> 0:17:58.720 of humans who have either enabled one species to spread 0:17:58.760 --> 0:18:02.240 to an area that it previously had no access to, 0:18:03.280 --> 0:18:06.320 or changes in the environment or in the or in 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:10.440 the atmosphere that that caused an animal to change from 0:18:10.520 --> 0:18:13.600 one area to another. So well, and see this is 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:15.560 the this is the thing about the in passy, and 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:18.080 that I think that the main point that a lot 0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:20.800 of geologists and scientists are trying to make is that 0:18:20.920 --> 0:18:24.840 all of this is being captured. Um. It's being captured 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:29.000 in sediment, is being captured in chemical markers. So people 0:18:29.040 --> 0:18:31.719 will be able to look back and say, okay, there 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:34.960 you know the the amount of pollen wasn't as present 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:37.679 as it was in these areas, and you began to 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:40.600 make this story for yourself of Okay, there could have 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:44.840 been a collapse with the honeybee uh colonies, or these 0:18:44.880 --> 0:18:47.120 animals were in this area when they shouldn't have been, 0:18:47.200 --> 0:18:49.520 or they became extinct in this area. So it's not 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:52.680 just the fossil record, it's the chemical signatures. Um. It 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:54.560 should probably take a break, but when we get back, 0:18:54.600 --> 0:18:57.760 we're going to talk about these chemical signatures, how we 0:18:57.800 --> 0:19:00.320 are changing the earth chemistry, and I probab ms you 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:03.520 will have a bit of good news in there too. Eventually, 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:11.320 all right, we're back talking about what humans have done 0:19:11.320 --> 0:19:13.719 to the planet. And I tell you one one personal 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:16.119 example that I ran into the other week keeps ringing 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:19.320 in my mind. I was at The Desert Museum in 0:19:19.359 --> 0:19:23.040 Arizona outside of Tucson. Really cool place. It's really not 0:19:23.119 --> 0:19:25.200 so much a museum as it is a botanical garden 0:19:25.240 --> 0:19:27.600 with animals. Get to see a lot of cool cacti, 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:31.720 other modes of desert vegetation. Get to see really cool 0:19:31.720 --> 0:19:34.199 animals like the have alina, various lizards. There was a 0:19:34.240 --> 0:19:39.400 coyote hiding there somewhere. But they also had little prairie dogs. Yeah, yeah, 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:41.280 and they were adorable. We haven't hit them, just as 0:19:41.280 --> 0:19:43.439 they were coming out and they were they were looking around, 0:19:43.800 --> 0:19:45.640 so we were just really eating it up. They're like, oh, 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:48.199 they're so cute. They're amazing looking how they're watching, you know, 0:19:48.200 --> 0:19:50.320 observing the way that that some are watching out for 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:54.680 hawks overhead and the others are busy feeding or seemingly 0:19:54.720 --> 0:19:57.800 snuggling with each other. It was the adorable creatures. Did 0:19:57.800 --> 0:20:00.119 they give you giant foam hammers to pump from? No, 0:20:00.440 --> 0:20:02.520 they didn't, but but in a way it was like 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:04.720 a bomb to the head when other tourists showed up, 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:07.000 because there was one in particular where the only thing 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:09.680 the guy can muster is he he asked, I wonder 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:13.040 what those tastes like? You know, which, which is a 0:20:13.160 --> 0:20:15.000 very kind of human thing too. It's like you're you're 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:17.439 your only way of relating to this animal is to 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:19.800 think what it might taste like and how it compares 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:23.160 to other animals that you eat. I mean, that's that's 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:25.040 a very narrow way of looking at the world. But 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:28.680 the best though, was another tourist wanders up and it's 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:31.080 like a father and a sign. And at first I'm like, oh, 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:32.679 it's a father in the son. They're looking at the 0:20:32.720 --> 0:20:35.280 prairie dogs. It's nice that the son, who is apparently 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:37.639 he's older, It got the impression who was in the 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:39.960 National Guard or in the military or something. And he 0:20:40.000 --> 0:20:43.560 starts telling his father, how ah, these things they infest everything. 0:20:43.720 --> 0:20:45.080 They just all over the base. We have to go 0:20:45.080 --> 0:20:46.960 ahead and kill him at all. And I wanted to 0:20:47.080 --> 0:20:49.399 shake them and say, say, the prairie dogs are not 0:20:49.680 --> 0:20:52.879 the creatures infesting things, like the humans are the creatures 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:56.240 that are infesting things. Humans are the invasive species that 0:20:56.320 --> 0:20:59.359 have spread to every continent on the planet and have, 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:03.680 as we're discussing here, drastically changed most of those continents, 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:06.280 and that we're working on the last one. Just give 0:21:06.359 --> 0:21:10.040 us time. But I doubt they would have. I would 0:21:10.080 --> 0:21:12.719 have probably ruined their vacation. I really wanted to say that, 0:21:12.800 --> 0:21:17.600 you know, because it's it's it all tends to wind 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:20.000 up at our feet, you know. Yeah. But then there's 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:23.560 this problem of that's been the dominant philosophy for humans. 0:21:23.560 --> 0:21:26.800 I mean, manifest destiny is you know something that that 0:21:26.800 --> 0:21:29.960 that arose um when when America is expanding, But that 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:32.879 is that's a perspective that most humans have taken, is 0:21:32.880 --> 0:21:35.440 that we are going to dominate, and we are going 0:21:35.480 --> 0:21:38.560 to bend nature to our will and how dare nature 0:21:38.680 --> 0:21:43.520