November 6, 2012 • 36 mins
When viewed from the standpoint of geologic time, what is humanity's ultimate contribution? Have we founded an Age of Man with agriculture, industrialism and war? Join Robert and Julie as they ask hard questions about humanity's relationship with Earth.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
We just recorded an episode about the Ordovician period and uh,
and you don't need to listen to that one to
understand what we're going to talk about in this episode.
(00:24):
But we did spend a lot of time discussing a
certain period in earth ancient history that we look at
through geology. We look at the various layers of sediment
that have accumulated on the Earth. We look at the
chemical signatures from the past and trying to piece together
exactly what the world was like, what caused it to
be like that, and what made it in What ended
(00:47):
that period? What catastrophic events ended that period in Earth
history and gave birth to a new age. So inevitably
we end up looking at our own period of time
and what happened when we look at the age of
humans as a geologic period, what indeed of aliens in
the distant future? Time travelers, what have you travel to
(01:13):
the Earth and find this world devoid of humans, but
are able to look back through geology through chemistry and
peer at our age, what would we make of it? Well?
And I think it's a very interesting question because I
think so often we are preoccupied with the past, particularly
when we look at the time scale, we just think
about everything that has happened before us. We understand ways
(01:34):
in which we are affecting the earth, global climate change
or something that comes up quite a bit. But as
you say, I don't think that we have taken this
stance before. We've tried to go out ten thous years
from now and visit the geologic time scale and see
what it would look like with the age of man.
And this is what we're gonna talk about today, this idea,
(01:56):
this anthroposyn this age of man that is replacing the
current Holocene that we are in, this period of time
um that has been relatively stable in terms of climate
and resources, and trying to take a look at how
we are actually going to how we are affecting the Earth,
and what it will look like many years from now.
(02:18):
And this is going to be kind of a dust
statement to to talk about, because you know, we all
know this. At some point Homo sapiens were not the
dominant species and we're not quite as accessible as we
are now. But there was a time um during life
when Homo sapiens really had to be careful about the
way that they conducted themselves because they could easily be
(02:41):
a meal for megafauna, for a large predator. Or there
were times in history where you've seen something called bottlenecks,
and this is when the population, the Homo sapien population
went below two thousand people. If you can imagine where
the population dives down so far that the chances of
the species can tinuing really diminishes, and then also you
(03:03):
get into increasing problems of genetic diversity as well, and
the population begins to get down that low, and of
course you've got circumstance us during that time, that's thought
that there weren't as many resources available. But now we
take it for granted that Homo sapiens, you know, have
always been strong and here and and been the dominant
force on Earth. But really this is a fairly new
(03:24):
in the full geologic time scale view of things. This
is a fairly new development. Yeah, because we're as humans
were still afraid of things. We're still afraid of sharks
seating us, we're still afraid of of stray dogs, biding us.
We're afraid of diseases. We're afraid of the death that
we haven't exactly figured out how to defeat yet. I mean,
(03:44):
and and everything has come into this humans versus this,
humans versus that scenario. But we look back in the past, right,
and there was a time when animals were a definite
threat to humans. There was a time when disease was
more of a threat. Now it's still a threat, but
there were times when an outbreak of disease could potentially
wipe out the species. And today, to too many modern observers,
(04:06):
you might think, well, we basically haven't have it knocked right,
outside of the chance that the shark might eat me,
outside of the chance that the disease might topple some
of us, humanity is here to stay, right, Yeah, humanity
is here to stay. And you have to look at
it this way that when we began to hunt wooly mammoth's,
we began to change the landscape. Um, you know, from
(04:27):
ancient aqueducts to cloud seating for Beijing Olympics to try
to have better weather. We have been trying to alter
our landscape. And geographers Earl Ellis and Navin Ramakuti argue
that we are no longer disturbing natural ecosystems. Instead, we
are now we now live in human systems with natural
(04:47):
ecosystems embedded within them. Yeah, the mammoth thing is really
interesting because generally when you start thinking about, okay, when
did humans really start tinkering with things, you tend to
think back twelve thousand years to this, this turning point
when we begin to develop agriculture. Because this this allows
a number of things to take place. We've discussed this before.
Suddenly you're able to grow a surplus of food, You're
(05:09):
able to stay in one spot, You're able to devote
certain members of society to specialist tasks, be that task
the development of essentially the early sciences, to culture, to religion,
to star or naval gazing, to fine tuning the agricultural
processes that society is depending on the birth of the city.
(05:29):
All of these things rise up from that turning point.
But you go back much farther in history and you
find that the mammoth populations are dropping, in part because
you have natural climate change taking place, but also mammoths
are tasty, mammoths are useful, use every part of it right,
it's it's a fabulous product. Early humans couldn't get enough
of it, and so they were hunting it to extinction.
(05:52):
And without the mammoths around to graze and eat the
birch that grew, um, that kept everything kind of a grassland.
Suddenly you have forests ringing up, darker forests absorbing more light. Right,
So you end up with a warmer climate because of it.
So here already due to the things humanity wants, the
(06:12):
things that it feels it needs to combat in the
world around it and take from the world around it,
that contributes to changes in the planet. Yeah, and I
guess some people would argue that that was really the
beginnings of when we began to alter the landscape. Um.
You know, was thought that it was the more agrarianxieties
societies that cropped up ten thousand years ago, that that's
(06:34):
when humans really began to change the landscape for better
or worse. But you can point to this, You can
point to rolling manloths in the hunting of them that
had a direct correlation with how the environment changed. Um.
So if you kind of fast forward a bit and
you had, you know, to to modern day and you
had mentioned um, extra terrestrial life forms, if they were
(06:55):
to cruise by our planet, they would see a very
human stratigraphical signal. And when I'm thinking of, are the
satellite photos of the Earth at night lit up by
fossil fuel combustion. I mean, you could cruise past our
planet and say, oh, there's something up, there's something going
on there. Yeah, they're burning their past to create this
present lit electric world of power and energy. And if
(07:19):
in fact, as we've discussed before, as we're trying to
figure out where extraterrestrial life may exist in the universe,
we're looking for the same type of signals because we
look to ourselves as the only model of intelligent life
in the universe is the only one we have. So
therefore the simplest equation to follow is that what exists
here would exist elsewhere if there is anything alive elsewhere.
(07:41):
So we look for that same level of fossil fuel
consumption of energy, uh, energy consumption and energy output. Yeah,
so it looks so So think about those satellite photos
and think about the fossil fuel combustion and the beautiful
sort of fireworks display of light throughout the world that
actually has real time signatures in the Earth settlement, and
that's we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna talk about
(08:03):
this idea again that we are now in the age
of man. And if you doubt this, there's a statistic
out there that says that there will be a million
person city built every ten days over the next eighty
seven years. So you have to start to think about
the implications of that. And we discussed in the Ortivisian
podcast this idea that when when you live on the
(08:25):
earth here, you just continue to build up layers and
layers of sediment. So now we are building up these
layers of human sediment. Yeah. To see, it's just a
simple example of that. If you've we've mentioned London in
the past and how London has all these various levels
of Like walking down one street in London, a particularly
long street in London, you encounter bits of architecture from
throughout that city's history, and if you take down into
(08:47):
the earth, you'll travel down through the layers of history
for this one city. The same way that we look
at geologic time, and we're trying to figure out exactly
how future analysis of geologic time will look at this
age of humans. Yeah, so we should probably talk about
the Holascene period, because this is what we have identified
the period that we are in up until about I
(09:08):
guess the nineties, when this idea of antipascene came onto
the scene. Here. Ye, so Earth was emerging from an
ice age, So we had the end of a period
of of cold entering a period of a summer, if
you will, a very long summer in which humans yea.
So we have about something what twelve thousand years now
in this Holocene period. And uh, some scientists will say
(09:32):
that they think that this era ended and they think
they can pinpoint it to about two hundred years ago
with the advent of the steam engine. And this is
according to Ken called the Ara. He is a climate
scientist at the Carnegie Institute of Science in California. He
says that steam engines allowed the extraction and transportation of coal,
which ushered in the Industrial age. So previous to this development,
(09:56):
it would take huge acts of nature to drastically all
to the earth settlement. Yeah, you really can't overstate the
importance of steam power for human civilization. It affected our
ability to travel around the world. It affected our ability,
like you said, to change the landscape around us. It
affected our ability to grow things, It souped up our
(10:18):
ability to depend on agriculture, It changed our ability to
wage war on each other. I mean it really a
manufacturing and affect every level of of human society and
human culture. That's right. If you had to choose one
thing that you would say hinged on that that changed
technology for better or words going forward, I guess you
could point to the steam engine. And uh, I actually
wrote an article on how Stuff Works about the steam technology.
(10:40):
So put steam technology, steam power into how stuff works
dot com search bar and you find out what I
can feel is a pretty good article that goes through
the history of it and how it really changed the
world as we know it. Yeah, and if you doubt this,
um consider that there has been data retreat from glacial
ice cores and it shows the big of a growth
(11:00):
in the atmosphere at concentrations of several greenhouse gases, in
particular c O two and c H four, And the
data coincides with James Watt's invention of the steam engine
in seventy four. So that's just one human marker of
these sort of ways that we have scarred or shaped
the earth. Think about fiber optics, lining in the ocean floors,
(11:22):
manufactured materials like aluminum and steel. Essentially these are new
this is a new layer of human made strata. Yeah,
it's estimated by at least eight three of the earth
verse land surface had been directly affected by humans. That's
everything from cutting down a forest and planning a bunch
of crops, to erecting a city, to turning what was
(11:46):
formerly a grassland and into asphalt, to laying down cables
to running power lines across the wilderness and the meaning
name of the world pretty significant, right and the earth
land right, but still you still have some significant changes
going on underneath the water as well. And then again
these are sedimentary and geochemical signals that are exactly the
(12:08):
kind that geologists used to mark where one period of
Earth history ends and another begins. And in the BBC
program The Age We Made, geologist gen Zala Suits actually
shows a reporter where a railway cutting exposed a clear
line in rocks made one dred and eighty million years
ago and this um actually mark the Torracian extinction event
(12:31):
in the early Jurassic when dinosaurs is beginning to dominate.
And Zala Suit says that in a similar way, we
will see clear marks in the rocks that will show
us where one one age was divided into another and
and where you can see the human handprint on the earth. Um.
(12:52):
He's saying that the rocks of the ant Passyne would
show an accumulation of novel chemicals like artificial PCBs, among
many other things. Yeah. I mean that it's an important
thing to mention. We're chemically altering the world as well.
It's not just we took a bunch of stone and
a bunch of metals and we built a city out
of it, or that we live up the night. Uh. Chemically,
(13:12):
we're changing what the earth is. Yeah. And before we
talk about how we we've changed the earth chemistry, let's
talk about humans as a force of nature. We talked
about this idea of sediment being moved around, but again
it wasn't you know, previous to humans, it was really
ice ages, supervolcanoes, um, huge events that changed the landscape,
(13:34):
mass extinctions of animals. You know. Again, this was something
that we attributed to nature in the past. But now
again with sediment changes, here is a very clear picture
of how we are the largest force in the movement
of sediment on our planet, and that is compared with
what's moved by ice, wind and rivers. And this is
(13:54):
according to James Vitski, he's an earth scientist at the
University of Colorado, Boulder. He says that that rivers carry
thirteen billion tons of settlement to the ocean, and we
now mine eight to nine billion tons of coal, and
that by thirty's predicted that we will reach thirteen billion
tons of coal mining. And that does not include aggregate
(14:14):
materials like gravel and sand, which is another thirteen billion tons.
Hydraulic cement and iron ore both each another two billion tons. Yeah.
On the point about water, as of two thousand and five,
humans had built so many damns, then nearly six times
as much water was held in storage as flowed freely
in rivers, right, And this is important because again you
(14:36):
don't want necessarily your rivers to overflow into your cities,
and that's why we try to control it. But it
is another example of how we are sculpting the earth
and changing it to meet our needs. And you cannot
deny that there there is the hampret of humanity on
the earth now, right, I mean, it's it's kind of
the idea of a damned river like that is what
we have done to the planet. The planet itself as
(14:58):
a damned river with the natural flow of things, has
been messed with so that we can get something we
want out of it, damned and not damned. Right. Yeah,
and then we've got agriculture. We produce food for the
seven billion of us, and that's the earth surface that's
used for production of crops and pastures. And this doesn't
actually take into account how the land around it is
(15:21):
also influenced by agriculture, whether it's runoff um or the
chemical trace of synthetic nitrogen. So again, think back to
that example of the mathoths. Without the mammoths, forests sprang
up and change the atmosphere. Eventually humans get around to
knocking down a lot of those forests so that they
can grow crops, and this is also going to have
a huge effect on the atmosphere. Yeah. And I had
(15:44):
read somewhere that the reason why some of this is
hard to get our heads around is because we have
abstracted so many of what, so much of what we
do and how we see ourselves apart from animals um
that we no longer see ourselves as animals. And this
is just something that is an indirect pros says, Yes,
we build cities, we build homes. Oh, by the way,
you know, we're taking away the habitats of certain creatures
(16:07):
and it's just leading to extinction. Well, and then I
to a certain extent, I feel like people also look
to animal models and they're like, well, a bird has
a nest um, an it's built a colony. These are
all just versions of what we are doing. But you
don't see in the animal world. You don't see it
too to thee the extent that we carry it out,
to the extent that it is, it is changing the planet.
(16:30):
I mean about it really about the only the only
things that as far as life goes when when you
look back through a lot of time, see early emergence
of organisms that changes the atmosphere, that that contributes to
a huge change in the atmosphere. And then you also
see as vegetation takes hold that also has an atmospheric
effect and also cuts down on the weathering that can
(16:51):
take place on the planet. But outside of a lot
of those early changes like this is this is the
one like beavers were not changing the lens gape in
a significant way. Leave it to the humans. Right. Yeah, well,
and I'm thinking too, even something like the collapse of
the honeybee colonies, which has been in the news a
lot in the last five or so actually ten years. Um,
(17:12):
this is a great mystery. Now there are some ideas
about the cause of it, and they're pointing to pesticide,
saying that this is changing the pesticides are actually changing
the behaviors of honey bees. And we already know that
honeybees are central to the way that our ecosystem plays
itself out. So again it's it's just problematic because these
(17:32):
are indirect things that are happening. Um, but it's hard
for us to, i think, get our heads around it
and see it for the actual damage that is doing
to the land, into the ecosystem. Yeah. I mean to
say nothing of most of the various invasive species that
we're having to worry about in the world today, A
(17:52):
vast number of those can be laid at the feat
of humans who have either enabled one species to spread
to an area that it previously had no access to,
or changes in the environment or in the or in
the atmosphere that that caused an animal to change from
one area to another. So well, and see this is
(18:13):
the this is the thing about the in passy, and
that I think that the main point that a lot
of geologists and scientists are trying to make is that
all of this is being captured. Um. It's being captured
in sediment, is being captured in chemical markers. So people
will be able to look back and say, okay, there
you know the the amount of pollen wasn't as present
(18:35):
as it was in these areas, and you began to
make this story for yourself of Okay, there could have
been a collapse with the honeybee uh colonies, or these
animals were in this area when they shouldn't have been,
or they became extinct in this area. So it's not
just the fossil record, it's the chemical signatures. Um. It
should probably take a break, but when we get back,
we're going to talk about these chemical signatures, how we
(18:57):
are changing the earth chemistry, and I probab ms you
will have a bit of good news in there too. Eventually,
all right, we're back talking about what humans have done
to the planet. And I tell you one one personal
example that I ran into the other week keeps ringing
in my mind. I was at The Desert Museum in
(19:19):
Arizona outside of Tucson. Really cool place. It's really not
so much a museum as it is a botanical garden
with animals. Get to see a lot of cool cacti,
other modes of desert vegetation. Get to see really cool
animals like the have alina, various lizards. There was a
coyote hiding there somewhere. But they also had little prairie dogs. Yeah, yeah,
(19:39):
and they were adorable. We haven't hit them, just as
they were coming out and they were they were looking around,
so we were just really eating it up. They're like, oh,
they're so cute. They're amazing looking how they're watching, you know,
observing the way that that some are watching out for
hawks overhead and the others are busy feeding or seemingly
snuggling with each other. It was the adorable creatures. Did
they give you giant foam hammers to pump from? No,
(20:00):
they didn't, but but in a way it was like
a bomb to the head when other tourists showed up,
because there was one in particular where the only thing
the guy can muster is he he asked, I wonder
what those tastes like? You know, which, which is a
very kind of human thing too. It's like you're you're
your only way of relating to this animal is to
think what it might taste like and how it compares
to other animals that you eat. I mean, that's that's
(20:23):
a very narrow way of looking at the world. But
the best though, was another tourist wanders up and it's
like a father and a sign. And at first I'm like, oh,
it's a father in the son. They're looking at the
prairie dogs. It's nice that the son, who is apparently
he's older, It got the impression who was in the
National Guard or in the military or something. And he
starts telling his father, how ah, these things they infest everything.
(20:43):
They just all over the base. We have to go
ahead and kill him at all. And I wanted to
shake them and say, say, the prairie dogs are not
the creatures infesting things, like the humans are the creatures
that are infesting things. Humans are the invasive species that
have spread to every continent on the planet and have,
as we're discussing here, drastically changed most of those continents,
(21:04):
and that we're working on the last one. Just give
us time. But I doubt they would have. I would
have probably ruined their vacation. I really wanted to say that,
you know, because it's it's it all tends to wind
up at our feet, you know. Yeah. But then there's
this problem of that's been the dominant philosophy for humans.
I mean, manifest destiny is you know something that that
(21:26):
that arose um when when America is expanding, But that
is that's a perspective that most humans have taken, is
that we are going to dominate, and we are going
to bend nature to our will and how dare nature
creep upon us? Uh? And we will try to manipulate
life for us at every single level that we can,
you know, from from d NA to a cloud seating. Yeah,
(21:48):
and its human being. Since we've discussed before, we're notoriously
bad at judging or specifically acting on long term risks.
And that's just within our own lifetime. That's that come
down to should I study for the exam tonight or
should I go out and party? And then you end
up going partying instead. But then when you when you
deal with it with much larger periods of time that
(22:10):
span a whole multiple generations, it becomes even harder for
us to actually act on it, and we end up
again caught in this narrow perception of my life and
the things around me and the things I need to
maintain this level of goodness. Well also feel like on
a technological level, we really are only beginning to understand
the impact of what the last seventy eighty years and
(22:34):
technologies have brought to our feet. And I'm thinking in
particular this conundrum of synthetic nitrogen. Yes, because synthetic nitrogen
is something that we were able to begin to harness
in the nineteen thirties. It was in our atmosphere, we
couldn't quite figure out how to manipulate it for our use.
And then let me and behold, biochemists figured out how
(22:55):
nitrogen could be taken out of the atmosphere and break
it down with bacteria to create fertilize. Yeah. Particularly, this
is a man by the name of Fritz Haber um
round nineteen hundred, young MP chemist in Germany. There's an
excellent radio lab segment titled how do you solve a
problem like Fritz Haber And Uh, It's a fascinating story
because see, at this point in time, everyone is really
(23:16):
starting to worry about how we're gonna feed these growing populations,
and it continues to be a problem today, but at
the time that it was getting pretty serious. How do
you grow enough food to feed everyone? So Haber happens
on a solution. Again, he's experimenting, and he makes his
breakthrough about how to pull nitrogen out of the atmosphere, essentially,
to borrow the term from Radio Lab, how do you
(23:37):
turn air into bread? Turn how to turn to basically
make food out of thin air and enable humanity to
continue all these things that it's doing. And it's of course,
what's the dark side to the friends Haber story, as
as I'll leave Radio Lab to explain it to you,
is that he ends up having a role in the
creation of some particularly devastating chemical agents in the Second
World War. So go go listen to that when you
(23:59):
get a chance. It's dark and insightful. But here's the thing,
and that that that's that's where the conundrum comes in.
You have synthetic nitrogen, harnessing it, you can use it
for fertilizer, you can grow many more crops, feeding many
more people. But the problem is is that now it's
being leached into the soil is being leached into um
into the atmosphere, and when you have the combustion of
(24:20):
fossil fuels with atmosphere nitrogen, that produces nitrogen oxides which
have created basically a global nitrogen cycle which is completely
controlled by the human species. And this if if you
doubt the hand of man on the world and it's markers,
you can look directly to this to say that we
are a force of nature ourselves when we can control
(24:44):
the nitrogen cycle on our planet. Yeah, we Again, we're
not just building things out of other things. We're altering
the system itself, and it's and it's pretty terrifying when
you start thinking of it in those terms. So then
you have this problem of reactive nitrogen washing into the
oceans and causing coastal dead zones. Even the most remote
areas of the world have isotopic markers in the layers
(25:05):
of sediments in places like the Arctic pointing to increased
amounts of human engineered nitrogen. So again, we've got the
record here for for all to see in ten thousand
years from now at least, So what can we do
about it? What can we actually do at this point?
And again, the big thing here. It's kind of like
building bases on the Moon, or exploring other planets, or
(25:25):
any any substantial human achievement. We've got to actually want
to do it and have there There has to be
the political will to get it done. But what could
we do if we wanted to do something? Well, I mean,
we have a couple of things up our sleeves, but
I think one of the main things is that we
have to have a perspective change and um And I
think this is why some people are pushing for the
(25:48):
adoption of this antipathying term, because they're saying that once
you say, yes, this is the age of man, then
people will become more responsible when they realize that on
the geologic time scale all that they are now responsible
for the changes made to Earth. It's not just oops,
we did this and this happened. Um And I'm thinking
too that that this is not just the long view,
(26:11):
but as more and more technologies come online and people
like Aubrey de Gray, the bio gerontologists, she says that
we could live to a thousand years. He says that
the first person to reach the age of five has
already been born, who can be maintained like a classic car,
so to speak, with all the different technologies. But this
is coming online and that people will naturally begin, hopefully
(26:35):
to adopt this long view perspective. And right now, you know,
we sort of quibble about, well, this is very expensive
to bring in this technology that helps um for you know,
to ameliorate some of the problems that we have. But
the fact of the matter is that we do have
bioadaptive technologies that could render waste really a thing of
(26:56):
the past. It reminds me of the movie The Mission,
if you've seen this with Jeremy Irons and Robert de Niro.
At the very end of it, there's a character who
is having to come to terms with some arguably bad
decisions that he made that had some some horrible repercussions,
and another character says to him, well, thus is the world,
as if to say, hey, this is the world. We
just have to live in it. Sometimes you've got to
(27:17):
do bad stuff to live in this world. And he responds, no,
thus thus is the world? Thus have I made it?
Saying that the world that we're making excuses for is
a world that we have increasingly created through our own mistakes,
wrongdoings and this attitude of of living in a world
where the rules are already set well, and I think
largely we have lived that way. But again, I think
(27:38):
that we're beginning to get it beat on what happens
with technology over a hundred year period. And I think
that to me, the most amazing part of this story,
and perhaps the most uplifting if we can use this
information right, is that over the last two hundred years,
we have vastly changed the climates. Um, we've vastly changed
(27:58):
the way our our world looks and it's sculpted. We
could do the very same thing, but in ways that
we're intentional and that made sense for the long haul. Yeah,
and there are a lot of people working on this.
There are some fantastic designs just coming out all the time.
We we feature a lot of them on the Facebook
page and the Twitter. You know, it'll be this kind
of design for a for an ecologically sound city or
(28:19):
an ecologically sound household. Countless new technologies are always being
dreamed up, if not actually developed. It's just to what
extent are we willing to actually invest in them and
make make the jump Well, and um, I mean there
are ideas like compossible cars and gadgets, um, And really
what we need to look toward is and we've talked
(28:40):
about this number many, many times, but this has been
This is the year that we will reach about nine
and a half billion inhabitants. And of course, where are
we going to get the food, Where are we going
to get the space? So we need to think about
innovations that are tailored to the needs of the poorest
and new plant varieties that can withstand climates that are harsh.
We need to about technologies to recycle phosphorus. Then now,
(29:03):
of course when you talk about new plants, you're talking
about genetically modified organisms. So it's give and take, right. Yeah,
It's kind of like the bathtub. It's like a little
more hot water because the bath too cold, a little
more cold water because the bath is too hot, and
then at what point does the water simply overflow? Well,
the thing is is that we we are a self
aggrandizing species, right, And this is where I think this
(29:26):
works to our advantage, because if we really want to
have an age of man and own this and uh
and be within the fossil record or the geological time
scale and say this is the age of man, we
actually have to exist for a lot longer um. You know,
these periods are quite long. So if we begin, if
we go at the rate that we are, and we
(29:48):
were to use up um a lot of the resources
of Earth and make it not so that it's not
very habitable, especially with so many people coming online in
the year, then we may not have this. It may
not even be able to point to this because we
may not be alive. I mean, ultimately, do you want
it to be the age of man or do you
want it to be the human event? This is near
(30:11):
blip in geologic time in which humans arrived on the scene,
changed the world around them, and then brought about their
own extinction and pretty quick succession. Right would it be
lovely if ten tho years from now someone could point
to this age and say, ah, here's this crazy stuff
that they were creating in the air, and then you
can see all this other evidence in which they began
to sort of tinker with that and and create substances
(30:34):
that worked better with the natural world. So there is
hope if we want it, um. But but there there's
a lot of serious stuff on the table that we
need to think about. Really and again we need to
I do believe we need to start thinking about it
as the age of man, as not this not an
age in which we live, but an age of us
(30:57):
that we are dictating, and so we need to we
need to step up and and make some changes. This
is the tough love talk. There's a great quote in
Daniel Quinn's Ishmael which, if any if you're interested in
any of these topics, I highly recommend reading that novel.
He makes a really strong philosophical argument for most of this,
and I believe this book arises from pretty much the
(31:18):
same period as the as the idea that this age
of man exists. Yeah, actually, I mean mentioned to you
that age of Man was put forward by Paul J.
Krutzen and Christian schwad Role and this was in the
early so so roughly there. But the Daniel quint Quinn
quote goes as follows, Man's destiny was to conquer and
(31:41):
rule the world, and this is what he's done. Almost
he hasn't quite made it, and it looks as though
this may be his undoing. The problem is that man's
conquest of the world has itself devastated the world. And
in spite of all the mastery we've obtained. We don't
have enough mastery to stop devastating the world or to
repair the devastations, and we've already wrought. So there you go.
(32:02):
We need the long view people. Yeah, so it's it
can be a bit when I read Ishmael, it's kind
of a harrowing, depressing read because it deals a lot
with what we are, what we've done, and what we
might not have the will to do. But like all
of it, humans are capable of so much. I mean,
just look at what we've done to the earth. It's
most of it we've looked at in a very negative
(32:24):
light here, but it's still a tremendous amount of change.
Imagine if we're able to work that back in another direction. Well,
and imagine again too, if if you do live to
be five or someone listening, well, perhaps you're the first
person that lived to be five years old. I feel
that that our behaviors would change with that sort of longevity. Yeah,
so if you're listening, future five year old person, you
(32:48):
know what to do. All right, Well, let's call over
the robe it here and see if you can liven
things up with a little listener mail. All right, we
heard from Adam Adam of course is the chief been
this officer from having this pledge dot com travels around
the world doing good and uh we get to live
vicariously through his uh missives to us. School hats that time,
(33:11):
I know, and it's cold enough for me you to
begin wearing mine. I'm very excited. But he wrote in
about our maps episodes and he says, Hi, guys, as
you can imagine, maps are a daily part of my existence.
Being on the road, I've had to read more than
my fair share, and they range from good to horrible,
usually depending on the level of infrastructure in the city.
I'm in Catman Doo, Nepal at the moment, and you
(33:32):
can see on the attached pictures that there are no
street names on the map. Thus all maps have schools, hospitals, hotels, restaurants,
and other landmarks so you can navigate your way around.
I think Robert has mentioned on the show that he's
been to Costa Rica. Throughout Central America, there aren't really addresses.
I remember trying to find a bus company's ticketing offices
which listed its addressed as quote, two hundred meters south
of the high school, a hundred meters west of the church,
(33:54):
a good sense of direction is necessary or command of
Spanish to just ask locals, which what I inevitably always did.
As for the reading the maps of places before going,
I say it's the best. It's best to go and
experience everything when you get there. Thanks again for the
great podcast, and take care. Indeed, in Costa Rica, that
was the one thing I definitely remember. They're talking about
(34:15):
how the maps really don't work, and a lot of
it ends up depending on landmarks, but not only current landmarks,
but the landmarks that haven't necessarily existed in like a
decade or so. Like one of the big ones was like,
there's a Coca Cola bottling plant, I believe in the
capital of Costa Rica, and that was still used as
a reference point as a landmark even though it's no
(34:36):
longer there. Let's see. That's what I think. It's really
charming about Costa Rica. Yeah, yeah, because I don't know.
I love I love that it's time doesn't necessarily exist there,
nor do good roads. That's the roads are pretty autricious,
especially the ones going up to Monteverde. But but I've
heard the argument that the reason that those roads haven't
been improved because if you get a nice road going
(34:57):
up to Monte Verde. Then how long before you have
a casino in Monteverdi? How long do you have to
the whole the very beauty of the place that everyone likes.
It is kind of this mountain, kind of hippie, a
lot of expatriots living there, Quakers. It's a really magical
place and I read everyone to go. But the road
up there is terrifying, but perhaps for a reason, and
(35:19):
that would be no good for sloths rights. Yeah, they
hate casino because they're just they're too slow on the one.
I know, I know, I wants to get behind a
sloth at a casino. All right, Well, if you have
anything you would like to share with us about your travels,
about maps or on the heels of this episode, about
(35:40):
humanity's impact on the on the world and what we
need to do going forward, if we were really to
own this idea that this is the age of man,
that we're living in a world that is sculpted from
our selfish desires, let us know. You can write us
through various methods. You can find us on Tumblr, where
we are stuffed to bow your mind. You can find
(36:01):
us on Facebook, where again we are stuff to blow
your mind, and on Twitter we use the handle blow
the Mind, and you can also drop us a line
at blow the Mind at discovery dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, Is It How
Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
We just recorded an episode about the Ordovician period and uh,
and you don't need to listen to that one to
understand what we're going to talk about in this episode.
(00:24):
But we did spend a lot of time discussing a
certain period in earth ancient history that we look at
through geology. We look at the various layers of sediment
that have accumulated on the Earth. We look at the
chemical signatures from the past and trying to piece together
exactly what the world was like, what caused it to
be like that, and what made it in What ended
(00:47):
that period? What catastrophic events ended that period in Earth
history and gave birth to a new age. So inevitably
we end up looking at our own period of time
and what happened when we look at the age of
humans as a geologic period, what indeed of aliens in
the distant future? Time travelers, what have you travel to
(01:13):
the Earth and find this world devoid of humans, but
are able to look back through geology through chemistry and
peer at our age, what would we make of it? Well?
And I think it's a very interesting question because I
think so often we are preoccupied with the past, particularly
when we look at the time scale, we just think
about everything that has happened before us. We understand ways
(01:34):
in which we are affecting the earth, global climate change
or something that comes up quite a bit. But as
you say, I don't think that we have taken this
stance before. We've tried to go out ten thous years
from now and visit the geologic time scale and see
what it would look like with the age of man.
And this is what we're gonna talk about today, this idea,
(01:56):
this anthroposyn this age of man that is replacing the
current Holocene that we are in, this period of time
um that has been relatively stable in terms of climate
and resources, and trying to take a look at how
we are actually going to how we are affecting the Earth,
and what it will look like many years from now.
(02:18):
And this is going to be kind of a dust
statement to to talk about, because you know, we all
know this. At some point Homo sapiens were not the
dominant species and we're not quite as accessible as we
are now. But there was a time um during life
when Homo sapiens really had to be careful about the
way that they conducted themselves because they could easily be
(02:41):
a meal for megafauna, for a large predator. Or there
were times in history where you've seen something called bottlenecks,
and this is when the population, the Homo sapien population
went below two thousand people. If you can imagine where
the population dives down so far that the chances of
the species can tinuing really diminishes, and then also you
(03:03):
get into increasing problems of genetic diversity as well, and
the population begins to get down that low, and of
course you've got circumstance us during that time, that's thought
that there weren't as many resources available. But now we
take it for granted that Homo sapiens, you know, have
always been strong and here and and been the dominant
force on Earth. But really this is a fairly new
(03:24):
in the full geologic time scale view of things. This
is a fairly new development. Yeah, because we're as humans
were still afraid of things. We're still afraid of sharks
seating us, we're still afraid of of stray dogs, biding us.
We're afraid of diseases. We're afraid of the death that
we haven't exactly figured out how to defeat yet. I mean,
(03:44):
and and everything has come into this humans versus this,
humans versus that scenario. But we look back in the past, right,
and there was a time when animals were a definite
threat to humans. There was a time when disease was
more of a threat. Now it's still a threat, but
there were times when an outbreak of disease could potentially
wipe out the species. And today, to too many modern observers,
(04:06):
you might think, well, we basically haven't have it knocked right,
outside of the chance that the shark might eat me,
outside of the chance that the disease might topple some
of us, humanity is here to stay, right, Yeah, humanity
is here to stay. And you have to look at
it this way that when we began to hunt wooly mammoth's,
we began to change the landscape. Um, you know, from
(04:27):
ancient aqueducts to cloud seating for Beijing Olympics to try
to have better weather. We have been trying to alter
our landscape. And geographers Earl Ellis and Navin Ramakuti argue
that we are no longer disturbing natural ecosystems. Instead, we
are now we now live in human systems with natural
(04:47):
ecosystems embedded within them. Yeah, the mammoth thing is really
interesting because generally when you start thinking about, okay, when
did humans really start tinkering with things, you tend to
think back twelve thousand years to this, this turning point
when we begin to develop agriculture. Because this this allows
a number of things to take place. We've discussed this before.
Suddenly you're able to grow a surplus of food, You're
(05:09):
able to stay in one spot, You're able to devote
certain members of society to specialist tasks, be that task
the development of essentially the early sciences, to culture, to religion,
to star or naval gazing, to fine tuning the agricultural
processes that society is depending on the birth of the city.
(05:29):
All of these things rise up from that turning point.
But you go back much farther in history and you
find that the mammoth populations are dropping, in part because
you have natural climate change taking place, but also mammoths
are tasty, mammoths are useful, use every part of it right,
it's it's a fabulous product. Early humans couldn't get enough
of it, and so they were hunting it to extinction.
(05:52):
And without the mammoths around to graze and eat the
birch that grew, um, that kept everything kind of a grassland.
Suddenly you have forests ringing up, darker forests absorbing more light. Right,
So you end up with a warmer climate because of it.
So here already due to the things humanity wants, the
(06:12):
things that it feels it needs to combat in the
world around it and take from the world around it,
that contributes to changes in the planet. Yeah, and I
guess some people would argue that that was really the
beginnings of when we began to alter the landscape. Um.
You know, was thought that it was the more agrarianxieties
societies that cropped up ten thousand years ago, that that's
(06:34):
when humans really began to change the landscape for better
or worse. But you can point to this, You can
point to rolling manloths in the hunting of them that
had a direct correlation with how the environment changed. Um.
So if you kind of fast forward a bit and
you had, you know, to to modern day and you
had mentioned um, extra terrestrial life forms, if they were
(06:55):
to cruise by our planet, they would see a very
human stratigraphical signal. And when I'm thinking of, are the
satellite photos of the Earth at night lit up by
fossil fuel combustion. I mean, you could cruise past our
planet and say, oh, there's something up, there's something going
on there. Yeah, they're burning their past to create this
present lit electric world of power and energy. And if
(07:19):
in fact, as we've discussed before, as we're trying to
figure out where extraterrestrial life may exist in the universe,
we're looking for the same type of signals because we
look to ourselves as the only model of intelligent life
in the universe is the only one we have. So
therefore the simplest equation to follow is that what exists
here would exist elsewhere if there is anything alive elsewhere.
(07:41):
So we look for that same level of fossil fuel
consumption of energy, uh, energy consumption and energy output. Yeah,
so it looks so So think about those satellite photos
and think about the fossil fuel combustion and the beautiful
sort of fireworks display of light throughout the world that
actually has real time signatures in the Earth settlement, and
that's we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna talk about
(08:03):
this idea again that we are now in the age
of man. And if you doubt this, there's a statistic
out there that says that there will be a million
person city built every ten days over the next eighty
seven years. So you have to start to think about
the implications of that. And we discussed in the Ortivisian
podcast this idea that when when you live on the
(08:25):
earth here, you just continue to build up layers and
layers of sediment. So now we are building up these
layers of human sediment. Yeah. To see, it's just a
simple example of that. If you've we've mentioned London in
the past and how London has all these various levels
of Like walking down one street in London, a particularly
long street in London, you encounter bits of architecture from
throughout that city's history, and if you take down into
(08:47):
the earth, you'll travel down through the layers of history
for this one city. The same way that we look
at geologic time, and we're trying to figure out exactly
how future analysis of geologic time will look at this
age of humans. Yeah, so we should probably talk about
the Holascene period, because this is what we have identified
the period that we are in up until about I
(09:08):
guess the nineties, when this idea of antipascene came onto
the scene. Here. Ye, so Earth was emerging from an
ice age, So we had the end of a period
of of cold entering a period of a summer, if
you will, a very long summer in which humans yea.
So we have about something what twelve thousand years now
in this Holocene period. And uh, some scientists will say
(09:32):
that they think that this era ended and they think
they can pinpoint it to about two hundred years ago
with the advent of the steam engine. And this is
according to Ken called the Ara. He is a climate
scientist at the Carnegie Institute of Science in California. He
says that steam engines allowed the extraction and transportation of coal,
which ushered in the Industrial age. So previous to this development,
(09:56):
it would take huge acts of nature to drastically all
to the earth settlement. Yeah, you really can't overstate the
importance of steam power for human civilization. It affected our
ability to travel around the world. It affected our ability,
like you said, to change the landscape around us. It
affected our ability to grow things, It souped up our
(10:18):
ability to depend on agriculture, It changed our ability to
wage war on each other. I mean it really a
manufacturing and affect every level of of human society and
human culture. That's right. If you had to choose one
thing that you would say hinged on that that changed
technology for better or words going forward, I guess you
could point to the steam engine. And uh, I actually
wrote an article on how Stuff Works about the steam technology.
(10:40):
So put steam technology, steam power into how stuff works
dot com search bar and you find out what I
can feel is a pretty good article that goes through
the history of it and how it really changed the
world as we know it. Yeah, and if you doubt this,
um consider that there has been data retreat from glacial
ice cores and it shows the big of a growth
(11:00):
in the atmosphere at concentrations of several greenhouse gases, in
particular c O two and c H four, And the
data coincides with James Watt's invention of the steam engine
in seventy four. So that's just one human marker of
these sort of ways that we have scarred or shaped
the earth. Think about fiber optics, lining in the ocean floors,
(11:22):
manufactured materials like aluminum and steel. Essentially these are new
this is a new layer of human made strata. Yeah,
it's estimated by at least eight three of the earth
verse land surface had been directly affected by humans. That's
everything from cutting down a forest and planning a bunch
of crops, to erecting a city, to turning what was
(11:46):
formerly a grassland and into asphalt, to laying down cables
to running power lines across the wilderness and the meaning
name of the world pretty significant, right and the earth
land right, but still you still have some significant changes
going on underneath the water as well. And then again
these are sedimentary and geochemical signals that are exactly the
(12:08):
kind that geologists used to mark where one period of
Earth history ends and another begins. And in the BBC
program The Age We Made, geologist gen Zala Suits actually
shows a reporter where a railway cutting exposed a clear
line in rocks made one dred and eighty million years
ago and this um actually mark the Torracian extinction event
(12:31):
in the early Jurassic when dinosaurs is beginning to dominate.
And Zala Suit says that in a similar way, we
will see clear marks in the rocks that will show
us where one one age was divided into another and
and where you can see the human handprint on the earth. Um.
(12:52):
He's saying that the rocks of the ant Passyne would
show an accumulation of novel chemicals like artificial PCBs, among
many other things. Yeah. I mean that it's an important
thing to mention. We're chemically altering the world as well.
It's not just we took a bunch of stone and
a bunch of metals and we built a city out
of it, or that we live up the night. Uh. Chemically,
(13:12):
we're changing what the earth is. Yeah. And before we
talk about how we we've changed the earth chemistry, let's
talk about humans as a force of nature. We talked
about this idea of sediment being moved around, but again
it wasn't you know, previous to humans, it was really
ice ages, supervolcanoes, um, huge events that changed the landscape,
(13:34):
mass extinctions of animals. You know. Again, this was something
that we attributed to nature in the past. But now
again with sediment changes, here is a very clear picture
of how we are the largest force in the movement
of sediment on our planet, and that is compared with
what's moved by ice, wind and rivers. And this is
(13:54):
according to James Vitski, he's an earth scientist at the
University of Colorado, Boulder. He says that that rivers carry
thirteen billion tons of settlement to the ocean, and we
now mine eight to nine billion tons of coal, and
that by thirty's predicted that we will reach thirteen billion
tons of coal mining. And that does not include aggregate
(14:14):
materials like gravel and sand, which is another thirteen billion tons.
Hydraulic cement and iron ore both each another two billion tons. Yeah.
On the point about water, as of two thousand and five,
humans had built so many damns, then nearly six times
as much water was held in storage as flowed freely
in rivers, right, And this is important because again you
(14:36):
don't want necessarily your rivers to overflow into your cities,
and that's why we try to control it. But it
is another example of how we are sculpting the earth
and changing it to meet our needs. And you cannot
deny that there there is the hampret of humanity on
the earth now, right, I mean, it's it's kind of
the idea of a damned river like that is what
we have done to the planet. The planet itself as
(14:58):
a damned river with the natural flow of things, has
been messed with so that we can get something we
want out of it, damned and not damned. Right. Yeah,
and then we've got agriculture. We produce food for the
seven billion of us, and that's the earth surface that's
used for production of crops and pastures. And this doesn't
actually take into account how the land around it is
(15:21):
also influenced by agriculture, whether it's runoff um or the
chemical trace of synthetic nitrogen. So again, think back to
that example of the mathoths. Without the mammoths, forests sprang
up and change the atmosphere. Eventually humans get around to
knocking down a lot of those forests so that they
can grow crops, and this is also going to have
a huge effect on the atmosphere. Yeah. And I had
(15:44):
read somewhere that the reason why some of this is
hard to get our heads around is because we have
abstracted so many of what, so much of what we
do and how we see ourselves apart from animals um
that we no longer see ourselves as animals. And this
is just something that is an indirect pros says, Yes,
we build cities, we build homes. Oh, by the way,
you know, we're taking away the habitats of certain creatures
(16:07):
and it's just leading to extinction. Well, and then I
to a certain extent, I feel like people also look
to animal models and they're like, well, a bird has
a nest um, an it's built a colony. These are
all just versions of what we are doing. But you
don't see in the animal world. You don't see it
too to thee the extent that we carry it out,
to the extent that it is, it is changing the planet.
(16:30):
I mean about it really about the only the only
things that as far as life goes when when you
look back through a lot of time, see early emergence
of organisms that changes the atmosphere, that that contributes to
a huge change in the atmosphere. And then you also
see as vegetation takes hold that also has an atmospheric
effect and also cuts down on the weathering that can
(16:51):
take place on the planet. But outside of a lot
of those early changes like this is this is the
one like beavers were not changing the lens gape in
a significant way. Leave it to the humans. Right. Yeah, well,
and I'm thinking too, even something like the collapse of
the honeybee colonies, which has been in the news a
lot in the last five or so actually ten years. Um,
(17:12):
this is a great mystery. Now there are some ideas
about the cause of it, and they're pointing to pesticide,
saying that this is changing the pesticides are actually changing
the behaviors of honey bees. And we already know that
honeybees are central to the way that our ecosystem plays
itself out. So again it's it's just problematic because these
(17:32):
are indirect things that are happening. Um, but it's hard
for us to, i think, get our heads around it
and see it for the actual damage that is doing
to the land, into the ecosystem. Yeah. I mean to
say nothing of most of the various invasive species that
we're having to worry about in the world today, A
(17:52):
vast number of those can be laid at the feat
of humans who have either enabled one species to spread
to an area that it previously had no access to,
or changes in the environment or in the or in
the atmosphere that that caused an animal to change from
one area to another. So well, and see this is
(18:13):
the this is the thing about the in passy, and
that I think that the main point that a lot
of geologists and scientists are trying to make is that
all of this is being captured. Um. It's being captured
in sediment, is being captured in chemical markers. So people
will be able to look back and say, okay, there
you know the the amount of pollen wasn't as present
(18:35):
as it was in these areas, and you began to
make this story for yourself of Okay, there could have
been a collapse with the honeybee uh colonies, or these
animals were in this area when they shouldn't have been,
or they became extinct in this area. So it's not
just the fossil record, it's the chemical signatures. Um. It
should probably take a break, but when we get back,
we're going to talk about these chemical signatures, how we
(18:57):
are changing the earth chemistry, and I probab ms you
will have a bit of good news in there too. Eventually,
all right, we're back talking about what humans have done
to the planet. And I tell you one one personal
example that I ran into the other week keeps ringing
in my mind. I was at The Desert Museum in
(19:19):
Arizona outside of Tucson. Really cool place. It's really not
so much a museum as it is a botanical garden
with animals. Get to see a lot of cool cacti,
other modes of desert vegetation. Get to see really cool
animals like the have alina, various lizards. There was a
coyote hiding there somewhere. But they also had little prairie dogs. Yeah, yeah,
(19:39):
and they were adorable. We haven't hit them, just as
they were coming out and they were they were looking around,
so we were just really eating it up. They're like, oh,
they're so cute. They're amazing looking how they're watching, you know,
observing the way that that some are watching out for
hawks overhead and the others are busy feeding or seemingly
snuggling with each other. It was the adorable creatures. Did
they give you giant foam hammers to pump from? No,
(20:00):
they didn't, but but in a way it was like
a bomb to the head when other tourists showed up,
because there was one in particular where the only thing
the guy can muster is he he asked, I wonder
what those tastes like? You know, which, which is a
very kind of human thing too. It's like you're you're
your only way of relating to this animal is to
think what it might taste like and how it compares
to other animals that you eat. I mean, that's that's
(20:23):
a very narrow way of looking at the world. But
the best though, was another tourist wanders up and it's
like a father and a sign. And at first I'm like, oh,
it's a father in the son. They're looking at the
prairie dogs. It's nice that the son, who is apparently
he's older, It got the impression who was in the
National Guard or in the military or something. And he
starts telling his father, how ah, these things they infest everything.
(20:43):
They just all over the base. We have to go
ahead and kill him at all. And I wanted to
shake them and say, say, the prairie dogs are not
the creatures infesting things, like the humans are the creatures
that are infesting things. Humans are the invasive species that
have spread to every continent on the planet and have,
as we're discussing here, drastically changed most of those continents,
(21:04):
and that we're working on the last one. Just give
us time. But I doubt they would have. I would
have probably ruined their vacation. I really wanted to say that,
you know, because it's it's it all tends to wind
up at our feet, you know. Yeah. But then there's
this problem of that's been the dominant philosophy for humans.
I mean, manifest destiny is you know something that that
(21:26):
that arose um when when America is expanding, But that
is that's a perspective that most humans have taken, is
that we are going to dominate, and we are going
to bend nature to our will and how dare nature
creep upon us? Uh? And we will try to manipulate
life for us at every single level that we can,
you know, from from d NA to a cloud seating. Yeah,
(21:48):
and its human being. Since we've discussed before, we're notoriously
bad at judging or specifically acting on long term risks.
And that's just within our own lifetime. That's that come
down to should I study for the exam tonight or
should I go out and party? And then you end
up going partying instead. But then when you when you
deal with it with much larger periods of time that
(22:10):
span a whole multiple generations, it becomes even harder for
us to actually act on it, and we end up
again caught in this narrow perception of my life and
the things around me and the things I need to
maintain this level of goodness. Well also feel like on
a technological level, we really are only beginning to understand
the impact of what the last seventy eighty years and
(22:34):
technologies have brought to our feet. And I'm thinking in
particular this conundrum of synthetic nitrogen. Yes, because synthetic nitrogen
is something that we were able to begin to harness
in the nineteen thirties. It was in our atmosphere, we
couldn't quite figure out how to manipulate it for our use.
And then let me and behold, biochemists figured out how
(22:55):
nitrogen could be taken out of the atmosphere and break
it down with bacteria to create fertilize. Yeah. Particularly, this
is a man by the name of Fritz Haber um
round nineteen hundred, young MP chemist in Germany. There's an
excellent radio lab segment titled how do you solve a
problem like Fritz Haber And Uh, It's a fascinating story
because see, at this point in time, everyone is really
(23:16):
starting to worry about how we're gonna feed these growing populations,
and it continues to be a problem today, but at
the time that it was getting pretty serious. How do
you grow enough food to feed everyone? So Haber happens
on a solution. Again, he's experimenting, and he makes his
breakthrough about how to pull nitrogen out of the atmosphere, essentially,
to borrow the term from Radio Lab, how do you
(23:37):
turn air into bread? Turn how to turn to basically
make food out of thin air and enable humanity to
continue all these things that it's doing. And it's of course,
what's the dark side to the friends Haber story, as
as I'll leave Radio Lab to explain it to you,
is that he ends up having a role in the
creation of some particularly devastating chemical agents in the Second
World War. So go go listen to that when you
(23:59):
get a chance. It's dark and insightful. But here's the thing,
and that that that's that's where the conundrum comes in.
You have synthetic nitrogen, harnessing it, you can use it
for fertilizer, you can grow many more crops, feeding many
more people. But the problem is is that now it's
being leached into the soil is being leached into um
into the atmosphere, and when you have the combustion of
(24:20):
fossil fuels with atmosphere nitrogen, that produces nitrogen oxides which
have created basically a global nitrogen cycle which is completely
controlled by the human species. And this if if you
doubt the hand of man on the world and it's markers,
you can look directly to this to say that we
are a force of nature ourselves when we can control
(24:44):
the nitrogen cycle on our planet. Yeah, we Again, we're
not just building things out of other things. We're altering
the system itself, and it's and it's pretty terrifying when
you start thinking of it in those terms. So then
you have this problem of reactive nitrogen washing into the
oceans and causing coastal dead zones. Even the most remote
areas of the world have isotopic markers in the layers
(25:05):
of sediments in places like the Arctic pointing to increased
amounts of human engineered nitrogen. So again, we've got the
record here for for all to see in ten thousand
years from now at least, So what can we do
about it? What can we actually do at this point?
And again, the big thing here. It's kind of like
building bases on the Moon, or exploring other planets, or
(25:25):
any any substantial human achievement. We've got to actually want
to do it and have there There has to be
the political will to get it done. But what could
we do if we wanted to do something? Well, I mean,
we have a couple of things up our sleeves, but
I think one of the main things is that we
have to have a perspective change and um And I
think this is why some people are pushing for the
(25:48):
adoption of this antipathying term, because they're saying that once
you say, yes, this is the age of man, then
people will become more responsible when they realize that on
the geologic time scale all that they are now responsible
for the changes made to Earth. It's not just oops,
we did this and this happened. Um And I'm thinking
too that that this is not just the long view,
(26:11):
but as more and more technologies come online and people
like Aubrey de Gray, the bio gerontologists, she says that
we could live to a thousand years. He says that
the first person to reach the age of five has
already been born, who can be maintained like a classic car,
so to speak, with all the different technologies. But this
is coming online and that people will naturally begin, hopefully
(26:35):
to adopt this long view perspective. And right now, you know,
we sort of quibble about, well, this is very expensive
to bring in this technology that helps um for you know,
to ameliorate some of the problems that we have. But
the fact of the matter is that we do have
bioadaptive technologies that could render waste really a thing of
(26:56):
the past. It reminds me of the movie The Mission,
if you've seen this with Jeremy Irons and Robert de Niro.
At the very end of it, there's a character who
is having to come to terms with some arguably bad
decisions that he made that had some some horrible repercussions,
and another character says to him, well, thus is the world,
as if to say, hey, this is the world. We
just have to live in it. Sometimes you've got to
(27:17):
do bad stuff to live in this world. And he responds, no,
thus thus is the world? Thus have I made it?
Saying that the world that we're making excuses for is
a world that we have increasingly created through our own mistakes,
wrongdoings and this attitude of of living in a world
where the rules are already set well, and I think
largely we have lived that way. But again, I think
(27:38):
that we're beginning to get it beat on what happens
with technology over a hundred year period. And I think
that to me, the most amazing part of this story,
and perhaps the most uplifting if we can use this
information right, is that over the last two hundred years,
we have vastly changed the climates. Um, we've vastly changed
(27:58):
the way our our world looks and it's sculpted. We
could do the very same thing, but in ways that
we're intentional and that made sense for the long haul. Yeah,
and there are a lot of people working on this.
There are some fantastic designs just coming out all the time.
We we feature a lot of them on the Facebook
page and the Twitter. You know, it'll be this kind
of design for a for an ecologically sound city or
(28:19):
an ecologically sound household. Countless new technologies are always being
dreamed up, if not actually developed. It's just to what
extent are we willing to actually invest in them and
make make the jump Well, and um, I mean there
are ideas like compossible cars and gadgets, um, And really
what we need to look toward is and we've talked
(28:40):
about this number many, many times, but this has been
This is the year that we will reach about nine
and a half billion inhabitants. And of course, where are
we going to get the food, Where are we going
to get the space? So we need to think about
innovations that are tailored to the needs of the poorest
and new plant varieties that can withstand climates that are harsh.
We need to about technologies to recycle phosphorus. Then now,
(29:03):
of course when you talk about new plants, you're talking
about genetically modified organisms. So it's give and take, right. Yeah,
It's kind of like the bathtub. It's like a little
more hot water because the bath too cold, a little
more cold water because the bath is too hot, and
then at what point does the water simply overflow? Well,
the thing is is that we we are a self
aggrandizing species, right, And this is where I think this
(29:26):
works to our advantage, because if we really want to
have an age of man and own this and uh
and be within the fossil record or the geological time
scale and say this is the age of man, we
actually have to exist for a lot longer um. You know,
these periods are quite long. So if we begin, if
we go at the rate that we are, and we
(29:48):
were to use up um a lot of the resources
of Earth and make it not so that it's not
very habitable, especially with so many people coming online in
the year, then we may not have this. It may
not even be able to point to this because we
may not be alive. I mean, ultimately, do you want
it to be the age of man or do you
want it to be the human event? This is near
(30:11):
blip in geologic time in which humans arrived on the scene,
changed the world around them, and then brought about their
own extinction and pretty quick succession. Right would it be
lovely if ten tho years from now someone could point
to this age and say, ah, here's this crazy stuff
that they were creating in the air, and then you
can see all this other evidence in which they began
to sort of tinker with that and and create substances
(30:34):
that worked better with the natural world. So there is
hope if we want it, um. But but there there's
a lot of serious stuff on the table that we
need to think about. Really and again we need to
I do believe we need to start thinking about it
as the age of man, as not this not an
age in which we live, but an age of us
(30:57):
that we are dictating, and so we need to we
need to step up and and make some changes. This
is the tough love talk. There's a great quote in
Daniel Quinn's Ishmael which, if any if you're interested in
any of these topics, I highly recommend reading that novel.
He makes a really strong philosophical argument for most of this,
and I believe this book arises from pretty much the
(31:18):
same period as the as the idea that this age
of man exists. Yeah, actually, I mean mentioned to you
that age of Man was put forward by Paul J.
Krutzen and Christian schwad Role and this was in the
early so so roughly there. But the Daniel quint Quinn
quote goes as follows, Man's destiny was to conquer and
(31:41):
rule the world, and this is what he's done. Almost
he hasn't quite made it, and it looks as though
this may be his undoing. The problem is that man's
conquest of the world has itself devastated the world. And
in spite of all the mastery we've obtained. We don't
have enough mastery to stop devastating the world or to
repair the devastations, and we've already wrought. So there you go.
(32:02):
We need the long view people. Yeah, so it's it
can be a bit when I read Ishmael, it's kind
of a harrowing, depressing read because it deals a lot
with what we are, what we've done, and what we
might not have the will to do. But like all
of it, humans are capable of so much. I mean,
just look at what we've done to the earth. It's
most of it we've looked at in a very negative
(32:24):
light here, but it's still a tremendous amount of change.
Imagine if we're able to work that back in another direction. Well,
and imagine again too, if if you do live to
be five or someone listening, well, perhaps you're the first
person that lived to be five years old. I feel
that that our behaviors would change with that sort of longevity. Yeah,
so if you're listening, future five year old person, you
(32:48):
know what to do. All right, Well, let's call over
the robe it here and see if you can liven
things up with a little listener mail. All right, we
heard from Adam Adam of course is the chief been
this officer from having this pledge dot com travels around
the world doing good and uh we get to live
vicariously through his uh missives to us. School hats that time,
(33:11):
I know, and it's cold enough for me you to
begin wearing mine. I'm very excited. But he wrote in
about our maps episodes and he says, Hi, guys, as
you can imagine, maps are a daily part of my existence.
Being on the road, I've had to read more than
my fair share, and they range from good to horrible,
usually depending on the level of infrastructure in the city.
I'm in Catman Doo, Nepal at the moment, and you
(33:32):
can see on the attached pictures that there are no
street names on the map. Thus all maps have schools, hospitals, hotels, restaurants,
and other landmarks so you can navigate your way around.
I think Robert has mentioned on the show that he's
been to Costa Rica. Throughout Central America, there aren't really addresses.
I remember trying to find a bus company's ticketing offices
which listed its addressed as quote, two hundred meters south
of the high school, a hundred meters west of the church,
(33:54):
a good sense of direction is necessary or command of
Spanish to just ask locals, which what I inevitably always did.
As for the reading the maps of places before going,
I say it's the best. It's best to go and
experience everything when you get there. Thanks again for the
great podcast, and take care. Indeed, in Costa Rica, that
was the one thing I definitely remember. They're talking about
(34:15):
how the maps really don't work, and a lot of
it ends up depending on landmarks, but not only current landmarks,
but the landmarks that haven't necessarily existed in like a
decade or so. Like one of the big ones was like,
there's a Coca Cola bottling plant, I believe in the
capital of Costa Rica, and that was still used as
a reference point as a landmark even though it's no
(34:36):
longer there. Let's see. That's what I think. It's really
charming about Costa Rica. Yeah, yeah, because I don't know.
I love I love that it's time doesn't necessarily exist there,
nor do good roads. That's the roads are pretty autricious,
especially the ones going up to Monteverde. But but I've
heard the argument that the reason that those roads haven't
been improved because if you get a nice road going
(34:57):
up to Monte Verde. Then how long before you have
a casino in Monteverdi? How long do you have to
the whole the very beauty of the place that everyone likes.
It is kind of this mountain, kind of hippie, a
lot of expatriots living there, Quakers. It's a really magical
place and I read everyone to go. But the road
up there is terrifying, but perhaps for a reason, and
(35:19):
that would be no good for sloths rights. Yeah, they
hate casino because they're just they're too slow on the one.
I know, I know, I wants to get behind a
sloth at a casino. All right, Well, if you have
anything you would like to share with us about your travels,
about maps or on the heels of this episode, about
(35:40):
humanity's impact on the on the world and what we
need to do going forward, if we were really to
own this idea that this is the age of man,
that we're living in a world that is sculpted from
our selfish desires, let us know. You can write us
through various methods. You can find us on Tumblr, where
we are stuffed to bow your mind. You can find
(36:01):
us on Facebook, where again we are stuff to blow
your mind, and on Twitter we use the handle blow
the Mind, and you can also drop us a line
at blow the Mind at discovery dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, Is It How
Stuff Works dot com
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