"Anthropocene" - the destructive Era Of Man.

wow, a good book, i like the anthropocene, idea


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=468267&in_page_id=1770

Six-and-half billion - and rising. That is how many humans crowd our Planet Earth. And there is no doubt that we are wreaking terrible damage on our world.

So much so that scientists talk about the "Anthropocene" - the destructive Era Of Man.

Our gases are polluting the atmosphere and warming the skies. Our chemicals taint the seas and the rivers; our farms and cities gobble up the landscape, pushing flora and fauna aside like sand before a bulldozer. Our green-and-blue world is still beautiful, but it is far from pristine.

Our mark is everywhere.

But just imagine what would happen if we were all to disappear, each and every one of us, tomorrow. That's right - think what would take place if every single man, woman and child were to vanish off the face of the Earth in an instant.


That is the bizarre premise of a new book which speculates what would happen in the days, months, years and millennia ahead if homo sapiens - surely the most extraordinary species ever to have evolved - were suddenly to be swept away.

The author, Alan Weisman, of Arizona University, does not speculate on the cause of the disappearance; this is immaterial, as this is not a book about the end of the world but about an imagined beginning - the beginning of The World Without Us, the title of his book.


The results of this huge thought-experiment are both fascinating and surprising. Fascinating for what they tell us about the impermanence of the works of man, and surprising for the simple reason that it soon becomes clear that our world would carry on regardless, indifferent to our demise.


In fact, the first things to happen after the disappearance of humanity would be very dramatic - and destructive.


Within a week, the emergency fuel supply to the diesel generators that circulate cooling water around the world's 441 operating nuclear reactors would run out.


After that, one by one, the reactors would overheat, burn, melt and in some cases explode. Several hundred Chernobyl disasters would play out, simultaneously, across the deserted world. Huge quantities of radioactive material would be released into the air, rivers and oceans.


What effect this would have on animal and plant life is unknown.


But much to everyone's surprise, the flora and fauna around the Chernobyl disaster site has thrived. The ecologist James Lovelock, a pro-nuclear Green, argues that wildlife, by and large, does not notice radiation.


Certainly, from then on, planet Earth would probably give a sigh of relief at our passing, as a spectacular environmental recovery would begin to take place. Quickly, the oceans would cleanse themselves; similarly the air, the streams and the rivers. In a remarkably short time, Mother Nature would reassert herself over her old dominions

The big cities would crumble with remarkable ease. London or New York, like all large towns near the sea, would start to rot from their foundations up, as underground tunnels and conduits that carried trains and cables, roadways and sewage, started to fill up with water within days. The pumps that keep them dry would have simply ceased to operate.


Indeed, the recent floods in northern England showed just how much damage can be caused when human defences fail. Without people to patch them up, and the rumble of traffic continually to keep them at bay, weeds would win their long battle with the asphalt.

Within a few weeks, grass shoots would begin to shatter every road surface in the world. Within 15 years, the M1 would look like one of those roads built in Africa in the 1960s and never since maintained.

Within a decade, the combined onslaught of weeds, waterlogging from blocked drains and the freeze-thaw action of water seeping into cracks would combine to turn the foundations of the urban world to rubble.


Many buildings would start to fall apart within 20 years. Walls would groan and creak, roof tiles lift, joints between walls and roofs separate. Without central heating, with gutters permanently clogged and no maintenance, most of Britain's homes would be in ruins by 2040

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I just post the stories, for interest.. for everyone

Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii

Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein

this is the book that the article talks about


The World Without Us by Alan Weisman is published by Virgin Books at £12.99.

heres the link for it on amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Us-Alan-Weisman/dp/0312347294/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-1601816-5496406?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1184443686&sr=1-1

*********************************************************************************************************************************
I just post the stories, for interest.. for everyone

Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii

Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein