Project Press
Is It Game Over for Coal?
By Emma Foehringer Merchant | New Republic | March 18, 2016 Last Friday, Oregon became the first state to ban coal outright, passing a bill that will phase out any electricity generated by coal by 2035. Several days earlier, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that 80 percent of last year’s retired electricity was coal-powered. In 2016, natural gas…
Read MoreThe Early Anthropocene Hypothesis: An Update
By Bill Ruddiman | RealClimate | March 15, 2016 For over a decade, paleoclimate scientists have argued whether the warmth of the last several thousand years was natural or anthropogenic. This brief comment updates that debate, also discussed earlier at RC: Debate over the Early Anthropogenic Hypothesis (2005) and An Emerging View on Early Land Use (2011). The graph…
Read MoreThe Case for Optimism on Climate Change | Al Gore TED 2016
Why is Al Gore optimistic about climate change? In this spirited talk, Gore asks three powerful questions about the man-made forces threatening to destroy our planet — and the solutions we’re designing to combat them. (Featuring Q&A with TED Curator Chris Anderson)
Read MoreAnthropocene: The Human Age
By Richard Monastersky | Nature | March 11, 2016 Almost all the dinosaurs have vanished from the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. The fossil hall is now mostly empty and painted in deep shadows as palaeobiologist Scott Wing wanders through the cavernous room. Wing is part of a team carrying out a radical,…
Read MoreSatellite Laser Will Map Forests in 3-D
By Brittany Patterson | Scientific American | March 8, 2016 In 2018, America’s space agency is going to send a laser into the galaxies to assess the world’s trees. It won’t be the first time NASA dabbles in lidar technology—shooting lasers onto things and recording what comes back—but it will be the first time the agency…
Read MoreNASA Finds Drought in Eastern Mediterranean Worst of Past 900 Years
NASA | March 1, 2016 In addition to identifying the driest years, the science team discovered patterns in the geographic distribution of droughts that provides a “fingerprint” for identifying the underlying causes. Together, these data show the range of natural variation in Mediterranean drought occurrence, which will allow scientists to differentiate droughts made worse by…
Read MoreIn Search of the Anthropocene Epoch
BBC News | February 26, 2016 For more than 11,000 years, we have been living in a period of geological time called the Holocene. But researchers say our planet is undergoing a rapid transition, so much so that we have shifted into a new epoch: the Anthropocene, the age of humans. Continue reading and watch…
Read MoreUN Science Report Warns of Fewer Bees, Other Pollinators
By Seth Borenstein | WTop | February 26, 2016 WASHINGTON (AP) — Many species of wild bees, butterflies and other critters that pollinate plants are shrinking toward extinction, and the world needs to do something about it before our food supply suffers, a new United Nations scientific mega-report warns. Continue reading on WTop.
Read MoreNew Evidence Shows Global Climate Change Began Way Back in 1610
By Eric Holthaus | Slate | February 17, 2016 With evidence mounting that humanity has become a true force of nature “as Earth-changing as a meteorite strike,” it’s natural to wonder just exactly when our collective influence over our home planet’s environment became so dominant. That question has sparked a roaring debate among scientists that’s led to an effort to…
Read MoreThe Anthropocene: Great Marketing, Wrong Product
By Brad Allenby | Slate | February 8, 2016 It was in 2011 that the Economist, a publication usually known for arcane speculation on geopolitics and economics, welcomed its readers to the Anthropocene and warned that humans had “changed the way the world works.” The drumbeat behind the concept has continued, recently receiving new momentum with the release in…
Read MorePODCAST: Congratulations, We are Likely the Anthropocene
The John Batchelor Show | February 5, 2016 Listen to the podcast on Audioboom.
Read MoreThrilled to be Collaborating with Deep Inc.
Thrilled to be collaborating with the @DeepDispatches team on #VR content for Anthropocene! https://t.co/bPmq606T9t pic.twitter.com/7ea8Bg2T9U — Anthropocene Project (@anthropocene) February 5, 2016
Read MoreWhat Future Humans Will Learn From Our Remains
By Yasmin Tayag | Inverse | February 3, 2016 Millions of years from now, a future geologist will be digging deep into the Earth, seeking the truth about his notorious sapiens heritage. Excavating far beneath the year 100,000, scraping past 10,000, he’ll hit on 2016 and think: What the actual fuck happened here? A recent paper written by researchers with…
Read MoreAnthropocene Writing Room
Anthropocene documentary writing room with the Edward Burtynsky research crew. Big plans for shoots this year!
Read MoreIn Search of a New Politics For a New Environmental Era
By Diane Toomey | Yale Environment 360 | January 20, 2016 That we live in a new epoch defined by humankind’s unprecedented influence on the natural world is becoming less a matter of debate than a starting point for future action. But now that the Anthropocene phenomenon has been identified and labeled, how do we act…
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