by lehi on 4/18/24, 6:08 PM with 59 comments
by Nevermark on 4/18/24, 9:45 PM
How many common assumptions about the Holocene are already broken?
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With much less at stake, I think it was out of touch and impractical to choose scientific terminology at odds with existing common language, when "dwarf planet" was defined as not a subcategory of "planet".
It defies common usage, and also common language forms. Prefixed nouns usually refer to subcategories, not excluded categories.
What science fiction story is going to carefully distinguish "dwarf planets" as being a completely separate category from "planets" because one didn't completely clear its orbit of debris?
A better (equivalent, and just as useful) nomenclature would have left the common definition of "planet" alone: i.e. a body circling a star, too small to be a star or brown dwarf (no continuous or aborted fusion), but large enough to form a near sphere based on its own gravitational field.
THEN, subdivide "planets" into "major planets" and "minor planets". We have 8 major planets, and it turns out, many many dwarf planets.
Pluto is a "planet", specifically a "dwarf planet". Earth and Jupiter are "planets", specifically "major planets".
"Rogue planets" are "planets" that left their systems. Some were originally major, some dwarf. "Protoplanets" are new "planets" actively accumulating mass by clearing their orbital field. They may stabilize as "major" or "dwarf" planets.
The new exlusionary definition of "planet" also opens the doors to inevitable conundrums:
Some day a huge planetary type body will be discovered in the outreaches of a solar system where it has not cleared its area of debris. So not a "planet"?
Some day a small planetary body with a cleared orbital field will be found between the orbits of larger planetary bodies that haven't cleared their fields. So it is a planet, but the larger bodies surrounding it are not?
by b33j0r on 4/19/24, 3:36 AM
If the problem being identified is that science is bad at PR, I agree. Science communication, I love you; please stop being a self-fulfilling prophesy.
If the message is that human industrialization besides carbon emissions directly have obscured the discussion. Yes.
But this article kinda… does not tell you the thesis, it gives you the evidence for us to come to our own (proven and correct) conclusions. At… length.
I like it, but we should probably try to get new people who don’t already agree… maybe
by lainga on 4/18/24, 7:52 PM
Geologists reject declaration of Anthropocene epoch
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/mar/22/geologists-r...
by noduerme on 4/19/24, 6:38 AM
Grouped by day you might just see a couple huge spikes on days where there were a few negative responses.
Grouped by year you'd notice that the volume of negative feedbacks was increasing.
Grouped by milllenia it would be hard to notice that something had changed radically in the last few years.
The question is what timeframe matters to your particular case. Unless you can answer that, you can't form a specific idea of how bad something actually is or whether it's begun improving or is still deteriorating.
The worst atmospheric polluting parts of the industrial revolution will have been over for most countries for a century before we really feel the environmental consequences of rising sea levels and increased greenhouse effects. No one alive today was burning coal in 1895. So it's not crazy to think about how we adapt, while still considering how to stop adding to the damage.
by FrustratedMonky on 4/18/24, 10:37 PM
It isn't against naming this the Anthropocene, all of the myths are followed by reasons why they aren't myths and this is probably the Anthropocene. "From a certain point of view".
by beloch on 4/19/24, 12:39 AM
e.g. Geologists of some far-off future are going to notice that species that were isolated to one continent suddenly started popping up everywhere in the fossil record a few hundred years ago. Sea travel has united the continents in way they haven't been united since Pangea.
A few hundred years will be indistinguishable from a single human lifetime to those future geologists. To us however, it's an important distinction.
by neonate on 4/18/24, 8:33 PM
by kazinator on 4/19/24, 3:52 AM
by hoc on 4/19/24, 6:50 AM
What we once considered pivotal points in our development seems now the source for our declared demise. At least we discovered that via satellites shot into orbit by rockets.
Now, if we accept that as the natural overshooting in a evolutionary jump, we just need to adjust. The undershooting will be painful, the discussion in the next few oscillations annyoing, still, it's the way to go. After all, denial is just a common step in change.
by eimrine on 4/18/24, 6:31 PM
by mig39 on 4/19/24, 1:35 AM
Yeah, let's not be hasty here. Let's just call it a war, because something worse can come along...
Let's not call this the Anthropocene yet, we don't know what's coming.
by Anotheroneagain on 4/19/24, 5:41 AM