The new 'Anthropocene Epoch' Means the Doom of Most Species on Earth

by RobertConnors

The 10,000+ years of the Holocene Epoch have ended abruptly, and a new Epoch is coming to dominate the Earth: that of the Anthropocene.

continued at Daily Kos....

Rolling the dice with evolution

by mwmwm

A new study by J. Alroy, just published in Science (subscription required for full text), has been getting some reporting by other sources. It's mildly entitled "The Shifting Balance of Diversity Among Major Marine Animal Groups."

It prods me to my keyboard.

Evolution, and biodiversity, and the interrelationships of biosystems, are to me the imprint of the universe's organizing principles. It's what I grew up with instead of religion.

My father was an evolutionary biologist and animal behaviorist, and so I grew up with dinnertime discussions about evolutionary pressures on butterfly wing designs, or the evolutionary explanations for beehive altruism, or why mating behavior affected peacock feather development.

Elroy's analysis -- while not a surprise -- hit me surprisingly hard, because it drove home the full impact of the "sixth extinction."

continued at Daily Kos....

Republican Sen. candidates push policies to end the Holocene

by Lefty Coaster

Republicans would despoil our country in pursuit of the oil and coal that are so profitable for their corporate sponsors, and so bad for our planetary climate. They are pushing energy policies that are hastening the end of the Holocene epoch, and the start of the Anthropocene epoch.

This comes from Bill McKibben writing at HuffPo:

We're Hot as Hell and We're Not Going to Take It Anymore

If we’re going to get any of this done, we’re going to need a movement, the one thing we haven’t had. For 20 years environmentalists have operated on the notion that we’d get action if we simply had scientists explain to politicians and CEOs that our current ways were ending the Holocene, the current geological epoch. That turns out, quite conclusively, not to work. We need to be able to explain that their current ways will end something they actually care about, i.e. their careers. And since we’ll never have the cash to compete with Exxon, we better work in the currencies we can muster: bodies, spirit, passion.

We need to shame them, starting now. And we need everyone working together.

continued at Daily Kos...