“These changes all are the result of what scientists call “the Great Acceleration” — the dramatic, simultaneous surge in almost every measure of human activity that started in the mid-20th century and continues through today.
The same evidence appears all over the planet, in every potential golden spike site the Anthropocene Working Group has examined. Peat bogs, ocean basins, the skeletons of coral reefs — even the ice of Antarctica has been permanently tainted by human pollution.
“What we have measured, in a very objective and quantitative way, is we are living in a world with conditions that are no longer within the last 11,000 years of natural variability,” McCarthy said. “The Earth is, in fact, fundamentally different.”“
However, “In 1963, when nations agreed to ban nuclear weapons testing that could contaminate the water and atmosphere, plutonium concentrations in Crawford Lake started to diminish. Fly ash counts fell after the United States and Canada required new pollution controls at power plants and other industrial facilities. The revitalization of the lake’s distinctive calcite bands during the 1980s is a sign of successful efforts to combat acid rain.”
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