Looks like it is a silly notion that an epoch should be named after us because we are the center of the universe. A notion that scientists usually try to avoid.
wiki: "The Anthropocene is a proposed epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on the Earth's geology"
Nothing to do with silly notions of Aristotelian anthropocentricity, because as you say, scientists do avoid that. It was proposed by geologists and other scientists on the basis of the effects of human activities being much more rapid than normal geological and climatological processes. Whether it will be accepted generally, remains to be seen.
Thank you for your comment, I hope you are right; but shouldent then the Athropocene start much earlier than "2000 years ago"? Say with the introduction of agriculture in big fields that lay bare the ground creating deserts like the Sahara (and almost created the Kansas dust bowl, but we managed to limit that). Or to the first use of wildfires as a weapon against enemy towns and cities. That too destroy the ground cover in large areas, I believe a lot of the European forest land was lost that way.
Thanks for expressing your view. I believe many would agree. It was geologists who first proposed the name and concept, and the idea was at first viewed with scepticism. But in the last ten years more and more evidence has been showing up that human activity is changing our geography, not just through climate change, but because of the sedimentary layers of pollution entering every part of the planet's environments, and even into the top inch of the most recent sedimentary rocks. Because of this, the term is beginning to gain acceptance in scientific communities.
JakobA the unAmerican. 