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HUMAN IMPACT ON EARTH-ANTHROPOCENE

by | 17-02-2017 00:06


We all are well aware, today our earth is on the brink of extinction largely because of the human or anthropogenic impact on the environment. The term anthropogenic defines an effect or object due to human activity. As per the researchers? mathematical equation, human activity are causing the climate to change 170 times faster than natural forces. A climate change expert and researcher Professor Will Steffen has written in his journal that for the past billion years astronomical and geophysical factors have been the dominating influences on the Earth system i.e, the Earth's "spheres"—atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, geosphere, pedosphere, biosphere, and, even, the magnetosphere and the impact of human societies on these components. But over the past six decades human forces now rival the dominating forces of nature in changing the earth system rapidly giving rise to a period known as the Anthropocene.

The term Anthropocene is referred to the period of substantial secretions of pollution and all kinds of environmental hazards as a result of human activities.

Steffen and his co-researcher, Owen Gaffney, from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, came up with an ?Anthropocene Equation? to determine the impact of this period of intense human activity on the earth.

Astronomical and geophysical forces and other internal dynamics like sun's  heat output, colliding continents, volcanoes Earth's orbit around the sun, gravitational interactions with other planets  all dominate the rate of change of the earth system but on orders of magnitude it is less than human impact. In addition to this, Greenhouse gas emitted as a result of human activity in the past 45 years,  have increased the rate of temperature rise to 1.7 degrees Celsius per century, mitigating the influence of natural forces.

Human has made technological advancement in the last few decades and it is still going on in full swing, given that the purpose of the technologies is to exploit, control, or dominate the natural forces for the apparent benefit of humanity. In science I have read about the conservation of mass principle and the first law of thermodynamics (i.e., conservation of energy) which defines that when the  material resources or energy are manipulated by technology, environmental consequences are inevitable. As per the second law of thermodynamics, order can be increased within a system (such as the human economy) only by increasing disorder outside the system (i.e., the environment). Thus, technologies can create ?order? in the human economy (i.e., order as manifested in buildings, factories, transportation networks, communication systems, etc.) only at the expense of increasing ?disorder? in the environment.

Scientists think that human impact has not only significantly changed the growth of biodiversity but it has also created disorder in the environment. The activities of human have accelerated the growth of species extinction and coral reefs are declining.

When other astronomical forces of our universe take millions of years to impact our earth, humans are impacting in the time frame of just a couple of centuries. To conclude we need to reduce the anthropological climate change otherwise it will lead to ?societal collase? . Need of the hour is to strike a balance in the exploitation of nature by humans.

The report above is after a thorough research based on the inputs from Guardian, Wikipedia, Gulf News and my knowledge on physics.