Stratigraphy is the study of finding the position and order of geological and archaeological remains in the strata of the earth layers. So if I was on the council of adding or rejecting the idea of the anthropocene epoch to the time scale then I would surely accept it. I would accept it because the anthropocene is how the humans have impacted the climate and environment around earth. Speaking about Montana I believe the anthropocene epoch should start sometime this year or even started last year because as you can see the effects of global warming and other factors stemming from humans have already impacted a place like Montana, which means less snow and warmer days, lots of rain.
Climate change is a huge thing in Montana because it is easy to see the changes even without much experience in the field. I strongly believe that people go with he social norm of climate change instead of actually knowing the full facts, but in Montana I would say it is easier to tell. This affects our ability to develop solutions to remediate climate change because, the test results of students and people uniformed are not conclusive enough to work with and develop a big solution to fix or help alleviate some of the problems. I would say something that would help encourage conversations about climate change between different people is something that Dr. Cathy Whitlock said at the end, “ instead of us calling it climate change, why don’t we just say lets change the climate.” This way s less provoking and easier to understand for those like me who don’t fully understand a lot about climate change.
Overall I really like your blog post the only thing that I disagreed with was when you said the epoch started but that is completely up for debate anyways so disagreement is natural. I definitely like your second paragraph though because it addresses how changing the time we use to discuss climate change have a big impact on reception. Especially because people do recognize the importance of climate change in Montana as it affects most aspects of life so it isn’t like people are adverse to change.
Hey Ben!
Your post is very to-the-point and clearly written, which was awesome to read because there’s no confusion about where you stand. I completely agree that we should recognize the Anthropocene as its own separate epoch, but it’s super interesting that you think it should start so recently. This idea was actually pretty mind blowing and I can see why you would have such an idea for the beginning of the age of Mankind. Personally, I think we need to declare the Anthropocene’s beginning much earlier. Originally, I thought the 1800 idea made sense but I can also see reasons to start it earlier than this. Montana is definitely a very special case in which we can begin to notice obvious changes in our beautiful state. I know that my family has noticed much more smoke over the past few years than we used to have during the summer. I am glad you choose to bring up Montana specifically in your post. Really like what you said about people just going along with the “social norm” of climate change without actually looking at the facts because I very much think that people on both sides of the political spectrum are guilty of doing this. Nice post, I like the aspects you chose to bring up here. Keep up the good work and happy Halloween!?