Readers of the New York Times
opened their papers today to a giant photo of Donald Trump appearing
above the headline “Geologists Say It’s Not Time to Declare a
Human-Created
Epoch”. (The
photo of Trump was attached to a different story.) The article, written
by reporter Raymond Zhong (who has been on the climate beat for two and
a half years),
appeared online yesterday with the headline “Are We in the
‘Anthropocene,’ the Human Age? Nope, Scientists
Say.”
“A panel of experts voted down a proposal to officially declare the start of a new interval of geologic time, one defined by humanity’s changes to the planet,” the article summarizes. Zhong quotes panel members Aarhus University geologist Jan A. Piotrowski and University of Wales Trinity Saint David stratigrapher Mike Walker, who voted against the proposal.
The chair and second vice-chair of the panel in question, the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS) of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) within the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), have now forcefully announced the vote was a sham and should be considered “null and void”.
In brief, the alleged voting and the process surrounding it is open to challenge based on the grave violation of the ICS Statutes and thus must be considered null and void.
They report that the improper vote was instigated by Peking University geologist Liping Zhou, first vice-chair of the panel, and University of Florence paleoclimatologist Adele Bertini, secretary, despite opposition from the chair, University of Leicester geologist Jan Zalasiewicz, and second vice-chair Martin J. Head, a stratigrapher at Brock University.
Zalasiewicz and Head note that “a large majority of SQS members who took part in the alleged voting” (11 out of 16) were “not eligible as voting members at the time they cast their votes,” as they had been members of the subcommission for more than 12 years. The five eligible members do not represent a needed quorum for a vote to take place.
Moreover, the sham vote was held even as a Geoethics Commission report on the workings of the subcommission’s Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) was being reviewed by the president of the IUGS, geologist John Ludden. Zalasiewicz requested the report be distributed to the subcommission members before any vote was held, but Zhou and Bertini ignored him and pushed forward the sham vote, with members notifying the New York Times about the fraudulent result. Ludden released the report to the SQS and the AWG on March 5th, after the Times story was published. According to Zalasiewicz,
The findings of that report included: that the AWG, in preparing its proposal, was unfairly treated, via conflicts of interest, application of different standards than to other working groups, and unreasonable requests and restrictions, while insufficient time was allowed for comment on the proposal, and the AWG were not asked to provide feedback on the discussions as would be normal practice. The Geoethics Commission further observed that the process as a whole between AWG/SQS/ICS/IUGS was dysfunctional; it thus recommended the urgent suspension of any voting procedures (though not examining their validity).
Panel member Naomi Oreskes, a historian of climate science, responds:
The irregularities in the SQS voting procedures strongly suggest that the SQS did not make its decision on scientific grounds. The argument put forward by the AWG—and overwhelmingly endorsed by the AWG membership—was never given a fair hearing.
What’s particularly sad about this to me—as a person who cut my teeth in field geology—is that by rejecting the Anthropocene proposal, the SQS suggests to the world that they are unwilling or unable to recognize what we all can now see: that we do indeed live in the Anthropocene. By denying the obvious, the stratigraphers threaten to undermine the credibility of the science that they claim to be protecting.
The full text of the press statement from Profs. Zalasiewicz and Head and Zalasiewicz’s report to the subcommission, are below.