Scientific Leaders: "No Anthropocene" Vote Was a Sham

The fraudulent decision made the front page of the New York Times today

This is a breaking story.

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. In his story, 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. As an aside, he notes that “it was unclear on Tuesday whether the results stood as a conclusive rejection” after receiving a terse email from the panel chair, University of Leicester geologist Jan Zalasiewicz.

This story was repeated in the Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, Science, and other outlets.¹

Today, Dr. Zalasiewicz and Martin J. Head, a stratigrapher at Brock University and the 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.

Zalasiewicz and Head report that despite their opposition, 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.

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, 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, the noted 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.

It will come as no surprise to Hill Heat readers that the online version of the Times story is running with fossil-fuel propaganda from the American Petroleum Institute.

1. The Post’s Sarah Kaplan did a better job of noting the murkiness of the vote in her initial story, which has since been updated (although the headine has not). Just in case you’re wondering who might be behind this sham, the Post and Science articles include comments from panelist Philip Gibbard, the University of Cambridge geologist and ICS secretary-general who is an extreme opponent of declaring the Anthropocene. “The decision is definitive,” Gibbard told Science’s Paul Voosen. “There are no outstanding issues to be resolved. Case closed.”