For scientific reasons but also for framing—for distilling into language calculated to steer thinking—Nature’s editors and many others want scientists to elevate the increasingly used term Anthropocene to official status as science’s formal, permanent name for the present period in Earth’s deep geological time. Under the headline “The human epoch” four years ago, with words those editors repeated verbatim this month, they argued that the name “provides a powerful framework for considering global change and how to manage it.”

Framework indeed. The editors’ 2011 subhead predicted that “official recognition for the Anthropocene would focus minds on the challenges to come.”

In recent years, journalists have been gradually introducing the name to the public, but the coverage has generally overlooked a lurking concern that Nature’s editors phrased as a question: “Is it wise for stratigraphers to endorse a term that comes gift-wrapped as a weapon for those on both sides of the political battle over the fate of the planet?”

Weapon? Political battle? Fate of the planet? Two sides? In other words, if scientists at the International Commission on Stratigraphy decide formally to assert this broadly encompassing name for known physical realities planetwide, they’ll unify an argument that’s enormous, but they’ll also incite accusations of perpetrating a propagandistic enormity.

At the end of the 12 March Nature article “Defining the Anthropocene,” Simon L. Lewis and Mark A. Maslin illuminated the name’s implications, its scientific and historical reach, and its consequent framing effect if elevated to formal, official status.

Past scientific discoveries have tended to shift perceptions away from a view of humanity as occupying the centre of the Universe. In 1543 Copernicus’s observation of the Earth revolving around the Sun demonstrated that this is not the case. The implications of Darwin’s 1859 discoveries then established that Homo sapiens is simply part of the tree of life with no special origin. Adopting the Anthropocene may reverse this trend by asserting that humans are not passive observers of Earth’s functioning. To a large extent the future of the only place where life is known to exist is being determined by the actions of humans. Yet, the power that humans wield is unlike any other force of nature, because it is reflexive and therefore can be used, withdrawn or modified. More widespread recognition that human actions are driving far-reaching changes to the life-supporting infrastructure of Earth may well have increasing philosophical, social, economic and political implications over the coming decades.

Concerning the name Anthropocene as a political weapon, Nature’s editors four years ago reasoned that the “scale of the changes already under way and the real value of a unified approach to studying human influences on the planet should surely quash” that and other concerns. They connected science facts to political and cultural framing:

The Anthropocene is defined not just by climate change or extinctions, but by a linked set of effects on Earth and its biosphere, from perturbations in the nitrogen cycle to the dispersal of species around the globe. Official recognition of the concept would invite cross-disciplinary science. And it would encourage a mindset that will be important not only to fully understand the transformation now occurring but to take action to control it.

But some observers nevertheless express uncertainty. And although their comments aren’t being thrown back at them just yet, no one who has watched the climate wars and other environmental strife can reasonably predict that if formalization of the name Anthropocene does come about, climate scoffers and other critics of environmentalism won’t find and creatively reintroduce those reservations when accusing scientists of ecopropaganda.

Consider an essay that New York Times online science columnist Andrew Revkin once recommended at E&E, which calls itself “the leading source for comprehensive, daily coverage of environmental and energy politics and policy.” The author, Paul Voosen, characterized the Anthropocene as “an argument wrapped in a word.” He reported misgivings:

Still, it’s possible that the Anthropocene is an idea before its geological time. There’s a degree of uncertainty in the concept that could make even nongeologists a bit squeamish. Say the world takes a turn—solar power becomes too cheap to meter—and the beginning of the end of global warming appears. Industrial and organic farming mate and turn into high-yielding, sustainable agriculture. Population levels off. “If humanity does change course, one could view [the Anthropocene] not even as an epoch,” said [an] Australian climate scientist. “One could view it as a minor excursion from the Holocene.”

Last fall, USA Today quoted Geological Society of America president Hap McSween calling the proposed name “a good way to point out the environmental havoc that humans are causing.” But in an article for that society, scientists Whitney J. Autin and John M. Holbrook cautioned that “scientific disciplines maintain their reputation by providing the credible voice a scientific community needs in public debate.” They wrote:

Although we acknowledge a distinct allure for the term Anthropocene and recognize merit in the concept, pop culture does not have an interest in the stratigraphic implications of this debate. If there is an underlying desire to make social comment about the implications of human-induced environmental change, Anthropocene clearly is effective. However, being provocative may have greater importance in pop culture than to serious scientific research.

After mentioning the reservations of Autin and Holbrook, a 12 March news article in Nature quoted International Commission on Stratigraphy chair Stan Finney, a stratigraphic paleontologist at California State University in Long Beach: “What you see here is, it’s become a political statement. That’s what so many people want.” That Nature piece noted as well that “critics worry that important arguments against the proposal have been drowned out by popular enthusiasm, driven in part by environmentally minded researchers who want to highlight how destructive humans have become.” Nature added:

Some supporters of the Anthropocene idea have even been likened to zealots. “There's a similarity to certain religious groups who are extremely keen on their religion—to the extent that they think everybody who doesn’t practise their religion is some kind of barbarian,” says one geologist who asked not to be named.

Even Nature’s editors recently acknowledged reservations about following through with formal, official adoption of the name:

It seems obvious that . . . broad planetary upheavals would warrant recognition on the geological timescale. But they may not be adequately reflected in stratigraphic evidence. In many parts of the globe, the geological record of the past 65 years is thin to non-existent. In the deep sea, less than a millimetre of sediment has built up, and that could be erased as ocean acidity increases. Signs of atmospheric changes are also preserved in recently laid down glacial ice, but much of that record could disappear in coming centuries as a result of global warming.

So far, Google News searches turn up little evidence of climate or environmental scoffers recasting reservations as part of an effort to discredit Anthropocene framing. In fact, though recent searches on websites for the word Anthropocene yielded about 100 hits at the ecoactivist New York Times, they yielded no hits at the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, or Investor’s Business Daily.

National Review’s Wesley J. Smith, known for asserting intelligent design, has commented on the word Anthropocene a few times indirectly, and last fall mentioned “the hint of earth religion among the Anthropocene pushers.” At the Federalist, the only mention so far involved only a similarly indirect aspersion. The same applies to the comparably conservative Washington Times.

At Canada’s Financial Post, where climate-consensus-scoffing pundits recently lost a libel case brought by a climate scientist, another columnist wrote dismissively about the Anthropocene back in 2012. At Breitbart, an October 2014 piece by regular scoffer John Hayward quoted a “cultist” from “the Church of Global Warming” who mentioned the term, though Hayward didn’t pursue it.

But last fall at the blog Watts Up With That?—widely read and regularly quoted by climate scoffers—reaction to the prospect of a formal Anthropocene proclamation rose above these incidental jabs and light aspersions. A posting that mocked what blogger Anthony Watts called “the fictitious, scary-sounding ‘geologic’ timescale ‘The Anthropocene’” began by asking, “Is there any limit to the extremes some climate propagandists will go?”

To what extremes will some scoffers go if scientists formally proclaim a human epoch for planet Earth?

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Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA's history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.