People have a worse influence on earth than we thought, study reveals

We fill oceans with plastic, we burn fossils to keep our houses warm and our cars moving and changing the landscape of entire continents, all while pretending that our actions will be without consequences.

While many studies have found how dramatically we have confused the planet with things like fossil fuels and pollution, new research suggests that our latest habits are only part of the problem.

People, it seems, have stressed the earth heavily for up to 4600 years, and perhaps longer.

The work, which was recently published in Science magazine, links dramatic changes in earth's vegetation with the same window of time in which human agriculture erupted.

Researchers used hundreds of pollen fossil records to draw up a time calendar of species, which spans more than 18,000 years. After completing all the data, it became clear that there was a serious change in the pace with which earth's vegetation changed.

Increasing the changes in vegetation starting in the Late Holocaust was even more dramatic than changes in global vegetation brought to the end of the most recent ice age.

Late Holocen also happens to be the period when people began to rely heavily on agriculture to keep the growing populations well and alive.

Using a summary of 1181 fossil pollen sequences and new statistical methods developed, we discover a acceleration worldwide in the rate of plant change starting between 4.6 and 2.9 years ago that it is globally unprecedented over the past 18,000 years in both size and size,” researchers write.

The options of the Late Holocaust of Change are equal or exceed the fundamental steps for all continents, suggesting that the scale of human effects on land ecosystems exceeds the transformations directed by the last climate. ”

The findings are interesting and disturbing. Narrates surrounding humans and climate change have long focused on the use of fossil fuels and pollution.

If we can just take those things under control, we think, we can prevent the Earth from falling on the “the point of turning” that leads to the destruction of our planet.

We still absolutely need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, embrace green energy and stop throwing our trash everywhere, but it is also likely that things we cannot think about as capable of dramatically changing the planet, such as agriculture, are more powerful than we assumed.

In our attempt to ensure that our species are safe, healthy and sound, we have changed Earth in unexpected ways.