Are humans the greatest geological force on Earth?

In a recent late night rant my flat mates were discussing how great and successful humans are, their view being that no other species can compare to our knowledge and power so we dominate planet Earth. They seemed to think this was brilliant for us. But I don’t think humans have only made positive changes to our world, surely continuing to exploit Earth for our own technological advancements isn’t necessarily something to be celebrated? So as useless as it was at 2am for me to challenge their opinions, I did try, and it got me thinking. The big questions in my mind are how large is the footprint left by the human race going to be? Are humans overtaking other natural processes to becoming the driving force of change on our planet? Would this make us the greatest geological force on Earth? Whilst three students sat in their kitchen late at night bragging about mankind may not put forward the most enlightened argument, they could be more right than they first thought about humans controlling the planet.

The idea that humans are ‘taking over the world’ by making so many global changes introduces us to the theory that we have pushed ourselves into a whole new geological age, the Anthropocene, as discussed in the New Scientist Environment blog. This hugely supports the idea that humans are changing the face of geology. Through this blog I will be exploring the evidence for the Anthropocene alongside the causes of many of the greatest global changes throughout human evolution. The areas I’m interested in include the loss of megafauna, global climate change and how the loss of modern biodiversity corresponds to previous mass extinction events – all with the aim of identifying who or what is dominating our current global environment.