Enjoyed the article and look forward to finding out more about Mr P's perspective as it sounds like it outlines in high contrast a very realistic portrayal of the fix we find ourselves confronting these days.

There is one area in which it, like so many other cautionary works that are finding themselves widely read, is that discovery of new historical and scientific facts, leading to new understanding and shifting perspectives will not doubt creat a future far different from what the predictions suggests. For example I saw now word regarding the cullulosic solution for ethanol which is apparently going to be "front-burnered" in the near future. Not does this take into account the fact that fusion energy generation will make an appearance and all will change. Nor do I read about the radical re-aculturation of the Amazon basin which was a few hundred years ago a highly productive agricultural zone and now is a wilderness of nature.

Imagine you're reading a book written at the dawn of the modern age and everyone was up in arms about the cost of building magnificent railway stations in the downtown areas of our nation's most progressive urban complex: cincinnati!

It seems the internet can do everything but convince us that predicting the future is impossible at best but utterly so when we ignore its meaning.

..implies that you are already soiled. While it's easy to condemn those who have been soiled, the real problem is that it is effectively impossible to rise to political prominence and therefore become an effective voice for your constituents unless you have come perilously close to the ugly interior workings. If not directly splashed with the lubricating crap that makes it work you will still stink of it.

I'm not advocating a free ride, but one should look carefully and with an eye towards understanding the political environment before condemning the guilt..there are few circumstances more extenuating than the political climate of Chicago...and if anyone wants to condemn something, one would be well advised to begin there, and then see how the same thing is growing everywhere.

Where money goes so goes the sociopath.

If only those interested in de-fanging the monster that is ingorance, hate and greed, they could lump religious fundamentalism with the other misguided notions of how people ought to controlled and reveal that fundamentalist religionists of certain sects and beliefs are practitioners of stupidity first and secondly might be interested in the truth. I don't believe that every moslem must be a hate filled moron, but let's face it, you are asking for it if you go about proclaiming your adamant faith, and your implied ignorance, to the world to hear.

I'd love to see an political environment where the ignorance of fundamentalism that espouses any kind of scripture and faith-based superiority over non-believers is routinely pointed out for what it is...silly and not of consequence in the long run. You're welcome to it if it makes you feel better, but no special treatment for idiocy.

Of course...that's not likely today, but one day soon we'll pull the wool off of our own eyes and see that we've been had by the most deluded among us, hiding behind our entirely human but thoroughly primitive instinctive fear of the unknown...and profiting from it and promoting more of it. Anger is usually hot on the heels of shame. That day will not come soon enough. Cheers.

One good smack from a fateful asteroid, even one that is orders of magnitude smaller than the dinosaur killer of 65 MYA, or a full sized super-volcano typical of the ones that occur every few thousand years throughout our geological history , or a pole reversal, or nearby gamma ray burst, and the idea of anthropocene will do down into the dictionaries, if any survive, as a derisive term reflecting man's proclivity for blowing things all out of proportion. As it stands, I wouldn't be too sure we're actually done with the pleistocene, since in fact the holocene, or own very special window of time, looks to be as much like an abberation to the normal earth history as much as it signals anything really serious as far as the earth's natural systems are concerned. Of course our human history might come to an end but the point is that it's arrogance squared to think we're going to change much with our puny efforts and messy carelessness.

Very interesting article and I will look with interest as more information emerges from this immensely interesting period of our early history. The process of recording history has long been subject to concerns for faith & politics more than objectivity and so much remains to be scraped clean of the patina of propaganda long carried on the surface. Fortunately some objective data remains beneath and here is where the true story will amaze and astonish us even today.