ABSTRACT
The new discipline of Earth System science has characterized the Earth as a ‘system’, a collection of processes in constant flux. These processes now include the effects of human activity, which have become so large as to rival the great forces of nature. Ice core data revealed that the Earth behaves as a single, complex, dynamic entity, and showed that the planet can shift, often abruptly, from one state to a quite different one. The idea of the Anthropocene, first put forward in 2000, was not possible before systems thinking was applied to the Earth as a whole.
