Baidu Anthropocene

 

What do these pictures say to you? (The second seems to be from NYC.) They certainly don't say "Anthropocene" to me, but I found them on the Chinese Wikipedia-analog 百度百科 Baidu Baike article "人类世 [Anthropocene]," which also includes the nearly illegible chart at right and the two further pictures below. The contents of the article are unobjectionable but there's one thing strikingly different from western accounts, and it's mentioned at the start and end of the article. Accounts I'm familiar with describe debates about when the Anthropocene should be said to have begun - with the invention of agriculture, the steam engine, or the "Great Acceleration" after WW2 - and this one does too. But it goes on to observe: 

2010年6月，澳大利亚国立大学微生物学著名教授、人类消灭天花病毒的功臣弗兰克·芬纳称人类可能在100年内灭绝，“人类世”将终结。

Australian microbiologist Frank Fenner, leader in the eradication of smallpox, apparently said in 2010 that humanity might be extinct within 100 years - thus ending the Anthropocene. That's not quite right... we may shuffle off this mortal coil, but the damage we've already done to Earth Systems will endure long after that, evidence of the crime preserved in the geological record long after we're gone.