Our effect on the earth is real: how we're geo-engineering the planet CLEARING UP THE CLIMATE DEBATE: Director of the Melbourne Energy Institute and Professor of Geology Mike Sandiford explores the staggering ways we influence the shape of the globe. Aren't we too puny to rival the great forces of nature that shape our planet? Certainly some prominent Australian geologists... Articles by This Author Humans contribute energy to the global system at the rate of 15 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs a minute. CLEARING UP THE CLIMATE DEBATE: Director of the Melbourne Energy Institute and Professor of Geology Mike Sandiford explores the staggering ways we influence the shape of the globe. Aren't we too puny to rival the great forces of nature that shape our planet? Certainly some prominent Australian geologists sceptical of our ability to impact our climate have said as much. But the facts show that we are fundamentally impacting planet Earth in unprecedented ways, and we've known about it for a century. Measuring our impact So what are those measures of our geological impact, and how do they compare to the natural energy and material fluxes that shape our planet? Geologists estimate that on average about 10 billion tonnes of sediment have been moved from mountain to sea each year over geological time by rivers and glaciers. Since the onset of agriculture, the river sediment flux has increased about threefold, to about 28 billion tonnes each year. Let's compare that to our own direct activities. We mine about seven