Warming and Slowing the World

chrisleonard writes "We all know that global warming is supposed to heat the planet up, but did you know that it might also slow it down? According to a report from Belgium's Royal Observatory (as reported here by astronomy.com), if the days seem a little longer to you than they used to, it might not be just old age catching up with you. Would it be wrong to call the interaction of the world's warming temperatures and its slowing rotation ... a snowball effect?"

Comments

Re:You do need to do something

[Com2Kid]

How many years in a row does it have to be 'odd' for?

It used to be perfectly natural for my area to get a little something called SNOW now and then.

The last 5 years have gotten snow that almost immediately melted from the ground (within a day) and even then the snow fall was pitiful.

10 years ago we would get a regular snowfall of some sort.

20 years ago a regular snowfall of some decency.

50 years ago you actually had to own a pair of snow boots to wear more then once a year.

Now days the 1 day of snow we get is so thin that you can walk in it with sneakers.

So... let me get this straight...

[stinky wizzleteats]

We're on a planet that has a 3 billion year history in which the climate has changed dramatically enough to put dinosaur fossils on Antarctica, evidence of undersea life on top of Mt. Everest, strange enough to feature a 20 megaton blast in Siberia 50 years before atom bombs were invented, and random enough to prevent our ability to accuratly forecast tomorrow's weather, AND we conclude based on less than 100 years of weather data that global warming is happening?

Forgive me, but I'm feeling a little like a mayfly seeing its first (and only) sunrise and worrying about global sunlighting.

Even if...

[The Man]

you buy into the assertion that Earth is warming, the historical record indicates that at times in the distant past (100s MY ago) the Earth was MUCH warmer. Yet, amazingly, the "fossil fuels" we're so bad to be burning weren't yet fossils, humans didn't exist, and Earth didn't become Venus. Shocker. As for slowing rotation, there are plenty of other factors controlling air currents, so even if we were to accurately measure an otherwise (moon, etc) unexplained slowdown in rotation, it doesn't prove that Earth is warming. All it proves is that Earth spins more slowly.

Care for our planet, yes. Act as responsible stewards of our land and oceans, certainly. But spew bogus alarmist rhetoric to confuse and manipulate the mediagoing public, shame on you. This is junk science at its worst.

"More profoundly"?

[The Monster]

efuseekay writes:

is more profoundly affected by tidal locking with the moon than fluvial effects

While the story itself says [emphasis mine]:

expect the length of an average day to increase by 11 millionths of a second per decade, corresponding to an overall increase of about one ten-thousandth of a second by the close of the century

Since the people who tend the atomic clocks have been adding at least one "leap second" each year for as long as I can remember (inserted as 23:59:60 GMT on 31 Dec, with the occasional extra at the same time on 30 Jun), it would seem that it would take tens of millenia before this factor is even a blip, much less 'profound'. The article closes with this Burning Question:

How will the diurnal rhythms of animals and plants be affected in coming millennia? Only time will tell.

Is there any animal or plant with a rhythm that can be measured in nanoseconds? If so, why are we not using them instead of those atomic clocks?

CO2 is not a toxin

[autopr0n]

You have no idea what you're talking about. The amount of CO2 going into the air is known... the affect on the weather is what's in question.

Re:Global Warming is very real ...

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Um. No. I vehemently disagree with you. Global Warming is bunk. We only have about 100 years worth of weather data. HOW IN THE WORLD CAN YOU SAY HUMANS CAUSE THIS WITH THIS DATA! It isn't enough! The world is around 3 billion years old ( I think that's it....) and we are trying to say that us humans who have only been here part of that time caused this? No, US folks are skeptical of scientists who talk out there butt. Weather patterns are CYCLICAL! Just because I ain't freezing my butt of now and walking thru 10-12 inches of snow does not mean that the globe, as a whole is any warmer. Do you realize that Texas has had more snow then Columbus, OH?? That's almost unheard of. Also, I believe Texas has also been colder then we are too. Some people will say that global warming caused this chaotic pattern. BS. We don't have anywhere near enough data to prove global warming. Any scientist saying we do should tear up his PhD.....now and go start selling burgers at McDonald's.

Also there's no such thing as an unbiased news source. We're humans. We have opinions and try as we might, we can't always suppress them.

Also, an another note, for the freaks who say we don't have enough oil, well, if we'd drill in ANWR we'd stabilize the market. If we get off of our butts and tap the oil in the Gulf of Mexico, we could be self sustaining and not need oil from saudi. This is a fact (wish I could atrribute a source but it's late and I am going to bed after this). Here's an interesting link about ANWR. The reasons these ecological wackos have come up make no sense and have no scientific backing except some crap some scientists who liked the idea has drawn up.

I am not saying we should not explore alternatives that are cleaner then gasoline. Hydrogen and fuel cells hold great promise not just from an environmental sense, but from a business sense as well. Imagine if we all had a fuel cell on our house. We'd no longer be dependent on wires going underground and into our house and no longer would we have to worry about lightening striking the above ground wiring because there would be none. When ever Hydrogen is cheap (it's cheap now...), you'd just fill it up and be good to go. The waste water created by the reaction could be ran through a filter, and used to flush toilets or take showers or heck even drink. Who WOULDN'T want this? Even the big oil would want a piece of this. The good thing is if we actually tap the Gulf adequately, we could be assured we would have enough oil until this stuff is perfected. Right now, if we decided to bomb someone in the middle east, we may as well grab ahold of a bank loan to buy gas cuz it's going to go up. My biggest point here, is that it doesn't have to be this way. it's only this way becase a small MINORITY thinks the sky is falling when it's not.

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Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Global Warming is very real ...

[canadian_right]

One of the odd things about changing global weather paterns is some of the unexpected side affects. Global warming may decrease the temperature in Northern Europe by a few degrees by changing some rather major artic ocean currents. Warming would bring a major cold stream that is currently quite deep (and makes it farther south) to raise up and cool Europe.

Weather is very complicated. Global warming will not simply give us the same weather, but warmer. It will cause strange, and unexpected new weather patterns. Storms will tend to be more intense (high temp = more energy), some places will get wetter, some drier, some warmer, some cooler.

But all this is nothing compared to the Ocean's rising if it actually get warm enough to break up the antartic ice shelf.

And all xfiles people know that global warming is being orchestrated by a global conspiracy of GOOD guys to stave off an imminent ice-age!

My bad

[MarkusQ]

The Oregon Institute's "petition" is a hoax. The names are largely made-up. I recall Captain Kangeroo being among their number. The OISM is run from a small warehouse in rural Oregon. Their scientific credibility is on a par with the Flat Earth Society.

*laugh*

That will teach me to do a quick link search! (Although to be fair, I haven't really researched your claims either). I don't doubt that there are are people in the "global-warming-is-bunk" camp that have political agendas; for that matter many people in the "humans cause-global warming camp" have a pretty clear political agenda too. In my defense, please note the times on my varrious posts over the past few weeks (and frequent refferences to coffee); we've got a new son, & I've been hopping on while rocking him between diaper changes,, etc. at pretty much random times (read: not enough sleep).

So I will back down to a few statements I know first hand to be correct, and not try to back anything with potentially tainted links:

I don't recall hearing about the pettition until the first poster mentioned it; based on that, I just did a quick google & posted what I found. My bad. I have seen the long term (>1000 year) climate data, and it is noisy. I worked briefly with someone (him in the field, me on the computer) who was trying to correlate data from varrious locations, and the correlations they found (to distinguish global from local) was about as good as it is at present. The noisy climate record isn't a consequence of our ignorance. Against this background, the size of the signal claimed for global warming is absurdly small (cf the day length change posited in the article here, vs, the change due to tidal forces, etc.). I'm not an industry flack, fundumentallist, etc. of any stripe, and I am also not a climate expert. I was a botany major for a while, (w. a 4.0 GPA), but then I was also a math major, a physics major, and several others. The main limiting factor for most plants is CO2 supply. The only reason we have the atmosphere we do (almost no carbon, lots of oxygen) even though we started out with a carbon-heavy atmosphere is that the plants sucked down every scrap they could get their grubby little leaves on. As one on my professors put it, "dumping CO2 into the attmosphere is like throwing money off a building in New York City: you might change the local environment some, but if you expect it to accumulate and block up the street, you're dreaming." In the 1960s, the more vocal global warming advocates were asserting that, by 2000, the earth would be uninhabitalbly hot. They keep shifting the claims, but it always amounts to "dire things will happen ~40 years from now unless you do what we say now, without wasting time on study or debate." This has biased me against them. The people I have personally met who have felt most strongly about global warming seem to 1) fear and resent "technology", and 2) have a burning desire to believe that what they do makes a difference in the big picture. This is pretty easy to test if you bait them with "I heard about an article that may have claimed..." and see which silly statements they will accept & which ones they reject. It's my conclusion that the reason the "people are changing the Earth's climate" story sells so well (along with nonsense like "cut the plastic tabs on your six packs to save the dolphins") has much more to do with a fear of insignificance and a need for "redemtion" than with anything rational. And yes, I do see the analogy with my quick acceptence of the pettition, despite the fact that I don't trust "Discovery" and I don't trust "Science-by-pettition"--I suspect I am swayed by my pro-technology/on-the-galactic-scale-humans-are-in significant bias.

Better?

-- MarkusQ