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Is Global Warming Behind Earth's Gravity Shifting?
MichaelH writes "The good folks at JPL along with the Royal Observatory of Belgium have an explanation for the recent changes in Earth's magnetic field: the melting of sub-polar glaciers causing a mass shift towards the equator. Starting in 1997, a noticeable change in Earth's gravitational field was observed; Earth was beginning to develop a 'bulging waistline.' Sounds like it's time for a diet with fewer greenhouse gases...."
Won't the resulting evaporation just return the water back to the poles anyway???
Earlier, I had read a cnn blurb about global warming which contained no useful information. Finally, the whole global warming thing is explained:
Natural variability may be behind the changes, but human activity might also be to blame, scientists said.
That's what I call "pinning it down"!
Global warming?!? I don't know what your talking about.... Global warming is propaganda spread by evil anti-capitalist pigs, trying to stand in the way of progress. Maybe the cosmic forces are sending us a message, Global Warming = GW, President Bush = GW, The world is gaining a 'bulging waistline' It's well knowen the waistline of your average american is 'bulging' Bring on the carbon dioxide eating genetically engineered microbes.
If not, the Earth needs to get some more exercise.
Perhaps the gravity shift is behind global warming.
Eh? Didn't think of that one did you?
Global Warming is responsible for the following:
The 2000 Election trouble
UFO's
Martians
Smurfs
HAPPY FUN BALL
Neelix
The price of gold and vodka
Hell. No one really know.
This get posted but this news does not
"An international team researching particle physics at Tohoku University has observed a new kind of neutrino--one of the building blocks of the universe--and almost certainly confirmed that the particles have mass, it was learned Tuesday."
The last portion of my post is wrong. It is a few stories down. My mistake.
I *love* it when people postulate that humans are the cause for 'global warming'. It's been shown that
But it has never been proven that human activity of any form did cause, (or could stop) the climate change everyone seems so keen to label global warming.
News flash: Global warming itself is still theory. It has some amount of scientific evidence behind it, but some against as well. This is to say nothing about the theory of human dynamics on climate.
What is happening, however, is there are groups out there who believe that until we know for certian that we are the problem, we should assume we are and stop what we can. These people are called extremists or fanatics.
I do not deny that the planet is changing, and likely it is due in part to human life. But it would be just as irresponsible for us to run in and fix something we don't understand (and may well not be 'broken') as it would to wontonly destroy our atmosphere (which is what some are claiming we do).
Yes, yes, let's reduce our pollution. I, as well as many others reading this, have mild but chronic asthma. Sure, I'd like to breathe cleaner air and know that I won't get as ill as frequently as I currently do.
Let's just not become couriers of FUD in the process.
-Adam
If it ain't broke, fix it 'till it is.
Earth First! (we'll strip mine the other planets later)
The White House recently decided that it would be prudent to investigate further before taking any action to combat global warming. Debates were mostly over what research strategy to use. Of particular concern is ensuring that the United States economy doesn't suffer too much.
Great!
So that's what happens when we come out of an Ice Age...
It's amazing how often this point is convieniently ignored.
-- MarkusQ
They really need to work on their diagrams, but that's beside the point. Did they ever stop to think that maybe the internal cooling of the earth could be affecting gravity in any way? It's just an idea, and would probably be shot down, but that might be contributing to something.
> the melting of sub-polar glaciers causing a mass shift towards the equator.
Wouldn't this cause the earth's rotation to slow down? (spinning in the chair experiment). With super-accurate GPS and atomic clocks, I would think this would be measureable.
-metric
Well... Everything in nature is from a pattern.... Hurricanes are on what? 90 year pattern? ice storms is what an 11 year pattern along with solar activity?
So, where is the trending data over a few thousand years saying that man and his theorized greenhouse gases are heating things up? From the trending data that exists, its about time we have another serious cold snap... the kind where you have an ice age.. Hell... It's cold outside right now.
Was there not an artical a few weeks ago, about how they think the polls are going to shift soon... because historically.... its about that time... and the poles are weakening?
Ya know... I know this is not politically correct, but life is not, nor can it ever be politically correct. All this PC belief in global warming boils down to the brain washing of children in schools for the express purpose of slowly dictating every person's life by laws to protect "the enviroment". Hell, In the second paragraph of that "expanation", they say that the teams whole purpose was to find a "climatic reason" for the change in magnetic field.
Remember all the "don't cut down the rain forests, we will die if you do" shit? Did they ever shut up when studies came out that said that really, they only provide about 15% of the oxygen in our atmosphere.... and that 75% of it is done by microbes in the ocean? Jee Wiz Bat Man.
Yo, Slashdot editors, please loose the P.C. Crap.
So... If somebody ever proves with real evidence, and trending, that these greenhouse gases are the culperate for ALL our problems... what are we going to do about those pesky things called volcanos? Tell them that they can't spew millions of tons of greenhouse gases?
Shit... why don't we just move to Mars.... I will gladly take the cause of earth's naturally generating greenhouse gases... It will allow mars to be reborn... oh.. its the core of the planet.
I suspect the moon is a much greater affector of the speed of the earth's rotation. It would be swamped by the slowdown effect responsible by it's receding from the earth.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
...who cares? I really can't see how this will effect our lives in any way. So maybe people at the equator will weigh + or - .00000000000000000000000000000005 lbs because of this... so what?
Why don't they put the research grants toward something a little more important like earth quake prediction since they're dealing with the shifts in land mass and flowing mantle...
I'm fond of science... but wasting all that money on monitoring tiny shifts in the earth's gravitational field and trying to blame global warming?? Come on...
Nice article overall, but what the hell is up with that picture? If the Earth bulged that much, we'd all have noticed the incredible changes in gravity between 45 degree N and 0 and 90 degree north. I mean, yikes, that's gotta be at least a 10% difference between the two Earth-like planets in that picture.
Realistically, the shift much be vanishing fractions of a percent, and you wouldn't be able to find a difference between the two Earths ("pre-bulge" and "post-bulge"), even in principle, on a low-resolution picture like that; the effects they are talking about would be sub-pixel, to say the least.
I'd do the math, but there aren't any numbers in the linked text and it's too late to go out and try to find them. (Perhaps someone else will... I'll lay my money down on, ohhh, within an order of magnitude of "one ten-millionth of a pixel difference" between pre- and post-bulge Earth.)
Can't we get those guys who measured the distance from the North Pole to the equator (to define the meter/metre) redo their measurements. ;)
> HAPPY FUN BALL
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball!
Warning: Happy Fun Ball may stick to certain types of skin.
"Dickey cautioned that the study is not entirely conclusive, as the changes in sea level are measured in millimeters and represent a "daunting task" that requires numerous corrections to account for various known factors, such as natural short-term fluctuations." --space.com (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth /pumpkin_planet_021205.html)
Another article on space.com stated that:"The instruments will sense a difference in position of one micron, or about one-fiftieth the width of a human hair."
For a bit of perspective you'll need to consider that the radius of the Earth at the equator is about 6.378 x 10^8 cm or 6.378 x 10^9 mm. So the fluctuation in the Earth's radius is something like one part in a billion.
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
The article is about Earth's gravity shifting -- like it says in the title of the post. Why does the body of the post mention "recent changes in Earth's magnetic field"? Does /. know something about a unified theory that physicists don't?
Okay, so I saw the title, I clicked. I read.
I still don't see any mention of how gravity is being affected by global warming.....
what's the deal?
Okay, let's assume that burning fossil fuels isn't what's causing global warming, and we reduce or eliminate our use of fossil fuels anyway.
So now we've just managed to clean up our air to the point where Los Angeles and Toronto no longer have pollution advisories on the Weather Channel, but Rio de Janerio and Amersterdam are flooded.
Well, we've just done one very good thing, and the other thing was expected anyway and didn't happen overnight, so it's not like we had to rush a huge evacuation or anything. Maybe we've just built better dikes instead.
If we *don't* do these things, then Los Angeles and Toronto will have even lower air quality *and* Rio and Amsterdam will be flooded too.
But what of the costs! They'll be enormous! Well, that's what they said about replacing CFC's, eliminating particulate waste from coal power plants, and not using PCB's to cool big electrical transformers. Oddly enough, coal power plants are now selling that particulate waste as a replacement for gypsum in fire-resistant wallboard, the extra cost of not using CFC's in your car's air conditioner is about $20, not $1500, and your electric utility is now spouting on about how good and wonderful they are for not using PCB's in your friendly neighbourhood power transformer (despite the fact that the government had to force them to do so).
Even better is the fact that we can reduce our current CO2 production just by not wasting our fuel! Are we so wealthy that we don't have to worry about how much we spend on fuel, but not wealthy enough to not use it so much? There was one company here in Canada that went to parliament saying that "hey, this Kyoto thing isn't so hard. We met those goals already and look at the millions of dollars we saved!"
By forcing people to look at the problem, we can start to find solutions. A large part of the problem here is waste. Waste is bad because its a sign of inefficiency. Why can't some people realize that when it's so blazingly obvious?
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Anyways, think of how much more real estate we'll have in the tropics if we continue to expand the equator. Let's all drive hummers!
So the earths magnetic field is caused by mass of the water in the oceans. I was under the impression it was caused by the molten core.
The rebound of the earths mantle is meant to take thousands of years, but this effect is evident in less than 50?
What is the mass of the earth? I doubt this amount of water is 1% of 1% of the earths mass.
How much oil have we dug out from the earths crust? Is it close to the mass of the water?
From reading the article it sounds like they had a tehory, went searching for a reason and then massaged the facts to fit their theory.
Also it seems quite intimidating to me that these glaciers are melting. I wonder how far they will go before they stop melting and which cities, countries, etc would be "covered" in water etc, as we've already seen flood damage in europe. Not to mention, how does this affect fault lines? I know theres something wrong there *shakes finger like crotchety old man*. I saw "A view to a kill".
Quick, lets all prepare for an apocalypse! :)
N
PS: damn, I knew I should have paid more attention to Waterworld.
Reality is a slackware box running on a 386 tucked away in god's sock drawer.
Even if that were true, it would be irrelevant. CO2 emissions do cause increases in average global temperature; that is elementary physics. The only question is the degree and when those increases will lead to catastrophes. But increases and catastrophes will inevitably result sooner or later if emissions continue at current levels or grow.
But it would be just as irresponsible for us to run in and fix something we don't understand (and may well not be 'broken') as it would to wontonly destroy our atmosphere (which is what some are claiming we do).
Quite to the contrary: the only responsible thing to do is to greatly reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Not only does that address issues of global warming as best we can, in developed nations like ours, it is also good for the economy, for defense, and for quality of life. The only groups who don't benefit are entrenched interests afraid of change.
In fact, it was completely irresponsible to start such massive changes on a global scale in the first place, initiated by what amounts to a very small group of people, with no oversight and no democratic input from most of the affected populations.
Let's just not become couriers of FUD in the process.
Given the global and irreversible nature of these changes, fear, uncertainty, and doubt are completely justified.
What I find particularly ironic about the bogus arguments you are repeating is that they often come from the same people that formulate our drug policy on tenuous or disreputable scientific evidence. Apparently, it's not OK for me to voluntary inhale or ingest substances that only affect me and have never been demonstrated to be harmful. But it's perfectly OK for big companies to emit substances that I can't escape from and that the scientific mainstream pretty much agrees are going to have deleterious effects on people and the world.
though if you threw in the possibility of being hit by a huge asteroid, then I think it'll all work. Havn't you ever taken a magnet(earth), heated it up (greenhouse) and whacked it with a hammer (asteroid) to have the magnetic polarites get mixed around?
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
Ok, nice of you to admit this. Let's add one more thing science can give you: some numbers.
CO2 records go back thousands of years from Greenland ice core data; since the industrial revolution began the era of massive human use of carbon-based fuels, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have already risen 30%, methane concentrations doubled, and nitrogen oxides up 15%. All these chemicals are known to trap heat.
People have been modeling this year after year for decades with relatively consistent results - a warming on the order of a few degrees C by 2050, much greater warming at the poles than at the equator, increased intensity of storms and other severe weather.
None of the models see global cooling as a result any more, although regional cooling of one sort or another is possible with changing ocean circulation patterns. If the effect is always warming, whether 1 degree or 10, no matter what the model, you can safely conclude that the added human chemicals do force a general warming of the planet with a value somewhere in that range.
The scale of what we have been seeing, from around the world, over the past decade, is alarmingly very much in line with the model predictions. Global temperatures are already up 0.5 degrees C, and even this small temperature rise seems to have had dramatic effects.
Does this prove that human activity has caused global climate change? Science never conclusively proves anything - results are always open to further question. But for policymakers not blinded by the continuing obfuscation from the oil companies and their toadies, the conclusion is rather inescapable. Humans have clearly increased gases that are clearly known to trap heat, and the climate has already seen warming over the past century.
Why aren't we doing more about it? Look at what the Europeans are doing to meet Kyoto targets: massive investment in wind farms, for example. Why isn't that happening in the US? Why has average US automotive fuel economy gown down in recent years, not up? Would reduction of oil use really be such a bad thing??? Only for the oil companies who are currently running the US government...
We are so utterly dependent on oil that we have to kow-tow to the arrogant Saudi's and similar despots around the world who control so much of the world's oil resources - or, in current circumstances, go to war. Improved automotive fuel economy by just a few percent would return far more oil than the disputed ANWR drilling area. But the US Congress the last two years has rejected all attempts to re-instate the fuel economy standards and apply them across the board.
There are alternatives, but the current US government refuses to invest in them - Energy department programs in renewables and fusion energy have been cut year after year. The research dollars required are considerably less than, for example, the billions California lost in last year's energy debacle, but we refuse to make that investment.
What about the possibility that the world will warm and climate will change whether or not we do anything about our CO2 production? First, admitting that humans can have an impact on global climate should give us the confidence to know we can also impact it for the good, as well as for bad. Contrary to your impression that we don't understand climate, we do understand it well enough to know the effect of some changes we could make. Large-scale geo-engineering to mitigate natural climate change is certainly a possibility.
But in the long run, Earth has managed pretty well on its own and our policy probably should be one of neutrality rather than hands-on management: movement of industrial activity into space (as your tag line indirectly suggests) may well be the best long-term option for the planet. But we're not quite ready for that yet (although that's another area where I believe US R&D investment has been much less than it could have been).
Energy: time to change the picture.
I see something on the horizon, it's big, furry and it has four legs, and seems to be looking at my sheep.
So, I say, "well, shit, I'd better do something about it". Now, if it's not a wolf, I've just wasted time and effort, but there was SOMETHING THERE. (take that, you false analogy)
In this case there is a possibility that we are causing this problem, the solution is not (most likely) cost prohibitive, and has other fringe benifits. And by god, if the US federal government can make claims about unseen, unproven dangers to drum up support for their policies, so can I.
hmmmm?