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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...."
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"!
Yes, yes, everything is a theory. In this case, however, global warming is a symptom . The theory is that we humans are causing or helping the slide toward global warming, and this theory has nowhere near the ratio of for/against evidence that relativity or darwinian evolution has, and those two are still contested today.
IM(no)HO, this is a flawed analogy on many levels. The general public has more knowledge (read:only a very little) about the average bank vault than the average climate scientist has about climate change through the centuries, nevermind millenia.
I'd like to see a poll of 'the vast majority of the world's scientists' before I take that statment at anything more than '4 out of 5 dentist recommend x brand. Sure, global warming looks like it could be a problem, and it's possible that human activity affects it in a grander scale than the butterfly on japan affects the climate in florida. It's easy to postulate possibilities.
We can predict weather based on patterns, but we still can't predict it based on causes other than other weather. We know, for instance, that in the northern hemisphere after several months of generally warm and hot weather it will then have several months of generally cool and cold weather. This is a generic weather cycle. We can't predict on any more of a minute scale other than observing what weather is already happening and what has happened with that kind of weather before (ie, clouds over chicago generally mean there will be clouds over michigan soon, and depending on the type of cloud may or may not dump water, etc)
What global warming used to be was "The world is getting warmer, why is that?" Now we're finally to the part that scientists are seeing patterns in geological history where such large scale changes occured, in concert with other large changes (magnetosphere, etc). It will likely be found out that this is another, extremely long, cycle we are moving around in that we are only now discovering (in the past 100 years) because only now have we had the record correlating ability to do so.
Again, I'm not saying it's untrue that humans are affecting global climate change (I'm sure we are) but the level and amount of change caused by us is what's in play here.
What irks me is that people are using it as a crutch for pollution change. If pollution change is a good thing, it should be able to stand on what we know it causes right now, rather than on the possible future eventuallities.
Global warming is not a crutch to be used to prop up environmental change. I believe in passing environmentally sensible policy, but if people keep putting global warming out as the reason for these regulations, then when global warming is found to be a natural cycle in the earth, environmental policy will fall on its rear end and won't be able to get up by itself for another decade or two, even when it's also shown that we may be accelerating the change.
-Adam
If having a strong, well defined opinion is trolling, then put me under a bridge with a toll box.
About extremists or fanatics: The world needs them, there is a place for them in society. They shouldn't be offended by being called extremists or fanatics - they intend to pull us in a direction by representing a view that is so far from reality that soon the general public doesn't view the center as unnatural, since there are views that are far stronger. This gentle tugging and pulling is needed to affect change.