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...."

Comments

Let's define 'theory', shall we?

[stienman]

Sounds like it's time for a diet with fewer greenhouse gases....

I *love* it when people postulate that humans are the cause for 'global warming'. It's been shown that

• The earth has been gradually getting warmer
• Certian chemicals synthesized by humans can cause some amount of climate change

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)

Re:Let's define 'theory', shall we?

[kmellis]

" 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)."

Replace "would" in that sentence with "might".

If we were to go about a risk and cost/benefit analysis as rationally as possible, we'd have to acknowledge that there's a considerable amount of uncertainty as to the side of the equation involving the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We do know that it will cost something, and we know an approximate range, and we know that that cost can be translated into other tangible things, like money diverted from reducing non-greenhouse pollutants that cause disease.

For the sake of the argument, let's invent a fictional economic unit, the "fubar". Let's assume that the cost of eliminating 80% of the production of greenhouse gases is somewhere between 50 and 100 fubars. (Note that I use an 80% reduction amount to imply what is almost certainly true--that approaching 100% reduction would have the cost increase astronomically.)

Now we'll ask what is the cost of not reducing greenhouse emissions.

Since we don't know if we're responsible for global warming at all, we have to place the lower limit of the cost of not reducing emission at zero fubars. But what's the upper limit?

The point here is that the upper limit is very, very high compared to the upper limit of the cost of reducing the greenhouse emissions. I don't really know what the magnitudes are, but I'll guess for the sake of the argument that it's nearly 1000 fubars. And that could be low. Maybe it's 10,000 fubars.

Your point is that the lower limit is zero and that spending 100 fubars on reducing greenhouse emissions is irresponsible. But that's true only if the cost of not doing so is actually zero. Your default assumption that it's zero is clearly also irresposible. It may be zero, but it may not be. And if it isn't, it's not likely to be 10 or 100, it's likely to be 1000 or 10,000.

How much in possible financial winnings would it take for you to play a single round of Russian Roulette? (Say that if you don't shoot yourself, you get X amoung of money.) I ask because it's not certain that you'll shoot yourself in the head. Lest you try to argue this point on the basis of causation, it's also not certain whether there is a causal relationship between you pulling that trigger one time and a bullet being fired into your brain.

So, since there's a prety good chance that there will be no bullet fired when you pull the trigger, will you do it for a dollar? Or ten? Or a thousand? Or, more likely, a million?

Not spending money on reducing greenhouse emissions is like getting that dollar (or ten) in the Russian Roulette example. If the magnitude of the risk is so large compared to the benefit of not trying to avoid the risk, then it is clearly foolish to fail to avoid the risk, even when it is an uncertain risk. In fact, part of my point here is that the certainty (or lack thereof) of the risk makes no qualitative difference. It just means that the lower value of the range of the risk magnitude is zero. It doesn't mean that this is a special case where it's rational to defer making any judgment at all.

So what?

[edunbar93]

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?