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Changes in Earth's Orbit Linked to Extinctions
Josh Fink writes "A group of Dutch Scientists have recently released a study stating that they have found that changes in Earth's orbit around the sun are linked to mammal extinctions. From the article: '"Extinctions in rodent species occur in pulses which are spaced by intervals controlled by astronomical variations and their effects on climate change..." The cycles are associated with lower temperatures, changes in precipitation, habitats, vegetation and food availability which are the main factors influencing the extinction peaks, the study published in the journal Nature said.' So on top of worrying about global warming, it seems we should also worry about the physics that govern the orbit of Earth around the sun. Too bad we don't have a way of keeping the Earth in the same orbit/on the same axis of rotation."
We did until George Bush ordered it to be defunded.
Do you have ESP?
before anyone starts getting all 'see, all you global-warming believers, this is a perfectly rational natural explanation for the current warming trend,' the periods of these natural cycles are on the order of 1.2 and 2.4 million years. not exactly fast-acting.
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
The dinosaurs died because you touch yourself at night. Family Guy told me so.
Is causing a wobble in the earth's orbit and causing global warming. Now where is my Nobel prize?
This is clearly due to world jump day... http://www.worldjumpday.org/
I left my wallet in El Sigundo!
Too bad we don't have a way of keeping the Earth in the same orbit/on the same axis of rotation.
You sir are shortsighted. Find someone to blame, add it to the party platform (either one, it doesn't matter) and then fund raise on it. Global Wobbling must be stopped!! We can stop it!!! It won't be stopped if party X get's/keeps control of Congress!!! The time to act is now!!
Please click here to donate 25, 50, 100, 1000 dollars to STOP GLOBAL WOBBLING. You will receive two complimentary pamphlets entitled "The Wobble, the Planet, and You" and "Why is Galileo weeping?". Both are packed with earth-shattering information to help you spread the news of this new threat to our precious freedoms and way of life.
More info in nature. It seems to do with something called Milankovich cycles. But i guess 'wobble' is specific enough for stuff that matters.
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
Actually, this study isn't all that new. The globes tilt has been known to be linked to CO2 levels (and temperature) for a while now. The question is how do the effects of greenhouse gases put out by industry compare to this effect, and the answer is not so clear. Yes, obviously many scientists and virtually all non-scientists attribute all of our climate changes to to industry, but we need to remember to be rigorous on both sides of the debate. In short, this is not junk science. And to claim so only shows that you yourself are not a scientist.
Even if we could affect a change in the earth's orbit around the sun, who's to say if that is a good thing? Might that not be akin to preventing all forest fires? Controlled burns are our way of preventing some large/catastrophic forest fires and lightning strikes are nature's way of doing it. What makes us think the "wobble" in our orbit isn't causing cyclical "refresh" events? No, I'm not suggesting some diety is controlling things or that ZOMG WE R AL GOING 2 DIE or anything like that. Just saying we might not yet comprehend the consequences of making this "fix" change. Hell, we are still unable to predict the weather with any certainty more than a day or two out. /shrug
Here's a quick link to some other studies: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Paleoclimat ology_Evidence/
That's not the Earth's orbit causing rodent extinction.
That was the mice rebooting the Earth while debugging it.
Since the users of our iPlanet are bailing out now without the system shutting down, I expect we're obsolete. Get ready to do your part for the firewall they turn us into.
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make install -not war
We don't have animals in our climate model, but if you'd like to see how orbit effects climate, you can do so yourself.
The EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA GCM in a graphical interface. You can double-click to install, and if you'd like to turn the sun down a few percent or change the orbit, there are checkboxes and sliders. Press play, wait a while (hours to a day or so depending on your computer), and you can look at the results...
Disclaimer: I'm the developer.
Space and Computers.
Or....people, w/o a clue, are reading this and blowing it out of proportions by not keeping it in context. Changes to our atmosphere, because of orbital deviance, happens in the millions of years category.....changes in our environment, due to global warming is happening on a monthly/yearly basis.
So yea, if I edited portions of the article I could make it sound like the orbit change is the reason for global warming.... then again, if i took bits and pieces of the quoran (sp) I could tell people that Allah demands we kill anyone who is not muslim, even if it means we have to kill ourselves to do it.
Moral of the story: Use the whole story, and keep it in context.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
What if we solved global warming a few hundred years from now, reversed a lot of the temperature increases we found we are directly responsible for, and over that time the Earth's orbit/rotation changed such that an Ice Age was triggered? Oh noes! Suddenly global warming doesn't seem all that bad, does it?
Suppose again someone in charge actually accepted my supposition and decided global warming research was pointless.
Ok, I'm done making improbable suppositions.
Blame it on microsoft, it makes everyone so much more happier.
The whole tone of this /. post freaked me out. There's no way for there to be 'irregularities' in the Earth's orbit without something with both really high mass and really high velocity interacting with the earth or the sun.
So I read up on Milankovich cycles, and it turns out it's just precession. It's perfectly regular, it's just that in the case of something the size & slow angular velocity of the earth, it takes a really long time to change.
When you spin a top, you can see the axis of spin describe a circle. This is precession.
Likewise as the Earth rotates, there is precession. Also, as the earth orbits the sun, there is precession. These have cycles on the order of tens of thousands of years. Both can affect the climate by changing the angle of sunlight. There are cycles on the order of millions of years long in which the two effects both affect the climate the same way, and so produce a bigger net effect.
I guess wobble is an accurate term, except that to me it implies something irregular. In a system as big and isolated as the Earth's orbit around the Sun, or the Earth's rotation, momentum is king, and very little could cause an irregular change. These changes are just precession, and they're perfectly regular.
I am not a physicist, but I do have a Bachelor of Science in Physics.
That its perfectly fine for one side to have exceptions to issues the other side but the reverse is not true.
My problem with the whole GW crowd is how they will quickly object or attempt to marginalize anything which doesn't support their view. At the same time any little piece of information which supports their view is held forth as indisputable fact.
Look, we don't know half of what we think we do. The one great thing about science in this day and age is that we are continously changing what we know as fact as our ability to observe becomes better and better. Old theories that were hard to prove can be supported and previous "unalterable" facts are dismissed.
We can barely predict the weather from day to day let alone week to week. We can't accurately predict the number of hurricanes, typhoons, or the like. Yet at the same time you want me to believe that enough is known to tell me that we are all going to die in 10 years?
Just admit you know about as much about the climate as the other side. Fact is, we are still discovering the variables. In no shape or form can you have the definitive anwser without all the variables.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
In the years since 1998, not only has the Earth's temp not risen, but it has fallen slightly...and I mean so slightly that it is practically immeasurable. But, it definitely hasn't risen at all.
Damn the Republicans! They are responsible for this.
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"They are always satisfied. Who ever the fuck it is."
-Andrew Dice Clay on his sexual prowess
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
I am being serious. Someone told me this. That is how I know it is unquestionably true. Isn't that all we need as proof these days? I mean, if we are basing the Global Warming myth on the extremely errored models with which we used to collect the "data" that suggests this, then why do we even need evidence at all to make a point or declaration of any kind? Ouch...a monkey just flew out of my butt. You don't believe me...well, you're stupid (sarcasm).
/. give Microsoft the same benefit of the doubt? Should you?
But, come on, if you are going to point toward the chicken-little argument about the melting of the ice caps, then you must also be aware of the recent studies that show that even though some ice is melting, new ice is being produced in other areas at an even higher rate. Or do you also conveniently believe that Global Warming is also causing Global Cooling like some of the other geniuses believe. All you have to do is re-read the previous sentence, particularly the, "Global Warming is also causing Global Cooling" part to realize how ridiculous it sounds on its face. It is almost as ridiculous as looking at a canvas with obvious splatters of paint and actually letting, "Jackson Pollock is a genius!" roll off your lips. The leap is just too far...
You can show me a study...I'll show you a study...you show me one...I'll show you one...me...you...me you...and so on until we puke. At the end of the day, does it really matter? Is it really worth all the crying and nashing of teeth? Until the models with which we collect data have fewer holes than Win98, do you really want to stake anything on the "data" that is output from the studies? Do you or anyone else here at
"...So on top of worrying about global warming, it seems we should also worry about the physics that govern the orbit of Earth around the sun. Too bad we don't have a way of keeping the Earth in the same orbit/on the same axis of rotation."
/ earth_move_010207.html
Yes, we have! And it's very interesting indeed!
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth
A link to the paper: Korycansky, D. G.; Laughlin, Gregory; Adams, Fred C. Astronomical engineering: a strategy for modifying planetary orbits. Astrophys.Space Sci. 275 (2001) 349-366
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0102126
Abstract:
"The Sun's gradual brightening will seriously compromise the Earth's biosphere within ~ 1E9 years. If Earth's orbit migrates outward, however, the biosphere could remain intact over the entire main-sequence lifetime of the Sun. In this paper, we explore the feasibility of engineering such a migration over a long time period. The basic mechanism uses gravitational assists to (in effect) transfer orbital energy from Jupiter to the Earth, and thereby enlarges the orbital radius of Earth. This transfer is accomplished by a suitable intermediate body, either a Kuiper Belt object or a main belt asteroid. The object first encounters Earth during an inward pass on its initial highly elliptical orbit of large (~ 300 AU) semimajor axis. The encounter transfers energy from the object to the Earth in standard gravity-assist fashion by passing close to the leading limb of the planet. The resulting outbound trajectory of the object must cross the orbit of Jupiter; with proper timing, the outbound object encounters Jupiter and picks up the energy it lost to Earth. With small corrections to the trajectory, or additional planetary encounters (e.g., with Saturn), the object can repeat this process over many encounters. To maintain its present flux of solar energy, the Earth must experience roughly one encounter every 6000 years (for an object mass of 1E22 g). We develop the details of this scheme and discuss its ramifications."
The fascinating average temperature data from Vostok Antarctic ice data:
/ tempplot5.gif
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/temp/vostok/graphics
shows that for last 450,000 years Earth was mostly in the Ice Age, interrupted
by 10,000 year long warm periods spaced 100,000 years apart. We are about 15,000
years into the last warm period on record.
Because of strong periodicity, the current best explanation of this cycle is
by astronomical phenomena (Earth orbit/axis wobble).
This does not contradict global warming---it just shows that the climate
is a very delicate balance between strong opposing phenomena; the point being
that we should be real careful how we influence it.
Extinctions Linked to Changes in Earth's Orbit.
Or was I the only one who read it as a paucity of mammoths might cause a tilt...?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
OK; Listen everybody , those north of the equator, at the count of 10 move to your right 1 meter.
Converted to kilograms, your figure works out to 3.5 * 10^10 kgs. Let's triple the weight to 180 lbs, and your figure becomes 1 * 10^11 kgs.
Now, the mass of the earth is approximately 6 * 10^24 kgs. That's 6 * 10^13 bigger. Let's see what a similar ratio would look like applied to a 100 kg (220 lbs) human. Something that is 10^13 smaller would be approximately 1 microgram. The average piece of dust weights about 100 micrograms.
So the effect would be like an exceptionally tiny piece of dust striking you, i.e. no effect at all.
What was once true, is no longer so
Connect the dots. Global warming is NOT man made. It is made by changes in Earth's orbit and changes in output from the sun.
Can anyone tell me who was burning fossel fuels between the year 850 and 1300 when the earth last experienced "global warming" or why from 1300 to sometime around 1800 we experienced global cooling in what scientists called a "mini ice-age"?
600 million people were supposed to simultaneously jump on July 20th to alter the earths orbit to prevent global warming. Only after the fact did anybody bother to tell us this could lead to our extinction. Oh no!
Stupid people are funny.