Global Warming Shifts the Earth's Poles

ananyo writes "Global warming is changing the location of Earth's geographic poles, according to a study published this week. Researchers at the University of Texas, Austin, report that increased melting of the Greenland ice sheet — and to a lesser degree, ice loss in other parts of the globe — helped to shift the North Pole several centimeters east each year since 2005. From 1982 to 2005, the pole drifted southeast towards northern Labrador, Canada, at a rate of about 2 milliarcseconds — or roughly 6 centimetres — per year. But in 2005, the pole changed course and began galloping east towards Greenland at a rate of more than 7 milliarcseconds per year (abstract). The results suggest that tracking polar shifts can serve as a check on current estimates of ice loss. Scientists can locate the north and south poles to within 0.03 milliarcseconds by using Global Positioning System measurements to determine the angle of Earth's spin. When mass is lost in one part of a spinning sphere, its spin axis will tilt directly towards the position of the loss — exactly as the team observed for Greenland."

Comments

Three Gorges Dam

[ShanghaiBill]

Part of this shift could be caused by filling the reservoir behind the Three Gorges Dam, since that is on the opposite side of the world from Greenland. But that would only explain part of it, since the reservoir holds about 40km^3 and Greenland is losing about 240km^3 per year.

Re:Three Gorges Dam

[Aardpig]

I welcome our new Asian Overlords and their Moment of Inertia.

Re:Three Gorges Dam

[ShanghaiBill]

With that said, why did they change from "centimeters" to "milliarc"? What the hell is the ratio?

A Nautical Mile is one minute of arc. Since a NM is 1852 meters, an arc second would be 1852/60 = 30.87m, so a milliarcsecond would be 3.087. So the ratio is about 3.

Re:Three Gorges Dam

[JMJimmy]

Something about this article just feels wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_polar_wander feels more right - just sits better in my gut. ;)

Re:Three Gorges Dam

[The Mighty Buzzard]

So, you're saying we should bomb China then?

Re:Three Gorges Dam

[bmo]

A nautical mile isn't an "imperial unit"

It's a nautical unit. It's actually Babylonian. It's useful for measuring the Earth because it's "close enough" to a minute of arc.

If Gunther had changed his surveyor's chain to 1/100 of a nautical mile in 1620, (instead of 1/80'th statute mile)^1 we wouldn't be talking about the Meter at all, as it would have been useless.

--
BMO

1. A nautical mile is 92.06 chains. An adjustment of the chain to 100 per NM wouldn't have been a big difference, and made things even easier for surveyors and engineers.

Re:Three Gorges Dam

[vikingpower]

. Meters and kilometers are strait-line measures, and can only approximate distance on Earth (unless you want to bore through the earth).

Which is bollocks. The one is not more "curved" than the other. Both can be used to measure distance on either flat ( Euclidean ) or curved surfaces.

Re:Three Gorges Dam

[angel'o'sphere]

Ofc it is bollocks and you are wrong.

A nautical mile is the distance you get if you measure one arc minute at the equator of the earth. That happens to be something like 1852m.

This 1852m is called a nm. And this nm can be used to measure anything ou want.

You can define the speed of light with it, measure arbitrary distances etc. Regardless wether you do that in curved or flat environments.

Hint: it is not the arc minute that is relevant but the distance this arc minute gives you at the equator.

Simple question

[hcs_$reboot]

What are the implications?

Re:Simple question

[shikaisi]

Well if the earth Poles have moved, the government of Poland is going to be out of a job soon.

Re:Simple question

[silentcoder]

Not much, at least not yet, since polar drift is a common and permanently ongoing event - and full-on polar shifts happen every half a million years or so.

What it does do however is provide another data set to compare when measuring ice melt, and importantly one of which we have a much longer record.
Scientists like being able to test their results against other measurements. By using polar shift we can verify satelite data to confirm (or in some case disprove) what the measurements seem to say.
It's basically just more evidence one can use to determine the rate of warming and the impact of it's effects.

In practise it won't have any effect on normal people because if the overwhelming evidence already supporting climate change theory hasn't persuaded the politicians, yet another data set confirming it won't do anything.

Re:Simple question

[Oxdeadface]

Santa has to move :(

Re:Simple question

[Sockatume]

You're confusing the drift and inversion in the planet's magnetic pole with the drift in the planet's rotational pole. This article is about the latter.

Re:The opposite might also be true

[ZaMoose]

I was actually going to post something incredibly close to this. The causal link just isn't there, as far as I can tell. It could very well be that the glaciers melt/freeze due to slight shifts in the poles' positions and variations in the Sun's output.

Spinny-Chair

[Mystakaphoros]

Is this a conservation of angular momentum thing? Because I feel like my high school physics teacher would try to explain this by spinning someone around in a chair with a melting ice cube on their head.

Re: Spinny-Chair

[domatic]

To get any appreciable thrust at all, he'd at least need to use an M-80. Bonus points if the vectors of what's left of the body moving forward and the asschunks moving in the other direction are accounted for with high speed photography.

Sounds like a good MythBusters episode to me. They can jam ever increasing amounts of explosives up the ass of pig carcasses.

Re: Spinny-Chair

[mrvan]

You seem to be talking about the magnetic poles, which are indeed caused by the spin of the core and move a lot every year, in the magnitude of 50 km/year. This is so much that navigating using a compass requires compensating for the specific declination of that year. You can even observe it if you have a good bearing compass: take the bearing from a fixed position to a relatively far away object, such as a broadcast tower. A couple years later, take the bearing again, and (depending on your location) it may have changed by one or even several degrees.

TFA talks about the geographic north, e.g. the intersection of the surface and the axes around which the earth spins. This does not generally move around much, as it is affected by the distribution of mass around the earth causing the axis to shift. According to TFS, it can be measured using GPS, and moves in the magnitude of centimeters per year.

Re:Spinny-Chair

[Sockatume]

Actually, yes. If the Earth's mass is redistributed, its rotational axis and/or rate must move, depending on the redistribution. It's the difference between you spinning in the chair holding a lead brick, and spinning in the chair with the same mass evenly distributed about your person.

it all goes south from here...

[burdickjp]

When you're at the North Pole, which way is East?

Re:it all goes south from here...

[ultranova]

When you're at the North Pole, which way is East?

Well, you're facing south, so east is to your left.

Re:it all goes south from here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Counterclockwise.

Re:it all goes south from here...

[i kan reed]

A quick bit of projection math tells me the value of east is the set of all angles when you're at the north pole.

Re:it all goes south from here...

[Coolhand2120]

It doesn't swirl at all, it's frozen.

It's another check on the measurements.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like the age of something can be measured by multiple decay products, layer depth, and many other measures of archeological assessment, and when they are in agreement, you know your results are robust, this is another way to measure the loss of ice which, if it agrees with GRACE, land measurements and predictions from models, will indicate that the model results are robust.

It's even in the FS:

"The results suggest that tracking polar shifts can serve as a check on current estimates of ice loss."

Shifting Poles

[Anonymous Coward]

There was this guy called Adolph that shifted the Poles too

GPS reference system

[XNormal]

I wonder how this affects high-accuracy geodetic GPS measurements. The GPS coordinate system is defined by the Earth's axis.

Re:GPS reference system

[Maximum Prophet]

If you had a run of the mill GPS system, and you drove your car very, very, far North, eventually you'd lose signal.

What I imagine is going on here, is that there is a ring of base stations watching the GPS satellites around each pole. If you know the base stations haven't moved w.r.t. the pole, then you can calculate where the center of spin is, thus where the pole is.

Re:GPS reference system

[CayceeDee]

Your imagination is faulty in this area.

It does so by noting minute changes in gravitational pull caused by local changes in Earth's mass. Masses of ice, air, water and solid Earth can be moved by weather patterns, seasonal change, climate change and even tectonic events such as large earthquakes. To track these changes, GRACE uses GPS and a microwave ranging system to measure micron-scale variations in the 220-kilometer (137-mile) separation between the two spacecraft, developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. These measurements are used to produce monthly gravity maps that are more than 100 times more precise than previous models, providing the resolution necessary to characterize how Earth’s gravity field varies over time and space, and over land and sea. The data have substantially improved the accuracy of techniques used by oceanographers, hydrologists, glaciologists, geologists and climate scientists.

We did not lose mass.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

It got redistributed, that is all.

Re:The opposite might also be true

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Global warming may or may not be caused by humans. Perhaps in part. Regardless, we should focus on cutting pollution even if global warming is not man-made.

WTF? has been happening for years

[alen]

i first read about this a decade ago and it has been happening for hundreds of years. scientists are studying ships' logs from the 1700's and earlier and this process started 300 years ago.

Re:WTF? has been happening for years

[ElderKorean]

i first read about this a decade ago and it has been happening for hundreds of years. scientists are studying ships' logs from the 1700's and earlier and this process started 300 years ago.

Ships used compasses (likely GPS now), which use the magnetic north & south poles - we've known about them moving about the place for ages, and even flipping. This is about the geographic poles which are at different locations - the Earth spins around these..

Re:WTF? has been happening for years

[dargaud]

You are talking about the magnetic pole (which wanders a lot, and may or may not shift in the coming millenia, not decades as you state) while the article is about the geographic pole which is the axis of rotation of the mound of dirt and water we call Earth. And it's also different from the precession of the equinoxes which also cycles in about 26000 years (changing the polar star to something different than the current Polaris).

Re:The opposite might also be true

[serviscope_minor]

It could very well be that the glaciers melt/freeze due to slight shifts in the poles' positions and variations in the Sun's output.

Yeah it could be. I suppose since we have no way of measuring the sun's luminous output with any precision at all we're all just guessing here.

Re:The opposite might also be true

[SirGarlon]

Let's face it people, there is nothing we can do, accept it and deal with it.

There are plenty of things we can do. There's very little we *want* to do.

Re:The opposite might also be true

[Bartles]

More like, there are plenty of things we can force people to do, but in free liberal countries, we seem to be encountering resistance to our solutions.

Re:The opposite might also be true

[Vintermann]

It may have been reasonable to believe that if you had no information whatsoever about e.g temperature and rainfall or solar output.

How will it make it worse?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if it makes everyone live forever? What if it makes money grow on trees? What if it makes us travel back in time to the age of the dinosaurs?

How will it make it worse.

Re:Surface Drift Question

[EmagGeek]

The crust does drift, and because the crust does not have uniform thickness, crustal drift changes the center of gravity and angular momentum of the Earth, and also shifts the poles.

Also, if there is a major earthquake that sinks a large portion of crust any appreciable amount, the rate of rotation AND center of gravity change, and poles shift some more.

There are many many vectors of change for the position of the poles. To assume that all of the observed drift is due to the change in mass of a single ice sheet is ludicrous. But, we're talking about the chicken little global warming narrative here, so anything goes.

Re:The opposite might also be true

[bluefoxlucid]

I was going to call stupidity on this, but then I realized they meant the axial poles. The magnetic poles have been shifting (they travel a lot, and sometimes reverse; there's been dramatic movement in the recent decade), and this can alter magma flows and screw with global weather patterns. Axial poles shift due to mass movement, which may occur from magnetic poles moving hot metal around, but also other reasons as cited.

Re:The opposite might also be true

[SirGarlon]

The fact that bad ideas dominate the set of proposed solutions does not make the problem invalid.

This is awesome

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Awesome in how much of an epic fail this "scientific" research.

Regardless of global warming, I don't need a geology degree to know the geographic poles shift constantly, and if you measured their location over millions of years, you could realize that there is so much involved in where they are located, like continental drift or earthquakes or ice ages, to realize this is a completely meaningless study.

But of course retarded greenists are just going to add this to their list of "proof" about how the planet is in a state of disaster because someone linked something meaningless to global warming and other people will over sensationalize what a pole shift will mean to the planet (you know, like the BBC).

I don't deny global warming, I just want to be realistic about it and find ways of dealing with its existence rather than looking for blame or wasting money and time trying to prove it. I also don't believe this is the end of the planet just one of the many changes this planet has gone through and survived.

Global warming is a geo-political issue, period. Its not a global catastrophe to nature.

Re:This is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even look at the article before assuming that all scientists are idiots who didn't know that the poles shift constantly? If you had you would have read this:

Scientists have long known that the locations of Earth’s geographic poles are not fixed. Over the course of the year, they shift seasonally as Earth’s distributions of snow, rain and humidity change. “Usually [the shift] is circular, with a wobble,” says Chen.

But underlying the seasonal motion is a yearly motion that is thought to be driven in part by continental drift. It was the change in that motion that caught the attention of Chen and his colleagues, who used data collected by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) to determine whether ice loss had shifted and accelerated the yearly polar drift.

It appears that the scientists involved know almost as much as you about this subject! In fact, they may even know a bit more considering that they have a habit of reading up on a subject before making sweeping proclaimations.

Global Warming my Arse...

[PortHaven]

Okay, for the past five years or so I've experience some of the most frigid winters. We had an extremely cold winter. Followed by a winter with record snow (4 ft in two days). Followed by a year with a mild winter but a huge snow in fall and a late frost in April. Then this past winter we've had snow flurries on about 1/2 the days. And now, in the middle of may we had a frost wipe out my second planting of sweet potatoes and peppers.

This is well past the Farmer's Almanac.

So seriously, F-GW, F-AlGore, F-Idiots who shout doom and gloom. I'm going to light my fire pit, burn some carbon filled wood. And pour used motor oil over it just to help warm things up.

***

EXPLANATIONS for Polar Shift.

1. Global Warming, heck maybe they're right. Maybe the ice melting is rotating the planet.
  (Or maybe the planet rotating is melting the ice, though I would think that would mean the ice would merely shift directions.)

2. Maybe Three Gorges Dam in China

3. Maybe Fukishima earthquake, tidal wave, what not also contributed to the shift.

4. Perhaps we're applying the sure and steady scientific error. Where we assume things ALWAYS happen at the same rate. So if we see that the pole moved 1 meter in 300 years. We assume that it moved a centimeter a year. Rather than having any proof that the average movement is consistent. It may have moved 3 centimeters one year and 1/2 a centimeter another year.

5. If we used logic, we'd quit feeding the poor, quit having wars and devote ALL of our money to get us to a second planet and solar system. I mean seriously, what's the point of saving the poor only to have them wiped out by an asteroid. Just saying....Bruce Willis can't save us every time. I mean yes, he stopped Armageddon, and Cobra...but really. Can we rely on him to bail our butts out of every mess?

Re:Global Warming my Arse...

[Sockatume]

We know the effect of the Fukishima earthquake on the Earth's polar rotation, both through models and measurements (which are in accordance with one another). Actually, the same models used by the authors of this study.

Re:Global Warming my Arse...

[stjobe]

Okay, for the past five years or so I've experience some of the most frigid winters. We had an extremely cold winter. Followed by a winter with record snow (4 ft in two days). Followed by a year with a mild winter but a huge snow in fall and a late frost in April. Then this past winter we've had snow flurries on about 1/2 the days. And now, in the middle of may we had a frost wipe out my second planting of sweet potatoes and peppers.

Weather is not climate.

Re:Global Warming my Arse...

[Dixie_Flatline]

Congratulations, you just demonstrated how little you know about climate science and global climate change. Colder winters and longer winters are both explainable and predictable depending on where you are. For instance, changes in the currents in the ocean may direct colder water towards the UK and northern Europe, thereby actually making for colder winters and more snow. In North America this year, the melting Arctic icecap (which melted much more than usual last summer) added extra heat to the northern oceans, which affected the jetstream, pushing it south. That dragged cold air from the Arctic down much further south.

Climate is wild and woolly, and it's hard to know exactly what's going to happen, but we know enough of what's going to happen and what's happening that most of the complaints you're going to come up with can be explained by Science. And not just some random scientist, but peer-reviewed and published science.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/25/scientists-long-winter-in-u-s-the-result-of-melting-arctic-ice-cap/

We know the poles shift. In fact, that's IN THE SUMMARY. You didn't even have to read the article to see that shifting geographic poles are well known. But they're shifting faster, and NASA's GRACE experiment is also helping measure the subtle shifts in gravity associated with shifting mass. It all seems to be correlating well. Someone else here has even already pointed out this comment in the article:

"The results suggest that tracking polar shifts can serve as a check on current estimates of ice loss."

Are you interested in science or not? Then sit and read and understand the science. Don't go off on a rant before you know a single damn thing of what you're talking about.

Re:Global Warming my Arse...

[tompaulco]

But see, that is a perfect example of global warming, as global warming is a theory which encompasses all anomalies and even no anomalies. If the weather is hotter than usual, that is definitely global warming. If it is colder than usual, that is global warming. If it is more violent than usual, that is global warming. If it is milder than usual, then that is global warming. If it is the same as usual, then that is global warming.

Re:The opposite might also be true

[JasterBobaMereel]

Changes like this have happened time and time again ... and the world will continue and life will continue

The problem is it might not be habitable by 7billion humans ... this *will* affect you

Re:The opposite might also be true

[Aardpig]

Scheduled maintenance.

Re:The opposite might also be true

[roman_mir]

No, you'll get the real 'oops' when you will realise that you didn't check that 'Post Anonymously' box.... twice.

Re:The opposite might also be true

[PopeRatzo]

Global warming may or may not be caused by humans.

And if it is, too goddamn bad, because I'm not giving up my Buick for some sissy electric car that doesn't even have exhaust pipes.

Plus, Jesus is gonna come back way before we have to worry about global warming. And when he gets back, he's not going to want to see a bunch of Priuses. He's going to want to see 400hp American Iron.

Re:Only if you make money out of polluting.

[CayceeDee]

Actually companies make money by passing such issues to the general public. Externalities is what they call it.

Just fix it

[EZLeeAmused]

That candy striped pole in the front of Santa's workshop? Can't they just dig it up and re-plant it where it should be?

Re:The opposite might also be true

[Anonymous Coward]

There is pretty clear causality here - melting ice results in a shift of mass on the surface of the Earth, which causes a change in the moments of inertia and products of inertia of the planet - due to conservation of angular momentum this results in the axis of rotation shifting.

Re:The opposite might also be true

[Sockatume]

It's a bit of a stretch to suppose that there's some other force changing the Earth's angular momentum in just such a way as to be the same as that expected from the mass transfer from the Greenland ice sheet to the oceans.

I dont get it...

[PanAmaX]

How exactly is the surface temperature which is insulated from the magnetic core by quite a large layer of crust changing the orientation of the earths magnetosphere? I thought that the movement of the pole was caused mostly by an increase in seismic activity over recent times (as in we've had more severe incidents which have been said to shift the pole) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Magnetic_Pole It has been known ALL MY LIFE that the magnetic poles wander, and in fact have undergone complete pole reversal on average once every 450,000 years. This is not a linear process, and will experience times of acceleration and deceleration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal in fact there were articles on how the magnetic north has been shifting further and faster each year all over the place and something about runways having to repaint the north indicator on runways. (you look it up) Anyway.. to throw some tinder onto this fire.. I've always believed that our period of climate change (bear in mind we are always in a period of climate change as climate is NOT static and its stupid to think it is) may more directly influenced by cloud formation than we are lead to believe. Hence changing the magnetic north will change the distribution of Cosmic Carged Particles and this in turn will affect local climate areas. Not to mention that since the mass adoption of Jet engines (the time scale on this matches with a lot of the accelerating climate change graphs too by the way) on aircraft we have noticed artificial coalescence of clouds by compression of the water vapour through the engine.. this causing Contrails or whathaveyou which if you watch over the course of a day (anecdotal - take with a grain of salt) seem to cascade into larger cloud formations.. this plus the location of clouds in respect to the land mass I believe needs more studying before we can make any solid claims on the trends that cause/indicate/influence global climate.. and further than that local weather. ALSO it is very important to note that in a warmer environment that there will be increase in atmospheric CO2 as the ocean will not be able to absorb as much CO2 at higher temperatures (check out solubility of CO2 in water). http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/09/cosmic-rays-and-clouds-potential-mechanisms/ So in summary while I strongly believe most of these types of reports are funding seeking scare mongering nonsense, I do believe that we are in a state of climate change, people do have an effect, and we should all be doing our part to plan for a better future.. but please.. please.. base decision and actions on an accurate model. if the model doesnt work with more data, fix the model. Im not a denialist.. I just dont believe we have an accurate model yet.

Re:I dont get it...

[PanAmaX]

AH!!! OK.. NOW I get it :) and it makes sense. of course changing the distribution of the mass will change the rate of wobble... Completely wrong end of the stick on this one, thanks for the correction without adding a snide insult :D

Re:I dont get it...

[Sockatume]

We've all been there. Don't sweat it.

The causal link is freshman physics

[Sockatume]

If you take the known mass transfer between the ice sheets and the ocean, you can predict its effect upon the rotational axis of the Earth. You can then compare that prediction to what's actually observed by measurements of the location of the rotational axis of the Earth. This is what the paper did.

Re:In Other News!

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you're being ironic, but I'd like to point out he's also completely wrong.

The effect of continental drift, ice melting, ocean temps, etc is a quite long studied subject (see ref below which mentions George Darwin already looked at polar wobbling). I admit not everything about the wobbling is fully understood, but at least since 2002 [1] we are quite confident that the Greenland ice melting is significant enough to cause an effect on polar motion.

The fact that random people here often think they did a better job at the science in a 20 sec post (especially if that science is related to a politically sensitive topic) is something interesting I have been observing on /. for the last 2-3 years, and is quite a disappointing trend imho.

[1] http://www.pnas.org/content/99/10/6550.full

Re:My close personal friend

[VortexCortex]

That's funny. I live in Texas, and the University of Houston attendees I queried here say: "Let's test it to be sure!" They suggested that with enough world-wide cooperation we could move enough water with dams to modify the moment of inertia and thus control the movement of the pole -- One small step towards taking the helm of Spaceship Earth. I guess such ideas are to be expected after all those years as the home of NASA's mission control...

Well, one of them did offer that we should check the south pole to corroborate the findings -- "Just because the north pole moved doesn't mean the south one did too."

Galloping? Really?

[bmo]

galloping east towards Greenland at a rate of more than 7 milliarcseconds per year

>galloping
>milliarcseconds/yr

To put it into english:

1 arcsecond is 1/3600 of a degree (1/(60x60)). One thousandth of this is 1/3,600,000 degree. There are 7 of these per year.

I will leave it to the reader to determine how many thousands of years it will take to move one degree from where it is now, excluding normal precession.

--
BMO

Re:The opposite might also be true

[Dixie_Flatline]

Or to paraphrase, "Brakes are gone...no point in steering!"

There's lots of stuff we can do to make sure that we're not making things worse. We know we're making SOME things worse, so why don't we stop it with those things?

Climate changes. But climate changes tend to happen on geological timescales, barring utter catastrophe. I'm sure the K-T Boundary impact changed the climate, but that was a world-changing catastrophic impact that effectively lit the atmosphere on fire for a few hours. I haven't seen one of those recently, but I've seen what humans can do given some time and ambition.

Stop it with the calls to inaction. We've got enough evidence that it's a good idea to hedge our bets and start cutting back on the needless waste that we're so good at. We can do better, so let's do better.

polar shift is a branch of geophysics

[peter303]

There have been several papers on the topic every year in the geodesy section of the American Geiphysical Union meetings. Earthquakes, ice sheet melting, mantle convention velocity changes, seasonal ocean storms all cause mass shifts int he earth and a slight change in pole position. Before satellite GPS geophysicists used Very Long Baseline radio telecscope inferometry of quasars to measure pole position. VLBI is essentially a "galactic GPS" but more expensive than satellite GPS methods.

A closely related geophhyscial measurement is Length-of-Day, that is the time between repeat viewing of stars which varies nanoseconds per day and milliseconds per year. All the same large earth mass-moveoments that shift poles also change Length of Day.

Re:The opposite might also be true

[jovius]

Let's imagine that aliens start to pour carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the Earth's atmosphere. The greenhouse effect has been known for over 100 years so we quickly can conclude that the net effect would be a warmer atmosphere. We would definitely try to do something to the matter, because well, the risk assessments would be increasingly worrying.

So why is it so difficult to act now?

And true, the climate has changed. Also it's normal that gamma ray explosions happen in space and they might destroy most of the Earth's atmosphere. It's still rather insane to explode one on Earth.

Re:In Other News!

[Sockatume]

Actually, they did.

Re:Surface Drift Question

[Sockatume]

The technique they used is neither complex, controversial, new, nor specific to climate science.

Re:The opposite might also be true

[tompaulco]

"Do unto others as you would have them do nought to sixty."

Actually by that metric the electric vehicles are still ahead.

Yeah, but in America we don't USE metric.

Re:All Just a SWAG

[Sockatume]

Not at all. It's a method that's proven itself repeatedly in studies on other subjects, such as the inner structure of the Earth and the measurement of earthquakes. If you'd rather believe that geophysicists studying the earth's mantle who've never written a climate science paper in their lives are also part of The Conspiracy you're welcome to, but you're rapidly going to find yourself as the only one who isn't In On It.

Re:The opposite might also be true

[ArsonSmith]

We're talking about climate not weather you moran.

Global warming causes everything!

[BitZtream]

Is there anything that isn't caused by global warming? It's getting silly at this point.

Re:The opposite might also be true

[Alsee]

Yet another story from the warmist conspiracy, piling more so-called "science" on top of their propaganda.

The reason for the pole shift is simple. Due to a toxic spill of lead and cadmium paints, Santa Claus was forced to move his workshop slightly. The Elves are no longer permitted egg-nog while on duty.

P.S.
I'm a climate skeptic goddamnit. It really pisses me off when warmists keep calling me a denialist. Only people with no real evidence to back up their case resort to name-calling. Until someone can prove to my satisfaction that the pole shift wasn't caused by a toxic spill at Santa's workshop, my explanation is just as valid as any warmist's "theory".

-

Way too many factors

[Terry95]

I don't care enough to look up the specific numbers but I must observe that they are taking a single measurement, which is known to have traveled over just about every single point on the globe at one time or another, and assigning its entire variation to their pet agenda.

The two things that spring to mind immediately are the Pacific volcano a couple decades ago and the Japanese earthquake, both of which were reported to have permanently (to the limit of our near nonexistent understanding) changed the Earth's very orbit itself.

So forgive me if I am more than a whole lot skeptical of their childishly simple cause = effect assumption. There are literally hundreds of thousands of inputs we know of their model likely omits and probably millions we don't even know about.

This is yet another "Measure with a micrometer, mark with chalk, cut with ax" story.

Not so drastic

[JigJag]

I got thinking that many Aztec, Mayan, Egyptian and other nations have left us with structures (pyramids, temples, etc) strongly aligned with stars and other celestial items. Seems they are still aligned, despise 1000s of years. If the Earth has been shifting since eons, how come those are still aligned?

If you are tempted to say the time scale isn't the same, remember that in only 8 years, it's moved 20cm according to the fine summary and we're not experiencing the first GW.

The points of this post is not to discredit GW, nor the shift we observe, nor the Grand History of mankind as we know it, but to gather opinions on how to reconcile those 2 seemingly incompatible points.

JigJag

Re:External forces

[Immerman]

I won't go into your astronomical thoughts, beyond stating that yes, there are minor fluctuations in planetary dynamics due to gravitational interactions between them, but they are fairly small even on geological time scales, the sun and moon are the only bodys that have any significant effect on the Earth. due to their tidal forces, all other planets are so comparatively tiny and far away that they have minimal tidal effects and cause little more than slight variations in our orbit.

The renewal of the Earth's surface (I beleive crustal subduction is the term if you want more information) is a continuously ongoing process, but is due to the currents within the Earth's semi-liquid mantle - essentially the Earth is something like an egg, only a very thin outside layer is actually solid, and the interior is churning in ways we don't yet understand well. As for the age of things, you are somewhat correct about mountains, jagged mountains are in fact much younger than rounded ones, but the rock itself is typically quite old, it's just that it's only recently been thrust to the surface by tectonic forces. Actual new rock is created either by high compression of sand or dirt over millions of years, or created near volcanos, mostly in continental rifts such as the massive undersea Marianas Trench where two tectonic plates are spreading apart and magma is bubbling up from below to become new rock on the trailing edge of the plates. Eventually that rock will reach the far end of the plate, where it will collide with another plate and either be shoved on top of it to become mountains, or shoved beneath it to melt and rejoin the liquid mantle.

As for deserts - those aren't actually a geological formation so much as an environmental one - rock from the mountains does get ground down into sand, but whether it becomes the fertile soil or sandy desert depends on the amount of organic matter in it, which in turn depends on local weather patterns. As such deserts can actually form and disappear quite rapidly, geologically speaking. Destroying a forest for example will tend to reduce the formation of clouds (plants vent water vapor and other gasses that promote cloud formation), and thus reduce rainfall downwind, which can lead to the formation of a desert - this phenomena can actually be observed around most major metropolises, especially if you have areal photographs from several decades apart. And once formed a sandy desert can actually spread fairly quickly, with blown sand burying neighboring ecologies under fresh dunes, choking out the life that helps keep regions further downwind fertile. IIRC some borders of the Sahara are currently expanding at a rate of several hundred feet per year. In other places, especially where desert reclamaition projects have been implemented, you see the opposite effect - keeping a single narrow greenbelt watered puts enough moisture into the air that plants can take root downwind and begin converting the sand back into fertile soil.

Re:And yet, the nay-sayers...

[riverat1]

Antarctic sea ice has grown some but sea ice is not what we're talking about here. It's the glacial/ice sheet ice that is solidly grounded on land that is causing this. I doubt whether sea ice in the Antarctic or Arctic has much effect on this.