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NASA: Global Warming Is Now Changing How Earth Wobbles (go.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A new study from NASA finds global warming is shifting the way the Earth wobbles on its polar axis. Melting ice sheets are changing the distribution of weight on Earth, which has caused both the North Pole and the wobble, called polar motion, to change course. Since 1899, scientists and navigators have been accurately measuring the true pole and polar motion and for almost the entire 20th century they migrated a bit toward Canada. That migration has changed with this century -- now they're moving toward England, said study lead author Surendra Adhikari at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. "The recent shift from the 20th-century direction is very dramatic," Adhikari said. NASA scientist and the study's co-author Eirk Ivins said, Greenland has lost on average more than 600 trillion pounds of ice a year since 2003 and that affects the way the Earth wobbles in a manner similar to a figure skater lifting one leg while spinning.
Water extraction would be much worse. It's shifting a resource from 30% of the surface to the other 70% of the surface. And it's done at a much higher rate than oil extraction. For example, in the year 2000 a total of 26 cubic kilometers of water was pumped from just the Ogallala aquifer alone. That amounts to around 450 million barrels a day - compared to around 90 million barrels a day of oil worldwide. And given the fact that water is 10-15% denser than oil - we have a mass shift of around 6:1 in favor of just the Ogallala aquifer water versus worldwide oil. Total water shift worldwide is probably closer to 60:1.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The article says it's nothing to worry about. Well that's what they said to Jor-El, and you know how that turned out.
The shift in mass distribution caused by melting ice will cross the boundaries of tectonic plates, changing the relative pressure on adjacent plates. This will likely lead to increased earthquake and volcanic activity. On the bright side, the ash from the volcanoes may limit global warming (maybe even trigger an ice age), and deformations of the sea floor may reduce sea level rise (or make it worse). Another possible impact is the triggering of a geomagnetic reversal.
The political debates about climate change are futile. What we should be discussing is whether we know enough about how this planet works (and have the technology) to attempt some kind of active intervention, such as carbon sequestration or actually blocking sunlight from space. But we'll probably just end up fighting over whatever habitable parts of the planet remain. Maybe the survivors will be wiser.
There is some ice spread around the world but the vast majority of it is located on Greenland and Antarctica. When ice there melts it leaves the vicinity and more or less spreads evenly around the globe through the global ocean.
That's pretty telling, then, since the ice in Antarctica is actually expanding. It's only melting in Greenland.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Bzzzzzzt.
The Sun dumps visible light on Earth, which is absorbed, and re-radiated at a lower wavelength. The atmosphere is mostly transparent to visible light, and CO2 does squat to it. The atmosphere is opaque to IR pretty much to the edge of space; the "top of atmosphere" is where a given photon has a higher chance of being released to space instead of being captured and re-radiated. The effect of CO2 is not to increase the opacity of the lower atmosphere, which is already saturated with H2O and CO2, but to push the CO2-rich layer further out into space.
You clearly know fuck-all about atmospheric physics. Why are you commenting?
In that case, stop the subsidies to oil companies in the form of production and exploration tax subsidies. That would save the USA tax payer $37.5 billion a year. The argument that it saves jobs can't be used if it can't be used with renewable energy sources.
http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/
That's because this was political from the start almost. Back in the 80s when the activist wanted to warn congress, then senator Timothy Wirth (or is it Worth ) set out to find the historically hottest day in Washington D.C. and scheduled the hearing to coincide. He then had staffers flip the breakers on the AC the night before for effect when activist James Hansen and friends made their presentation.
Fast forward to the Kyoto protocol. This was in the works when there were groups like Jubilee2000 who were arguing for the first world countries to forgive the third world debt created in the 80s to develop their oil infrastructure after the opec embargo caused havoc. Along comes the Kyoto protocol and out of 157 original countries, only 37 had any carbon limits and 2 or 3 of them had limits well above their then values so they could build up to the limits in the future. But here is the real political story, a country could avoid their limits by moving production and infrastructure off shore to countries without the limits. They could also purchase carbon credits from countries that have managed to be under their limits. But furthermore it set requirements for technology transfers to many of these third world countries. It was as if carbon emissions was not the issue but lack of development in these third world countries. Now this Kyoto protocol was born in 1997 (actually it started birth two years prior but was a final draft to be ratified in 97) and almost as soon as it was being offered, the third world debt cries almost became invisible. Groups like Jubilee2000 stopped having large rallies and all but disappear by 99.
There has been politics and conspiracy associated with climate change since the beginnings. There is no real reason why that would disappear just because the evidence is more strong today or that more people are believers today. Most modern believers don't know the background of this and those who do want to forget it.