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Humans Are Causing the Earth To Wobble More Than It Should, NASA Finds (bgr.com)
Iwastheone shares a report from BGR: When looking at the Earth from afar it appears to be a perfect sphere, but that actually isn't the case. Because Earth isn't uniform on all sides due to land masses that shift and change over time, our planet actually wobbles a bit when it spins. Now, a new study by researchers with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and several universities and science centers has pinpointed the causes of Earth's imperfect spin, called "polar motion," and they found that humans are contributing to it. The researchers used a wealth of data gathered over 100 years to build mathematical models to trace the causes of the wobble and found that three factors are at play, and mankind is responsible for one of them. Two of the three factors identified by the scientists are glacial rebound and mantle convection. Glacial rebound happens when thick ice sheets physically push down on land masses, compressing them, but then release that pressure upon melting. The land then balloons back up over time, causing Earth's spin to wobble as if slightly off-axis. The effects of the last ice age, which would have compressed a huge amount of land across many continents, is still being felt today in the form of glacial rebound.
Mantle convection, the other uncontrollable factor in Earth's wobble, relates to our planet's inner workings. The plates on Earth's surface are in constant flux due to the movement of liquid rock far beneath our feet. The researchers believe these currents also contribute to the planet's imperfect spin. The third and final factor identified by the scientists is the massive loss of ice on Greenland and other areas, which is the direct result of global warming thanks to human activities. The researchers estimate that Greenland has lost roughly 7,500 gigatons, or 7,500,000,000,000 metric tons of ice due to global warming. All that ice loss has happened in the 20th century, and greenhouse gas production has been cited as the primary culprit. Losing all that mass has caused a significant shift on the planet and has contributed to the wobble as well.
Mantle convection, the other uncontrollable factor in Earth's wobble, relates to our planet's inner workings. The plates on Earth's surface are in constant flux due to the movement of liquid rock far beneath our feet. The researchers believe these currents also contribute to the planet's imperfect spin. The third and final factor identified by the scientists is the massive loss of ice on Greenland and other areas, which is the direct result of global warming thanks to human activities. The researchers estimate that Greenland has lost roughly 7,500 gigatons, or 7,500,000,000,000 metric tons of ice due to global warming. All that ice loss has happened in the 20th century, and greenhouse gas production has been cited as the primary culprit. Losing all that mass has caused a significant shift on the planet and has contributed to the wobble as well.
The plates on Earth's surface are in constant flux due to the movement of liquid rock far beneath our feet.
In terms of the Earth's radius, the liquid rock is not that far. It's close. It's so close. So scarily, scarily close!
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Sounds like Rep. Johnson was on (to) something!
Also the same "scientists" that claim the earth is round!
Global production of concrete is 10 billions per year. Every year, just from concrete production, the earth gets 10 billion tons heavier. And what about the hundreds of millions of cars, trucks and busses that didn't exist a hundred years ago. That's a lot of weight that has been added. And it's not evenly distributed either.
Volcanoes are just pimples, and should be treated Proactivly.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
They are speaking of 2 different effects, both caused by the melting of ice.
The first effect is due to how the land responds to the ice melting. This continues long after the ice has melted, because the land does not decompress instantly. This is not (really) about glaciers that are melting today, the land is rebounding from glaciers which melted millennia ago.
The second effect is due simply to the loss of the ice itself. As stated in TFS, the 7500Gtons is only over the last 100 years. That much mass loss in a fairly localized area was enough to make a significant contribution to the movement of Earth's center of mass, impacting the wobble.
Finally, it's not the direction so much as the rate. Yes, we're coming out of an ice age, so we would expect average temperatures to gradually climb. However, what we have seen is that the climb has accelerated. Specifically, it has accelerated during the time that we have become industrialized. That acceleration means that certain effects will be more extreme, and we will have less time to adapt or prepare for them.
This is not just true of the climate, but of any non-linear dynamic system (aka everything). When a system moves from one state to another, there are high frequency effects introduced. The faster the system transitions, the more pronounced those effects are.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
"The third and final factor identified by the scientists is the massive loss of ice on Greenland and other areas"
That affecting the "wobbling" is possible. But the loss of ice - melting and going into oceans - should make earth wobble less, as oceans are more equally distributed on earth than blocks of ice.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
we just need a coordinated effort among all the people in the world.
Carbon dioxide has strong absorption bands in the near infrared (namely 2.7 micrometer, 4.2 micrometer and 15 micrometer). That means, that infrared radiation with those wavelengths will not penetrate a layer of carbon dioxide very well, but instead heat the carbon dioxide (which in turn then radiates itself, but in all directions, thus reflecting 50% of the radiation back to Earth).
We also have carbon dioxide data for the atmosphere since about 250 years, when Joseph Priestley first found out that air is actually a mixture of different gasses, and started to measure the respective shares. We know for instance, that around 1900, the carbon dioxide share of the atmosphere was around 270 ppm (or 0,027 percent), as we can read in Anatol Leduc: Nouvelles recherches sur le Gaz (1899) or numerous other publications of the time. We know the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere today (410 ppm or 0,041 percent), for instance measured in the Keeling Curve. So we know that the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has risen 140 ppm, and we can calculate, how much carbon dioxide you need, given that the total pressure of the atmosphere is 1033 hPa or 103,3 kN/m. Of this pressure, 140 ppm is caused by additional carbon dioxide since 1900, giving 14 Pascal or 14 N/m. As the whole Earth has a surface of 510 million square kilometers or 510 trillion square meters, this means that the additional carbon dioxide lasts with around 7000 trillion Newtons on the Earth's surface. And because 1 kg causes a force of 9,81 N on the Earth's surface, we can calculate, that we need 700 trillion kilograms or about 700 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide to cause an increase of the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere from 270 ppm in 1900 to 410 ppm today.
And because carbon dioxide is made up of one atom of Carbon (12 g/mol) and two atoms of Oxygen (16 g/mol), we can calculate that we need to burn 200 billion metric tons of pure Carbon to cause an increase of the atmospheric carbon dioxide from 270 ppm to 410 ppm. And how much pure carbon (mainly as coal and crude oil) have we mined since 1900? About 270 billion metric tons (currently, it's about 4.1 billion metric tons per year). That means, if we have burned all our coal and crude oil mined since 1900, about 70% of its carbon content is still in the atmosphere (the other 30% are mainly solved in the oceans causing acidification, and some of it indeed was bound due to increased plant mass, because we have more forests now than we had in 1900).
(OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL): Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War... First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.
Christine Stewart, former Canadian Environment Minister: “No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits.... climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Monika Kopacz, atmospheric scientist: "It is no secret that a lot of climate-change research is subject to opinion, that climate models sometimes disagree even on the signs of the future changes (e.g. drier vs. wetter future climate). The problem is, only sensational exaggeration makes the kind of story that will get politicians’ — and readers’ — attention. So, yes, climate scientists might exaggerate, but in today’s world, this is the only way to assure any political action and thus more federal financing to reduce the scientific uncertainty."
Researcher Robert Phalen's 2010 testimony to the California Air Resources Board: "It benefits us personally to have the public be afraid, even if these risks are trivial."
Did the Earth wobble more before the ice age compacted the surface? What's the correct amount of wobble? What's the best temperature for the planet? Who gets to decide all of this?
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Oh, nice quotes.
An environmentalist, who worked in advising on carbon credits, told me basically the same thing, that it doesn't matter if the CO2 issue isn't really a problem, because by cutting CO2 you will force everyone to cut production and so you force everyone to cut consumption, and she added with emphasis, "it's about reducing greed".
That was a good ten years ago. It shapes my opinion that people are here using "science" as a narrative, to wrap their entical and moral ideas in a science theory so as to give it objective validity, whereas moral and ethical issues are inter-subjective, social, cultural issues, not objective issues.
By all means, people can and should debate the ethical issues around co-habiting on a planet, where a child born in Somalia faces entirely different opportunities and hardships to a child born in Norway. We as a humanity should be talking about that ethical issue.
But leave science to the objective study and testing of objective phenomena. Don't corrupt science for the sake of propaganda.
Most of the world's population is not ethically developed enough to start viewing the world as a common humanity. We are barely growing out of the ethical dogmas of the traditional religions, as it is.
Trying to convince everyone that they "must act" because of imagined disasters, will NOT end well, because existential threats cause people to RETREAT and go back to earlier more primitive moralities.
Making everyone fearful for existence does NOT make them more globally compassionate people.
It is kinda sad how they are damaging the reputation of science, and damaging the ethical development of humanity, at the same time.
The best one can hope for is that they just get generally ignored.
No. But we have some facts.
But they have alternative facts.
Carbon dioxide has strong absorption bands in the near infrared (namely 2.7 micrometer, 4.2 micrometer and 15 micrometer). That means, that infrared radiation with those wavelengths will not penetrate a layer of carbon dioxide very well, but instead heat the carbon dioxide (which in turn then radiates itself, but in all directions, thus reflecting 50% of the radiation back to Earth).
I have attempted to get the idea of the concept of the greenhouse gas effect through some folks by the concept of energy retention. Different gases and water vapor have the effect of energy retention. A few, like Sulfur Dioxide function in reverse of that.
I have no expectation that I will actually convince any person who denies this energy retention for political reasons. I only put it out there as an example of politics trying to trump physics, and hopefully others might see the folly of that.
Meanwhile, as of 2007, we have had 800 Terawatts of radiative forcing. since 1750. http://news.mit.edu/2010/expla...
We also have carbon dioxide data for the atmosphere since about 250 years, when Joseph Priestley first found out that air is actually a mixture of different gasses, and started to measure the respective shares. We know for instance, that around 1900, the carbon dioxide share of the atmosphere was around 270 ppm (or 0,027 percent), as we can read in Anatol Leduc: Nouvelles recherches sur le Gaz (1899) or numerous other publications of the time.
Something important to point out here. Over this long timeline, nothing has changed except the accuracy of the measurements. The first mention of the global effect was made in the late 1890's by Svante Arrhenius.
This ain't rocket surgery, AGW deniers, the physics is real. The release of much sequestered Carbon Dioxide and Methane is real. The denialists need to come up with a sound reason why these simple truths fail on a global scale.
So far, they have failed miserably. The political rhetoric, like calling Michael Mann an asshole - he isn't - doesn't hack it, and the tactic of jumping on every anomaly like it is a smoking gun simply helps point scientists in the direction to send their research. Cherry pick away deniers, you are helping refute your denialism.
because we have more forests now than we had in 1900).
Side note. I was at an old iron furnace a few years ago. Greenwood Furnace to be exact, in that section of Pennsylvania made famous by the LANDSAT images from space for it's tortured terrain.
They cut trees and turned them into charcoal for the furnaces. So much that you could stand on top of the mountains in that area, and eventually not see one tree from horizon to horizon. Which is what always put the furnaces out of business before coke production allowed the big furnaces in Western PA to take over and kill charcoal smelting for good.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Yo mamma so fat, she makes the earth wobble more than it should.
That's nothing, your mom is so fat she has smaller fat women orbiting her.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I wish I was an astroturfer. I'd love to get paid by the DNC or GOP to post on forums.
But no, I'm just an ordinary guy, who gets paid Nothing for being on /. forum. TRIVIAL: There have been 5 ice ages on the earth, including the one we are experiencing now.
- The earth has spent the majority of its time (90% of its life) with NO ice on the poles. This is called a Tropical Age.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
- The earth has spent the majority of its time (90% of its life) with NO ice on the poles. This is called a Tropical Age.
True. You know what else the Earth didn't have during those times? Humans.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.