Posted on 07/03/2023 10:59:00 AM PDT by NohSpinZone
Humans pumped so much groundwater out of the Earth that the planet has begun to wobble detectably on its axis, a new study has found.
On its own terms, the magnitude of the new wobble is slight — a matter of millimeters, which puts it in the same approximate speed category as Earth’s slowly drifting continents.
But the findings published earlier this month in Geophysical Research Letters show the extent to which human action — in the form of dam construction, groundwater drilling and the burning of fossil fuels — are impacting the very position of the Earth.
They also provide powerful corroboration for something scientists had long suspected but had remained unproven: the staggering depletion of the world’s groundwater reserves over the past several decades.
The scope of the findings released this month were startling. Between 1993 and 2010, the scientists found, human society — and mostly human agriculture — had depleted 2,510 gigatons of water.
That’s the equivalent of 600 cubic miles of lost freshwater, more than five times the volume of Lake Erie or half the volume of Lake Huron.
At that rate, we would run through the equivalent of the 2,900 cubic miles of water that fill Lake Superior by the end of the century.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Yes I agree , of course, there are natural cooling and warming cycles. Also I know there are tilt, wobble, other astronomical variables that act together to create those. Yet the Earths eccentricity is based on a 100,000 cycle.
This is slow. We are seeing warming faster than the Milankovitch cycle can explain.
According to the E.P.A. , Our current warming rate is 10X that of the earth after the last glacial period. So why so much faster, when it also just happens by sheer coincidence to coincide with massive anthropogenic release of CO2 during the tiny 100 year old or so window (tiny compared to a 100,000 cycle)?
And as an other opinion it’s not that the CO2 has increased tremendously as a percentage it’s a MASS thing. Billions of tons (as I tried to explain in my previous post) has been added since the Industrial Revolution and this matter is blocking heat trying to radiate out of the earth…just a little but perhaps enough to add to a natural warming event weakly already going on.
Oddly enough a coincidence is the human body does not feel drunk at .04% alcohol by volume in blood (about same % as CO2 in air) yet by a small increase in a % a person is quite drink at .08% . Apparently at an equilibrium it takes very little to tip the system one way or another.
Does it never stop?
Sorry I disagree!
Even though it superficially looks like a repeat of the Medieval Warming period my money is on a long-term cooling period. Hopefully will be at worst like the Little Ice Age. However, it could be much much worse. We are still in the Quaternary a geologic time period defined by cyclic continental glaciations. We are about overdue for one of those cycles. So, they were somewhat right when they made that claim in the 1970s but they made the claim based on the wrong reasons.
The Hill is stupid enough to believe this.
I guess their original plan of aliens from outer space was rejected.
Well I hope you are right (about the global warming being overly influenced by man).
This is nothing compared to the weight of ice on Greenland. It wants to spin where Guam is.
Hold it!
Either I mistyped or you misinterpreted my text.
I think man has little to no significant influence on the climate.
“ I remember people walking cross the Ohio in 1977 on ice”
I remember that month. I worked for the Indiana State Highway Commission as a truck/snowplow driver. Moved west the same year.
There were other times in the past the Ohio River froze over and I’m sure the day(s) will come again.
For example, the late 1770s (particularly 1777) to the late 1780s the winters were particularly harsh. The winter of 1777
made Valley Forge unbelievably bad! Bad European winters in the late 1780s caused crop failures throughout Europe. It hit France particularly hard and set the stage for the French Revolution. We know all of this from written records from the participants at the time and we have actual temperature measurements. Upper-class gentlemen often had a hobby of monitoring the weather such as our own Thomas Jefferson, recording the temperature with these new-fangled thermometers was something they did. (Thermometers about 100 years old at that time.) So we have the records and it was quite bad!
I forgot to add that was in the period known as ‘The Little Ice Age” 1300 - 1850. So, harsh winter weather was the norm. There’s been a warming trend since 1850.
According to the E.P.A.
______________________________________________________________
Then it must be so eh? Have you ever wondered why it’s only left wing lunatics and idiots like yourself who believe this BS?
Absolute insanity.
Unless they are sucking our water and spewing it all into outer space, this is absolutely ridiculous.
You are a genius.
Several of the more current Google Earth satellite photos of the dam have large errors in the digital processing so it looks as if the dam is getting ready to collapse, which is not the case at all.
I used to think people were somewhat educated and not prone to freaking out but I am now a total cynic. Either that or the people posting those photos know they are not reflective of reality and are trying to foment fear and gain a following.
You are pointing out, tongue in cheek, that it obviously does enter the water cycle. Most groundwater is used very near the location where it is pumped up; some of it evaporates, some of it trickles back down to the same aquifer in a few years, and a very slowly increasing fraction is tied up in biomass and infrastructure; this is a pseudo steady state condition. The net mass displacement versus some historical baseline is zilch against the mass and inertia of the planet, even with it occurring at the max distance from the center. And how did they establish the baseline? I'm sure that "further study (= funding) is required."
I know I hope you are correct.
The year later my neighbor, worked for the Highway Dept driving a truck, slid off the road. Almost froze to death and had to spend the night with a total stranger family on their couch.
That was ‘78.
How about a bit of perspective:
The earth’s oceans hold 328,680,479 cubic miles of water (yes, Wiki provides NINE significant digits!). This article says humans have depleted 600 cubic miles of fresh water. That is 0.00000183 of the earth’s water.
Of course, the “missing” 600 cubic miles isn’t really missing. It is certainly not destroyed. It probably got added to the ocean’s mass through the water evaporation cycle.
Can such a minuscule amount make a difference?
That doesn’t surprise me.
In ‘77 during the season you mentioned, our shop superintendent had a heart attack and died trying to keep the fleet mobile. Very sad.
We could build a bunch of nuclear plants to power the windmills and blow the earth back into the correct position. Happy Independence Day.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.