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Scientists Say Global Warming Slows Earth's Spin
Duluth News Tribune ^ | 13 Feb 02 | Seth Borenstein

Posted on 02/13/2002 7:08:17 AM PST by johniegrad

WASHINGTON -- Feeling like the day is dragging? Blame global warming.

Increased man-made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a global warming gas, is slowing the Earth's rotation, according to a new study by Belgian scientists published Tuesday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

It's not much of a slowdown -- about 1.7 microsecond or 1.7 millionth of one second a year, according to co-author Michel Crucifix, a climate researcher at Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.

The slowdown occurs because extra carbon dioxide expands the mass of the Earth's atmosphere from the Earth's surface. The change slows the Earth's rotation for the same reason that the spins of ice skaters slow when they extend their arms.

Crucifix's findings were based on runs of 14 different computer models.

Even without global warming, Earth has been slowing, mostly because the gravitational pull of the moon has been acting as a brake. Keepers of the master clock at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington generally add a leap second to official time every 12 to 18 months to compensate, said observatory spokesman Geoff Chester.

The effects of lunar braking plus global warming add up to this: A day in 2002 is about .002 seconds longer than it was in 1900, Chester said.

Not that you'd notice.

If you're banking on getting an extra minute of sleep, it'll be an extra 3 million years before you see that,'' Chester said.


TOPICS: Announcements; Front Page News; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: co2; deforestation; dep; ecoterrorism; environment; environmental; environmentalism; epa; forests; fossilfuels; globalwarming; globalwarminghoax; greenpeace; jungle; loss; natives; rainforrest; rainforrests; tropics
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To: ao98
This is a lie. The leap second is not added because the earth is slowing. It is added because the year is not excactly 365-1/4 days long. The leap second is to compensate.

Well, yes and no. Click here for a description of leap seconds.

The last leap second, BTW, was added in January, 1999 -- three years ago. By historical standards that's pretty long.

41 posted on 02/13/2002 8:02:06 AM PST by r9etb
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To: spqrzilla9
You don't find any supporting evidence in NASA's satellite records of global atmosphere temps.

No, but you do see that the "global warming" is laying down increasingly thicker ice and snow in the Antarctic. Satellite measurements are showing the build up, (which should not be happening in a warming climate anyway), but the extra mass is probably the real cause of the earth slowing down. (Note, that last comment was sarcasm, I think everything the Global Warming crowd comes up with is junk science and I refer them to "The Skeptical Enviornmentalist".

42 posted on 02/13/2002 8:02:55 AM PST by KC_for_Freedom
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To: Khepera
Actually we could compensate for this by having people driving east all put on their brakes at the same time.

HAHA........very good.

How about Congress facing west during one session....same effect.

43 posted on 02/13/2002 8:03:02 AM PST by CROSSHIGHWAYMAN
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To: Zathras
You're highly confused. The research came out of Belgium.
44 posted on 02/13/2002 8:09:37 AM PST by johniegrad
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To: johniegrad
But if that takes too long, I'd be satisfied knowing that I could at least keep it up for a few more minutes.

Let's keep it clean? :)

45 posted on 02/13/2002 8:13:43 AM PST by cinFLA
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To: cinFLA
Let's keep it clean? :)

I try to.

46 posted on 02/13/2002 8:16:26 AM PST by johniegrad
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To: ao98
This is a lie. The leap second is not added because the earth is slowing. It is added because the year is not excactly 365-1/4 days long. The leap second is to compensate.

No, leap seconds are indeed added to civil clocks to account for the lengthening of the mean solar day caused by deceleration of the Earth's rotation due to tidal braking.

The last leap second adjustment was made on Jan 1 1999.

See USNO Leap Seconds for the excruciating details.

FWIW, there is currently a proposal to forego leap second corrections altogether, and let civil clocks drift with respect to the mean solar day.

47 posted on 02/13/2002 8:17:10 AM PST by MassLengthTime
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To: johniegrad
More tripe from those European loonies who still are looking for a way to be relevent.
48 posted on 02/13/2002 8:21:11 AM PST by hgro
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To: KC_for_Freedom
Also, more rainwater is retained at higher elevations from man-made dams and lakes. This also would slow the earth, and possibly make it wobble because dams are not distributed evenly. As the earth slows we all weigh more because of less centrifugal force. Of course when all the icebergs melt from global warming the world will spin faster and we'll all float away.
49 posted on 02/13/2002 8:28:10 AM PST by Reeses
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To: CROSSHIGHWAYMAN
That would only work if they suddenly and in mass broke wind. Right now the hot gasses have been misdirected.
50 posted on 02/13/2002 8:43:12 AM PST by Khepera
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To: johniegrad
How much pollution do we need to start going back in time?
51 posted on 02/13/2002 8:44:41 AM PST by Maceman
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To: Number_Cruncher
But all the windmills will slow the wind down, causing the solid Earth to speed up to conserve angular momentum. They forgot that.

The article said "the weight of the atmosphere was growing". Yet the number of atoms of carbon and oxygen on the planet is fixed, with none being created or destroyed, only redistributed. If the atmosphere is "getting heavier", the solid part of the planet is getting lighter.

Actually, earth gains weight with all the meteorites and space dust it sweeps up. Maybe the extra weight is what's causing that component of the slowing rotation. Most probably, there are enough observational and computational errors in the models that make this figure invisible among the statistical "noise".

52 posted on 02/13/2002 8:47:15 AM PST by 300winmag
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To: johniegrad
1.7 millionth of one second a year

if anyone care, this is about 30 minutes every billion years.

53 posted on 02/13/2002 9:00:21 AM PST by staytrue
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To: johniegrad
Now that Hansen has decided the Earth will only warm as much as nature intended, the dreaded man-made gases are being blamed for a global slowdown.

NASA Extinguishes Global Warming Fire

NASA's James Hansen now predicts precisely the same, small amount of warming in the next 50 years that the much-derided "climate skeptics" predicted all along. According to both the skeptics and Mr. Hansen, the planet is destined for a mere 0.7 degree Centigrade (1.25 degree Fahrenheit) warming between now and 2050. It's a good thing "W" listened to those skeptics before he decided on Kyoto. If he had waited for NASA, he might have committed the United States down the road to an unwarranted economic disaster for no good reason.

54 posted on 02/13/2002 9:02:37 AM PST by syriacus
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To: 300winmag
Ya Know, 300, I noticed that the days were getting longer the last month or so. But I had just attributed to seasonal changes. Maybe I was wrong. Now I am looking forward to having more time to get the yard chores done. I think I'll get the old gas-hog SUV out and make a few runs around the block and see if I can help this global warming thing along.
55 posted on 02/13/2002 9:04:36 AM PST by rboatman
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To: johniegrad
I assume they didn't waste any valuable supercomputer time on this back-of-the-envelope freshman physics calculation.

When will they add in the even bigger effect of the gradual accumulation of micrometeoroids to earth's mass?

56 posted on 02/13/2002 9:05:48 AM PST by RightWhale
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To: johniegrad
TOTAL BULLCR$P .....
57 posted on 02/13/2002 9:05:55 AM PST by Centurion2000
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To: Centurion2000
Careful!! Sheep dip adds to the total warming effect. Your life could slow down to nothing.
58 posted on 02/13/2002 9:07:12 AM PST by johniegrad
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To: johniegrad
They should work on keeping Belgium waffles warmer longer. Then they'd really have something!
59 posted on 02/13/2002 9:12:56 AM PST by openotherend
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To: johniegrad
Global warming causes:

tooth decay

cold weather

recession

rust

60 posted on 02/13/2002 9:21:00 AM PST by First_Salute
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