That's the last time I buy one from a roadside vendor...
Posted on 11/16/2007 11:23:52 AM PST by Rb ver. 2.0
(ZURICH, SWITZERLAND) - Rising temperatures due to global warming could affect the most basic unit of measurement known to man - time, disrupting solar calculations that can be predicted centuries into the future.
"The basic premise is as the earth's temperature rises, the atmosphere thickens, gaining mass which will exert a measurable pressure upon the planetary axis of rotation", says Dr. Heimel Van Ulderwert of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich.
Dr. Van Ulderwert presented his theory today in a report issued at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and cautions that "although the calculations are sound we won't know exactly the extent this effect could have on world economies".
"As the Earth's atmosphere thickens it will act as an automobile brake slowing the axis rotation; Modern time keeping will not be affected", referring to clocks, "but culturally, this could significantly affect societies that rely on predicted, exact sunrise and sunset times in ceremonial and religous activities" Dr. Van Ulderwert said.
Other activities that could be affected are hunting and fishing in European countries where sunrise/sunset times are used to regulate when game and certain fish can be taken. "If the sunrise or sunset is delayed by a few minutes there may be instances where fish or game taken could legitimately be within the allowable time by virtue of the sun being visible, but would be considered poaching as the sunset or sunrise time would be inaccurate on the published tables", said Chance Hollings of the EU Directorate-General for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs office. "We will have to address these issues on a case by case basis as they happen", he added.
In before the “Aw geez, not this sh— again” pic.
This is just about as stupid as the letter to the editor by the woman who said that we needed to quit doing daylight savings time because the “extra” hour of daylight was contributing to global warming...
Actually, Earth's rotation has sped up! The tsunami of 2004 (or was it 2005?) sped up the Earth's rotation by three microseconds due to a rearrangment of mass. It's all George Bush's fault of course.
I also think we should start blaming all natural disasters on Al Gore (why not?) Any hurricane, landslide, earthquake, etc. from now on will be AL Gore's fault! After all, he's the guy who is always proclaiming that disaster is just around corner. Al Gore, the harbinger of doom and gloom.
No, actually not. Atomic clocks are relatively stable vs. orbital clocks, they are “advancing” with respect to one particular rotational clock, the earth.
Edmund Halley noticed that historical records of eclipses were occuring at the wrong places. He conjuctured that orbits might have been slowing up.
We accept atomic clocks as better time standards for two reasons, theoretically they subjected to fewer disturbances and as a pratical matter ensembles of atomic clocks are mutually consistent, much more so than orbital or rotational clocks.
The problem with atomic clocks is that they are affected by gravity, thus the one in Denver and the one in Greenwich run at different rates, (Denver the mile high city, Greenwich at sea level). Also, in 1984 Dr.Van Flandern at the US Naval Observatory noted that the atomic clocks were slowing down relative to orbital time. Since then this has been confirmed by others.
Venus’ rotation is somewhat unusual in that it is both very slow (243 Earth days per Venus day, slightly longer than Venus’ year) and retrograde.
Yeah, her days are longer than her years.
They are total and complete liars. It is an established fact that the earth’s rotation is slowing due to the tug of the moon. Fact. Not because of GW.
The definition of TAI accounts for the local gravity using Einstein’s theory of General Relativity.
Currently Dynamical Time (the independent argument of the dynamical equations of orbital motion) is defined as TAI + 32.184 seconds. I am unaware of any generally accepted differences between atomic time and graviational (Dynamical) time. There are the intruging issues of the pioneer anomaly and Modified Newtonian Mechanics, but that’s above my pay grade.
Obviously has a degree in Biased Ultra Liberal Lunacy from Swiss Homeland Institute of Technology
Doctor of cowchipology.
I appreciate everyone’s response to this thread. It’s been fun!
That's a good point. However, if you move the mass from a center to an outer radial point, rotation of a body will slow in order to preserve angular momentum. Think about a spinning ice skater who moves her arms outward to slow down and inward to speed up. Even so, the effect of atmospheric mass increase would be inconsequential when compared to the rotation of the massive nickel-iron core of the earth.
So, in a hundred years or so, Greenwich will be under water and only the Denver clock will matter. ;-)
That's the last time I buy one from a roadside vendor...
~~Anthropogenic Global Warming ™~~
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