Wobbly apocalypse — Humans to blame for making days longer, throwing planet off balance

Neolithic Shamen controlling Earths spin. Climate Change.

By Jo Nova

Is there nothing fossil fuels can’t do?

Climate change makes the Earth wobble on its axis. Now, if you shower too long, and enjoy that beefsteak too much, you could affect the tilt Earths axis. Are you feeling guilty yet, or just fed up that modern science is indistinguishable from the prophesies of Neolithic shamen?

Earth is wobbling and days are getting longer — and humans are to blame

By

We’re talking of fractions of a millisecond:

Initially, these changes will be imperceptible to us, but they could have serious knock-on effects, including forcing us to introduce negative leap seconds, interfering with space travel and altering our planet’s inner core, researchers warn.

So it’s probably your air-conditioner in Power Mode, but it could be due to crustal plates shifting:

A day on Earth lasts about 86,400 seconds. But the exact time it takes our planet to complete a single rotation can shift by tiny fractions of milliseconds every year due to a number of factors, such as tectonic plate movements, changes to the inner core’s rotation and gravitational tugging from the moon.

Earth space spinsAnd it might have something to do with the moon, or the inner molten core of Earth, which might be affected by the sun’s magnetic field. I mean, we really have no idea, but let’s remake our electricity grid just in case we lose a millisecond?

When we melt the ice at the poles and the seas rise higher over the equator, the Earth spins slower just like the iceskater who spreads out their arms:

Over the past few decades, the rate of ice loss from Earth’s polar regions, particularly Greenland and Antarctica, has been increasing rapidly due to global warming, leading to rising sea levels.

Which is all very well, except Antarctica hasn’t warmed in a thousand years, the coastline hasn’t changed since we first took photos of it, and 600 Pacific Islands are not sinking or shrinking.

Plus only 4 years ago, scientists were telling us the days were speeding up

All those emissions sped the world up, and now all those emissions are slowing us down?

In 2020 scientists made a startling discovery. They found that, instead of slowing down, the Earth has started to spin faster. It is now spinning faster than at any time in the last 50 years. In fact, the shortest 28 days on record all occurred during 2020. — ScienceFocus

At the Guardian they’re afraid the extra millisecond will disrupt internet traffic, or screw up financial transactions and GPS. It’s be like Y2K all over again, and we all know how catastrophic that was.

Look at the language here, these people so want to believe we are Gods:

Climate crisis is making days longer, study finds

Damien Carrington, The Guardian

The phenomenon is a striking demonstration of how humanity’s actions are transforming the Earth, scientists said, rivalling natural processes that have existed for billions of years.

The change in the length of the day is on the scale of milliseconds but this is enough to potentially disrupt internet traffic, financial transactions and GPS navigation, all of which rely on precise timekeeping.

The other thing that’s persisted for billions of years is radical sweeping climate change. Like this (below). Nature has been screwing up our GPS, our financial transactions and our space travel for millions of years and we just didn’t know it.

Five Million years of Climate Change and sediment Cores. Paleoclimate, ice ages, Graph. Pleistocene.

Wait til you see how solid this research is — like climate modeling but with less data:

I mean, how accurate were the clocks at recording milliseconds in 1901? We didn’t even define what a second was until 1968. and it’s not like we’ve got many measurements of changes in Earths’ core since then either. Ask Jules Verne?

In the new study, published July 15 in the journal PNAS, researchers used an advanced artificial intelligence program that combines real-world data with the laws of physics to predict how the planet’s spin will change over time.

Length of day modeling.

And this is a Nature paper.  Yet the whole thing could have been an AI school project from start to finish. An AI awarded an AI a grant, which produced a “paper” which an AI editor thought was worth publishing, and AI journalists turned into nonsense headlines, which an AI audience clapped. And no one anywhere thought to ask whether the researchers knew Antarctica is not melting, and seas are barely rising, and length of day was shrinking only a few years ago.

Big Government is strangling real science.

REFERENCE

Kiani Shahvandi, M., Adhikari, S., Dumberry, M. et al. Contributions of core, mantle and climatological processes to Earth’s polar motion. Nat. Geosci. 17, 705–710 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01478-2

 

 

9.9 out of 10 based on 85 ratings

72 comments to Wobbly apocalypse — Humans to blame for making days longer, throwing planet off balance

  • #
    Richard C in NZ

    What a hoot, and pictures too.

    Nobody does it better.

    190

  • #
    Sean

    Did a search on “length of day” and this article from Scientific American came up:

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/heres-why-earth-just-had-its-shortest-day-on-record/

    This is what the article said, “But some day lengths are more extreme than others. Take June 29, 2022, which was nearly 1.6 milliseconds under 24 hours, making it the shortest day ever recorded.”

    Seems to contradict the conclusions above.

    231

  • #
    Just+Thinkin'

    Fossil Fuels are pretty powerful.

    Doesn’t Big Pharma use lots of this stuff to take us away from natural remedies?

    Oh dear.

    100

    • #

      “When we melt the ice at the poles and the seas rise higher over the equator, the Earth spins slower just like the iceskater who spreads out their arms:”
      Perhaps think more the ice skater moves their hair gloss to their finger tips …
      Or, maybe, not that much!

      Auto

      20

  • #
    Skepticynic

    >Is there nothing fossil fuels can’t do?

    Is there nothing AI can’t do?

    170

    • #
      Kalm Keith

      Today’s drama.

      ” days are getting increasingly longer ”

      Increasingly longer.

      Perhaps that’s a bit overstated but I’m concerned that our lives might become “diminishingly shorter” because of the political stress of counter global warming alarmerism.

      Fight!

      190

      • #
        PeterPetrum

        Oh come on! I am delighted that I am going to live 0.11 milliseconds longer. I will, won’t I…………..

        80

      • #
        Graham Richards

        The only thing making days seem longer is the incessant lies & BS about “ climate change “
        not to mention the weeping & wailing of the offended class, all the reasons you should go gay or transgender or some other fictional gender & particularly “ racist “ or “ white supremacy “. How about some offended class carping out a “ welcome to country “ ditty “.

        It’s difficult to fit all the nonsensical crap into one day so I guess we should be grateful that days are obliging the oppressed & offended of this world by granting them more “ gripe & complaints “ time!

        90

        • #
          wal1957

          I have a good chuckle whenever a new scare/claim is laid out.
          The claims all belong on a roll of toilet paper. That is the only use I can come up with.
          The big problem is that a lot of the idiots ie. politicians and bureaucrats, tend to believe the BS that is fed to them.
          Then of course there is the meejia…..sigh. They are a lost cause as they are too far down the rabbit hole.

          90

    • #
      jelly34

      A1 is only as good as the programmer writing the scripts.From what I’ve seen they have a long way to go.

      70

      • #
        Skepticynic

        They can use AI to feign authority and make imperious and influential pronouncements about anything, to fool the gullible masses.

        50

        • #
          John in Oz

          Plus absolve themselves from any negative consequences of their actions.

          “The AI made me do it and I was jsut folowing its orders”

          30

      • #
        Ted1.

        jellly34@#4.2

        True, and ’twas ever so.

        AI is no more than incredibly low cost hardware, which gives anybody access to supercomputers.

        30

  • #
    David Maddison

    The idea that variations in length of day are unprecedented comes down to the Aristotlean world view of warmists. They think the world remains exactly the same and never changes. We know from thousands of years of recorded history plus the geological record that that is simply not true.

    The uneducated, anti-science Left are terrified of any real or imagined changes they have no understanding of. They are like primitive people encountering a solar eclipse or Incas sacrificing humans to make it rain.

    There are also natural variations in the position of the spin axis of the earth, known as polar motion.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_motion?wprov=sfla1

    Polar motion is defined relative to a conventionally defined reference axis, the CIO (Conventional International Origin), being the pole’s average location over the year 1900. It consists of three major components: a free oscillation called Chandler wobble with a period of about 435 days, an annual oscillation, and an irregular drift in the direction of the 80th meridian west, which has lately been less extremely west.: 1 

    The slow drift, about 20 m since 1900, is partly due to motions in the Earth’s core and mantle, and partly to the redistribution of water mass as the Greenland ice sheet melts, and to isostatic rebound, i.e. the slow rise of land that was formerly burdened with ice sheets or glaciers.: 2  The drift is roughly along the 80th meridian west. Since about 2000, the pole has found a less extreme drift, which is roughly along the central meridian. This less dramatically westward drift of motion is attributed to the global scale mass transport between the oceans and the continents.: 2 

    And why are the world’s largest CO2 emitters, by far, and rapidly increasing, China, not getting blamed for causing a variation in the length of day?

    https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/13-facts-about-the-controversial-massive-chinese-dam-that-slowed-the-earths-rotation

    It Has Slowed the Rotation of the Earth

    The secret behind this phenomenon is inertia. If it hasn’t been established yet, the Three Gorges Dam is massive. When the dam is at its maximum, the reservoir holds 42 billion tons of water. A shift in mass that size does affect Earth, increasing the length of a day by 0.06 microseconds.

    Other redistribution of water mass such as extraction of groundwater and building of dams also causes movement of the earth’s spin axis.

    But these are all minor changes. Just because something is capable of being measured with extremely sensitive equipment, doesn’t mean it’s a problem.

    280

    • #
      Maptram

      “Other redistribution of water mass such as extraction of groundwater and building of dams also causes movement of the earth’s spin axis.”

      What about the shipping of mineral ores, most of which is discarded after the mineral is extracted, to China

      60

      • #
        Paul Siebert

        ____David and Maptram,

        20

      • #
        another ian

        Way back in BC there was a series of paperback books of yarns that started with “Bastards I’ve Met”.

        Not the Barry Crump version – these were penned by a stock and station agent/ pub user from NW Qld about the late 1970 – 1980’s era. Whose pen name (might have been something like Sam Weller) I can’t recall. And who seems to have escaped DDG.

        One story fits here which went (IIRC)

        Deep thinking bloke to barman – “You know the earth’s spinning on its axis in space? And we’re shipping all that coal and iron ore to Japan. So what happens if it gets out of balance and gets a wobble up?”

        Barman – “No worries mate. It’s balanced by all the Toyotas, Nissans and things that we get back”

        40

    • #
      Paul Siebert

      David and Maptram,
      ____Wouldn’t our globe’s “free” water just redistribute to maintain balance? Something like balance beads installed inside truck tyres?

      30

    • #
      Paul Siebert

      David and Maptram,
      —–Wouldn’t our globe’s “free” water just redistribute to maintain balance? Something like balance beads installed inside truck tyres?

      30

    • #
      Paul Siebert

      ____David and Maptram,

      30

  • #
    John Hultquist

    The change in velocity is caused by all the California vehicles (loaded with households) accelerating east toward lands of opportunity. Rubber on the road, peddle to the mettle and put on a traveling song. I like “Jessica” my self. Dickey Betts creator and performer.
    Dickey Betts Jessica (youtube.com)

    170

    • #

      …..and put on a traveling song. I like “Jessica” myself. Dickey Betts creator and performer.

      What a great song. I just love the (much longer) album version better. The reason I went out and purchased that (vinyl) album, with that wonderful iconic cover.

      Jessica was Dickey’s (still just an infant really) young daughter when he wrote this wonderful Instrumental, as she bounced along as he strummed the song during the writing process.

      Sadly, Dickey passed away only three Months back now.

      Tony.

      110

  • #
    Neville

    So the fake CC garbage has wasted endless trillions of $ for SFA change to anything, then how many more trillions of $ will the “time of day” fraud and con trick cost us in the next 34 years?
    But I’m sure China, India and the NON OECD will just laugh at us again and spend their money wisely on more BASE-LOAD energy, like FFs, Nuclear and Hydro.
    Certainly Xi, Putin, Nth Korea and Iran etc will be watching and waiting to strike.

    110

  • #
    Penguinite

    Not sure about “Leap Seconds” but Leap Years have been around since 46 BCE, as part of the Julian calendar. The Julian calendar included leap years every four years without exception, aiming to synchronize the calendar with Earth’s seasons. Then, in 1949 along comes the Atomic Clock to cater for lost seconds. How finite can we get? Milliseconds are surely a waste of time!

    130

  • #
    Ross

    Just to be sure, anthropogenic global warming/ climate change (crisis) is the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the human race. A close second is probably the prevention of human respiratory diseases via the use of vaccines.

    111

  • #
    Neville

    More about the length of day and a nice article from a 1975 Newsweek about the coming Ice age or not?
    Ceratainly the Scientists wonder how we could feed everyone in the future and even believe we should be considering hoarding more food.
    And more about trying to melt the ice by covering it with soot etc
    It makes you wonder what people in 2075 will think about us wasting decades of time and tens of trillions of $ on our present UN CC BS and Fraud.

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/07/17/sea-level-rise-is-causing-longer-days/

    60

  • #
    David Maddison

    Even the fully woke and dumbed-down New Scientist admits a natural variation in day length has been happening for a very long time.

    https://www.newscientist.com/question/fast-earth-spin/

    A change in speed has been happening here on Earth, but it is far too slow to notice. Millions of years ago, one Earth day was about 22 hours, and Earth’s speed has been dropping for more than a billion years, with days increasing by around 2 milliseconds every century.

    But then can’t help adding obligatory “climate change”

    This slow down is caused by friction created by the ocean currents, tides and wind pulling on Earth’s surface. However, global warming may speed things up again. As sea levels rise, this change in mass could result in Earth spinning faster and reducing the length of each day by 0.12 milliseconds, which would have dramatic effects on the calibration of atomic clocks and GPS systems.

    50

    • #
      Penguinite

      And there’s me thinking it’s my age that is causing the slowing of my gait etc to slow down but it’s really Mother Earths fault!

      80

    • #
      Liberator

      I don’t get how there is a change in “mass” just because ice turns to water, although ice is lighter. If you have a glass of ice and it melts to water (what else?) it’s still the same mass. If ice in the ocean melts, its still the same mass, just distributed in the ocean, The mass of the Earth won’t/can’t change because the ie melts. (AFAIK). The only way the Earths mass would increase/decease is a loss of atmosphere etc to space, = decrease, or the accumulation of space debris on the earths surface = increase.

      30

      • #

        You’d never guess New Scientist is supposed to be a science magazine.

        They’re referring to a “change in mass” at the equator. They should have said “change in distribution of mass”.

        The ice, remember, is at the poles, the water is at the equator.

        90

  • #
    GlenM

    When Pangea existed and there was no Polar ice whatever happened then? It seems that wee have low grade graduates with little to do with their time except play computer modelling. Through my extensive observations I’ll conclude that the last 30 years have churned out great numbers of abysmal scientists.

    80

    • #
      another ian

      Well that sure put the northern hemisphere out of balance, with excursions into the southern too

      20

  • #
    Garry

    And I thought I was kidding when i told environuts the wind turbines would slow the earths rotation … LOL

    70

    • #
      another ian

      A friend maintained that “Im very fond of anything I like”

      But they seemed to be “immoral, illegal or fattening”

      40

  • #
    Frederick Pegler

    If you enjoy it, it’s a sin – Buy your indulgence here.

    60

  • #
    David Maddison

    Due to tidal forces causing drag and exchange of angular momentum from the earth to the moon the moon is receding at about 3.8cm per year. This is causing the earth’s day to slow by 2.4mS per century.

    I haven’t (yet) seen warmists blame lunar recession on “climate change” but I am certain it will happen.

    60

  • #
    Boambee John

    Take away their models and the fantastical “assumptions” used to develop them and what do our Klimate “Scientists” have left? SFA!

    40

  • #
    Old Goat

    If you look at what passes for “news” in the MSM you will see “articles” that contradict each other regularly . Science has the same problem . It’s getting colder/hotter , its getting shorter/longer , its getting bigger/smaller – this is why I am a skeptic in all things….and always follow the money. Twiggy Forest’s boondoggle is hitting the wall as free money is getting hard to find .

    70

  • #

    Oh no, not another one.

    Look at that bottom graph, and see the blue dotted line along the bottom.

    Sitting here at the computer, and just as I was looking at that graph, I was distracted by a noise. I gently swivelled my head to the right, my eyes blurred over slightly, but I could have sworn I saw a ‘hockey stick’!!

    (Hmm! Michael Mann thinks to self)

    “Good morning. Anderson, Smith, Jones, Studley, Williams, Montgomery, Allison, Phillips, Gagndolfo, Henry, Wilson and Partners Lawyers. How Can I help you?”

    “It’s Professor Micheal Mann here, could you put me through to my Lawyer please.”

    “Right away Sir. Putting you through now.”

    “Professor Mann, Sir, Andrew McDonald here. Good Morning.”

    “Andrew, I see you’re not a partner yet.”

    “Naah! Evidently, I need another six million. How may I help you this morning?”

    “I see that the Olympic Games are on next week.”

    “Yeah! Let’s hope we beat the Chinese this time, eh!”

    “I hear they have a Hockey tournament.”

    “Well, two of them really, one for the Men and one for the Women.”

    “I read that they have press conferences after every single game.”

    “Err, yes they do.”

    “Is there any way I can get paid a royalty every time someone mentions the phrase ‘Hockey Stick’?”

    “I don’t think it works in that direction Sir. They had the phrase long before you did.”

    “Say, couldn’t we copyright the phrase?”

    “I don’t know Sir. Perhaps. Let me investigate that for you then, and I’ll get back to you.”

    “Thanks. Say, How much do you think it might cost me for you to get that process started?”

    “Oh, look, at a rough guess, I’d say around, say, six million!”

    Tony.

    150

    • #
      Liberator

      Sitting here at the computer, and just as I was looking at that graph, I was distracted by a noise. I gently swivelled my head to the right, my eyes blurred over slightly, but I could have sworn I saw a ‘hockey stick’!!

      Thought you were going to say you heard a bullet whizz by your ear…

      30

  • #
    Peter T

    Surely it’s the drag on the earth caused by the windmills that are slowing down the rotation!

    100

    • #
      Honk R Smith

      We have floating windmills.
      Why can’t we build giant airborne windfarms that could be on turned at strategic positions and times to create weather fronts.
      We could reposition heat domes, polar vortexes, and atmospheric rivers by blowing them around.
      We could redirect hurricanes, like away from Blue states to Red states, to teach the Red states to believe in Climate Change.
      We could blow snow to Miami.
      It could be run by AI.

      Do I have to use AI?
      I’m trying to cut out gluten.

      70

    • #
      el+gordo

      Very amusing, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with Antarctic mass balance.

      The huge icebergs in the Southern Ocean during the 19th century are a clear illustration. Returning ice to water might have something to do with length of day as the planet seeks equilibrium.

      22

      • #
        Honk R Smith

        That’s the problem.
        It’s anthropogenic equilibrium.
        Which is not equitable, and is un-diverse.

        I demand Planetary Equitablelibrium.

        20

  • #
    Ronin

    It’ll be the weight of all the private jets buzzing to and fro and all the ships transporting iron ore to China and all the junk flowing from there to the idiots who buy Chinese stuff.

    That’s it, and the windmills and the weight of solar panels up high on roofs, like when a ballet dancer spins then holds her arms out and she slows down, the conservation of momentum.

    20

  • #
    Ronin

    Just as an aside and off topic, SA power @ 10:30, $1000 Mwh, QLD $38.95.

    50

  • #
    Gee Aye

    Well… Illustration software used by blogs uses what?

    23

  • #
    Paul Siebert

    David and Maptram,
    ____Wouldn’t our globe’s “free” water just redistribute to maintain balance? Something like balance beads installed inside truck tyres?

    40

  • #
    John in Oz

    From Wiki re the 2004 tsunami

    “Weeks after the earthquake, theoretical models suggested the earthquake shortened the length of a day by 2.68 microseconds, due to a decrease in the oblateness of the Earth.”

    Nature, she is a bitch

    20

    • #

      And the tsunami was – obviously -caused by catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.
      So it’s all the fault of those who drive their kids to school.
      So we must all eat bugs – and freeze in winter – to avoid a lengthening of the day of about 0.001 seconds a century.

      Yeah. Right.
      Got it.

      Auto

      00

  • #
    CO2 Lover

    Planet Earth’s days are numbered.

    After the hydrogen runs out on our sun, there will be a period of 2-3 billion years whereby the sun will go through the phases of star death. Once the hydrogen runs out, our yellow dwarf star will begin to swell. It will swell to a size that will cause it to swallow Mercury, Venus, and Earth.

    Better fast track those new hydrogen production facilities while we can.

    30

    • #

      And we absolutely have to supply that hydrogen to the Sun.
      Obviously, going at night – we wouldn’t want to get burned, would we?

      Auto

      00

  • #
    Paul Siebert

    ___Jo,

    20

  • #
    Ronin

    Twiggy Forrest ‘absolutely gutted’ to have to let huge number of employees go, has the conveyer belt of taxpayer dollars stopped running.

    90

  • #
    James Murphy

    I have put on a bit of weight over the last few years, maybe I am to blame for changing the distribution of mass, and making days longer.
    I’ll add it to the list of my sins – working in the oil industry, being white, being male, and having an opinion that differs from the one true path.

    50

  • #
    TdeF

    The rules are simple.

    1 Measure something, even create something fantastic to measure like Global Temperature. Or measure the day length to a thousandth of a second.
    2 Find at that resolution something is changing slightly
    3 blame humans and pollution and invoke shame and guilt.
    4 Ask for cash to fix it.

    61

    • #
      TdeF

      I find it odd, the parallels with locking up Galileo. He built his own telescope with ideas from Holland. He found and mapped sunspots, previously uknown faults in a perfect sun, the basis of the religion of Sol which had been subsumed into Christianity. Golden solid halos for example
      And then he showed they rotated and came around again, which is far worse because it meant the sun was spinning too. All this was his fault for finding such things. Lock him up for the rest of his life! He was a Sol denier.

      You see the world is perfect. The temperature never changes. And the period of rotation of the earth, that wobbly old lump of liquid iron ore, is a perfect constant. Next they will be finding that magnetic North moves. Or the planet nutates like a top when the axis of rotation is not vertical. God forbid.

      What we need is a tax. And a totalitarian world government.

      20

      • #
        TdeF

        The International Panel for Controlling Wobbles. The IPCW. Run by some third world socialist anthropologist who would love to live somewhere much nicer than a third world country and on a great salary with no restrictions on travel or budget. And bring in Wobble Taxes. Or Wobble Credits.

        50

  • #
    Bill Capon

    Another fine butt-kicking administered by Jo!!!

    20

  • #
    Ruairi

    Alarmists in climate scares to the hilt,
    Now turn their concerns to Earth’s tilt,
    Warning, clocks won’t keep phase,
    With its lengthening days,
    Caused by man, who aught to feel guilt.

    30

  • #
    Ed Zuiderwijk

    Ignorant idiots waffling about matters they know nothing of.

    The tidal interaction of the oceans with the moon slowly but steadily transfers earth rotation angular momentum to the moons orbital motion. The Earth rotation slows down through it, decreasing the length of the day by a millisecond per 2 or 3 years. Nothing to do with climate, cold or warm water or salt of fresh water, just absolutely nothing.

    However, that millisecond per day accumulates quadratically over the years which makes a ‘leap second’ needed every two or three years or so to get the civil time in sinc. with the day length. Since 1950 there have been the 20 odd leap seconds. This seems tiny but it is essential for for instance GPS functionality.

    10

  • #