Climate Change May Be Causing Earth’s Poles To Shift

[Lodestar]

See video at link

Scientists solve mystery of why the planet’s axis is tilting eastward.

The position of Earth’s axis has dramatically shifted, likely because of melting ice sheets (fueled by climate change) and natural changes in water storage on land, according to a new study in the journal Science Advances.

Erik Ivins, senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and co-author of the study published on Friday, told The Huffington Post that the movement of water on Earth’s surface affects the planet’s distribution of mass — and its axis — much like adding weight to a spinning top.

“If you considered a spinning top, and then placed a piece of chewing gum on the top, it would start spinning around a new axis,” Ivins said in an email. “On the Earth, since water can be transported in and out of the oceans to the land — affecting global mean sea-levels — this also changes the moments of inertia, in exact analogy to the piece of chewing gum on a spinning top.”

The shifting axis might add to the effects of climate change on our stressed-out planet: Global temperatures are getting hotter. Weather events are becoming more extreme. Sea levels are rising.

cont'd
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/earth-poles-climate-change_us_5706c52ee4b0537661892db4

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[Jackie Wilson Said]

1. And we are arguing about how mad we should be at Bernie for going to the Vatican or at Hillary

for maintaining a separate email server.

Jesus christ people.

[Lodestar]

2. In high school I can remember reading something about pole shifts

from a psychic named Edgar Cayce. It had a big impact on me because suddenly
potential 'change' on earth became grand in scale and I felt so small at the thought.
Until then, as with most youths, I was the center of the universe and this information
was a 'pole shift' for me.

http://www.edgarcayce.org/are/blog.aspx?id=3030

[Nihil]

3. At risk of spinning off at a tangent ...

... the people to read about to get a background on pole shifts in
this context are:

- Sir John Evans (1860s)

- Hugh Auchincloss Brown (1940s)

- Charles Hapgood (1950s)

(i.e., rather than the likes of Cayce and his successors) but watch
out for the inevitable nutcase links that tag onto their names (not to
mention the plagiarists who write science fiction without giving any
credit to their inspiration ...).

Yes, there are some errors and/or invalid assumptions in their writings
(especially to readers with the benefit of decades of subsequent scientific
advances) but there have also been some support for their findings over
that time as well.

Also note that "rapid movement" to a geologist usually means
"in less than a few million years" (similar to understanding the difference
between "sudden climate change" to an oceanographer and to the makers
of "The Day After Tomorrow&quot .