Draft script:
From Scientific American on 27 March 2024 comes this headline: Global Warming Is Slowing the Earth’s Rotation. Here’s the subtitle: “Drastic polar ice melt is slowing Earth’s rotation, counteracting a speedup from the planet’s liquid outer core. The upshot is that we might need to subtract a leap second for the first time ever within the decade.”
Oh, really? That’s the upshot? Not that anthropogenic global warming underlies the ongoing Mass Extinction Event. Not that anthropogenic global warming is destroying habitat for all life on Earth. Onto the important topic: “we might need to subtract a leap second for the time ever within the decade.”
A Harvard University geophysicist provides the bottom line of this article: “Do we continue … adding or subtracting seconds from our definition of a day, or do we accept this irregular difference as normal and give up the bother of continuously correcting?”
Onward, then, to issues of minimal importance relative to the article in Scientific American, at least according to the Scientific American author. I’ll start with an article at earth.com. Titled Strongest ocean current on Earth is speeding up and causing problems, this article was published on 31 March 2024.
Here’s the lede: “The Antarctic Circumpolar Current … is the most powerful current on Earth, encircling Antarctica and influencing the global climate.” The relevant question asked by the article comes from the two ensuing paragraphs: “Over the last few decades, observations show that it has been speeding up. Experts were uncertain whether this was a result of human-caused warming or a natural pattern.
However, scientists have discovered that this oceanic powerhouse is getting even stronger. What does this mean for our planet’s future?”
The article at earth.com refers to a peer-reviewed, open-access paper published in Frontiers in Marine Science published on 22 February 2024. It is titled Revisiting the multidecadal variability of North Atlantic Ocean circulation and climate.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
