Sunrise arrives two days early in Greenland (but it's global warming, not shift in axis!)

[lynnf]

bet the recent shifting in the magnetic field is due to global warming, too! all right, go back to your football, hockey games, and six-packs, nothing to see here..... what you don't know can't hurt you..... right?


http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/73759,news-comment,news-politics,climate-change-brings-sunrise-two-days-early-to-greenland

S
cientists claim to have discovered more evidence of global warming after the sun rose two days early in Greenland, apparently because melting glaciers have lowered the horizon.

The polar night usually ends on January 13, but this year residents of Ilulissat, the third largest settlement in Greenland, were surprised to see dawn arrive just before 1pm on January 11 after six weeks of perpetual darkness.

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[mczerone]

bet the recent shifting in the magnetic field is due to global warming, too! all right, go back to your football, hockey games, and six-packs, nothing to see here..... what you don't know can't hurt you..... right?


http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/73759,news-comment,news-politics,climate-change-brings-sunrise-two-days-early-to-greenland

S
cientists claim to have discovered more evidence of global warming after the sun rose two days early in Greenland, apparently because melting glaciers have lowered the horizon.

The polar night usually ends on January 13, but this year residents of Ilulissat, the third largest settlement in Greenland, were surprised to see dawn arrive just before 1pm on January 11 after six weeks of perpetual darkness.

...

Umm, "apparently" doesn't sound like a very certain scientific word. Wouldn't there be easily measurable evidence of the glacier "walls" being shorter, making a proof of this assertion rather simplistic, and not require the weasel wording of "apparently"?

Anyway - even if the glaciers are melting, why would that be so horrible? Greenland was once a pastoral paradise, as little as 1000 years ago. I'm sure many members of the local population there would much rather raise sheep and have some industrial presence instead of being tundra-dwelling ocean fisherman (assuming that is their main livelihood). If it is pollution changing the environment, the market could help reduce the effects. If there's nothing that can be done about the pending climate change, only the market is elastic enough to allow human prosperity in the face of changing conditions.

You left out the more nauseating part of the article:

However, not everyone accepts the explanation that melting glaciers are to blame. Message-boards are full of posts from conspiracy theorists blaming everything from chemtrails to a build-up of methane in the atmosphere or a shift in the earth's axis.

That last idea has been pooh-poohed by Wolfgang Lenhardt, director of the department of geophysics at the Central Institute for Meteorology in Vienna, who explains: "The data of the earth's axis and rotation are monitored continuously and meticulously and we would know if that had happened... there would have been an outcry around the world."

Read more: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/73759,news-comment,news-politics,climate-change-brings-sunrise-two-days-early-to-greenland#ixzz1BGHlvhGc


1 - Nice slander.
2 - Couldn't it be the case that some of these are more likely than others, why lump them all together as "conspiracy theories"?
3 - To be a "conspiracy theory", an explanation would need to include some human planning - I don't see the explanation of "axis-shift" to be within that definition.
4 - This scientist shows that even the axis-shift explanation is possibly in the realm of conspiracy theory. "We would know... outcry around the world" - does the world have access to all of that data, or do a few, well handled state scientists collect and control that data, possibly not releasing it, or altering it before release to the rest of the scientific community?
5 - How many scientists favor the "conspiracy theory" explanations, including the possibility that cloud-seeding or methane emissions are the cause of the "sun-dogs" Lenhardt mentions? Why not quote 1 for 1, showing that there are rational minds on either side? Why appeal to authority only on the "nothing to see here" side of the argument?

I don't know what the explanation is. But my scientific, rational mind says: be skeptical until there is enough evidence to favor any single explanation above the others. Both sides seem to be playing a game of wild speculation. Go get some measurements, and present your arguments as to why those measurements support your hypothesis and exclude others. Until then, I only know that the sun rose early on one town in the polar region this year. Are there measurements from the Antarctic that could help prove whether this is local or global?

[Bruno]

^^^ + rep


If there is a polar shift, we are screwed.

[Anti Federalist]

Greenland was once a pastoral paradise, as little as 1000 years ago.

Hence, the name...

[Kilrain]

Hence, the name...

Well, TBH, the name was more of a gimmick, meant to entice people to settle there. It was certainly a lot "nicer" than it is today, though I would hesitate to call it a "paradise".

[lynnf]

Well, TBH, the name was more of a gimmick, meant to entice people to settle there. It was certainly a lot "nicer" than it is today, though I would hesitate to call it a "paradise".

yes, as I was told - Greenland to attract people there, and Iceland to repel people from there.

lynn

[puppetmaster]

is the axis the same as the pole shift?

as far as I know we always shift and have read many times that the earth "wobbles"...

I see nothing new just hype

[oyarde]

^^^ + rep


If there is a polar shift, we are screwed.

I remember looking at a map predicting the changes ? Like the Great Lakes would empty down the river basins .. ?

[tangent4ronpaul]

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/life/dawning-of-the-age-of-what-113837869.html

Dawning of the age of... what?

f you thought a recession could throw things off kilter, try a "precession."

Ever since a Minneapolis astronomer told a newspaper reporter that this cosmic phenomenon -- which causes the Earth's spinning axis to wobble -- means our zodiac signs are all wrong, there's been a celestial kerfuffle the likes of which we haven't seen since Pluto got demoted.

In an interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Parke Kunkle, a board member of the Minnesota Planetarium Society, said that Earth's wobbly orbit means it's no longer aligned with the stars in the same way as when the signs of the zodiac were first created by the ancient Babylonians.

According to Kunkle and his colleagues, the moon's gravitational pull over the millennia has created about a "one-month bump" in the stars' alignment.

Not only that, this shift in the astrological calendar supposedly brings in a 13th sign: Ophiuchus, known as "serpent-bearer" in Greek and depicted by a man holding a snake.

The Star Tribune story -- which reportedly sent thousands of people to the newspaper's website and then went viral with postings on Yahoo News, Gawker, Fark, Twitter and Time.com -- seems to have sparked instant identity crises.

And understandably so. One day you're a Pisces, swimming along (in two directions) in your own little intuitive, imaginative, otherwordly world, and the next you're an assertive, intellectual, water-bearing Aquarian.

Or not.

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"We've haven't always been at this exact inclination; the Earth tends to wobble a bit as it's spinning, and that is noticeable over time -- 5,000 to 10,000 years -- and that causes the sun's path through the stars to move a little if you're looking at it relative to the stars."

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[tangent4ronpaul]

You know - maybe the AZ shooters rantings about it really being 2011 and the end of the world in 2012 being nigh weren't so far off...

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gBw1QWEAZsG4yn40qfdAaIpm2RqQ?docId=CNG.9339e f82154dd22d5e620b4f093ad380.1d1

The abrupt dawning of the age of Ophiucus

By Karin Zeitvogel (AFP) – 3 days ago

WASHINGTON — Thousands of people woke up to the realization this week that they aren't who they thought they were.

Worse still, neither was that partner they always thought they were so compatible with based on their astrological signs, because this week it was announced that many of us were reading the wrong horoscope.

"Over the 2,500 years or so since the zodiac was established, your sign has moved about a month relative to the sun and stars," wrote Robert Roy Britt in a posting on LiveScience that was republished by a newspaper in Minnesota, triggering the zodiac panic.

"You're no longer what you think you are, and so if you're an astrology buff, perhaps poised to make a New Year's resolution based on the stars and a reading of your supposed personality, know that you're actually following observations, predictions and advice aimed at another person entirely."

The shift in the alignment of the stars, which has come about because the Earth has been wobbling on its axis for millennia, means most people go back a sign.

Warm-hearted, patient Taurus becomes selfish, quick-tempered Aries.

Eminently practical and prudent Capricorns are now blindly optimistic and careless Sagittarians.

And many Sagittarians are now Ophiucus.

Oh what?

Ophiucus. It's the hitherto little-heard-of 13th astrological sign. Apparently the Babylonians had an Ophiucus column in their daily horoscopes but it got dropped somewhere between their civilization and ours.

In any case, news of the celestial shift and of Ophiucus's resurrection sent astrology buffs reeling.

If they weren't wondering how to get rid of the Scorpio tattoo that they just had done when it turns out they're really Libra, as Michele Zipp did in a blog posting on The Stir, they were pondering some of the other existential questions raised by the change.

What, for instance, are Ophiucus's personality traits? What signs are compatible with Ophiucans? And do the lyrics to the song from "Hair" that go, "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius" have to be rewritten?

It would become "the dawning of the age of Capricorn", which doesn't really work with the meter of the song.
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