Townhall

Not-So-Scary Truth About Climate Change

Charles III

Donald Trump

Elon Musk

Joe Biden

Nancy Pelosi

Xi Jinping

Rishi Sunak

Kamala Harris

Justin Trudeau

Narendra Modi

Bill Gates

Pope Francis

Janet Yellen

Emmanuel Macron

Olaf Scholz

Angela Merkel

Yuval Noah Harari

António Guterres

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Barack Obama

Kofi Annan

Michael Mann

James Inhofe

Greta Thunberg

David Attenborough

Giorgia Meloni

Patrick Michaels

Jane Goodall

Bjorn Lomborg

Freeman Dyson

Metaculus

"[C]limate change is just a very, very expensive form of tax."

"I believe in climate change caused by human beings. What I'm skeptical about is the glib notion that it means the end of the world as we know it."

"The clock is no longer just ticking, it is banging."

"There is no long-term prosperity without action on climate change."

"The time for seeking global solutions [to climate change] is running out."

"The climate crisis is the existential threat. That's not hyperbole; it's a fact."

"[W]e are killing our planet."

Climate change is "above all, an existential crisis."

"Climate change is one of the greatest challenges mankind faces."

"If we don't take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon."

"Humanity is on thin ice — and that ice is melting fast."

"We haven't yet exceeded the bounds of viable human civilisation, but we're getting close."

Is Climate Change an Existential Threat?

According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, mass redistribution due to rising sea levels caused by the melting of the polar ice caps is changing the length of a day on Earth.

ABC News

The length of day, the time it takes for the planet to rotate on its axis, is about 86.4K seconds long. The study found an acceleration in the change of the day's length from 0.3-1.0 milliseconds per century during the 20th century to 1.33 ± 0.03 milliseconds per century since 2000.

Newsweek

The study suggests that Earth's movements — primarily determined by natural forces like the moon's pull — are now also regulated by human-driven global warming, which has allegedly accelerated the melting of ice sheets.

wapo

Benedikt Soja, a co-author and assistant professor at ETH Zürich, warned that "climate change could become the new dominant factor" if planet-heating pollution and human-induced ice loss continue to increase.

Meanwhile, in 2020, Earth had the 28 shortest days since 1960, when the world started using atomic clocks to set time zones. Two years later, the planet completed a rotation in 1.59 milliseconds less than 24 hours.

Forbes

The authors predict the variation in the length of a day on Earth, besides altering how time is measured, could also affect future GPS navigation and internet traffic.

Study: Climate Change Is Making Earth’s Days Longer

The Controversies

Trump

Michaels

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Sunak

Francis

Biden

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Thunberg

Merkel

Attenborough

Guterres

Mann

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