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( Three minute read)

We’ve long laid a heavy hand on the planet’s ecosystems, and perhaps now it is time to wield that hand more deliberately and creatively.

The influence of human activity on the Earth’s ecosystems has become so extreme that it now seems to be the central driver of environmental change but is there another contributing reason.

Our planet is constantly trying to balance the flow of energy in and out of Earth’s system. But human activities are throwing that off balance, causing our planet to warm in response.

The Earth’s rotational pole normally changes and wanders by about several meters each year.

Without better management, an estimated 42% to 79% of all watersheds that pump groundwater may no longer be able to maintain healthy ecosystems by 2050. This rate of change has frightening implications for the future.

Below the Earth’s surface lies over a thousand times more water than all the rivers and lakes in the world.

We’ve been extracting so much groundwater that it caused the Earth’s rotational pole to drift by 64.16 degrees east at about 4.36 centimetres per year from 1993 to 2010.

On top of this we have extracted trillions and trillions of litres of oil, moved trillions of tons of sand/rocks, put trillions of tons of concrete on the surface, changing the landscape and its weight distribution for several thousands of years. Resulting in the rotation of the earth on its axis changing, not just in speed but in it’s tilth angle, effecting the Jet stream, the direction of ocean currents, the length of day and night.

Perhaps it is one of the reasons that the climate is changing.

Extracting it unsustainably.

Glaciers are disappearing, melting faster than they can be replenished, like this glacier located in Greenland. Melting is happening faster in Greenland and the rest of the Arctic, which is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth.

It is not possible to predict with any certainty what the coming decades might look like for Earth’s energy budget.

Groundwater is used for about 40% of global irrigation and provides almost half of all drinking water.

To put it simply, groundwater depletion contributes to sea level rise because water is being transferred from the continents to the oceans. This is significant because each millimetre rise in sea level is said to make the shoreline retreat an average of 1.5 meters.

If Earth’s rotation does keep accelerating?

The Earth has rotational kinetic energy associated with going spinning around its axis once a day.

Rotational kinetic energy depends on:

  • How fast the object is spinning (faster spinning means more energy).
  • How much mass the spinning object has (more massive means more energy).

How is the planet going to handle that?  No one knows.

Maybe there will be chaos across the tech industry, or maybe we won’t even notice, as time will be flying by.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com