Friday, May 11, 2007

Canada still affected by the last ice age

In an article titled "Canada's odd low gravity a relic of the ice age," Dawn Walton writes about the Canadian gravitational anomalies. You'd weigh less in parts of Canada than you would in New York or Moscow, though not much.

In 2002, NASA and the German Aerospace Center launched a pair of satellites to circle the planet from 500 kilometres above to map changes in mass and gravity.… The satellites found that the Earth's crust over Canada has not completed what scientists call the "post-glacial rebound." Now, it's clear that the ice age is still affecting the planet.
Like a hangover, and Earth is still a little unsteady from all that ice. This means that Gore and the AGW promoters are like bad friends who won't let a drunk sober up.

Update: And another thing: All this rebounding means that previously glacier-covered land is rising, and previously unglaciated land is sinking, relative to some level, which might be sea level. The water is rising on the southern shores of the Great Lakes, for instance, while sinking on the northern shores, or so it appears. Scotland rising means England is sinking, so the Thames will flood more, but it not the CO2 that's doing it at all. That Globe & Mail article has gone behind a pay wall, so here is Wikipedia on post-glacial rebound, and a New Scientist article, Satellites solve mystery of low gravity over Canada, on the GRACE mapping satellites.

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