> One other item in the book that bothered me. I've heard it
> mentioned by
> "gloom and doom" types on radio and I've pretty much
> discounted it. The idea
> is that were the Ross Ice Shelf in Antartica to be released
> so that it went
> floating off it would destabilize the earths rotation with
> ugly results....
> Kinda like a tire out of balance.
>
> My feeling is that the mass disparity is too great. The mass of the
> Antartic Ice in comparison to the mass of the earth is less
> than comparing a
> pebble in the tread of one of my trucktires......no big
> deal....and besides
> my autobalancers would compenstate...as would the ocean compensate...
>
>
Don't know if it's so far fetched. my personal knowledge in the matter is
nill, but i read an article in new scientist (either 28/11/1998 or
5/12/1998, can't remember) about someone proposing that 600 million years
ago the earths tilt was at around 51 degrees (they were using this to
justify the fact that there used to be glaciers around the equator at that
time), but since the earths tilt is "known" to have been around 23 degrees
about 430 million years ago they needed to find a quick way of changing the
earth's tilt by that amount in that short (170 million year) period. one of
them suggested that ice formation around the current poles would have
shifted the tilt by the needed amount. the contention from other geologists
seemed to be the difficulty in the creation of the ice in the right places,
not in the maths of the tilt shift which suggests that the calculations in
that department were correct. i'll see if i can find it again.
Alejandro Dubrovsky
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