The melting of polar ice due to global warming is affecting Earth’s rotation and could have an impact on precision timekeeping, according to a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
In just a few years it may be necessary to insert a “negative leap second” into the calendar to get the planet’s rotation in sync with Coordinated Universal Time.
“Global warming is managing to actually measurably affect the rotation of the entire Earth,” said study author Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at the University of California at San Diego, as quoted in the Washington Post. “Things are happening that have not happened before.”
And most Republicans, heads buried deeply in the increasingly hot ground, deny the reality of global warming. Anything to keep their big-bucks contributors happy.