Earth, Time & Gaining an Hour

Earth speeds through space, its atmosphere carrying ever-increasing levels of carbon. Sunshine arrives, warms Earth, but then can’t bounce back out. Some of it anyway. It’s caused by humans burning fossil fuel. And it results in the temperature rising. People wonder, is the planet in trouble? Do we need to save it?

One particular bit of advice that stands out in my mind is the sign posted in the bathrooms of certain hotel rooms. It reads, “Save the planet.” If you use a towel, leave it on the floor. Instead of us washing all your towels in a fossil fuel-burning washer and dryer after you leave, we will be saving the planet by washing less.

I also remember advice back then — this has been so long going on now — offered up by President Gerald Ford after President Richard Nixon resigned.

“If you use a dishwasher twice a day, do the dishes just once a day. That will do it.”

Perhaps the way our planet has been dealing with trouble has never been properly explained. Earth spins around the sun. It will keep doing so. It will warm but it will adapt. No need to get it fixed.

On the other hand, there are other troubling things happening to the planet. Although, to be clear, they are not things related to global warming.

Many, many years ago, a molten ball that became the Earth got thrown out of the sun. By some miracle, it cooled way down, started spinning, became a sphere, hardened up and found a spot where it could begin circling the sun which was trying to pull it back in while resisting a centrifugal force trying to pull it out and send it flying off into space.

This effort has taken a toll on our planet. While spinning, more of the planet’s dirt accumulates at its equator and less at its poles. The result is that the highest place on Earth is not at Mount Everest, it is at the equator. Earth is sort of a fatty. And it just keeps getting fatter.

The spinning also created a spinning-top-like wobble that results in the North Pole leaning more toward the sun at certain points while its South Pole leans toward the sun at other points. This results in any one place on the planet being warmer than it should be at certain times, then cooler than it should be at other times. It would not endure such an inconsistency if it didn’t wobble.

Also, scientists now tell us, the Earth’s spinning is slowing. It’s just a second or two every year, but it will in the end, all add up. Days will drag on longer. So will night. Eventually, days and nights will drag on for 48 hours and more.

We’ve also learned that the Earth’s core is cooling. It’s in a sheltered place far beneath the crust so it’s not subject to anything that might warm it. On the other hand, there have been times, billions of years ago, when the core began heating up. I don’t know why. Maybe huge dinosaurs running around emitted explosive gasses that could roar down into the core one way or another. Did dinosaurs dig holes?

Of course, since humans have come along, there’s been a lot of attempts by folks in charge to explain these inconsistencies. As the wobble takes place, for instance, the position of the sun setting on the horizon moves to the left as summer turns to winter and then back to the right as winter turns back to summer.

This must have really confused a lot of people early on. And then there is Stonehenge. My opinion about Stonehenge, the ancient series of stone monuments built in a circle atop a hill in England, is that priests noticed the movement of the shadows of the stones as the sun moved across the sky and saw that on a certain day, the shadows stopped going one way and started going the other. Noting that it happened every year on the same day, the priests then could, ahead of time, perform some sort of fake magic to make followers think they were making it happen. A stone would stop it. Wasn’t it amazing?  Obviously the priests had something going here.

Through all of this, the Earth has soldiered bravely on, putting up with the tipping, wobbling, pushing, pulling and temperature changes.

It’s also astonishing how the moon came about. I’m told that some big glob of Mars hit the hot Earth early on, sending another glob, a smaller one, but made of Earth material, back up into the vacuum of space where it cooled, became a smaller sphere, and began to endure the same sort of push-pull situation the Earth was undergoing with the sun, but with this chunk circling the Earth doing it with us. Good heavens!

Frankly, I don’t think the Earth is going to change much just because we keep throwing excess carbon up into our atmosphere. With the sunshine trapped, it will warm. But it will live on. It’s just another damn thing happening to it. For now, anyway.

Scientists tell us that eventually the sun will burn brighter, eventually win the war against the opposing centrifugal force, thus causing the Earth and all other planets to fall back into the mothership for a final collapse into something called a black hole.

I have no idea what that is, and so far, I think, nobody else knows what that is either. But that is so far into the future, we needn’t worry about this much at this time.

Meanwhile, I just read that Elon Musk is planning to send rocketships filled with people to Mars before 2030.

The assumption is, I think, that if it’s bad here then it must be much better over on Mars. So, let’s go.

Well, we know very little about Mars. Eventually, Mars might turn out to be a wonderful surprise or a horrendous disaster when we get there.

Anyway, if you use a towel in a hotel room, leave it on the floor for the maid to put in the wash. Not washing the other towels may not save the planet. But maybe it will.

And don’t forget to set your clocks back on Sunday, Nov. 3.

Read more of Dan Rattiner’s stories.