Ripples In A Teacup

I read this headline on CNN and my heart stopped for a moment. Various factors cause Earth’s rotation to slow down. The friction of the tides on the ocean floor is one such factor. The melting of polar ice (driven by humans burning planet-heating fossil fuels) causing meltwater to move from the poles toward the equator, further slows the speed of the Earth’s rotation. Our planet’s liquid core spins independently of its solidouter shell. If the core slows down, the solid shell speeds up to maintainmomentum. So, despite polar ice melt exerting a slowing influence, overall theEarth’s rotation is speeding up. As a result, we will soon need to subtract a second for the first time. Though a second doesn’t sound like much, it is significant since computing systems are set up for activities such as stock exchange transactions and need to be accurate to a thousandth of a second. Apparently, manycomputer systems have software enabling them to add a second, but few have thecapability to s

Yesterday night, I returned to Mumbai after a week in Switzerland. We had spent four snow-full days in Zermatt before we went to Geneva to spend the rest of our holiday. I love snow and can’t have enough of it. Two years ago, we had gone to Kashmir and I still remember that holiday with nostalgia. Switzerland was even better, mainly because of its better infrastructure. Why did we choose Zermatt? Mainly because it gets more snow than most other places in Switzerland and towards the end of winter, we didn’t want to go to Switzerland and not find any snow. This CNN article on an Italian mountain resort facing a snow crunch drives home the problem. There are so many people in this world, especially in Europe, who are dependant on snow for their livelihood. There are so many animals, especially polar bears, which need snow to thrive. As climate change and global warming reduce the amount of snow that we get every year and as winters turn milder and milder, this problem will become mor