NASA: Global warming is now changing how Earth wobbles

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. I disagree; I don't think this is anything like as important as species extinction

You need astronomical instruments, or GPS, to detect it. The planet has moving tectonic plates, and over immense time periods,

Does this 'have inertia'? Literally, I would say it doesn't. It's not a 'balancing act' - it's just physics, and the movement of mass around the planet will produce this response. The Earth has angular momentum, and it's going to keep that; this is just exactly where the surface features are aligned with the momentum.

Being a hundred metres closer or further from a pole, over a hundred years, would make no difference to us compared with the actual temperature effects in the atmosphere, or sea level rise, over that time. It's another way to measure the rate of ice melt (though it would, I think, be a difficult calculation to make, because you'd have to take into account melting at both poles, and what longitudes it's happening at). But extinction is for good; the exact position of the poles is of scientific interest (and for calibrating GPS, so they'll have to continue to measure it), but not something that will change any ecology.