Ever notice how some days there just doesn't seem to be enough time? How there just aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done that you need to do?
Well, according to the latest climate panic-mongering, you may be about to get some help with that. The latest claim is that climate change is affecting Earth's rotation, causing it to slow, making the days longer.
By 1.33 milliseconds. Yes, really.
Euronews, writing in a recent article titled “Unprecedented in the past 3.6 million years’: How human-made climate change is making days longer,’” claims that climate change is slowly but measurably altering Earth’s rotation, lengthening the day by about 1.33 milliseconds over a century, implying troubling consequences ahead for society and the planet because it is “unprecedented in the past 3.6 million years.” This is patently and demonstrably false. Variations in Earth’s length of day (LOD) of this magnitude or greater are routine and naturally occurring. The 1.33 millisecond variation poses no biological or societal threat, and technologies tied to time can be adjusted, if necessary, to account for the change.
Euronews’ article relies on a recent study suggesting that melting ice and mass redistribution are influencing Earth’s rotation. While redistribution of mass can affect the angular momentum of the spinning Earth, which is basic physics, the framing of the article implies something unprecedented or destabilizing. The historical record shows otherwise.
1.13 milliseconds isn't really a long time. It takes you longer than that to sneeze. It's 0.00113 seconds. A second, if you remember from counting the time from lightning to thunder when you were a kid, is about how long it takes to say "hippopotamus."
The problem with this argument is the same as with many climate change arguments: They sort through and ignore a great deal of statistical noise to reach one item they can blame on humans. That's what they are doing here. The Earth's rotation has been generally slowing by a millisecond or two per century, since, well, always. Why? Look up at the Moon some night. That's why. It's the same thing that causes the tides, the Moon's gravity pulling on the Earth, gradually slowing its rotation. It's generally called tidal braking, and like so many of the Earth's cycles, it operated on the geological time scale, not the human time scale.
There are many, many more influencing factors.
Earth’s rotation has never been perfectly constant. It fluctuates continuously due to multiple natural mechanisms operating on different timescales.
Seasonal redistribution of mass in the atmosphere and oceans adds about 0.5–1 millisecond annually, as wind systems shift and ocean currents adjust. Interannual climate patterns such as El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) contribute an additional ±0.3–0.5 millisecond variation. None of these processes are new, and none are evidence of planetary instability.
None of these processes endanger the planet, the climate, or humanity, either, and none are caused or enhanced by our use of fossil fuels. What they do, though, is cause the one thing that the scold's argument focuses on - melting ice - to be, essentially, nothing more than statistical noise, when you look at all the factors.
In that context, a 1.33-millisecond shift sits squarely within the range of normal background variability, and is nothing to be concerned about.
The long-term trend — Earth gradually slowing due to tidal friction from the Moon — is also well understood. Based on 2,500 years of historical astronomical eclipse observations, science estimates the average increase in LOD at approximately +1.7 to +1.8 milliseconds per century. That gradual braking has been operating for hundreds of millions of years. It is not caused by industrial emissions, nor is it accelerating catastrophically.
A 1.13 millisecond shift is not only lost in the statistical noise, but it's not even detectable without complicated and expensive instruments. It won't affect humans in their everyday lives, it won't affect agriculture, it won't affect anything on the human time scale.
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That's key: The human time scale. Earth's rotation and orbit have cycles that are measured in hundreds, thousands, and even millions of years. Many, many factors influence the planet's rotation and orbit, and we almost certainly don't even know all of them yet. We have a pretty good idea of the extent of lunar tidal braking, and we have some understanding of orbital and rotation cycles. And even in the cycles we do understand reasonably well, still have some natural variability; the planet doesn't run like a metronome.
Finally, these cycles run on the geological timescale. A human lifespan, the famous three-score and ten, is the tiniest of blips on the geological time scale.
Once again, we see climate change panic-mongers try to make a point by cherry-picking one data point out of many to make a poorly thought-out point. Once again, we see them simplifying a vast, chaotic, complex system to one factor. It's not science; it's not even good demagoguery. It's laughably and ridiculously easy to debunk.
And, once again, this claim, the claim that we humans are making the Earth's rotation slow down, is not about science. It's about control. It's always about control.
