Earth Getting Fatter?and Mussels Know Why
Not only is there a wave of obesity in the well-fed Western world, but the Earth itself is getting fatter around the middle, caused by global warming. An increase in glacier melting at the poles, along with shifts in ocean circulation, have forced water away from the poles to the Earth’s midsection. Physicist Jean Dickey of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory says, “Some people refer to it as equatorial obesity.” This is a sudden change in shape for the Earth, which, before this, had been getting rounder for thousands of years. The reversal has stunned scientists, and at first they were puzzled over why it’s happening.
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