Accoding to the pajama boys over at thehill.com, a new study has found that humans have pumped so much groundwater out of the Earth that the planet has begun to detectably wobble on its axis.  They admit that the "magnitude of the new wobble is slight — a matter of millimeters, which puts it in the same approximate speed category as Earth's slowly drifting continents."

So, perhaps the wobble is actually related to the Earth's slowly drifting continents?

The Hill says the findings, recently published in Geophysical Research Letters (subscribe now, operators are standing by!), purport to "show the extent to which human action — in the form of dam construction, groundwater drilling, and the burning of fossil fuels — are impacting the very position of the Earth."

Dam construction and the burning of fossil fuels are causing the planet to wobble and/or are impacting its very position?  We're going to have to call "BS" on that one!

 The "scientists" conducting the study allegedly found that, between 1993 and 2010, human society, largely due to agriculture, had depleted 2,510 gigatons of groundwater, the equivalent of half the volume of Lake Huron.  Half the volume of one lake?  Is that really that calamitous?

This is just another swipe at agriculture/farming/the audacity of humans producing food for sustenance.

No one loves water — and lakes — more than I do.  I know that is a bold claim, but trust me on this.  Nor is anyone more desirous of preserving same.  But I am also in favor of humans "being allowed" to eat and drink as necessary to survive.  And even to take a shower now and again.

All the water that we use — or that evaporates from our lakes and reservoirs — eventually returns to Earth in one form or another.  Our planet is a closed and remarkable system in this regard.  Perhaps "experts" don't know the precise cause of the alleged "new" wobble.  What if drifting continents, shifting glaciers and polar ice caps, volcanic eruptions — and the cumulative effects of such events — account for the Earth's tiny trembling?

The Earth has always wobbled.  Other planets, too.  That's what they do.  According to some scientists, the planet's mantle is still readjusting to the loss of ice on North America after the last ice age, and they say the reduced mass beneath that continent pulls the Earth's spin axis toward Canada at the rate of a few inches each year.

It seems that many recent, supposedly "scientific," theories are based on wobbly reasoning.  And simply don't hold water.

Photo credit: Donkey Hotey, CC BY 2.0 license.