After my article on this space last week, entitled “Between pole shift and polls shift”, I got a number of messages from readers who wanted a more indepth explanation of the term pole shift, or polar shift. A particular one stated that the term should be given a more academic attention because it is “highly relevant because of climate change”. I agree. However, it is actually difficult to do a thorough job of explaining the concept within the limited space of this column. But, I will try.
First of all, because in the said write-up I related pole shift to present-day Nigerian political realities, I would quickly touch on politics. The pole shift I envisaged in our political climate did not happen. Power is still with the All Progressives Congress. Speaking on mystical terms, the transfer of power to the River Benue axis (where Atiku Abubakar hails from) from the River Niger axis (where President Muhammadu Buhari is from) did not work at the end of the day.
But there are minor evolutionary gains here and there. For one, it has become obvious that in spite of the general, once deafening, calls for a viable Third Force or People’s Coalition, political power vortex in Nigeria is still comfortably ensconced in the arms of two super entities: the APC and the PDP. And if you ask me, it should perpetually remain so, until such a time when Providence illuminates our minds to the reality of the three true (cosmic) power coalitions.
Nigeria is still evolving, especially politically. For our political class to be more focused and effective in governance, it has to clearly answer some fundamental questions. What exactly is progressive about the APC? What does it mean to be progressive in the Nigerian developmental context? What is the underpinning ideology of the PDP? Who exactly is a conservative in the Nigerian context? What is the watermark to identify a potential PDP, or APC member? Who funds who, how and why?
Until these and other existential posers are addressed, we may be circling around a precipitous abyss, waiting for doomsday. But then, we must realise that the more we perambulate, the world is laughing at us, the small countries around us are speeding past us, and our children are gathering the stones they will hurl at us tomorrow when we would be too weak to move forward and too poor to change our tattered robes!
Now, back to the geological polar shift. Some people believe that the Earth’s North and South poles were not always located where they are now. They believe the Earth once rotated on a different axis. Others say that the Earth always rotated about its polar axis, but that the Earth’s crust shifts so that the land located at each pole changes. Climate change, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions result from stresses on the Earth’s crust during the shift. Some claim that the Earth will soon experience another dramatic polar shift, and that, as a result entire continents might sink while new ones emerge from the sea.
The pole shift theory is a hypothesis based on geologic evidence that the physical North and South poles of the Earth have not always been at their present-day locations (at the Arctic and the Antarctic regions respectively). There are a few variations of thought as to how and why the Earth experiences pole shifts.
One theory suggests a 180-degree physical inversion of the planet’s solid crust around its molten core, thus leading to major cataclysmic events and extreme physical earth changes. It is believed that this could take place if another planetary body – such as a “rogue planet” or similar cosmic anomaly – passed in close proximity to the Earth, providing enough force for such an event to occur. Many believe this has occurred in the past and is due to occur again in the not so distant future.
The second theory is more evidence-based. That is, a reversal of the Earth’s magnetic poles, called geomagnetic reversal, in which the positions of magnetic north and magnetic south become interchanged as the Earth’s magnetic field weakens.
A reversal of the magnetic poles is much more likely, as it has occurred several times before in Earth’s history according to paleomagnetists. Evidence for this is provided by measurements of the orientation of magnetic materials in sedimentary and volcanic rock. Research indicates approximately 200 reversals have occurred over the last 178 million years. But these geographic movements have been far smaller and of a less catastrophic impact than those predicted by the pole shift theorists – less than one degree per million years or slower. This is what I described as “true polar wander”.
Nevertheless, because of the widespread “belief” in an actual, historical, catastrophic polar shift, one must state one’s own personal convictions, too.
For instance, in 2012, there was mass hysteria concerning the so-called 12th planet, or Planet X or Nibiru. Many speculated the rogue planet would be passing Earth in 2012 on its 3,600-year orbit around the sun, reshaping earth and life as we know it. Known as The 2012 Phenomenon, researchers said it was in line with the Mayan Calendar. Interestingly, this belief was recreated into major Hollywood blockbusters like the 2009 movie 2012.
Furthermore, in a 1872 article, Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, an expert in Mesoamerican and Aztec manuscripts, interpreted native myths, writings, and maps as indicating that at least four such pole shift-related cataclysms had occurred beginning around 10,500 BC.
In 1948, respected electrical engineer, Hugh Auchincloss Brown, claimed that the massive weight of accumulating ice at the Earth’s poles caused axial polar shifts every 4,000 to 7,000 years. He suggested the use of nuclear weapons to break up the polar ice caps in order to prevent future catastrophes.
In his controversial 1950 book, Worlds in Collision, historian Immanuel Velikovsky, cites ancient manuscripts and archaeological artifacts from around the world as evidence that around 1,500 BC, Venus, then in the form of a comet-like object ejected from Jupiter, passed near the Earth, changing the Earth’s orbit and axial tilt with devastating results. Instructively, astrophysicists have confirmed that collisions and near-misses of the planets did occur as the orbits of the planets stabilised over the centuries.
In 1974, engineer and explorer Flavio Barbiero theorised that a drastic polar shift triggered by the impact of a comet around 9,000 BC is recorded in mythology as having been the cause of the destruction of the island of Atlantis. Due to the polar shift, he suggested, if it ever existed, Atlantis would be found under the Antarctic ice sheet today. Interestingly, there are conspiracy theories making the rounds about ongoing Unidentified Flying Objects (aka flying saucers) and alien activities in Antartica underground locations.
In 1998, James G. Bowles, a retired civil engineer, suggested that the combined gravitational pull of the Sun and the Moon over the millennia has slowly eroded the geological link between the Earth’s crust and the inner mantle. This Rotational-Bending, or RB-effect, as he calls it, creates a “plastic zone” that allows the crust to rotate or drift independently of the mantle. Bowles suggests that pull of centrifugal forces on the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets will cause the poles to drift toward the equator, possibly sooner than later.
Because of space, I will have to give my own personal thoughts, and research-based beliefs, on polar shift in the next article on this space, next Thursday.
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