Variations in G
It didn't take more than a couple of seconds before I saw the date at the top of this article -on climbers website UK Climbing - and realised this was an April fool's joke. The article suggests that variation in the gravitational constant G might result in rock climbs being easier in some countries than others. Basically it's a dig at the grading of rock climbs in certain countries (Spain and Greece). There is some element of truth in the story however the variation is in g rather than G, this would have the same effect but to notice the difference you would have to build two identical rock climbs in two places. I wonder if the actual variations in g would make a significant difference. The value of g varies from 9.780 ms−2 on the equator to 9.832 ms−2 at the poles (wikipedia), that's 0.5%. I weigh about 66kg so this would be equivalent to a change of 330g, not much but not negligible. One commentator mentions the dependancy of G on the age of climber. That's not G it's m.