As the World Turns More Slowly?

Slate: "The U.S. Naval Observatory has announced that they'll add an extra second to the nation's atomic clocks this New Year's Eve—the first time a "leap second" has been deployed since 1998." Last time I heard about this it was the large impoundments of water we've built, i.e. dams, near the Equator that have slowed down Earth's rotation (there's one coming up in Syria that had/has Iraqi's Fundies in a knot, no water like "no ticket" in the movies). Some geographers see a coming civil war between the Northern Hemisphere ("haves") and the Southern Hemisphere ("have nots") over resources. I once had a piece of software that was developed by the gentleman measuring the Moon's distance from the Earth with a laser off the mirrors left behind there in the Apollo/LEM program (Lunar Excursion Module built by Grumman who built, sold and trained the 100 F-14 Tomcat's in Iran for the Shah) and the software could take two photo's and recreate a 3-D wire frame from some known distances in the photo. I was really surprised on how far the Moon/Earth distance varies within its orbit (apogee/perigee), which seemed a little underplayed in the article. The Moon is also slowly (very slowly) moving away.