Mar
Man is so powerful, he can lengthen the Earth’s day
Yesterday we heard the interesting news that the massive 8.8 earthquake in Chile shortened our planet’s day by about 1.26 microseconds and nudged the axis a couple of inches. I held my breath, but I was relieved that I didn’t see any major stories on global warming somehow being involved. Of course, many believe that global warming (and I assume global cooling, since it’s all climate change) causes earthquakes, but that’s a different story.
Then someone emailed me a link to the Discovery article, Top 5 Ways to Mess With Earth’s Day. Author Michael Reilly lists the top five causes that can affect the length of the Earth’s day. Guess what #2 is?
2. Global Warming: Yep, you heard right. It’s one more way our civilization is changing the planet — by making our day longer. Warm El Nino conditions that occur every few years in the tropical Pacific Ocean can lengthen the day up to a millisecond (1/1000th of a second) before subsiding again. According to recent research, more warmth in the tropics could mean many more El Nino events. With more energy getting pumped into the atmosphere, high-level winds will speed up.
To conserve momentum in the Earth-atmosphere system, the planet will be forced to slow down. The cumulative effect could be a half millisecond added to our day by the year 2100.
I’m sure that big climate changes do affect our day’s length. But to label #2 “Global Warming,” with both words capitalized, and the snide line “Yep, you heard that right,” we know exactly what he means. It’s not natural changes in our climate, it’s that dastardly man-made Global Warming that we are skeptical about.
Man has become so powerful. He can now, literally, move the Earth.
Source: Discovery News.
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Guess you missed this yesterday then:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/18/tech/main4191556.shtml
“Dr. Chalko said that global seismic activity was increasing faster than any other global warming indicator on Earth and that this increase is extremely alarming.”
I have concerns over the AGW desire to drill for geothermal energy in areas where the world’s crust is already weak, and there is scientific eveidence of that causing earthquakes. To suggest that global warming has anything to do with earthquakes is evidence of a scientist making a fool of himself. Perhaps he could explain the physics involved.
“Man can move the earth” eh? On a good day, with a following wind I can make the earth move – ask the wife !!
Dams. Impounding water behind dams, rather than letting it fall to a lower altitude, increases the earth’s moment of inertia. This lengthens the day by a tiny amount.
Beavers are natural, though. They’re grandfathered in.
From Day-Wiki
Because of the way the second is defined, the mean length of a day is now about 86,400.002 seconds, and is increasing by about 1.7 milliseconds per century (an average over the last 2,700 years).
Start sarcasm
If “Global Climate Change” will add .5 milliseconds to the day by the end of the century versus the 1.7 that those wacky scientist were going to add. That means that our day would be 1.2 milliseconds shorter. WooHoo! Shorter workdays for everybody!
End sarcasm
Graham,
There’s plenty to worry about when it comes to Alternative Energy. Your concerns (and mine) are just as valid as any
concern the IPCC has thus far. These Wind Turbines have a lot of people scared, the stress could lead to hypertension, heart attacks and more; read ‘litigation’. Can they prove that the turbines won’t impeade the wind enough to slow the earth’s rotation? These things are unnatural you know, the same as dams, fish farms, and all the other things environmentalists want stopped or removed.
What do you know about wind turbines ?
Denmark exports 50% of its wind power to countries that don’t use fossil fuels, so it saves no CO2 emissions and it has to give it away and charge the Danish consumer. It exports it because it’s produced at the wrong time. After 10 – 15 years a wind turbine needs to be replaced so the ongoing capital costs are extremely high.
The report that quoted these, and many other negative facts, also pointed out that Denmark has the highest energy costs in Europe.
This is the link to the report
http://www.cepos.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/Arkiv/PDF/Wind_energy_-_the_case_of_Denmark.pdf
I’ve studied them for 30 years. Best reason to buy them are the subsidies or some other benefit ‘outside’ the potential of the investment to make a profit on its own. They are PR machines.