Science spin of the worst kind: National Geographic's 'When The Earth Stops Spinning'

I think you missed the point, this isn’t an article saying that the earth is about to stop spinning, but its exploring what would be the result. We will have to assume the laws of inertia are suspended so that the crust doesn’t split and fold up allowing magma to run over a large part of the earth, that the atmosphere stops dead too avoiding those 1,000 miles per hour winds at the equator.
I recall reading a sci-fi book not so long ago about the colonization of such a world, where it was tidally locked to its sun. The inhabitable portion was in the twilight region.
Its an interesting thought experiment to determine if a human-compatible atmosphere could transport enough energy to the dark side to avoid the entire freezing out of all the available water (and nitrogen, oxygen etc.). Of course, CO2 would freeze out first, making breathing a little problematic, but mostly being a real issue for any plant life. I suppose you would need CO2 credits for activities which releades gaseous CO2 into the atmosphere.
The other problem involved in heat transfer from hot to [cold] side, is transporting enough of the energy to avoid boiling off the atmosphere on the hot side.
Personally, I suspect that taking an earth-like planet and tidally locking it to the sun would result in it becoming uninhabitable within a very few years. Small colonies might be able to exist if there were big enough deposits of frozen gases and water to mine on the cold side, but that would be about it.

I smell a government grant !

Prof Steffen said that this period of climate change caused by humans, known as the ‘anthropocene era’, could ultimately cause the whole system of ice ages followed by warm periods, that has allowed life on Earth to flourish, to be over.
Possibly the most ‘un-scientific’ statement. Ever.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9168055/Compost-bomb-is-latest-climate-change-tipping-point.html

There I was, needin’ some scary movies and bored with zombies on Netflix…
Nat Geo to the rescue!

How hot would it get on the side facing the Sun?
1,000 Watt/m2 coming in forever. It would just get hotter and hotter and hotter until some equilibrium level is reached. Technically, I think it would exceed Venus’ temperatures within a year.

Yeah agree. I turned on National Geographic in Asia and got a stream of shows on ghosts and UFOS. The marketing of these shows states “Its not a question of whether ghosts/UFOs are real, but what we can do about it” kind of stuff. No skepticism, no fact checking. Scenes of little goblin aliens as if they are real. I didnt even bother to watch the shows, which may have some kind of fact checking in there, because the way it is marketed itself was wrong. The marketing style alone is only a step or two outside of fully selling out to mysticism and superstition. Im quite sure Carl Sagan would be disgusted (see his book “the demon haunted world”-about the dangers of superstitious mysticism and unregulated piffle).
Nat Geo used to be about science, but obviously the management has decided that its better to make more money focusing on marketing and entertainment-but by doing this one has to betray the science. Appeal to the masses of uneducated, don’t worry about the science. Its a disgrace.
On their website, it states “caring for the planet and every living thing in it, since 1886”. Actually this is not its mission at all. Its about learning about the planet, not caring for ‘every living thing’. Do we care about the malaria virus? Or deadly strains of bacteria? Do we stop eating meat because we care about the cows? No, but we treat the cows humanely. They have imposed a psuedo-religious mentality on the site similar to the marketing of the media style of “scientists report UFO” kind of marketing, but dont worry about the facts.
Maybe someone can set up a Nat Geo breakaway group, with its charter to remain true to science and not sell out to marketing and entertainment.

doha spin is everywhere in the MSM, no matter how insane:
3 Dec: ABC: Sarah Clarke: Temps set to soar as emissions grow: report
The latest snapshot from climate scientists has found the planet is on track for a 4 to 6 degree Celsius temperature rise by the turn of the century…
The Global Carbon Project, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, has calculated that emissions rose by 3 per cent last year, and 2.6 per cent this year, despite the weak global economy.
Pep Canadell from the CSIRO was one of the lead authors of the report, and says the growth in emissions is shocking…
The authors say while it was technically still possible to limit warming to below 2 degrees Celsius, emissions growth would have to rapidly come to a halt and then fall quickly…
It would require a rapid shift to greener energy and even net negative emissions in the future, where more CO2 is taken out of the air than added.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-03/annual-report-shows-carbon-emissions-continue-to-grow/4403778

Heh, I’m sorry, but these climate scare claims are wimpy. In my own area of research I’ve had to deal with babies licking floors for almost 3 trillion years and college students being poisoned from sitting on contaminated campus benches for roughly 3 SEXTILLION years.
AGW Climate science by comparison is rock solid science wrapped in parsecs of nanotubing!
The trick is to do exactly what Anthony did here: hit them at their most ridiculous lies. If they want to claim global warming is slowing the planet, fine. Just point out that non-anthropogenic solar warming will have burned the earth to a crisp 200 times over before it happens. You have to make the ridiculous numbers clearly LOOK ridiculous to the layman — even though they’re being spouted by “all the cognizant authorities in the world.” Without that push from people like the folks here, people just accept what they keep hearing repeated on the TV.
The trick also lies in getting that information out to the people whose main source of input is the televised (and, as Anthony points out, translated over to mainstream popular print as well — the three-trillion-year floor-licking-baby claim is based on serious research published with a straight face by the New York Times) misinformation that they’re hit with every day. You need to find a way to counter the ads showing the cute little girl playing on the railroad tracks with the train accelerating towards her at warp speeds.
Combine those tricks and you’ll have a shot at fighting on something at least approaching an equal footing. The more technical arguments about percentages of ice melt and ocean rises of 2 cm instead of 15 cm and CO2 levels of .3% or 1.6% may be important if/when you get a voice at scientific conferences or in published letters/responses to climate journals, but I strongly believe that, to have an impact, you need to get the message out to the people who are getting clobbered by the sensationalism of the other side every day. And to do that, you have to hit with sensationalism, but more HONEST sensationalism of your own. And since you don’t have an equal microphone to start off with you need to get the microphone shoved in your faces through the promise of providing a colorful fight: and that’s where calling their most extreme lies to the floor over and over again comes in!
– MJM

P.S. This discussion of National Geographic sensationalism has reminded me of a discussion I overheard my parents having back when I was about 13 years old. I had collected a good number of National Geographics at that point from secondhand stores because of all the amazing pictures of insects they had. My parents however were quietly discussing whether I should be allowed to bring magazines into the house that had all these pictures of African Tribeswomen with bare breasts! Heh, I was a bit slow, even for a 13 year old Catholic school boy: I don’t think I’d even NOTICED the breasts by that point: bugs were SOOOOO much more fun!
:>
MJM

omnologos says:
December 2, 2012 at 2:10 pm
Nobody’s read H.G Wells, uh?
Exactly my thoughts….
H.G.Wells – The man who could work miracles (1936)

I only ever looked at NatGeo for the pictures. i watched this ‘documentary’ a few months back as i was feeling a little sad and needed cheering up.

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