Yet another reason why I no longer subscribe to National Geographic
Turned on my TV today, and this popped up, so of course I had to write about it. This is stupidity on steroids, packaged as psuedo-scientific claptrap entertainment for the gullible. Of course they had to work in the obligatory New York City flooding scene. But what’s worse is Nat Geo’s wholesale failure to even consider basic science before making this garbage.
From their website:
When The Earth Stops Spinning
If the Earth was to suddenly stop our seas and the atmosphere would change so drastically that it would no longer be able to support human life. Looking to a future where one side of the planet is dark and cold for six months at a time, and the other is bathed in deadly solar radiation, this episode explores how long human and animal life might survive in a cruel new, stationary world.
There’s the usual climate porn in this video, roasting temperatures, people fighting for resources, global sea level rise, etc…but what makes this NatGeo docu-wailer extra stupid is the simple math that tells us when the Earth will actually stop spinning. They apparently couldn’t be bothered to do that, since it blows the premise of the whole show right out of the water.
OK here’s the basic science and math relevant to the issue.
The Earth’s rotation around its own axis has been observed (thanks to atomic clocks) to be continuously slowing down. The main reason for this slowing is believed to be due to tidal friction. This is primarily caused by the moon’s gravitational actions on the oceans of the world.
![EarthMoon[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/earthmoon1.gif?resize=622%2C321)
The Earth will still be spinning in ~ 5 billion years when the Sun will turn into a red giant star and obliterate it. Prior to that, due to solar brightening, ~ 500 million to 2 billion years into the future, the Earth is likely to be uninhabitable anyway.
Now compare that to “…this episode explores how long human and animal life might survive in a cruel new, stationary world”
Let me just say whoever produced this garbage science drama for National Geographic could use a good whack upside the head with a solar science book. You can let them know if you feel as I do:
To contact us from the United States, please email comments@natgeochannel.com or go to www.nationalgeographic.com/community/email.html.
You can watch the whole ridiculously bad thing here:
The September 2004 Nat Geo was part devoted to global warming. Since then, new instruments, new observations have revealed some erros and some wrong projections. The IPCC glaciers melted by year 2035 is in there. I’ve emailed the Editor suggesting that correct scientific procedure is to correct errors once established, suggesting a decade later Sept 2014 edition again on (corrected) global warming.
Anthony, if you have enthisiasm for this, do you have a collection point for contributions from top people so that a compendium of corrections coud be sent to Nat Geo by (say) March 2014?
I have a rough draft that readers can see at http://www.geoffstuff.com/NatGeo_10_YEARS_DRAFT.pdf
But I thought global warming was supposed to slow down Earth’s spin. Or was that speed it up. ;-(
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2001GL013672
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2006GL029106
I doubt whether human beings will be around in 5 million years let alone 500 million years. The main problem being the eventual peaking of world population (2100 at 10.1 million – UN), aging, then decline. Fertility rates in many parts of the world are falling as standards of living improve. Mexico and Brazil are good examples.
http://www.economist.com/node/14744915
Cool, but what’s the point. Why don’t they make a show asking what if the Moon began accelerating away? What if the Sun suddenly stopped shining? Sheesh!
I.P.C.C.
Intergovernmental Panel on Centripetal Calamity…
see easy peeaasy
psion (@psion) says:
December 2, 2012 at 2:28 pm
Once again, you pretend you know what you’re talking about. Are you a geospinologist with recent scientific publications, Mr. Watts regarding what makes the world go ’round? No? Then what business do you have questioning the science behind such an enlightening presentation? The time for debate is over. Unless we act now, unilaterally, the Earth will stop spinning and your children and your children’s children will never know days and nights again!
Did I do that right? Should I have called people deniers, too
————————————
You forgot to ask for more money for more research.
cn
This might actually be possible in our time. According to that channel, aliens hav visited the Earth to build the pyramids, so i guess it would be a walk in the park to stop the rotation if they want to. Considering that this is very likely because we burn to much oil according to alien climate experts, we shuold prepare ourselves with new taxes.
I don’t remember reading anything in NG that I didn’t believe was real when I was a kid,
i thought everything between those pages was true, including the short, naked Africans.
Alas, my childhood is gone. Another icon swept away by CAGW.
cn
Usually happens to those who least understand the true cause of some occurrence, throw stupid idea, and claims to have caused as much sensation and earned it as much!
NEED TO KNOW TRUE cause of some phenomenon, and then draw conclusions.
Science still has not figured out the real causes of the earth’s rotation on its axis, and found hundreds of miracles to draw conclusions about it.
Stupidity and the Moon slows the earth’s spin, as they are moving together around a common center barimetra-rotation, which is located around 1500 km. below the surface.
The country has its own eccentric spin for rotation around the sun, and the energy of the spin is accumulated in the perihelion and the mass of the Earth is given by the radial kinetic energy, radial movement of the same congregation.
Let those who love science prostuditaju this well, and they will see that this is true, and I can confirm and prove to you that I have the opportunity to publish it.
Here’s the formula for baričentar:
r= (t / T). ae.1 / (1-e ^ 2) ^ 1/2.cosf (o-pi)
r-distance from the center of the country Baricentro
t-time spin
T-Time Revolution
a-major axis of the earth
e-eccentricity orbits
f-angle between the directions: sun-perihelion and position of the sun and the earth
p = 3.1415 …
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Eh, it’s all in good fun. Didn’t see the episode but coming at it from this angle will get more people to watch than an episode on why earth’s rotation was critical to the formation of life. The Universe epidsoe on the Day the Moon was Gone was actually quite fascinating. You take the big old moon for granted, but most likely without it we wouldn’t be here. As long as they didn’t blame the earth’s rotation stopping on CO2.
Unfortunately I think you are very, very incorrect in that assumption.
——
“I imagine that most anyone who’s graduated middle school has at least a vague notion of what would happen if the planet stopped spinning.”
Some of their disaster scenarios are vaguely interesting, but this one I didn’t even glance at ’cause it’s physically impossible. Just like the moon “disappearing” instantly.
I remember seeing this doc about a year ago – way before hurricane Sandy, so they must have updated it. I viewed it as a sci-fi but there were some interesting observations, such as when they said the atmospheric pressure would become too low to support life at the equator. I’m not sure how they worked that out – seems a bit bizarre.
Looking back, it was sort of interesting in a “I like to get scared” way, but not very relevant to todays problems. I believe they did something similar about the sun getting hotter, or maybe that was another channel.
Well, in the 1951 sci-fi film “The Day The Earth Stood Still”, an alien being neutralizes electric power worldwide to teach them a lesson. Oh wait, that’s essentially what the Warmists want to do. Never mind.
Ouch!
Anthony, for all that i admire and respect you, I have to say that on this occasion you’ve missed the point.
The National Geographic show is not about the current slowing of the Earth’s rotation that you write about above. Yes, we know that’s happening. But the show is a thought experiment, a counterfactual, a hypothetical.
This is a perfectly valid way to consider actual physics. For example, we do it ourselves when we ask “How would the world be different if Climate models were valid?” The measured temperatures would be much higher, the stratospheric ‘hot spot’ would be found, both poles would be melting at the predicted rates, the paleontological proxies of the world’s temperature would be different, etc.
Surely you see that?
They’re putting their hypothetical in the indicative mood rather than the subjunctive is poor science, but great entertainment. Who could confuse it and think they mean it literally? Apparently you could, but surely not after a bit of reflection. Their meaning is far more obvious than a whore’s wink. For us to be insanely literal about this would be literally insane.
I’m no advocate of National Geographic. They had a noble tradition of informing us about the world. They’ve betrayed that tradition by abandoning integrity for advocacy. But this show is not that.
Those of us who e-mail them about this demonstrate that we sceptics are unable to recognise a simple hypothetical. It makes us look dumb. Let’s not.
They could do one where the earth has fallen out of its orbit, and is spiralling ever closer to the sun, with people dropping dead from heat exhaustion, and filled with panic about what is happening, and what will inevitably happen – the earth burning up. Then, in a twist, that could turn out to actually be just a nightmare, with the reality being that the earth is actually moving further away, and people are freezing to death. Ok, that was actually a Twilight Zone episode called “The Midnight Sun”, but it has some striking similarities to today, with the Warmists’ nightmare scenario being what they imagine as real, when in fact we are very likely looking at significant cooling in the short-term, and the inevitable return to Ice Age conditions within a few centuries, possibly sooner.
Bruce, one of my favorite episodes! 🙂 The old Twilight Zone was truly classic: the Outer Limits etc never even came close to it. And Jeff, yes, it’s clear to even the most unsophisticated among us that Apollo 11 is indeed the cause of the problem. Perhaps compounded by the extra frictional drag caused by excess secondhand smoke…. ::ducking::
;>
MJM
One of the “green” methods of generating electricity is to make use of the tidal motion in areas like the Bay of Fundy that have very high tides. The energy for generating this electrical power is taken directly from the angular momentum of the earth thus slowing it down. I
They’re going to kill us all to avoid burning fossil fuels!!! /sarc
You may be able to have fun with this until some alarmist bothers to calculate the actual effect.
You guys realize that all of the observe slowing of the Earth’s rotation has occurred since Apollo 11. Since lunar gravity causes the rotation of the Earth to slow, it’s clear that the Apollo missions had something to do with this
REPLY: I think you forgot the /sarc tag – Anthony
Did they mention the thousand-mile-an-hour whiplash effect at the equator? Dropping off, of course, as the cosine of the latitude as you go towards the poles…
The ‘tidal friction’ calculations usually overlook the fact that, as the moon slows the earth’s rotation the moon itself also moves further away from the earth, weakening the effect of tidal friction. The end point is reached when the moon and earth become tidally ‘locked’ so that the earth always keeps one face towards the moon. That is, the moon’s orbit becomes geostationary due to the earth’s slowed rotations.
I once did a back-of-the-envelope calculation based on the conservation of Total Angular Momentum (earth rotation, moon rotation, and earth-moon system rotation). The outcome was that the tidal friction will end when the solar day and the month are both about 45 day’s long, several billion years from now.
At that point the only thing that could alter the spinning of the earth-moon system is another (a third) body.
Ultimately, there is a third body involved already, the Sun.
Who where the “orders”, Earth Moon or vice versa, how to behave.? Most of the participants in the discussion did not take into account the relevant facts that the Earth is “commanded” the moon how to behave. There is no democracy as between us, and that stupid-illogical theories adopted to “beautiful relationship”.
Anyone who knows the laws of celestial mechanics that govern it, and this question the claim that the earth will be stopped in its rotation due to the influence of the moon, causing repugnance to him and confirm that all those who claim it, the absolute vorthles in science in general .
Who can claim that CO2 has a greater impact on the state of the Earth than the relations planet. This really has nothing to do or ideas about the forces that rule and govern the heavenly bodies.
It disappeared without a rationale for further discussion
JeffDG: Agreed, and it’s effect will also be frictional, reducing the total energy of the earth-moon system, but not the angular momentum of the earth-moon-sun system … until it expands sufficiently to add drag from the solar wind.
We are, unfortunately, continuing to fight tabloid entertainment propaganda such as this with, what is to the great masses of unwashed, science that they do not understand. Since we will never convince the science oriented ( I will not call them scientists) crowd who are making money off of the AGW scare, we need to convince the proletariat, who are, again, unfortunately, allowed to vote that they are paying for this nonsense and receiving nothing in return. Perhaps some movies, books or what have you, like the very humorous “Idiocracy”. It was very entertaining and funny but sadly accurate in terms of our present day path into the future.
All of the accurate science in the world will not convince those on the take since most of those folks don’t know or don’t care about their poor science. The rest of the world needs truthful but entertaining propaganda to fight against the continous bombardment from the leftist media on the issue of global warming. Otherwise we will need to wait until people are freezing in the dark.
Reading the comments here is repulsive.
Aside from daily rotation,the planet turns once to the central Sun where the polar coordinates act like a lighthouse beacon for the orbital behavior of the Earth and are currently under 3 weeks from being carried around to their maximum distance to the circle of illumination
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/05/22/earth_americas250.jpg
There is not a single article,paper or comment on the ecliptic axis around which those polar coordinates are carried around in a circle to the central Sun,an ecliptic axis which is crucial for explaining the seasons and defining planetary climate and runs along a line that follows the circle of illumination.
Far from this modern insanity is astronomy proper where causes and effects still have to be worked out and modifications made to suit contemporary imaging.It requires a less personal animosity as neither side in this mess have a good handle of planetary dynamics,how to combine them or separate them into their individual components and signatures.
Presumably the tidal drag is roughly proportional to the earth’s rate of rotation, so that as it slows down, the drag will reduce, with the result that the rotation slows exponentially rather than linearly. 1.7 milliseconds per century would therefore mean that in 1.9 trillion years, the earth will have only slowed to exp(-1) = 37% of its current rate. In another 1.9 trillion years, it will have slowed by another factor of 37% etc.
But Tadchem’s considerations above at 12/3, 8:17 AM would appear to accelerate the slowing considerably. I defer to him on these considerations.
Fortunately, I’ve already let my subscription to NG lapse years ago.
Everybody live backwards.