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)
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:
We shouldn’t get excited about this. The program is jsut a way of explaining the effects of the Earth’s rotation by showing a fantasy scenario in which it stopped. it is jsut a way to explain the science and nothing else – just a thought experiment to teach some concepts. I saw a whole series on the topic and it was quite good.
I think people are just abusing the term “documentary” to death.
This is like the “documentary-style” show from a while back that posited that the US military had co-opted governments around the world in some kind of plot to kill mermaids.
The funny thing is it never *said* it was fiction. I mean, it should be obvious, but you know someone, somewhere believed it.
I’m not sure what the link is, but our warmist at large Dick Smith founded Australian Geographic, akin to National Geopgraphic. After the Dick returned from a global helicopter flight recently, he reported that it was enough to persuade him that man was changing the climate. Nutty. I stopped buying the stupid man’s rag from that point.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_if_warming_is_so_dangerous_why_is_dick_smith_overhead
If the world suddenly stopped spinning, wouldn’t we all gain weight?
The funniest thing about this science fiction fantasy is NG totally ignores the centre of the Earth- the bulge of Earth is due its rotation. The liquid of the mantle will move towards a spherical arrangement and we will afflicted by the worst earthquakes ever. 9 and 10 magnitudes earthquakes will 99% of humans and most of the rest of life.
Michael
The 26 mile spherical deviation of the planet may be due to differential rotation,a common feature of all rotating celestial objects with exposed viscous compositions with the Earth’s fair thin and fractured crust disguising this common feature.
Venus has very little rotation,no spherical deviation and no geological activity beyond volcanic while the Earth has a 26 mile deviation,a very active surface crust due to an uneven rotational gradient between equatorial and polar latitudes.All it needs are researchers who can work with a maximum equatorial speed of 1037.5 miles per hour in order to move the topic forward where planetary shape,evolutionary geology and possibly geomagnetism combine using a common differential rotation mechanism that is already observed on other planets.
Of course,making planetary comparisons between Venus and Earth requires only good interpretative skills leaving modeling a distant 3rd factor and then only to make it understandable to a wider audience – likewise climate.
tadchem says:
December 3, 2012 at 8:17 am
“The end point is reached when the moon and earth become tidally ‘locked’ so that the earth always keeps one face towards the moon.”
The Earth’s rotation period has a lot of slowing down to do to match a moving target, then, since the period of revolution of the Moon is decreasing as well. Without having put any numbers into it, I kind of doubt these periods would ever intersect. Most likely, I would think the Moon would eventually be peeled off into a separate orbit about the Sun before tidal locking could occur.
Similarly, the Earth becoming tidally locked to the Sun would require a rotation period of greater than a year. I would suspect that the Earth’s orbit would be well beyond Pluto by that time, and the Earth itself might become part of the Kuiper belt.
Hu McCulloch says:
December 3, 2012 at 12:45 pm
I was going to make that point, too.
Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7 says:
December 3, 2012 at 3:13 pm
“If the world suddenly stopped spinning, wouldn’t we all gain weight?”
Now, you’ve done it. The public has lost interest in the hysterical hyping of floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes from AGW. But, if you tell them it makes them gain weight, we will have lost the war over public opinion.
A question: It’s always seemed a bit odd to me that things should be in a state where the moon just *happens* to always keep the same side turned toward Earth. Does it *truly* do so even down to not changing in any ongoing fashion even by a few tenths or hundredths of a degree per year? Has this always been the case? Is there a reason for it? Or is it something that just happens to be that way at the moment and will no longer be true just 50 or 100,000 years from now?
😕
MJM
P.S. Bart… LOL! I think you’re right about the pub.opinion!
The idea of a spinning moon is unbridled insanity,again,the idea of a spinning moon is insane and the only person ever to propose such an aberration was Newton about two paragraphs after he has Venus turning once in 23 hours and the Earth to stellar circumpolar motion in 24 hours
http://books.google.ie/books?id=gB2-Hqdx_LUC&pg=PA579&dq=newton+moon+rotates&hl=en&ei=SQJ5TJP1FYTKswadoL2yDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false
For goodness sake,walk around an object with an outstretched arm pointing at the object and that corresponds to the lunar orbital behavior and why we see the same side always.Introducing a worthless spinning moon into this observation to satisfy libration is similar to introducing inappropriate inputs into climate in order to satisfy a conclusion ,perhaps it would not matter to a mathematical modeler but physical considerations are absolutely crucial for an astronomer working at the juncture between planetary dynamics and terrestrial effects –
“They are just like someone including in a picture hands, feet, head, and other limbs from
different places, well painted indeed, but not modeled from the same body, and not in the least matching each other, so that a monster would be produced from them rather than a man. Thus in the process of their demonstrations, which they call their system, they are found either to have missed out something essential, or to have brought in something inappropriate and wholly irrelevant, which would not have happened to them if they had followed proper principles. For if the hypotheses which they assumed had not been fallacies, everything which follows from them could be independently verified.” De revolutionibus, 1543 Copernicus
Probably the most dismal feature in all this is not the technical aspects where the planet does turn once to the central Sun as a component of its orbital motion while the moon does not turn in its monthly lunar orbital circuit of the Earth,the most dismal part is that we can send an astronaut to the moon who can always keep the Earth in view because the moon doesn’t spin but the theorists refuse to accept it.How much more will they refuse to accept the necessary modifications needed to define climate but then again,I have seen so little interest at the juncture where planetary dynamics and terrestrial climate meet.
michaeljmcfadden says:
December 3, 2012 at 9:03 pm
“…where the moon just *happens* to always keep the same side…”
It’s no accident. See here.
Tidal locking! Yes! LOL! Something I had known about long long ago in a mind far far away…
Many thanks for the tip and the reference Bart! Exactly what I needed!
🙂
MJM
Bart says:
December 3, 2012 at 8:35 pm
Hi Bart. You are correct. The Earth and Moon will never be tidally locked. I did this calculation for myself some years ago, as I believe there is a great benefit in seeing things with your own eyes. The way to do it is simple. There are equations for energy stored in the rotation of the two bodies and in the potential energy of the moon’s orbit (the ‘higher’ it is above the earth, the more PE it has). This total energy can decrease because energy lost in the tides turns into heat. However, there is another set of equations for the total angular momentum of the earth-moon system, and the angular momentum is fixed, except for minor leakages from interactions with other bodies, which we can ignore.
So if we change something (rotational energy of earth due to tides), what must happen to keep the angular momentum constant? It turns out that if the earth loses X energy to heat, it must also lose another X energy pushing the moon into a higher orbit. The earth being so much larger than the moon, it can push the moon all the way to infinity without being tidally locked. Using figures I found on the internet for stuff like the moment of inertia of the planet, etc., I calculated that this would happen when the day was about 55 hours long.
So what about the absurd video? Somehow the earth stops spinning due to some completely non-physical process that doesn’t exist. And they “calculate” what would “happen”?? They tell us that the various layers of the planet would slow at different speeds. How do they know this when the planet is being slowed down by, let’s be blunt about it – magic? Why shouldn’t their magic slow all the layers at the same rate – no actual existing physical process can do it, so we ARE talking about magic after all.
I watched the stupid rubbish (yeah, I know, I would have got more reality out of watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and the final point was a SINGLE mention in the entire piece that it was fictional: “It will never happen like this, but still it reveals the delicate balance that keeps our planet alive.” I think documentary channels owe a greater duty of care to lay audiences than that. Well Nat Geo, answer me this: How do you reveal a “delicate balance” by postulating a fictional process billions of times greater than any natural process occurring to our planet? Heck, I could simply postulate that Maxwell demons set the planet on fire and burn us all to crisps. In fact you only reveal delicate balances by considering the effects of realistic influences, not by making up extreme fantasy (not even science) fiction.
PS to michaeljmcfadden: the moon’s angle does rock around a bit – in fact we get to see somewhat more than 50% of it at one time or another.
“bathed in deadly solar radiation”
We like to call that day. It happens every 24 hours presently.
Bart says:
December 3, 2012 at 8:35 pm
Hopefully, my sloppy terminology was too obvious as to cause confusion. The periods of revolution are, of course, increasing. It is the rates of rotation and revolution which are slowing and decreasing.
I remember in my Physics I class, having to calculate how much longer the day would be, if the entire Royal Navy lined up on the equator, and all setoff (in the mid Pacific), for the Galapagos, at flank speed.
So if one were to grab hold of say the top one metre of the earth surface, along the Greenwich meridian, and hold it stationary with an irresistable force, and peel it off like an onion, and dump it all into space, How many layers of onion would you peel off, before the rest reached zero angular velocity; and how long would that take ??
Ron House says:
December 3, 2012 at 10:03 pm
“…it must also lose another X energy pushing the moon into a higher orbit…”
Not sure why that would be, as the heat is free to go wander the universe. But, for now, I’ll take your word for it that, that’s just how the math works out.
“I calculated that this would happen when the day was about 55 hours long.”
Thanks for sharing your result. In the future, I will tell people, I’m not sure what the limit is, but others have calculated it to be about 55 hours 😉
Hi Bart,
“…it must also lose another X energy pushing the moon into a higher orbit…”
This is because of the need to conserve angular momentum, which cannot be created or destroyed, unlike energy, which can be converted into heat. If you deduct some energy from the energy equations, you disturb the angular momentum, and you must put some part of the remaining energy into the moon’s orbital energy to keep angular momentum constant. 55 hours though is just a rough figure, but I like it because I calculated it myself. I am sure a more accurate value could be found with a web search. The key point is that the earth’s rotation can never be stopped by tidal forces, nor can it even be locked to the moon.
“bathed in deadly solar radiation”
Of which, of course, “there is no safe level.” Something I have written widely about in my other excursions. : Do the WUWT archives have any in-depth discussions of the whole ozone layer holes caused by freon from deodorant sprays question? That was always something I’ve accepted without much questioning since it was first mooted back in the days before I became as skeptical of motivations as I am nowadays. The process picture of individual molecules repeatedly destroying millions of others in succession seemed convincing. Is the “ozone threat” from freon still widely accepted? Or has that too been highly criticized?
😕
MJM
The truly awful cult of the spinning moon is instructive in the same way the issue surrounding climate is instructive ,at least in how this dismal situation will play out – as long as those proposing outrageous ideas own the education system,the conclusion will stick around indefinitely no matter what arguments are brought front and center.So ingrained is the idea that the moon also spins as it orbits the Earth that people are no longer capable of interpreting the observation that it doesn’t spin,even when they can look out their window at the moon and affirm that it does not.
Like this horrible era where the studies between astronomy and terrestrial effects mesh,the adherent to the spinning moon back in the mid 19th century never saw a conclusive disproof because they simply could not and this is over what is perhaps the simplest astronomical interpretation of them all –
http://books.google.ie/books?id=MfU3AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA27&dq=moon+does+not+rotate&hl=en&ei=Ywt5TPu7DJDGswbJ58SyDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CFgQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
He called himself a ‘victim’ of the rotating moon controversy but that is not the point,a century and a half later the awful idea is so fixed in culture that even though it is obviously ridiculous in the space age,people still imagine it can be discussed in a rational way.
No wonder the children of the world are becoming retarded if this is the kinda BS they’re getting exposed to. They were once an asset to the future. But if they follow this pattern of thought…I guess they’re not. I don’t doubt that some school in some country will show this to a science class. I know it’s too early to talk about schooling my one year old, but I’m seriously considering home schooling. That way he will be exposed to real science and not this tripe.
Surely human emissions of C02 are responsible for this….I mean it’s responsible for everything else, why should the moon have anything to do with it?