Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
So I ran across this headline and subhead out on the interwebz:
“China Disrupts Earth’s Rotation”: NASA Confirms Massive Project Is Slowing the Planet With Unprecedented Global Consequences
In a groundbreaking revelation, NASA confirms that China’s monumental Three Gorges Dam project is subtly altering Earth’s rotation, raising global environmental concerns.
Intrigued, I read on … and on … and on … and finally down near the end, I find that the NASA geniuses have estimated that the Three Gorges Dam will increase the length of a day by … wait for it … 0.06 microseconds.
And how big is that?
Well, it will increase the day length by a whopping 0.00000000007% …
And bizarrely, this hot-off-the-presses news is two decades old. The source of this claim is a 2005 NASA JPL paper that’s here.
In addition, the smallest directly observed change in Earth’s day length (LOD) is 0.001 seconds (1 millisecond), measured on August 2, 2001, when Earth’s rotation briefly accelerated. This measurement was made using space geodetic techniques, including Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) and Global Positioning System (GPS) data. Changes smaller than that can’t be measured with current technology.
So this claim about the Three Gorges Dam would have to be sixteen THOUSAND times larger to be even measurable …
I don’t know which is more aggravating—the hype that the media puts on these trivial issues, the fact that this is from a 2005 paper, the fact that the claim is sixteen thousand times too small to measure, or the fact that there are highly educated NASA scientists wasting their time on this nonsense.
People are screaming about how the proposed budget cuts to NASA are going to cripple US science … but given the fact that NASA megabrains have time to jerk around making calculations and claims about things that are far too small to even measure tells me that there’s plenty of NASA fat to cut.
But that’s not all the terrifying news for today. We also have the following story about how bad things are. Here’s the headline and subhead:
Scientists may have figured out why a potent greenhouse gas is rising. The answer is scary.
Methane emissions spiked starting in 2020. Scientists say they have found the culprit.
I gotta say, the demand for scared scientists must be at an all-time high. And just what does this ultra-terrifying methane “spike” look like out here in the real world? To determine that, I got the data about the changes in atmospheric methane and CO2, and converted them to calculated changes in downwelling radiation using the IPCC formulas for the conversions. Here’s a graph showing the “scary spike”.
Pretty scary, all right.
My explanation for all of this is that the climate alarmists feel the ground shifting under their feet as taxpayer dollars dry up, and they are running as fast as they can to keep the population terrified so their grift can continue.
Sigh … at least it seems like we’re winning the battle to end this expensive, suicidal con job that’s already cost us hundreds of billions of dollars.
My best regards to all, keep up the good fight
w.
PS—As is my habit, I ask that when you comment, you quote the exact words you are referring to. Prevents endless misunderstandings.
PPS—I’m fed up with the endless insults from various folks. I’m going to start snipping them out of comments. If you think that calling names is how adults discuss contentious issues, this isn’t the place for you.
“I don’t know which is more aggravating—the hype that the media puts on these trivial issues, the fact that this is from a 2005 paper, the fact that the claim is sixteen thousand times too small to measure, or the fact that there are highly educated NASA scientists wasting their time on this nonsense.”
In fairness to the scientists involved their paper was about the effect of earthquakes on the Earth’s rotation and the reference to the Three Gorges Dam was to give a real world illustration of how much mass had been moved (~40x greater than the dam illustration).
Putting a media hype on it 20 years afterwards is definitely aggravating!
Willis, you wrote –
By “expensive con job”, what are you referring to? Maybe you could be a little clearer?
No need to panic, folks.
Clocks need to be adjusted by whole seconds (millions of micro-seconds) from time to time, due to natural variations of the Earth’s rotational period.
From nist.gov –
I’m surprised that NASA wasn’t aware of this.
I’m not.
It cannot be said enough:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and, hence, clamoring to be lead to safety) with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of the imaginary.”
H. L. Mencken
When/if the Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet is dammed there might be as much as 0.0000000001% change. Still too small to measure but REALLY frightening.
https://www.abc.net.au/asia/china-plans-to-build-world-largest-dam-india-bangladesh-impact/105223710
Nature has us beat
The devastating earthquake that struck the Indian Ocean on 26 December (2004) was so powerful that it has accelerated the Earth’s rotation, geophysicists have declared. They estimate that the shockwave shortened the period of our planet’s rotation by some three microseconds.
@willis
The Moon’s gradual retreat from the Earth, about 38 mm per year. This directly affects the planet’s rotation. This process, known as tidal friction, causes Earth’s rotation to decelerate slowly over time.
This friction steals energy from Earth’s rotation and transfers it to the Moon, nudging it farther away while simultaneously slowing Earth’s spin.
As a result, our days are getting longer by roughly 1.7 milliseconds per century (0.000017 milliseconds per year or 0.017 microseconds per year).
I’ll wager this hasn’t been factored into NASA’s calculations.
This is really exciting! To slow the Earth one needs more mass with zero potential or kinetic energy added to it. The water in this dam may come from the atmosphere, but I doubt it will make much difference. In any case, the Earth is slowing slightly all the time, which we may be able to measure, for other reasons. This is a 20 year old nonsense story!
I have a question that is related but off topic: If the purported slowing down of earth’s rotation is due to a gravitational bump by filling the 3 Gorges Dam, and things like Greenland Ice Mass are measured with gravitational differentials or anomalies via satellite, is it possible that moving magma under the crust is influencing these ice mass measurements by subtle changes in the mass under Greenland, etc? (in other words if a slightly higher density magma moves under Greenland would this not affect the gravimetric measurements irrespective of ice mass gain or loss?)
Magma is hot, why would it have a higher density? Would a higher density magma rather sink than move under Greenland?
I’m still waiting for the claim that all of the wind turbines are slowing the rotation of the Earth
Depends on the direction of the wind. Could be accelerating the rotation.
What was the name of that esteemed gentleman who managed to pull himself out of a swamp by the hair, again? :]
Let the solution be of the same nature as the problem: if all fish-mouthed people in North and South Americas pull themselves upward by the hair at the exact same time on every Earth day…
Why not to add “highly educated members of the organizations increasingly resembling the Laputan academy are being paid for wasting their time on this nonsense, with taxes extorted out of the people and leaked out of the pockets of everyone who owns a dollar (which is what emission is)”…
Obligatory xkcd reference, also from 20 years ago: https://xkcd.com/162/
I reset my clocks in 2005 when I first read that.
/humor
I have been waiting 20 years for the inevitable claxon going off:
“Scientist say the earth warming is fast reaching a tipping point when the planet will cease to rotate, becoming the new Mercury.
“As the Earth warms, due to fossil fuels, the glaciers and ice caps melt will accelerate raising the sea level. The rising sea levels, like we see in the China Three Gorges Dam is slowing the planet’s rotation like the extended arms of figure skater. Very soon enough ice will melt to raise the ocean levels to the tipping point that halts earth’s rotation.”
I never saw it. The climate alarmists missed an great opportunity 20 years ago to halt oil and coal and natural gas.
Fortunately.
Funny. The 2011 Japan earthquake accelerated the rotation by an “alarming” 1.8 microseconds.
This more than cancelled the Three Gorges Dam effect (0.06 microseconds).
Due to link on here I did a deeper dive than I ever had before on the Missoula floods and Glacial Lake Missoula. Three Gorges Dam is a backyard pond compared to those essentially inland seas formed by ice dams. I could be wrong… but the world didn’t end from rotational changes back then doubt it’s going to end now or even be noticeable. Unless the dam fails as predicted, that will be noticeable.