Slowing The Rotation Of The Earth

Are you getting tired of reading about and worrying about global warming? Not a problem, let me introduce the next environmental issue to worry about. Civilization has got to be slowing the rotation of the earth.

When glaciers in the arctic melt into liquid water because of global warming, the water spreads out southward toward the equator. Thus, the melting of arctic ice sheets is not only raising sea level, it is also redistributing the earth's mass toward the equator.

Now, consider that the earth is rotating once a day. When a mass of water moves from the arctic to the equator, it must move in a wider circle each time the earth rotates. This means simply that a mass or object at the equator must move further each day to rotate with the earth than it would if it was at a higher latitude.

If the earth's mass was rearranged so that more matter had to move further with each rotation, it would violate the laws of physics for the earth to keep rotating at the same speed. So, when a sheet of ice in the arctic melts and the water flows toward the equator, it is necessary that the earth's rotation slows down slightly to compensate and avoid violating the laws of motion.

The fact that melting glaciers will be slowing the earth's rotation is not my idea, there is already discussion going on about it.

The purpose of this posting is that I would like to add to it. I have come to realize that modern civilization in general, and not just global warming, must be slowing the rotation of the earth.

Whenever an object or a quantity of matter on earth is relocated so that it must move in a wider circle during the rotation of the earth, the earth's rotation must necessarily slow down a little bit to compensate in order to avoid violating the laws of physics. This happens whenever something moves from a higher latitude closer to the equator. It also happens whenever anything moves from a lower to a higher altitude on earth because this means that it will have to move through a wider circle during rotation.

When you roll a stone up a hill, the earth's rotation must slow down a little bit to compensate. Roll the stone back down the hill and it speeds back up. Roll the stone toward the equator and the rotation will slow, roll it toward a pole and it will speed up. This is the same principle used by a governor on a spinning axle to stop it from going too fast.

When a meteorite lands on earth, the rotation must slow a little bit because now there is more mass that must be rotated. When a spacecraft leaves the earth, the rotation speeds up for the opposite reason. When a ship sinks to the bottom of the sea, it must move over less distance when the earth rotates because it is closer to the earth's center and this will cause the rotation to speed up.

What about the building of a skyscraper? We are taking iron, stone and, other materials from under the ground and putting them up in the sky so that they now have to travel further when the earth rotates. Thus, every time we take materials from under the ground and put then either on the earth's surface or high above ground, we are contributing to the slowing of the rotation and lengthening the days. This includes all mining and quarrying.

One side of global warming that I have never heard referred to is that with all the carbon dioxide we are pumping into the air, the atmosphere is getting heavier. This is especially true since CO2 is heavier than the same volume of air. We are taking petroleum from deep underground and turning it into carbon dioxide high in the sky so that it has to travel in a wider circle when the earth rotates.

This slowing of the earth's rotation due to civilization is compounded by the fact that the human population of the earth is concentrated in the warmer areas of the planet close to the equator. This causes more slowing of the rotation than if the population were closer to the poles.

Of course, no matter what humans do we are not capable of slowing the planet's rotation by much. This inevitable slowing of the rotation will only be critical if there is some factor that is closely dependent on the speed of the rotation, in other words the length of a day.

The first thing that comes to mind is the earth's magnetic field. The earth is actually a magnet and the slower it rotates, the weaker the magnetic field will be. It is the earth's magnetic field that forms the two Van Allen Belts out in space that protect us from charged particles, particularly those from the sun. If the magnetic field weakened even a little bit, it would allow more charged particles to get through from space.