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I do think about wind turbines slowing down earth’s rotation. I’ve not done any calculations but I’d guess even a gargantuan number of them would have no notice
by pxeger1 3y ago
I do think about wind turbines slowing down earth’s rotation. I’ve not done any calculations but I’d guess even a gargantuan number of them would have no noticeable effect.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> wind turbines slowing down earth’s rotation Curious to be proven wrong, but I’d imagine they’d have no net effect. The only thing I could imagine is a miniscule gyroscopic effect if the turbines were aligned, but that probably nets out through tectonic weirdness before altering Earth’s rotation. Maybe if the slower-moving air sinks on average and lowers the planet’s moment of inertia? (Though that would speed up the Earth’s rotation.)
- SoftTalker 3y agoTidal power generation, in theory, could. In reality, unlikely.
- qayxc 3y agoYou mean this [1]? Yeah, the author went through some extraordinary mental gymnastics (i.e. keeping exponential energy consumption growth steady over centuries) to get his calculations to line up. It's almost grotesque how our species manages to vastly underestimate its influence on our planet in some aspects while simultaneously overestimating it in others. [1] https://cs.stanford.edu/people/zjl/pdf/tide.pdf https://cs.stanford.edu/people/zjl/pdf/tide.pdf
- tbrownaw 3y agoThe only way to change the earth's rotation is to transfer some of its angular momentum to something that's not part of the earth. The atmosphere is part of the earth, so just interacting with it can't do anything.
- mcv 3y agoWith the same angular momentum the Earth's rotation still varies. Snowfall high in the mountains slows the rotation by a minuscule amount. Mountain glaciers melting speed it up slightly. But again, negligible amounts.
- dukeyukey 3y agoI can't imagine wind turbines come close to the drag effect of jungles, forests, cliffs, and buildings.