4 ms·

It's completely wrong. He assumes energy will increase exponentially into the future to get to his wild claim that we could tidally lock to the moon in 1000 yea

• maxbond 2y ago
  Certainly if we grow exponentially for a further 1000 years we'll exceed the carrying capacity of this planet, however we derive our energy. I don't think that's a very interesting result. By "completely wrong" do you contend that using tidal energy doesn't decelerate the Earth's rotation?
  • pas 2y ago
    Can we even change viscosity meaningfully? (Coastlines already form natural "dams". All we would do is move the coastline inward a bit, so as the tide flows through it it spins turbines. The water gets moved the same. The energy is already dissipated at the coasts, it would happen at the dams. Total dissipated energy is the same this way. Okay, if we start putting 4 km tall dams in the middle of the ocean we might somehow meaningfully change the viscosity.) The thesis in the PDF seems to be that somehow we can push the brakes more. Maybe. (So if we let the Sun/Moon grab some water then use the Earth to get it moving again, then it necessarily slows down the rotation. But there's already a lot of energy in moving and compressing water itself, sure it's "uncompressible" compared to gases, but there's plenty of molecular stuff to move around where energy can go. There's some tidal heating too.) It's verbose, but in a bad way, and it's structured in a way that makes it hard to comprehend. (And the whole pro-fossil-fuel framing is just .. huh.)
• rswail 2y ago
  Imagine what a Dyson sphere is going to do to the lunar orbit around Earth.