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"Scientific American" is throwing some serious shade at Louie Gomert
Last edited Fri Jun 18, 2021, 04:36 PM - Edit history (2)
A Modest Proposal: Let’s Change Earth’s Orbit
What’s the worst that could happen?
By Maddie Bender on June 18, 2021
During a congressional hearing last week, Republican Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas asked a U.S. Forest Service official if her organization or the Bureau of Land Management could change the orbit of the moon or Earth to reverse the effects of human-caused climate change. That seems like a perfectly reasonable idea, doesn’t it? Let’s do it.
First, we must take stock of what we have—the givens in what will be our equation for moving Earth. Our planet orbits the sun at an average distance of 149.6 million kilometers, and it soaks up enough sunlight to have an average temperature of about 15 degrees Celsius. The latter figure is, however, an increase of slightly more than one degree C from Earth’s typical temperature across the past century. In short, this world is running a low-grade fever. According to current consensus estimates, that fever is likely to get much worse if left unchecked, raising Earth’s average temperature by another one degree C by the 2060s. Such an increase would render some presently people-packed parts of the planet effectively uninhabitable and threaten the sustainability of global civilization as we know it.
{snip}
To make Earth cooler, we need to decrease a variable on the right side of the equation: We can’t easily lower the sun’s temperature or radius—and clearly meaningful reductions to our heat-trapping, albedo-shifting greenhouse gas emissions are out of the question. So let’s take Representative Gohmert’s advice and simply increase D, the distance to the sun. All we have to do is find a way to move all 5.972 septillion kilograms of Earth’s mass farther away from our star. Easy, right?
By Scharringhausen’s calculations, a three-degree-C decrease in temperature to counteract current and near-future anthropogenic warming would require us to move our planet an additional three million kilometers from the sun. Using another back-of-the-envelope calculation, Scharringhausen finds that 5 x 10³¹ joules could push all 5,972,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms of Earth’s mass three million kilometers out from its present orbit. These numbers present challenges for Representative Gohmert’s plan because annual global electricity production is around 10¹⁹ joules, or 0.0000000000002 percent of what we’d need to move the globe. That’s also assuming we can apply all that energy to Earth at 100 percent efficiency, which, thanks to the laws of thermodynamics, is physically impossible.
{more}
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-modest-proposal-lets-change-earths-orbit/
What’s the worst that could happen?
By Maddie Bender on June 18, 2021
During a congressional hearing last week, Republican Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas asked a U.S. Forest Service official if her organization or the Bureau of Land Management could change the orbit of the moon or Earth to reverse the effects of human-caused climate change. That seems like a perfectly reasonable idea, doesn’t it? Let’s do it.
First, we must take stock of what we have—the givens in what will be our equation for moving Earth. Our planet orbits the sun at an average distance of 149.6 million kilometers, and it soaks up enough sunlight to have an average temperature of about 15 degrees Celsius. The latter figure is, however, an increase of slightly more than one degree C from Earth’s typical temperature across the past century. In short, this world is running a low-grade fever. According to current consensus estimates, that fever is likely to get much worse if left unchecked, raising Earth’s average temperature by another one degree C by the 2060s. Such an increase would render some presently people-packed parts of the planet effectively uninhabitable and threaten the sustainability of global civilization as we know it.
{snip}
To make Earth cooler, we need to decrease a variable on the right side of the equation: We can’t easily lower the sun’s temperature or radius—and clearly meaningful reductions to our heat-trapping, albedo-shifting greenhouse gas emissions are out of the question. So let’s take Representative Gohmert’s advice and simply increase D, the distance to the sun. All we have to do is find a way to move all 5.972 septillion kilograms of Earth’s mass farther away from our star. Easy, right?
By Scharringhausen’s calculations, a three-degree-C decrease in temperature to counteract current and near-future anthropogenic warming would require us to move our planet an additional three million kilometers from the sun. Using another back-of-the-envelope calculation, Scharringhausen finds that 5 x 10³¹ joules could push all 5,972,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms of Earth’s mass three million kilometers out from its present orbit. These numbers present challenges for Representative Gohmert’s plan because annual global electricity production is around 10¹⁹ joules, or 0.0000000000002 percent of what we’d need to move the globe. That’s also assuming we can apply all that energy to Earth at 100 percent efficiency, which, thanks to the laws of thermodynamics, is physically impossible.
{more}
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-modest-proposal-lets-change-earths-orbit/
38 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
The superscript didn't copy-and-paste. Luckily, I have skills... 
After all, he's a graduate of Baylor Law. I'm sure he already had these calculations penciled out on his desk beforehand. He just wanted to see if if the nice lady from the Forest Service knew.
She can shoot the moon until it changes the orbit
