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4 comments:
How does one get from global warming to "earth upside down?"
I'm reasonably confident in my understanding of physics that a slight increase in the earth's surface temperature (and all concomitant effects pertaining to climate, oceans and the like) cannot in any way result in the earth's rotation axis being flipped.
For reference, the approximate rotational kinetic energy of the earth is 3x10^29 J. That's a lotta energy...
For comparison, the total thermal energy added to the earth's atmosphere per degree increase is about 2x10^21 J, which is 10^8 times smaller.
::laughing uncontrollably at work::
So if the earth's surface temperature went up to, say, 150 million kelvin (about ten times the central temperature of the sun), and all of the 10^40-odd molecules in the earth's atmosphere all decided to abandon their random thermal motion and all move in the same direction, then yes, they could very well flip the earth's rotation axis.
This is no laughing matter.
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