Another therory on warmer temps.. - Snowmobile Forum: Your #1 Snowmobile Forum

Dennismc · 08-12-2007, 05:22 PM

Ok I was thinking last night about the insane heat and lack of snow in general.

Global warming is either Everything or nothing, so we wont go there. What I was thinking, what about mass? As in the last 20 or more years we have been building bigger, heavier buildings, more and more roads (which are not light either) Heavier cars and more of them and people..

Now as I understand it, the earths rotational pull is set, doest change. Now as we get heavier on earth, people and things, wouldnt that cause the amount of energy needed to keep it turning at the same speed to increase? And with the enegry being finit, it would then cause it to slow down?

Could also explain the increase in large earthquakes, as the amount of mass sitting on the tectonic plates increases, the amount of force required to move then increases as well. When they do shift then they are releasing a large amount of energy due to the added force required...

thoughts...?

Ditch hopper · 08-12-2007, 05:45 PM

You know i don't know if ur theroy is right or wrong but kinda makes cense cause all anybody ever thinks about these days is how can we make it bigger ie. homes stuff as many 1600sqf homes in 2 acres of land as possible and we keep getting less and less snow and we keep building and building more idk seems to make cense to me anybody elese?

Formula_Canuk · 08-12-2007, 06:14 PM

The only "mass" we add is people. You gotta consider that everything we have was always here and came from here, so techinically all were doing is moving the mass around, not adding any. I find that we aren't getting less winter here, just the time we get it has seemed to have shifted.

PolarisINDY500 · 08-12-2007, 07:02 PM

in order to change the rotation of the earth, or how fast it moves counter clockwise, we'd need to create some force in the opposite direction, or in some direction to alter its current axis/speed. so when you think about it, the earth weighs something like 6E+24Kg.

there is only ONE man made object that has the potential to alter the rotation of the earth. and that is the three gorges damn in China. There will be so much water backed up it will cover villages in 300' of water. and, i think its estimated the resivior will cover 80K acres. they've evacuated millions of people from their native lands. they say it "could" only change the axis by thousanths of a degree, due to the mass of the backed up water. that being said, there is nothing on we have built that comes close to creating a point load in one spot.

materials used in buildings are "transferred" from one location to another. for example, lime stone for temporary roads are excavated from a pit to the construction site. the same mass still exists, however, it's only relocated. the same for concrete. materials from the earth are merely transferred to create this building material.

because people, in my opinion, hardly weight anything, in comparison to a sky scraper, i doubt we have any effect, mass wise on the earth. and if there was, china and/or india would be the first to notice.

techtonic movement is in a horizontal direction. one plate moves over, or under, another. this is due to new material being made under the crust of the earth. the only place for it to go is over or under. so, in my opinion, i dont think building have any effect, or create enough of a point load to create a significant effect on how they move. when you think about it, in an earth quake, the plates move inches and releases HUGE amounts of energy. id dont think there is any man made force that could change the amount of released energy from the plate movement. its going to happen, weather builidngs were there or not, and the energy will still be the same.

Dennismc · 08-12-2007, 07:23 PM

Ok good points, but now on moving material around, isnt there the posibility that in creating one material form another we can in throry add weight? (the whole is greater then the sum)

and for the plate issue, even though they are moving horz. which is true, the force in which it would take to move them could vary depending on the amount of weight on them. (consider towing as an example)

Considering there is always movment on most fault lines, just not reaching the surface, if the amount of force it took to move the plate changed, it could in theory then, take longer to actually Move, therby the longer it takes to release its energy the more it would build up..

Now I know this is all for the most part hogwash, but it does lead to some interesting conversation..

**smallengineguy** · 08-12-2007, 08:24 PM

Interesting, indeed. The warmup can also be caused by WHAT we build. Roads, buildings, etc all are dark colored, (tar, shingles) thus retaining/attracting more heat than a forested surface would.

PolarisINDY500 · 08-12-2007, 09:25 PM

first off, we need to clarify...mass and weight of objects are not directly related.

1) Mass is a measurement of the amount of matter something contains, while Weight is the measurement of the pull of gravity on an object.

2) Mass is measured by using a balance comparing a known amount of matter to an unknown amount of matter. Weight is measured on a scale.

3) The Mass of an object doesn't change when an object's location changes. Weight, on the otherhand does change with location.

honestly, dennis, i dont think we can make more "weight" from two different items. if you take 50 lbs of material "A" and 50 lbs of material "B" you have 100lbs of material "C" (A+B=C). so in theory you "created" a new material, but its overall weight is derived from two seperate items.

PolarisINDY500 · 08-12-2007, 10:08 PM

just thinking about the earthquake idea...

there are three types of plate boundaries i didnt mention; transform, divergent, and convergent. the type ive been referring to are convergent, where one slips under/over the other.

please bear with me for a second...

-Sears Tower = 440 Million Lbs, and covers roughly 1 city block.
-Figure 64 city blocks per sq mile
-LA area covers roughly 450 sq miles
-if the LA area was full of Sears Towers, it would weigh about 12.672 Trillion pounds.

Now,
-a 9.0 earthquake on the richter scale releases about 5.6 giga tons of energy
-1 giga ton is 1 billion metric tons
-1 metric ton equals 2204 lbs
-so a 9.0 earthquake releasaes 12.34576 Trillion pounds of energy.

so needless to say, these are both huge amounts of weight/engergy.

one thing to figure out, which i have not, is the coefficient of friciton at the fault line. this is the energy used to keep both plates "equal". when one plate slides over the other, the friction between the two changes. how much energy is needed to move a tectonic plate? i have no idea.

PolarisINDY500 · 08-12-2007, 10:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smallengineguy

Interesting, indeed. The warmup can also be caused by WHAT we build. Roads, buildings, etc all are dark colored, (tar, shingles) thus retaining/attracting more heat than a forested surface would.

one thing builders are doing now is switching to a "white" roof. where, insead of using black material for flat roofs, their using white. this helps reduce the amount of energy aborbed into the roof. in addition, it helps reduce the amount of energy used to heat/cool the building due to heat transferring into the buildng, or being absorbed.

**smallengineguy** · 08-13-2007, 07:15 AM

Thank you, Dr. Good explanations!

littledawg · 08-13-2007, 06:56 PM

great on indy500.the co i work for just did a hospital and they put a atrium {spelling might be wrong} on top of it and the cost was ouy of here.lets just say 3 or 4 of us could retire..

HuskerCat · 08-13-2007, 07:41 PM

PI 500, you've put way too much thought and effort into this.

It's good to exercise the mind until it snows and we forget how.

Snow Freak · 08-13-2007, 09:06 PM

Here is my theory.. The earth is just going through a phase.. I read somewhere that the same thing happened back in the 50's.. And then we got a lot of snow for a long time, and now its back in the phase of less snow again, but it will come back.

Formula_Canuk · 08-13-2007, 09:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snow Freak

Here is my theory.. The earth is just going through a phase.. I read somewhere that the same thing happened back in the 50's.. And then we got a lot of snow for a long time, and now its back in the phase of less snow again, but it will come back.

To take that even further, it has been proven that the earth goes through a natural cycle. Its my thoughts that there is no doubt that our climate is changing, but whether its due to man or how much of an effect man has is unknown, and a lot of this is just hype. But it sure would suck if I was wrong and in 10 years sleds were useless

PolarisINDY500 · 08-14-2007, 12:30 AM

getting back to the building aspect, many skyscrapers, or new buildlings have some requirement for a "green roof" what this means is, terraces, or balconies will have planters for trees and shrubs. this helps asthetically (sp), and it also serves as a way to help reduce the CO2 emissions because the trees/grass will synthisize it..

in addition, many buildings being built, on some level, are trying to become LEED certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CategoryID=19). for a builder, building a LEED certified project is somewhat difficult, however, LEED projects will be more and more common in the future.

PolarisINDY500 · 08-14-2007, 12:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HuskerCat

PI 500, you've put way too much thought and effort into this.

It's good to exercise the mind until it snows and we forget how.

well, it wasnt that much effort. i just needed the conversion factors. its a good way to relate what were talking about.

big pun · 08-14-2007, 11:56 AM

i agree with snowfreak. i think the earth just goes through phases. we don't have information on year to year weather charted out much earlier than the 30's. if we went back i think that we would see waves like this. i think that within a few years we'll see more snow. we just have to give it time. good points all around though. i deffinatly don't believe in global warming.

SledChick · 08-14-2007, 01:51 PM

It's an interesting theory. Now, I'm no scientist---DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER---and it's been a long time since college and HS science, but I don't think the theory generally pans out and this is why--conservation of mass. Everything on earth is made from something that already exists on earth (the possible exception being humans, but I'm not even sure that's excepted). So we're not creating new mass and adding wieght to the earth by building infrastructure, we're just moving it around. As in mining ore to make steel, then build buildings. It just goes from the ground up but has always been here.

You could wonder, maybe, if buildings & roads themselves hold enough heat to make an impact...

Formula_Canuk · 08-14-2007, 05:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by big pun

i agree with snowfreak. i think the earth just goes through phases. we don't have information on year to year weather charted out much earlier than the 30's. if we went back i think that we would see waves like this. i think that within a few years we'll see more snow. we just have to give it time. good points all around though. i deffinatly don't believe in global warming.

Back in high school, we watched a movie attempting to prove global warming was true. I can't remember how but scientists were able to figure out temp 1000's of years ago. It did show a natural cycle. Problem is the land is physically arranged differently then before (all the contients were once joined)

PolarisINDY500 · 08-14-2007, 07:13 PM

one thing to also consider is the snow melt water that empties into the great lakes. ive seen lake level charts that graph the water heights over the last so many years. its a goo way to correlate snow fall to lake levels.