I have become curious about something. The core of the Earth is alleged to be molten. It's also a fact that the deeper you dig into the Earth, the warmer it gets. Where is that heat coming from... surely not from the Sun. What's the possibility that the Earth generates some of it's own heat from geothermal processes?
When I studied a bit of geology, we learned that the Earth is actually oblate, like a pumpkin. That shape apparently comes from the stress of the gravitational pull of the Sun the Moon. As the Earth moves in its orbit about the Sun, it is flexing due to those stresses, and cracks in the Earth heat up as they rub against one another.
There are estimates that the Earth's core may be in the vicinity of 5,000 to 6,000°C. That heat has to go somewhere. There is also a theory that the core may be turning at a differnt rate than the rest. There would be immense friction in that case, and immense heat generated.
Posted by: Gordon Robertson at August 17, 2008 08:18 AM
Louis Hissink.
Since you are asking about scientific education and training, perhaps you would condescend to respond to this
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/08/john_mashey_on_how_to_learn_ab.php
please.
I invite Graeme Bird, Cohenite, Gordon Robertson, Ian Mott, James Mayeau, other sundry Denialists, and indeed even Jennifer, and Michael Duffy, to contribute.
Your answers will be interesting indeed.
And if you don't believe that you need to respond, please be especially particular in explaining why you hold this stance.
In case anyone feels compelled to comment, the link to David Stove's essay on Velikovsky is published at this url - http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/davidstove.html
NT
Your silence indicates uyou have no scientific education or training.
Chris Crawford,
Your statement "Louis, you must like Velikovsky!" is a classic non-sequitur given it has to be based on my previous posts immediately above
I don't see how the theories of the plasma univerese have to do with Velikovsky since these theories were being formulated over 100 years ago by Kristian Birkeland, Irving Langmuire and their successors, Hannes Alfven and Anthony Peratt.
As for Velikovsky, my position is the same as philosopher David Stove's, published at this link http://www.kronia.com/library/journals/scimafia.txt
Louis, you must like Velikovsky!
As my blog is on the Index of Site, here is the summary:
Because the Earth is a small charged body moving in a large cell of plasma, explanations of all physical phenomena in, on, and near the Earth must take the electrical behavior of plasma into account.
Earth's atmosphere is an insulating medium separating the charge on the surface from the charge in the surrounding space plasma. A complex of "double layers" distributes the potential difference between the surface and space much like a series of capacitors. We detect the electrical field of the bottommost layer in the fair weather surface field of around 100 volts per meter.
This field beneath a thunderstorm may be 100 times stronger as the atmospheric dielectric is "shorted out" over many vertical kilometres by thunderclouds. As in a capacitor, when the insulating medium breaks down a discharge occurs between the electrodes. We can readily understand that lightning in a thunderstorm would be such a discharge. However there are other forms of discharge besides the arc mode of lightning--diffuse glow discharges, such as the sprites that occur above thunderstorms, and, especially, "dark" discharges. Although the latter may carry significant current, we are usually unaware of them because we can't see or otherwise sense them. But they may have visible secondary effects.
Close observation of laboratory arc discharges reveals that an electrical "wind" surrounds and often precedes the arc. The developing discharge sweeps the surrounding air along with the charge carriers of the current. This wind appears as inflows and updrafts as well as outflows and downdrafts. It can lift dust particles and erode surfaces. By analogy, we must then question the accepted explanation of thunderstorms as being caused solely by convection of hot air: The storms may instead be the visible secondary effects of an invisible dielectric breakdown in the Earth's atmosphere.
The up- and down-drafts, the in- and out-flows, would be atmospheric responses to "dark discharge" electrical currents more than to temperature differences. Furthermore, the suspension of particles--charged dust and polar molecules (water)--would be largely a result of electrostatic forces sweeping both particles and air along in the electrical field of the discharge. This would explain the spherical shape of hailstones, for example, which do not show the distortion that would be expected if they were formed by being blown upward by strong wind friction forces.
This leads to the more general idea that all weather may be caused, or at least influenced, by the electrical interactions between Earth and the surrounding plasma. Because this larger possibility has never been considered, critical tests have not been devised that would distinguish between the competing explanations. But there are tests that cast doubt on the prevailing theory.
Convection is well understood. The theory of gas behaviour in a convecting system is developed with great exactitude. But the weather forecasts derived from convection theory are more than mere applications of theory: They are also tests of that theory, and a wrong forecast is a falsification of the theory. The significant fraction of erroneous forecasts by weathermen is an indication that the theory is missing something. The Electric Universe suggests that what's missing is a consideration of the electrical properties of plasma.
To state the obvious, the earth's base temperature is what it is without a sun. Add the sun and the diurnal variation oscillates around the base period.
In addition none of you include the enormous amount of electrical energy entering the earth as measured by satellites (See THEMIS mission data).
Since the earth is therefore part of a large solar electrical circuit, including the sun, the planets and the galaxy, as described in the physics of the Plasma Universe by A. J. Peratt, and others, I find it amusing that the largest force in the universe, 10^39 times greater than gravity, it totally excluded from any theory of geophysics.
My postion on climate is identical to that of physicist Wallance Thornhill, and summarised http://geoplasma.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!C00F2616F39D0B2B!315.entry
NT
Just what scientific education have you? Just curious.
Internally generated heat would be important in escaping glacial periods. I think this can be proven pretty easily.
" and so is insignificant as a contributor to global temperatures."
Right now perhaps. And then again not all joules are equal. It matters where you put the element in the kettle. Joules moving all the way from bottom to top are doing double duty. You place your central heating in the basement.
But you have not acknowledged the point about earths history. Which is particularly glaring since your alarmist models cannot account for earths history.