More Greenwashing

This comic is a lie.

As my housemate Sean points out (see image to right), my physical intuition is all wrong. If you stopped the Earth spinning and gave all it's angular momentum instantaneously to the moon, it would only impart about 1/2 the energy needed to eject the moon from Earth orbit.

This does mean that the danger from lengthening Earth days is far more severe than I first suspected. An extra hour a day is relaxing, an extra thousand hours a day . . . bad scene.

Take home assignment. If we were determined to eject the moon, we could run tidal pumps instead of generators, causing the Earth eventually to spin backwards, and the moon to attain escape velocity. We'd have to spin the Earth pretty fast though. The assigned question is - would it be fast enough to fling hapless Polynesian islanders into the sky via centrifugal force? (This is NOT as straightforward a question as it sounds. Remember that it's momentum not energy that's being conserved here...)