Are loads of gases slinging us out of orbit?

Question

200 yrs. of industry have added loads of gases and debris in the atmosphere that must affect this moving object. Has this been addressed and by whom?

Answer 1

Wow. You have a lot of nerve, calling yourself "scientist", then asking a question like that.

Answer 2

Our orbit is fixed by the mass of the Sun and our mean distance from it.  It does not matter if Earth's mass is solid, liquid or gas.  In fact it would not matter (to our orbit) if we suddenly lost half our mass -- as long as we lose it symmetrically.

But the gas from industry contains matter that was already on this planet, and it remains in the atmosphere (the mass of the atmosphere counts as the mass of the planet).

Answer 3

The law of conservation states that you cant make or destroy matter, the gases that are going into the atmosphere are not being created, just released from the earth when coal, oil, ect. is burned.  There SHOULDNT be any effect at all.

Answer 4

It is not possible for such gasses to have any effect on Earth's orbit since they never escape out of the atmosphere to space. And we would know if Earth's orbit had been effected because organizations like the U.S. Naval Observatory are monitoring it all the time. This is necessary to set clocks, make GPS navigation work and in general make all kinds of navigation and time keeping accurate.

Answer 5

No.  Those gasses were already present in one form or another, thus there has been zero effect on the mass of the Earth.

Answer 6

I wouldn't think pollution would affect the Earth's orbit in any way.  We are not adding or removing any mass from the planet, just transforming resources that are in a solid state into a gaseous state.  The earth is the same mass now that it was long before the existence of humans.

Answer 7

No effect.  The gases were here in the first place - just in the ground.