With much fanfare from the faithful (a grand total of 15 comments as of this writing), SkepticalScience recently released their 4-Hiroshima-Bombs-per-second widget. Their claimed intent is to “raise the awareness of global warming”.
Nonsense.
Their intent is to scare people—children and adults—into believing that something must be done about global warming. It’s nothing but propaganda—plain and simple. It’s based on estimates of the radiative imbalance caused by human-induced global warming.
Without thought—nothing new there—SkepticalScience has now opened the door for people to illustrate (1) the diminutive size of the radiative imbalance in relation to the amount of sunlight and infrared radiation that warms the planet every day, and (2) the massive uncertainties behind the imbalance.
So that’s the foundation for the first of a series of YouTube videos titled “Comments on Human-Induced Global Warming”. Episode 1 is “The Hiroshima Bomb Metric”.
SkepticalScience has used spambots in the past. I wonder whether they’ll use them again for this offensive widget. So, if you see links to that widget around the blogosphere, please feel free to leave a link to this video:
As you’ll note, the video is about 6 minutes long. My goal is to limit the lengths of all of the videos in this series to 5 to 6 minutes.
The paper referenced in the video is Stephens et al. (2012) An update on Earth’s energy balance in light of the latest global observations.
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An early Happy Thanksgiving to all those celebrating tomorrow.
what a silly metric. [snip]
It is always useful to remember that these morally reprehensible SkepticalScience “children” are part of the public face of AGW climate science today. To all you practicing climate scientists – are you going to put up with this? When do you all say “enough is enough”?
Oh-oh, the Skepkidz are gonna throw a tant when they see this video.
Sorry Bob, but you just don’t sound scarey enough to get the attention of some people.
How many deaths from cold weather is the supposed 0.6 W/M^2 preventing? I suspect quite a lot.
Thanks Bob.
The sunlight at the TOA is 1370W/m2 which SkS spread over the whole planet. Reality dictates that the insolation warms one hemisphere and the revolving earth carries this round to the night side, yep, reality has a night time and day time. aking out the atmospheric losses the surface insolation is, in the zenith position, ~1000W/m2 which can be measured thus confirming reality. The planet radiates heat to space from both day and night sides which is 250/m2, conforming to the 1st law of thermodynamics as 4×250= 1000.
But that 250W/m2 does not come from the surface, as assumed, because heat is transported aloft by convection not radiation. The height that the alarmist’s claim is at the surface is at 5-6Km above the surface, ie the cloud tops.
The energy budget graphic in AR4, by K&T is total rubbish, not only is it not reality based it violates 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics so cannot work.
If 0.6 watts/sq meter = 4 Hiroshima bombs per second, the uncertainty of +-17 W/m^2 would be on the order of 100 H-bombs per second. Could we ask SkS to add the uncertainty to their widget?
Unfortunately the world has been down this pathway before, just a different ideology.
We are condemned since we have not learned from history.
Ironically, it will be the kids that suffer the most.
The energy imbalance is 0.6w/m^2 +- 17w/m^2. Give the size of the error bars, it is more likely the imbalance is 0.0w/m^2. Occam would certainly agree.
Funny how the energy budget is all in whole numbers, except for downward LWR. That has 0.6w/m^2 tacked on the end to create the imbalance. It is a manufactured value. Created by humans. Human created global warming indeed.
As mentioned many times on this site by myself and others, the warmistocracy are getting desperate. This is one more indicator.
My father’s website (Dr. Tim Ball) has been hacked and many of the links replaced with links to articles on tobacco and such. This is so cowardly, yet is to be expected as the vitriol is ramped up. The alarmosphere is painting itself into a corner and they have to resort to subterfuge.
Dr Tisdale, Happy early Thanksgiving to you as well.
I viewed the video and would like too make a suggestion. Since the Skeptical Science boys are trying to scare people with the ‘Hiroshima Bomb’ metric, you might put the total radiation reaching the surface into that metric in order too emphasize just how silly the metric is. I’d also suggest you spend a bit more time explaining the significance of the uncertainty range, perhaps giving an American football score as a comparative, i.e., an uncertainty of +- 17 to a .6 figure is like reporting that the points scored by a team in football game was 6 +- 170 or the points scored could have been -164 to +176. That shows just how meaningless the .6 figure is.
“To all you practicing climate scientists – are you going to put up with this? When do you all say “enough is enough”?”
You can use a very simple syllogism to cut to the heart of things, based on your observation/question.
No practicing scientist with integrity would put up with this kind of mindless propaganda, or welcome this as something that advanced his argument.
No practicing climate scientist has been heard to utter a peep of disapproval. (observation)
Therefore, there are no practicing climate scientists today who have even a shred of either personal or professional integrity.
But then Peter Gleick, supposedly the most “ethical” of them all, already proved that, didn’t he?
.
Minor quibble: 0.11% is not “one tenth of one percent”. It’s “one ninth of one percent”.
With error of +/- 17 W/m^2, it would seem that an honest scientist would conclude “The imbalance, if any, cannot be accurately measured.”
Numbers are brilliant. The fact that 0.6w/m^2 +- 17w/m^2 has somehow made it somewhere, as a science statistics in climate science is amazing. Perhaps we ought to start paying People $2000 a month $+-100 depending on how we felt, and see how far that sort of accuracy would get those of us whom work in payroll and financial systems.
Actually that’s a genius idea. If you ask any climate scientists how sure they are on measuring the global temperature of the earth, ask them what the error bars. Then ask them if would be ok if that error could be applied to their wage slip every month. So some months they might get paid $1,800, others $2,200 a month…..
Just depends what the system feels like.
I find that metric to be insulting. Carrying it on your device demonstrates you have a lack of scientific fundamental understanding, not even at the basic high school level. I wonder what high school science teachers think about the Hiroshima metric?
Excellent post, Bob. I liked the video. The alarmists have to keep up the skeer or they would fade into the mists (of no funding?). The really surprising things is that these expert scientists shamelessly claim great significance of numbers that are absolutely swamped by the uncertainties.
Can I ask a question please? (No that’s not it!) What is a Climate Scientist when he & or she are at home? Last I read, there were some 80 branches of science that went into studying climate. Let’s assume that a student has to do a Masters/PhD, lasting 4 years. Let’s be generous & assume that there is an overlap in studies of say 3½ years (unlikely, 95% confidence level – well if the IPCC can do it then so can I). That leaves 80 subjects x ½ years of study = 40 years at least of study before somebody can call themselves a Climate Scientist! No? 😉 Perhaps it’s just me then.
Like many others, I suppose, I doubt that we can measure the actual energy flows with the degree of accuracy implied by the 0.6 figure. However, if we take the warming over a long period, such as the 20th century, assume that it’s all due to an energy imbalance, and convert it to watts/m^2, how close is the result to SkS’s bombs-per-second figure?
I’m sorry Anthony. I’ve read much about this ridiculous metric and really want realists to succeed in defeating the lies beneath it’s scary cloak. However, I gave up on the video because the voice-over was so amateur and of such a depressing tone [sigh].
For a start, it seemed to me that the narrator had not rehearsed the script too well, stumbling at critical moments and so changing the emphasis (say) of what he was trying to get across. It would have helped if you’d had auditions for the voice-over. Remember, it needs to be slicker than Gore (which, I guess, sounds like a measure of some kind of slimy viscosity: sorry.)
Well done, Bob Tisdale. Well done!
I have a far more important question from the nose bleed seats on this topic. I was a teenager when all phones were black and heavy. At our school we were mesmerized by a desk sized calculator. I know what a Commadore 64 is. I knew what an Apple computer was BEFORE they were called a Mac. I cut my science teeth on a Wang computer (a Portland-based computer company) and cleared chads from data punch cards before I stuck them in the machine. Floppy disks were indeed floppy. So what the hell is a “widget”????
What about the energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere? In the same article, see the top part of the figure that you use? What was that you said about “Failing to Tell Their Faithful Followers”?
> Bloke down the pub says:
> November 27, 2013 at 6:33 am
> Sorry Bob, but you just don’t sound scarey enough to get the attention of some people.
He sounds like Santa Claus to me.
Thank you, Bob
This whole business is upside down.
The Climate System is obviously so noisy they’re trying to find a cricket in a working factory an acre in size (I loved Bob’s mulling over the .6)
It reminds me when I realized that the human “normal” temperature of 98.6
(sounds so precise) is actually just what you get translating F from 37 C
(37 doesn’t sound so precise, does it?)
S H Ice extent has now had a 2 year positive ice cover anomaly dating to November 24 2011. Since 1979 there has never been a year without a negative anomaly until now.
The second link is the data.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/timeseries.south.anom.1979-2008