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.
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?
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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
Any time now I expect them to say.
Since 46% of Americans do not believe in AGW they should be euthenised as they are just expelling CO2 and contributing to AGW at your expense.
unfortunately, 5-6 minutes will be too long for most people to get through.
@Pamela Gray
A widget within this context, is really a “web widget” with which code for the widget can be copied, and that code placed upon “your own website” and thus the widget will be displayed to those who visit your website. (btw, we must be around the same age, given your description of your journey through the tech world.) Take care.
Every once in a while I run across this amazing essay describing the traits of bad science.
That list includes things like barely discernable responses being given great importance, trends only being detectable by extreme statistical manipulation, data from differing sources recklessly spliced together.
The Hiroshima ploy is a rather entertaining way for the SkS gang to hide from the reality that their position contains nearly every aspect of bad science.
The irony that they pushed a blog claiming to describe the bad science of skeptics only makes this better.
My Organic Chemistry Instructor, Chris Russell, demonstrated that a 1/4 inch of rain falling on NY city released as much energy as the Hiroshima bomb. This of course leads me to the question “So what’s your point Scep Sci?”
You mean we could be sucking energy OUT of the system up to 96 atomic bombs per second and still be correct (as per the error bars)!
All that lost energy!. We need it back to keep out houses warm in this Northern Winter. 🙂
Find the 96 atomic bombs per second and use them productively, please.
Since all absorbed (versus reflected) radiation converts to heat, if the traditional (non supercomputer amplified) thin band (infrared) greenhouse effect adds heat in a way that results in more humidity that instead of acting as an additional greenhouse gas acts as broadband full spectrum radiation reflecting water vapor (clouds), then emissions might cool the planet, overall, or at least be moderated in warming effect.
-=NikFromNYC=-, Ph.D. in carbon chemistry (Columbia/Harvard)
A Big Thank You to George Washington, for making Thanksgiving a great day…
-To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us–and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/GW/gw004.html
Hmmm … don’t we need a “widget” too?
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Thanks Bob, nicely done.
jamesibbitson: “So some months they might get paid $1,800, others $2,200 a month….. ”
Right idea, wrong scale. Assume the average climate scientist make 60k per annum. Then if they were paid by the error bars their patron would pay them between 230k per annum, and -110k per annum. That is, some years the climatologist would be paying his employer almost twice what he expected to be paid by the employer.
Good career advice: Don’t accept wages with such an error bar.
Ha! And I misplaced the decimal point… You get the idea anyways: Negative wages.
When the natural embalance returns to it’s negative long term trend, we will need more of that nuclear energy to stay alive.
JimS says:
November 27, 2013 at 7:57 am
@Pamela Gray
A widget within this context, is really a “web widget” with which code for the widget can be copied, and that code placed upon “your own website” and thus the widget will be displayed to those who visit your website. (btw, we must be around the same age, given your description of your journey through the tech world.) Take care.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Widget is a placeholder name for a manufactured device, or web widget, small app.
Young kids, I was buying that stuff for my kids.
Ah. Thanks Jim. In my own words then, a widget is specific to a clickable web picture with an embedded specific program, and different than a thingamajig, which is different from a dohinky. And definitely not a whatsamacallit. I see that “A” has a bunch of widgets down the right side of the screen. I’ve been calling them icons all this time.
The human language is such a colorful changing entity. I often wonder if it is sentient. When new words are birthed for new concepts (or new meanings given to old words/new words given to old meanings), I am reminded of the Tower of Babel and its consequence. That consequence has multiplied, sending its babies to each individual language, intent on confusing every last human being on Earth.
I long for the return of Latin.
Bob, how did they ever cart around that calculator?
An average thuderstorm is releasing more energy than the Hiroshima bomb. An average hurricane is converting more energy than the Hiroshima bomb ever minute. http://teachertech.rice.edu/Participants/louviere/hurricanes/facts.html
Nice job decoupling reality from propaganda Bob!
I do have a related question.
What impact does all of the man made electrified use of technology do to the energy balance on earth. We have 700-800 satellites beaming their constant 1/4 watt or more signals 24/7/365, millions of miles of high tension lines, and a gazillion cell towers, wireless routers scattered globally like ants, microwave ovens and on and on.
What impact could all of that stuff in aggregate have on the energy balance.
Just curious if anyone has ever calculated that piece of the puzzle, or even considered it, or if I am way off target?
It has been a few years since i asked that question and I have yet to ever get an answer.
Happy turkey day folks in the US.
@jquip
Ok so your climate scientist is paid randomly between $740 and -$300 a day. Assume it’s a normal distribution.
What is the average amount of pay your climate scientist will accumulate in 18years? What is the 1 standard deviation range? Is what Mr Tisdale is saying correct?
They do seem to like the “bomb” metric. Weepy Bill referred to the Keystone Pipeline as “the fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet”.
ossqss says:
“What impact does all of the man made electrified use of technology do to the energy balance on earth. ”
All the broadcast electrical energy on Earth, combined, does not equal- excuse me for getting technical here- a speck of dust on a gnat’s rear end.
Little; since the sources you cite are intended for terrestrial ‘targets’ or audiences (subscribers in commercial wireless industry vernacular) much effort and engineering resources are expended to insure coverage of the earth’s surface with said RF energy from cited RF sources (e.g. cell sites, satellites et al) through (in the ‘old’ days of cellular) through antenna ‘down-tilting’ of the physical antenna or by ‘beam-forming’ (through phased elements, although not dynamic) the RF dissipates as ‘heat’ (through dielectric losses) in the soil, roadways and buildings (those with tinted windows for instance).
This, from an RF (Radio Frequency) Engineer’s point of view (involved RF planning and system ‘coverage’) as having been involved in both cellular (and paging!) industries at one time.
The efficiencies of RF ‘site’ equipment (for AC power in vs RF energy output overall; there is overhead for network gear e.g. line/fiber interface equipment and site controller, plus A/C and heat considerations) can generally on considered to be less than 20%. Actual transmitter efficiency can approach 70% (individual device perhaps 80 to 90%, aside from bias circuits and supervision circuits), but overall system efficiency really has to be considered.
We would talk differently about the ‘losses’ (directly to space) in SW (shortwave) as in ham and SW broadcasters below, saw 30 MHz, however.
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On a past thread about the “Hiroshima bomb” metric, one poster, I don’t remember who said something like ……
“I find the hiroshima bomb metric to be very useful. It points out that the speaker has abandoned scientific measurement terms, and moved into advocacy. Everything else the speaker says can safely be ignored.
Something along those lines anyway.
Pamela Gray says:
November 27, 2013 at 7:28 am
Thanks for dating me. I too recall all of those items. I have a vague notion of what a widget is NOW. But during early business classes a widget was a fictional item a company produced in case studies. All of a sudden the term became more common and I was left wondering what was going on.
Referring to another comment, I too have wondered exactly what a Climate Scientist was/is. My son-in-law was talking about the 97% of all scientists the other night. I said “noboday asked me”. He looked at me blankly. Stpooed him dead. Did it change his mind – no idea.
@Ossqss: “It has been a few years since i asked that question and I have yet to ever get an answer. ”
Satellites I’ve never heard of, actually. But all terrestrial issues are simply the dissipation from the initial energy production. Which is where the normative consideration steps in and we consider only the power plant itself, rather than all the various places it can and does dissipate the energy at.
@James: “What is the 1 standard deviation range? Is what Mr Tisdale is saying correct?”
Unless there’s some funky miscommunication going on, then ‘+-‘ as a statement of error is a statement of uncertainty about the mean, and what range of values it falls in. But is not a statement of standard deviation. So the average over 18 years of employment could quite trivially be the employee paying 18 times the lowest bound to his employer. Which is, frankly, a rather enthusiastic notion of a minimum wage.
4 Hiroshima bombs a second? I can do a better scare figure than that!
I Hiroshima bomb is about 100 million hand grenades. I hope I’ve got the decimal point right….
So that’s 1 hand grenade per 17.5 people per second. Call it 15…
So in quarter of a minute, enough extra radiation falls to give everybody in the world their own hand grenade!!! Shades of 10:10….
EXCELLENT video Mr. Tisdale. I love the real kicker at the end – where the uncertainty is something like 30 times higher that the ‘imbalance’.
ferdberple says:
November 27, 2013 at 6:52 am
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.
= = =
Fredberple is eloquent, but may I add, for any passing cultists choosing to browse this: –
The error bars are so great, you don’t know your carp from your elbow.
Sensu strictu definition of carp, of course.
Auto
Pamela Gray says:
November 27, 2013 at 9:02 am
===
======
I long for the return of Latin.
Ummmmmmmmmm . . . . . .
World (=English) works.
No cases. I gather Italian has 38 cases. Per my mate Francesco from near Naples.
No gender. German has Male. Female and Neuter [and – um – several cases].
World lives. You give a word [new or old] a meaning – and if it works – Voila! Apps, say. Or selfie.
Or it dies, except locally – ‘hand-phone’, say, in Singapore . . . . . . . .
I guess you’re my sort of age – I don’t keep up with the language, much – let alone all the technology.
But – hey, it’s there.
Let’s try and use it with our goitred fingers and toes.
Auto
Pamela Gray says:
November 27, 2013 at 9:04 am
Bob, how did they ever cart around that calculator?
===============================================================
I made them do math with pencil and paper before they could go high tech. Big strong kids.
Turns out that their math classes were built around using a TI85 and I was punishing my eldest by making her actually learn math and not just punch numbers. I finally surrendered to the education system.
I was in waxy white solids (carbon chemistry) grad school cramming boxes of IBM cards for x-ray crystallography into an IBM 360 and doing preliminary calc’s by hand and slipstick before a pocket calculator came out. I bought my kids a TI99 to play with and we actually had a mechanical adding machine.
_Jim on November 27, 2013 at 10:11 am
———————
Thank you for the good insight and info.
So, the net of what you are telling me is that of all that man made radiant energy produced, it does not add energy or heat into the Earths systems in any measurable way?
Upcountrywater wrote how thankful his/she was to George Washington for Thanksgiving. Actually it was inspired by the Pilgrims in the Plymouth colony with their bountiful harvest celebrating with American Indian neighbours. There is much to thank George Washington for though. Being an outstanding military commander and the first president of The United States. Still Happy Thanksgiving to you all in The States. As for those of us in Australia, its just another day at The Office.
Back on topic. 0.6w/m^2 with an error of +- 17w/m^2… Energy Imbalance? I don’t think it means what you think it means.
I love it that the only value given with any decimal places is the last one on the right, and its that one value , with its large error value , that gives the TINY radiative imbalance +/- 17 .. roflmao !!
Oh, and what happened with convection ?
Are these guys still in kindergarten ???
Sheer desperation…when cornered come up with something else to play for time.
Sisi says: “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’?”
Sisi, did you bother to read and understand the paper I referenced and linked? In the abstract, Stephens et al (2012) write:
“This lack of precise knowledge of surface energy fluxes profoundly affects our ability to understand how Earth’s climate responds to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases.”
Have a nice day.
dccowboy says: “Dr Tisdale, Happy early Thanksgiving to you as well.”
Thanks.
A quick correction: There’s no Dr in front of my last name…just Bob.
Regards
Looking at it from a different perspective. It would take about 120 years for that 0.6 wats/m^2 to evaporate 1mm of water (without raising the temperature). No wonder it is lost in the error in calculating a global energy balance.
@Pamela Gray says:
November 27, 2013 at 7:28 am
Et tu?!
Wasn’t it fun to tell people, “I’ve got to go play with my boss’ Wang,” and tell folks, “Those people in there are COBOLing.’ The reactions I got!
I even attended a lecture by Admiral Grace Hopper, codeveloper of COBOL, and remember my first $149.95 electronic calculator with amazingly five whole functions: +, -, *, /, and square root. Wow! I sometimes used it instead of my cylindrical sliderule accurate to five, count em five, decimal places.
Bob,
Do you realise that the radiative imbalance of the earth system has nothing to do with an energy imbalance at the surface? You should compare the Hiroshima Bomb Metric with the energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere. The paper you use says this is 0.6 W/m^2 +/- 0.4. Fact.
You are making a nonsense comparison. Your faithful followers here seem to uncritically accept your failings to tell the whole story.
Nice day to you as well!
Hmm. If the radiative imbalance is equal to 4 Hiroshima atomic bombs (HABs) every second, then according to Bob’s figures above the total incoming radiation at the surface is equal to 36.6 HABs every second. That means every day the earth is bombarded with the equivalent of 3.1 Million (3.141E6) HABs (standard day: 86400 seconds). This is over 1.1 Billion (1.147E9) HABs per year! If we pick 1998 as the epochal year when we should have heeded the call of James Hansen and company to take urgent action against global warming, then the entire planet has absorbed a total equivalent of over 19.5 billion HABs in those 17 years.
Numbers are wonderful. If you pick the right scale you can easily produce big, scary ones.
Maybe we should talk about the accumulating US federal debt in terms of Manhattan Projects? Maybe even make and App/Widget for it?
sisi: “The paper you use says this is 0.6 W/m^2 +/- 0.4. Fact.”
Oh, cool. So the 0.2 to 1.0 W/m^2 is right within the solar variation of 1.3W/m^2. And since you’re stating that surface radiation imbalances have nothing to do with global warming then… Your statement is that global warming is false. Right?
Does a “Hiroshima bomb a second” actually mean anything at all to 99.9% of the citizenery?
Today, close to 70 years after the actual event it is just another abstract metrics with no relationship to reality or carries any meaning at all for most people at all. It is far more likely to leave them quite cold and dismissive with little more than a shrug of the shoulders as just some more over the top advertising and propaganda as they move onto something more meaningful to their own lives.
Most are now immune to this constant barrage from every direction of this unrealistic, over the top advertising which is all that the SkS catastrophic climate meme repeated ad infinitum now means to most people. ie; They no longer can give a damn about the dangers of CAGW as they have heard it all endlessly before and nothing is seen or can be felt that is different to what has always been in their lives.
The “Hiroshima Bomb” example is for the SkS believers a bit like President Lyndon Johnson’s comments on making a speech on economics;
To paraphrase;
“It is a lot like pissing down your leg? It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else”.
@Jquip
I am stating that Bob’s video is comparing pears with oranges.
Btw. I did not state that “surface radiation imbalances have nothing to do with global warming”. That’s your invalid extrapolation.
Fantastic video Anthony and Bob…….more of these please
Oh yes, since 1998 in the atmosphere accumulated the energy of 1 atomic bomb per human family.
Each and every family of 4 person has more then his own atomic bomb of energy and some spares.
We all feel the heat, since it is exactly since the pause started :). The 2 billion bombs are hiding somewhere, my guess is that most of them already passed Proxima Centauri:
http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubbles-new-shot-of-proxima-centauri-our-nearest-neighbor/#.UpaAdbNCKO0
The Hiroshima metric fails as a means for trauma-conditioning the US populous. The reason being that Japan was and is an enemy state according to the charta of the UN. A more effective metric would be 9/11.
Bob reacted on my comment with:
“Sisi, did you bother to read and understand the paper I referenced and linked? In the abstract, Stephens et al (2012) write:
“This lack of precise knowledge of surface energy fluxes profoundly affects our ability to understand how Earth’s climate responds to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases.””
Bob was trying to put me down by asking if I have read the paper. Bad style. No, I didn’t read the paper, I read the abstract and the first page and looked at the figures. That is all you need to realise that Bob is telling porkies.
I do wonder if Bob read the article himself, all he is referring to is the abstract and he uses bad resolution images of the paper in the video, which look like the pictures seen at
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n10/full/ngeo1580.html
Sisi says: “Do you realise that the radiative imbalance of the earth system has nothing to do with an energy imbalance at the surface?”
Really? Are your sure, Sisi? What is plainly obvious (and easy for me and everyone else reading this thread to realize) is that you haven’t bothered to try to read the paper I presented as reference. The second sentence in the abstract reads (my caps): “As a result, the GLOBAL BALANCE OF ENERGY FLUXES within the atmosphere or AT THE EARTH’S SURFACE cannot be derived directly from measured fluxes, and is therefore uncertain.”
That was immediately before the sentence that quoted for you earlier.
Seems to me that (1) you don’t understand the topic at hand or (2) you’re making up stuff as you’re going along or (3) both of the above.
Here’s a link to the full paper.
http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~tristan/publications/2012_EBupdate_stephens_ngeo1580.pdf
It’s relatively easy to understand for people who want to try to comprehend it. Then again, it appears you simply may be trying to use smoke and mirrors to redirect the discussion.
Good-bye, Sisi.
Sisi: With respect to your November 27, 2013 at 3:58 pm comment, see my above reply.
The uncertainty, in each direction, is 100X the purported imbalance. Translation: They have no clue, it’s a Wild-Assed Guess (WAG), trying to look like a Scientific WAG (SWAG).
Sisi: ” That’s your invalid extrapolation.”
Oh? So when you say: “I read the abstract and the first page and looked at the figures. That is all you need to realise that Bob is telling porkies.”
What you meant to say was that Bob mentioned the surface imbalance and used the surface imbalance number of 0.6+-17 from the same figure you got the non-surface imbalance of 0.6+-4 from?
After all, your response to Tisdale about ‘porkies’ specifically includes the quotation from the paper in question: “This lack of precise knowledge of surface energy fluxes profoundly affects our ability to understand how Earth’s climate responds to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases.”
Now, I bolded the relevant bit you keep missing. Not because you’re telling ‘porkies’ or that I would accuse you of such a thing. As to refute yourself in your own post is a special breed of intelligence that I cannot quite describe in polite terms.
I like Bob’s easy-going, thorough style of presentation. It’s lack of slickness is a benefit.
A stick of TNT blows up on my basement every day….
http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/its-even-worse-than-al-gore-said/
So let me get this right,,,,,,,,, one can respond to a critique of a paper without reading the actual paper?
Ya gotta love that MAGIC!
This the season I suppose 😉
http://youtu.be/L8mLrLDd-5Q
Autocorrect truncated , or perhaps I should say extrapolated “Tis” in my prior post!
Sorry for the android coding …..
Lance made a good point:
“Lance Wallace says:
November 27, 2013 at 6:44 am
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?”
0.6 against ±17?
SkS has a 1 in 56 chance of being correct — according to their theory..
Trenberth 2009 has the energy imbalance at .9 w/m2 +_ .5 w/m2. Where is the source of the +_ 17 figure?
JK, look at the video. stop it at the right place and read the numbers on the bottom of the silly little diagram.
Large integer value +/- on all of them, and then they pretend that the balance is 0.6 .
ROFLMAO !!!
These guys should re-do kindergarten, and learn maths from the start !!
Robert!!!! I still say it! I always contribute to the old geezer computer conversation with, “I cut my teeth on a Wang”. Makes all the men in the room cross their legs. LOLOLOLOL!!!!
There was a great game on the Wang that was all about a cave-like dungeon, trolls, and dragons but no graphics, just a black background with words on the screen. You had to type in what direction you wanted to go and you had to keep an imagined vision of the multi-level landscape in your head. If you kept getting killed before you found the treasure deep in the labyrinth of the cave and typed in a swear word, the game programmer had embedded responses like “Do you eat with that mouth?”.
Loved the black screen and yellow font of a Wang. But there was no screen savor. Most of the monitors had a faint shadow of the login that had burned into the viewing screen.
3:12 ish will do.
There are uncertainties in measuring the w/m^2 balance at TOA. Here is a graph comparing satellite performance. http://www.geoffstuff.com/The%20problem%20-solar%20irradiance.JPG
would love to see this video redone by MinutePhysics!
@Pamela; You mean like this?
For those at Yahoo Climate Sceptic group, Donna Laframboise has a post http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2013/11/27/that-silly-coal-speech/
in which our dear “friend” Mike MacCracken is featured:
“Also on the list is Michael MacCracken – who pals around with professional lobbyists from the World Wildlife Fund. MacCracken sits on a WWF panel, the express purpose of which is to increase the public’s sense of climate change urgency.”
That may explain why the good Mike has been discreet these days… Busy propaganding. It is time this Yahoo group seriously think about not letting the fox in the hen house and cutting that one loose!
I agree with Snotrocket. The video has good content, but it is dragged down by inadequate production values. It needs a better VO, and it needs more visual energy (a Hiroshima bomb or two would do), and some polish. This can be accomplished by simple means, and at no cost. I volunteer to help.
Bob,
you are still telling porkies. If you want to critically check the Hiro measure you have to compare to the total earth energy imbalance. This is measured at the Top Of the Atmosphere. Not at the earth’s surface. You are using an incorrect comparison. And this is clear from looking at the figure you yourself use in the video. And no, for this you do not need to read the paper you referred to (thanks for providing the link btw; had found it before I read your comment though).
@Jquip
I just explained again why I think Bob’s comparison is nonsensical. Do you understand it now, or should I explain it to you again? Are you one of Bob’s Faithful Followers?
Sisi says:
“No, I didn’t read the paper…”
And thus, her critique and her credibility go down in flames.
Forget the enegry yields etc. The Hiroshima metric was chosen by the CAGW nutters as it represents an event of huge human suffering. Aside from the sick morality of stealing the memory of this suffering for their own agenda, it’s prefectly reasonable to ask if a event of this human significance was happening every 4 seconds – 15x a minute, 900 times an hours – that’s 21,600 times a day – we all might have noticed. We haven’t, it hasn’t and they’re full of shyte.
@dbstealey
Meanwhile I did read the paper. I am still sure that you only need the abstract and the figure that Bob uses in his video to figure out that he is making a false comparison. The Hiro measure (whatever you think about this measure) is meant to illustrate how much energy is accumulating in the earth system. Bob compares the Hiro measure to the energy budget of the earth’s surface. However, this has not much to do with how much energy the earth is accumulating (the earth’s surface is only for some part exchanging energy directly with surrounding space). For this you need to look at the energy budget at the top of the atmosphere. The numbers for the top of the atmosphere are in the figure that Bob uses in his video, for everybody to see! 0.6 watts/m^2 +/- 0.4. That’s why it is not necessary to read the paper. Bob is making a porkies comparison, that’s all.
I truly appreciate the thought and effort Mr. Tisdale has put into the video.
But I have to agree strongly with Snotrocket@3:25 AM and Torgeir Hansson@1:07 PM. I am reluctant to use these words, but I must: the narrator has worked so hard to make his points crystal clear that paradoxically he has failed to do so. The narration is slow and dull, even lifeless and a bit condescending. It does not hold interest.
Tip for the narrator: do not keep your eyes stuck to your script. Instead, talk mostly to someone sitting opposite you. Have a real conversation, with all the life that comes from that. Talk to a living person.
Sorry to be so blunt, but I think this is important. The videos could do a lot of good with more life in the delivery.
Please don’t be offended by this criticism. I mean it to be constructive.
Bruce!!!!! That’s the one!!!! And I sounded just like that when I played it!!!!!! Well, I swore a few times….OMG thank you for that snippet of past fun!
When I got tired of entering a couple thousand pieces of data, I would play that game. It helped to shake the data cobwebs out of my head when the hour was late.
WUWT 2013-11-30
Pamela Gray says:
November 27, 2013 at 7:29 pm
If I remember correctly the game was “Colossal Caverns”; it was the first quest type game I played. I never beat it. I couldn’t remember everything, and refused to make notes and draw maps. I very frequently ended with, “You are in a maze of twisty little tunnels, all alike,” with only the Dwarf Comic Books.” Earlier I had played the same or similar game on a DEC machine, perhaps a PDP-10xx or 11xx.
The yellow/orange monitor font was billed by Wang as easier to read and producing less eyestrain. Ha!
There was also a Star Trek game.
The people at Wang headquarters wanted Wang pronounced approximately Wong as Mr. Wang and family did.
My first computer was an IBM 1620, strictly cards in and cards out, with just a few toggle switches to control processing.
All this is off topic, but fun nostalgia.
As I have very limited time, and want to peruse the rest of WUWT, TTFN.
Bob, i found this a while back. Note, it’s for kids/z. In a very bizarre way, it sums up global warming insanity quite accurately.
In 1997, it brought more energy with it than a million Hiroshima bombs, and it’s resurfaced again in 2007. El Nino is a weather cycle that happens every few years but the El Nino of ’97-’98 was one of the most devastating. It killed nearly 2,100 people worldwide and left $33 million US in property damages in its wake. As if that wasn’t bad enough, El Nino was followed by one of the worst La Nina cycles in recent history – the very next year. Curious about how a weather system can wreak so much havoc? Read on to find out!
Read more: El Nino | La Nina | Weather Pattern | 2007 | Forecasts | Effects | Flooding | Storm http://www.kidzworld.com/article/2620-el-nino-and-la-nina-systems#ixzz2mEqSu9k0