Via Tom Nelson, no wonder they hate nuclear power so much, they don’t see any difference!
Global warming increasing by 400,000 atomic bombs every day | The Vancouver Observer
The amazing persistence of CO2 in the air has allowed billions of our small emissions, like those from the Enola Gay, to amass into an ever growing threat to civilization. How fast is that threat growing? In a must-see TED talk, NASA climate scientist James Hansen say the current increase in global warming is:
“…equivalent to exploding 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day 365 days per year. That’s how much extra energy Earth is gaining each day.”
That’s 278 atomic bombs worth of energy every minute – more than four per second — non-stop. To be clear, that is just the extra energy being gained each day on top of the energy heating our planet by 0.8 degree C. It is the rate at which we are increasing global warming.
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Update: I think we need a new unit to quantify ridiculousness. I propose the Hansen Ridiculae Scale, somewhat like the Richter scale, logarithmic in nature.
Turning up the thermostat at a senate hearing in 1988 would rate a 5.0 Death Trains might rate a 6.0, this would rate an 8.0.
I’m afraid to imagine what a 9-10 on the Hansen Scale might look like.
ALSO: I’m busy at work right now, so I don’t have time to research it fully and calculate it, but if somebody wants to quantify the solar insolation received by Earth each day in “Hiroshima units”, I’ll add it to the main thread. That number will dwarf Hansen’s claim.
UPDATE2: Willis helps out:
Here’s your numbers, Anthony.
1 ton of TNT = 4.184e+9 joules (J) source
Hiroshima bomb = 15 kilotons of TNT = 6.28e+13 joules (ibid)
Hansen says increase in forcing is “400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day”, which comes to 2.51e+19 joules/day.
A watt is a joule per second, so that works out to a constant additional global forcing of 2.91e+14 watts.
Normally, we look at forcings in watts per square metre (W/m2). Total forcing (solar plus longwave) averaged around the globe 24/7 is about 500 watts per square metre.
To convert Hansen’s figures to a per-square-metre value, the global surface area is 5.11e+14 square metres … which means that Hansens dreaded 400,000 Hiroshima bombs per day works out to 0.6 watts per square metre … in other words, Hansen wants us to be very afraid because of a claimed imbalance of six tenths of a watt per square metre in a system where the downwelling radiation is half a kilowatt per square metre … we cannot even measure the radiation to that kind of accuracy.
w.
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As do others:
Napkin calculation, no calculator needed: Hiroshima was ca. 63 TJ = 6E13J. The earths circular area is 3 * (6E6m)^2 = 1E14m2. The suns TSI is ca 1kW = 1E3 J/s, so the earth gets ca 1E17 J/s on the sunlit side, so the sun explodes about 1E17/6E13 = 1E3 Hiroshima atomic bombs on this planet. EVERY SECOND.
Mr. Hansen: the sun explodes about a thousand Hiroshima bombs on this planet. EVERY SECOND. DO something about it!
Or it is 42,000 high end industrial windmills, for that matter, provided of course the wind is always blowing (which is not the case).
If we even had enough uranium on Earth to build just the first 400,000 bombs,
all we’d have to do instead is build enough reactors to power the entire world
and synthesize all its motor fuel out of atmospheric CO2.
That much uranium would run the world for millenia,
and by then we’d be on thorium or Helium-3.
Or, if CO2 is 0.4 MHiroshimaBombs per day, then the sun delivers 956.4 MHiroshimaBombs per day. If you just count the fact that the sun only shines on one side, it’s 1913 MHiroshimaBombs every day on the lit side compared to 0.4 including night.
Jos, I know the point Hansen is making… a fainted lie, in that people need to worry. Besides, the concentration of CO2 does not affect our surface temperature.
This is even worse than lying by graphs and statistics !! Thank you NASA for the constant stream of this type of lies, it is sinking you. Fire the fool.
Okay, so the numbers are in and 400,000 Hiroshima bombs per day is almost nothing compared to the energy we receive from the sun each day. And that 400,000 is probably an exaggeration. I am assuming that Hanson is including the water vapor feedback that, so far, has only been found in the models. The actual increase from carbon dioxide alone, is probably around 150,000 Hiroshima bombs per day. That amount of energy may easily be radiated back into space by just a slight change in the amount of cumulonimbus activity on the planet, with almost no change to global average atmospheric temperature.
So what is Hanson doing with this? The same thing that the Heartland Institute did with their Ted Kacsynski/Global Warming Billboard, only worse! In fact, it is drivel like this from Hanson (and other warmistas) that prompted H.I. to put up their ridiculous billboard. The billboard was factually correct, but implied that all warmistas are crazy like Ted Kacsynski. Hanson’s statements are in the realm of scientific accuracy, but equate global warming to nuclear bombs. Nuclear weapons are far more terrifying and despised than little Teddy K. Hanson’s objective is to use the general populations ignorance of scale to terrify them and manipulate them emotionally. His statements do not educate, but obfuscate and exaggerate the reality.
The Heartland Institute was soundly and justly ridiculed for their billboard, from both sides of the AGW debate, but will the same thing happen to Hanson? If he is not vilified from both sides, than Hanson will end up proving the point Heartland was trying to make in the first place (albeit, distastefully)!
So what do you say, warmistas? Who will be the first to step up and publicly chastise Hanson for this ill-found propaganda. Who will be the first to demand he retract his statements? Who will be the first to show some moral character, some sense of justice and fair play, and demand that Mr. Hanson apologize for his deliberately equating CO2 emissions with an hourly global nuclear holocaust!
Our will you try to say that this is different? (Hint…it isn’t)
Which means a windmill is worth nine or ten Hiroshima atomic bombs per day. Horrible, is not it?
I think I just doubled the difference…. but the points I was making still stick.
Sorry…Hanson should be Hansen.
So if we leave our lights off for a few minutes, can we nuke somebody in an environmentally friendly way?
Can I just get by with buying another fan or should I plan for another AC unit? Just trying to think ahead here.
I can’t tell; is that supposed to be a mushroom cloud behind Hansen’s head or does that represent hot air coming out of his mouth? Now look at the stupid way it’s posed. The sappy melodrama. A balding twit standing there as if he’s a Grecian god of the future. I’d be genuinely embarrassed if I was him.
I can’t stand it. No more, please, I’m still coming to grips with spilt milk leaving a carbon footprint. Okay, okay, I ‘fess up, I like watching them implode. You’d think, as rational beings… *cough, cough, splutter* sorry about that… they’d twig to the fact that they are undermining their own argument by repeatedly trying to outdo their own scare stories. I guess they don’t understand the meaning of overkill. But c’mon, they must realize IT’S NOT WORKING ANYMORE.
I read the source article, lots of pix from the nevada test site. generally caused my brain to shrink away from the inanity of the comparison. This is Hansen (trying to) scarifying the public…again.
Now this idiocy ,this is what should be on a billboard, Just saying.
I wonder what the citizens off Hiroshima think about this analogy.
Thanks Willis Eschenbach & bvdeenen : For another WUWT slap down/home run. Great blog and support team.
Eat your manipulated doom laden crap data Hanson, your a disgrace to the human family.
Every time I see the pic of the doc speaking at TED I can’t help but think of the ending of this TED talk
“Some people have crazy ideas” 🙂
He should be encouraged and applauded for his wisdom and insight and encouraged to do more. This way he will be more of a rotting albatross around NASA’s neck. Useful idiots can be used by more than one party.
The sweetest spot is that nuclear weapons are absolutely carbon free. So changing our economy to 400,000 bombs/day should be a good business, dare you deny it, Hansen?
– Meanwhile back in the world
the average temperatures around the globe were in 1998 were ?
and now in 2012 they are ?
Ans = not much different,
same for : polar ice coverage, same for sea level, same for desertification etc. etc.
– to mother nature everything is still going within the natural variability we’ve known in the last 1000 years …. there’s still grass for the rabbits to eat
To the descendants of those whose lives were snuffed out in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings:
Speaking as a North American, I apologize for the despicable vulgarity that has been uttered by this person, Hansen. Please believe that not all of us are like this. Some of us do not believe that these horrible events should have happened, and some of us are also very sickened by the fact that such an event could be used in such a disgustingly insensitive way, thereby seeming to cheapen the lives of those that were made to suffer — though one human being can never really cheapen the life of another.
I am sorry that you have had to be exposed to the rhetorical filth that the American, Hansen, has produced at your expense and that of your lost family members. As I cannot think of anything I can do to stop him or force him to retract his vile statement, I can only humbly beg your forgiveness.
With greatest regrets,
Richard T. Fowler
The quote of Hansen’s is taken out-of-context. Here is more of the context. (To see the full context, he starts talking about the energy imbalance at about 6:15 in the TED talk.)
I don’t see what is wrong with that quote. His point is that a small imbalance in W/m^2 adds up to a large amount of energy over the Earth’s surface.
BargHumer says:
Primarily in the oceans.
Jim Clarke says:
Hansen is basing it on the energy imbalance as empirically diagnosed by looking at the net warming of the oceans over several years.
This is propaganda at its finest. Post-scientific era, I’d say it’s the right definition for Anthropocene. The time when humanity is driven not by reason but by emotions.
This man is having a permanent bad trip. He needs help asap.
Or he has to visit the Heartland Conference, to get some real-world visions on CO2 and climate.
The energy calculations are not the only innumeracy.
“The amazing persistence of CO2 in the air “
I don’t believe CO2 has a small effect just because it is a trace gas (which is not to say that I think its effect is large). But there is no getting around that it is present only in trace amounts.
Given that nature and us produce prodigious amounts, the fact is that it must be sequestered very quickly indeed.
That it persists at all is only because below the current concentration the plants struggle to absorb it quickly enough. The “persistence” of CO2 is clearly bogus.