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.
======================================================
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.
================================================================
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!
WUWT has become my go- to source for comic relief. Reports come in day after day of one howler after another.
I think It’s pretty clever really, he’s working his crowd nicely. They’re the crowd that believe the Earth is insulated by a blanket of “carbon pollution” and that the sun is a distant bright light that disturbs the average warminista at about 10.00 am.
I can not believe what Hansen said, I can not believe he believes it, I can not believe he believes we will believe him.
In my research (for fun only), I have discovered that a bolt of lightning conatins enough energy to toast 100,000 slices of bread http://www.physics.org/facts/toast.asp OMG we’re all toast 🙂
A lightning strike emits 5GJoules of energy apparently http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning#Harvesting_lightning_energy
Now, apparrently, there are 16 million lightning “storms” per year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning (ed’s note(me) this is a distraction 🙂
According to this site http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/wea00/wea00239.htm , there are 8,640,000 lightning strikes per day .
Warning: I do not buy any of these numbers, they may or may not be trustful; but this is a very quick web-study, not a serious investigation.
So we have 8,640,000 x 5 x 10**9/ 24×3600 joules per second (or Watts) total over the world’s surface. (resorts to trusty ancient solar-powered manual button calculator) or 5×10**11 watts so this suggests lightning’s added energy is about one thousandth in HUs.
For those who are alert, one link states there are 16 million lightning storms per year, and another staters the are (roughly) 8 million lightning strikes per year. Obviously someone is wrong; probably both. Any lightning storm produces, from my exprience, 10 lightning bolts. YMMV. It certainly does in Darwin, Australia, (brilliant beautiful place … gets wiped out every 20 years by cyclones or the Japanese). Hottest place in the world for lightning.
OK, I know I’m pushing the envelope here, but wouldn’t this have been a more appropriate background for the Hansen photo?
http://www.nicaliving.com/files/images//momotombo.jpg
Who cares about a little radiation! New study from MIT:
“This paper shows that you could go 400 times higher than average background levels and you’re still not detecting genetic damage.”
New Look at Prolonged Radiation Exposure: At Low Dose-Rate, Radiation Poses Little Risk to DNA, Study Suggests http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120515181256.htm
BTW It was Moon Unit, and she is Frank Zappa’s daughter.
Chris B says:
May 15, 2012 at 12:50 pm
Could we have that in Manhattans of ice melted please. I was raised on the old system.
————————-
How much is that in Olympic size swimming pools.
I have trouble with conversions also.
joeldshore says:
May 15, 2012 at 2:34 pm
There are several things wrong with that quote. First, we don’t have anywhere near the accuracy in the ocean data to support his claim of an imbalance. See my various posts on Argo for context, particularly “Decimals of Precision“. If you have problems with that analysis, bring them up …
Next, invoking atomic bombs is not an attempt to measure a “large amount of energy”. It is a way to try to alarm people.
You claim to give the number some “context”, but here’s the real context. It’s six-tenths of a watt per square metre in a system with a total downwelling radiation at the surface of about half a kilowatt (solar plus longwave).
In other words, he wants us to get all alarmed about a change of ONE TENTH OF ONE PERCENT in an active, dynamic system … surely, as a physicist, you can see the alarmism in trying to build a tenth of a percent change into hundreds of thousands of atomic bombs …
w.
BargHumer says:
“If it is gaining the energy, where is it supposed to be storing it?”
In the deep ocean (Trenberth), or deep space, or in a black hole waiting till a tipping point is reached to rear it’s ugly head. It doesn’t matter what the “explanation” is, you can bet it will be somewhere where it cannot be measured until all the current rent seeking, post-normal government scientists have long since retired.
Never mind the math, isn’t destroying civilisation the goal of the enviro movement? Why the alarm?
umm: The Ridiculous Hansen Scale … perhaps?
Units are Hansens, part units are James where a James = 1/1000th of a Hansen or 1000James = 1 Hansen.
Hansen is standing in front of a volcanic eruption, which even Hansen would agree causes climate cooling from aerosols and particulates.
I’ll note the irony of this picture probably telling us more about the cause of the late 20th century warming (lack of volcanic eruptions) than the rest of the article.
“I’m afraid to imagine what a 9-10 on the Hansen Scale might look like.”
See the post on the “Million Idiots Caravan” for an example of 9 on the Hansen Scale…
Jim Clarke says:
May 15, 2012 at 3:57 pm
“Hiroshima may be the single most emotionally charged topic on the planet. Hansen went there. It is shameful.”
Yes, but it was for the CHILDREN!
Robert of Ottawa says:
May 15, 2012 at 4:35 pm
Back on 5/5 Anthony posted his article on the Schumann Resonance…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/05/lightning-induced-schumann-resonance-may-divine-exoplanets/
50/sec=3,000/min=180,000/hr=4,320,000/day=1,576,800,000/year
Elsewhere on the web, as you note, there are various published figures on the peak power output of a single lightning stroke (1 trillion watts=one terawatt), amounting to 500-774 megajoules, or 215 Kwh
According to Wikipedia: How lightning initially forms is still a matter of debate… When it occurs between two separate clouds it is known as inter-cloud lightning, and when it occurs between areas of differing electric potential within a single cloud it is known as intra-cloud lightning. Intra-cloud lightning is the most frequently occurring type.
–from the 5/5 WUWT article
“Lightning striking again and again and again and again..”
–Lou Christie, Lightning Strikes
But we must accept what Hansen says about the atomic bombs, otherwise Chris Mooney might show up over here accusing WUWT of waging “a war on science”.
Is this .00167% increase, or any part of it, cumulative?
What were the names of those three hockey players in the movie Slapshot? The Hansen brothers? We need to find three warmistas to fill those roles…
Willis Eschenbach says:
Well…One can argue about various things regarding your numbers: Is it really the total downwelling radiation we should compare to rather than the 240 W/m^2. And, note that Hansen is talking only about the current radiative imbalance, not the part that has already been neutralized by increases in temperature (and thus increases in outgoing radiation), and the NET amount that includes aerosol cooling. Maybe if Hansen wanted to be more dramatic, he should have used the 4 W/m^2 that is the known effect from doubling CO2, which we will almost certainly do (relative to pre-industrial levels) by the time the century is out…and we will do much more than that if people like you have your way and we go completely to town burning all the coal and tar sands and what not we can get our hands on. 4 W/m^2 is getting up to close to 2% of the net amount of radiation the Earth’s climate system absorbs.
However, more importantly, saying that a small percentage is nothing to be alarmed about it sort of a silly argument itself. For example, with such logic, I could dismiss the whole glacial – interglacial cycles as pretty much inconsequential themselves as they result in only about a 2% change in global temperatures on an absolute scale.
So, your “context” is really no more objective than Hansen’s context. You just like your context better because you want to believe that the results of AGW are going to be inconsequential (and contradiction to what most scientists in the field believe).
Is that Joe Romm’s head exploding in the background?
wayne says:
Hansen only talked about the current imbalance, that is the current rate by which input exceeds output. So, no, he didn’t forget anything. To the extent that the Earth has already warmed and adjusted, it is not counted in his figure of the current net imbalance as measured by ocean heat accumulation.
This additional energy is not cumulative, it is being spoken as a forever-and-ever accumulation where in reality it is just a one-time shift in the base energy and therefore temperature, am I not correct? Is he not lying by omission too let alone the type of lying I mentioned above?
You are not really correct. Yeah….It won’t accumulate forever because eventually a new radiative balance will be established but that takes quite a long time. But, he didn’t say it would accumulate for ever and ever. And, on the time scale of a year that he was talking about, it is most certainly cumulative.
The fact that this was a TED talk lowers my estimation of TED. If they feature a crank like Hansen, what does that make those featured in other TED talks?
Do these catastrophists ever leave their models and go outside? My god, it’s just been the most beautiful spring. With a complete and total lack of climate catastrophe, I might add! Blue skies and green grass and fresh air. 400,000 Hiroshima bombs? LMAO!!