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!
“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.”
Hmmm… so it is safe to persue nuclear power generation after all.
Anthony, could you add Richard T. Fowler’s open letter at the top of this thread?
Mr Fowler is correct. This is equivalent to those supporting “the Cause” using the term “Denier.” It is another cheap trick that diminishes the deaths and suffering of those who were sacrificed during the power games of WWII.
In Hansen’s view fossil fuel use is absolute evil.
That is his whole argument. So he does not argue. He makes no pretence at being open to scientific doubt. He pontificates.
Thus I find it is not logically possible that Hansen can represent the scientific process.
John
Willis Eschenbach says:
No, he is not talking about a change in total downwelling radiation at the surface and I am surprised that you are confused on this point. He is talking about the NET imbalance in radiation at the top of the atmosphere, which ocean heat content is a pretty good proxy for because most of this net imbalance between what the Earth+atmosphere receives and what it emits back out into space goes into heating the oceans, given that is where most of the available heat capacity is. It makes no sense to think he is talking about downwelling radiation at the surface…After all, the surface budget is determined by much more than just the downwelling radiation there; it is also determined by the upwelling radiation, the convection, evaporation, etc.
Yes…This is the current radiative imbalance. However, that imbalance represents just the NET radiative forcing due to everything we have added to the atmosphere (or done to alter the surface albedo) that changes this balance (greenhouse gases, aerosols, …) minus the amount of adjustment (due to increase in temperatures) that has already occurred.
No serious scientist, including Lindzen, Spencer, etc. seriously disputes that value, at least to within about 10%.
As I have pointed out, your tenth of a percent number is problematic for various reasons. And, a more realistic number for the effect that we will cause on our current trajectory, the one that you want us to remain on, is easily up in the couple of percent range.
Furthermore, it is not clear to me how you have reached your conclusion about what matters. What from first principles tells you that a 2% increase in temperature makes a hugely dramatic difference in climate and sea levels (talking on the order of 100 meters, if I recall correctly) but that a change somewhat smaller than that suddenly ends up being inconsequential?
What has gotten us beyond the Dark Ages is the willingness of all but the most extreme parts of the political spectrum to generally accept the conclusions of the scientific community, as expressed by organizations chartered to provide input on science to the government, like the National Academy of Sciences. What will put us back in the Dark Ages is if one extreme of the political spectrum becomes so mainstream in one of the two political parties (speaking about things here in the U.S. specifically) that their notion of rejecting science that disagrees with their ideology actually becomes a matter of public policy. It is an extremely dangerous precedent, which is why most of the scientific community is so alarmed by it.
Hansen didn’t invent the Hiroshima unit of measurement for radiative energy “imbalance”.
The heat trapped by global warming equals 1 million Hiroshima bombs a day
By Christopher Mims
http://grist.org/list/the-heat-trapped-by-global-warming-equals-1-million-hiroshima-bombs-a-day/
“The radiative forcing of the CO2 we have already put in the atmosphere in the last century is … the equivalent in energy terms to almost half a billion Hiroshima bombs each year.”
I wish I could remember where I recently read a quote from Hansen where he says that CO2 adds 0.64 watts to warming. Very close to the 0.6 watts that Willis calculated for all the bombs. I think that Hansen realized that 0.64 watts didn’t sound scary so he converted the energy to A-bombs.
The Hiroshima device was not a hydrogen bomb.
Mr. Eschenbach says:
“Hansens dreaded 400,000 Hiroshima bombs per day works out to 0.6 watts per square metre”
Said differently, 400,000 of the most powerful devices mankind can build amount to squat when compared to what the sun pumps out daily. Mankind is NOT powerful enough to effect global climate change — period, end of sentence — the science is settled!
As Bugs Bunny would say, “What a maroon.”
(And Jimmy looks like Elmer Fudd.)
I was thinking of a way to calculate the amount of radiation from the sun that is actually absorbed by the earth.
Since I am not good at math, I will try to set the problem as I see it and will be happy if anybody could do the actual math:
* The direct radiation on the earth over 24 hours is only over its half side. So it is the earth’s surfase divided in 2.
* This area is also not quite right. only about 8 hours of the day have high radiation ratio, and also the equivalent of this length on the vertical dimension. When moving towards the poles or the sunrise/sundown line, the radiation quickly goes down. This suggests a rather small area of actual energy absorbtion.
* All through the dark hours of the day (night side) there is a NET OUTGOING RADIATION. This means energy lost to space, even from the CO2 molecules previousely heated during the daytime.
All this seems to me much less energy budget than people here suggest.
Willis, anybody – your comments are welcome!
joeldshore says:
May 16, 2012 at 7:34 am
Thanks, Joel, as always good to hear from you. Hansen is talking about the energy taken up by the ocean. He calculates this imbalance as being the equivalent of 0.6 W/m2 being absorbed by the ocean. Obviously, the ocean is not located at the top of the atmosphere, so he must be talking about the energy imbalance at the surface. In fact, there is no way to determine whether that change in ocean heat content is related to a global TOA imbalance or not. It is obvious that the ocean can warm or cool without the earth being out of energy balance, see the PDO and the El Nino cycles as examples.
Again, no, that’s just the change in the ocean. It may or may not be related to an equal, or a larger or smaller, change at the TOA. Energy is moving into and out of the ocean constantly, whether there is an imbalance at the TOA or not. If you have evidence that changes in ocean heat content are by definition equal to TOA changes, you’ll have to present that, because I know of no such evidence.
You make my point exactly. There are many things about the climate that we do not know to an accuracy greater than 10%. Indeed, some things, like the effect of clouds, we do not even agree about the sign of … and despite that, he claims that we should be worried about a tenth of a percent change somewhere in the system.
You are talking theory, bring it back to what I actually said. I said that a 2% change in earth’s temperature (six degrees) is a consequential change, while a 0.1% change (three tenths of a degree) is not.
If you disagree, you’ll have to explain why a change of three tenths of a degree should be a matter of concern.
Also, even by your numbers (using the TOA solar insolation of 240 W/m2 instead of the total surface DLR of about half a kilowatt), 0.6°C is still only two tenths of a percent, not 2%, so I’m totally unclear what you are talking about.
0.6 W/m2 is two percent of 30 W/m2 … what on earth are you comparing with Hansens 0.6 W/m2 that is only 30 W/m2 ???
Absolutely not. What has gotten us beyond the Dark Ages is that time after time scientists have gone against the consensus. If we were to follow your plan, we would still be believing what the consensus was in the Dark Ages, because according to you, science is settled by consensus.
Your claim is that the consensus of the experts is what we should listen to. I follow Richard Feynmann, who famously said “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts”.
Finally, the problem is not that people reject scientists who “disagree with their ideology”. The problem is that the leading lights of the AGW movement were shown by their own words to have lied, cheated, subverted the system, and likely broken the law in their attempts to advance their alarmism and punish anyone who disagree with their ideology … and the honest climate scientists said nothing, there were no consequences for the perpetrators of those actions.
THAT is the the extremely dangerous precedent, and the disbelief of much of the populace, rather than being dangerous, is a very logical and reasonable response to being lied to.
w.
Just a couple of comments/questions re the picture:
It really doesn’t look like a standard mushroom cloud of Hiroshima/Nagasaki size. I can’t find any pictures of genuine A bomb explosions that look like it.
Personally, I think it looks like a volcano, possibly one where the heat of the magma is being dispersed into that well known global warming agent – water. There appears to be little or no dust.
Can anyone identify the location? My guess would be Iceland – not too disimilar from the unpronouceable volcano from 2 years ago.
Was Dr Hansen responsible for the montage?
What’s really terrifying is that a overtly mentally deranged personality like this has any credence at all. The man is criminally insane methinks, and ought to be in the State Pen (Rather than in Penn State) …..hoho 😆
@Alan Bates: I believe it is one of several St. Helens eruptions in Washington State. (Looked familiar as I watched it as a child.)
No Gail,
Using nuclear power to synthesize motor fuel out of atmospheric CO2 would not starve the plants. After all, the point of synthesizing it is to sell and burn it and thereby give it back to the atmosphere. Basically it would be a seperate nuclear driven carbon cycle with no net change of atmospheric CO2. It would even be doable (but not economical) using current technology, and not politically feasible given the current state of public brainwash on nuclear technology.
I think this is a great point. Better run the planet a little bit warm than cold. As Hanson notes, it would take 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day to raise the temperature a small amount.
The lesson: it’s much harder to warm up the planet than cool it down! Cooling it down takes pushing up some sulfur compounds into the atmosphere, and Nathan Myhrvold thinks he knows how to do it for $250M per year. At least, it would work in a pinch.
…THINK OF THE PLANTS! [Gail Combs says: @ur momisugly May 16, 2012 at 5:51 am]
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KLA says: @ur momisugly May 16, 2012 at 4:48 pm
No Gail,
Using nuclear power to synthesize motor fuel out of atmospheric CO2 would not starve the plants. After all, the point of synthesizing it is to sell and burn it and thereby give it back to the atmosphere. Basically it would be a seperate nuclear driven carbon cycle with no net change of atmospheric CO2. It would even be doable (but not economical) using current technology, and not politically feasible given the current state of public brainwash on nuclear technology.
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The comment was sort of tongue in check.
However the “natural” carbon cycle also includes geochemical processes that take CO2 out of the cycle with the laying down of limestone and coal. This has gradually decreased the amount of CO2 to a rather dangerously low level. Plants starve below 200 ppm therefore increasing the levels to between 500 ppm and 1000 ppm as it was in much of the past would make for a much lusher biosphere.
A decent balance of nuclear (fusion/fission) for electrical generation and perhaps for mass transit such as ship and rail combined with the use of hydrocarbons for personal transport is what we should have been striving for all along IMHO.
Gail;
+1
You must be right. We agree!
>:)
Billy Liar says: May 15, 2012 at 11:47 am
Take a look at the observed Rose Park data in SLC:
http://co2.utah.edu/index.php?site=2&id=0&img=30
Thank you Billy.
This daily CO2 data profile is very interesting.
Please examine the Daily CO2 and Weekly CO2 tabs for all measurement stations.
These are current CO2 readings taken in May 2012.
Peak CO2 readings (typically ~470ppm) occur during the night, from midnight to ~8am, and drop to ~400 ppm during the day.
1. I assume that human energy consumption (and manmade CO2 emissions) occur mainly during the day, and peak around breakfast and supper times.
2. I suggest that the above atmospheric CO2 readings, taken in semi-arid Salt Lake City with a regional population of about 1 million, are predominantly natural in origin.
IF points 1 and 2 are true, then this urban CO2 generation by humankind is insignificant compared to natural daily CO2 flux, in the same way that (I have previously stated) annual humanmade CO2 emissions are insignificant compared to seasonal CO2 flux.
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003500/a003562/carbonDioxideSequence2002_2008_at15fps.mp4
IF these results are typical of most urban environments (many of which have much larger populations, but also have much greater area, precipitation and plant growth), then the hypothesis that human combustion of fossil fuels is the primary driver of increased atmospheric CO2 seems untenable. Humanmade CO2 emissions are lost in the noise of the much larger natural system, and most humanmade CO2 emissions are probably locally sequestered.
There may be some large urban areas (perhaps in China) where concentrated human activities overwhelm natural CO2 daily flux, but on a global scale these areas are miniscule. In winter,
when plant growth is minimal, concentrated human activities may also overwhelm natural CO2 daily flux.
These observations, if correct, suggest that human combustion of fossil fuels is NOT the primary driver of atmospheric CO2.
These observations are consistent with my 2008 paper, which notes that CO2 lags temperature at all measured time sales.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
In what has become “mainstream climate science”, there are many inconsistencies that have been resolved by data fabrication and contortions of logic.
There appears to be a much simpler explanation. Temperature primarily drives atmospheric CO2, not the reverse.
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Occam’s razor (also written as Ockham’s razor, Latin lex parsimoniae) is the law of parsimony, economy or succinctness. It is a principle urging one to select among competing hypotheses that which makes the fewest assumptions and thereby offers the simplest explanation of the effect.
Uniformitarianism is the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe, have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe.
Willis Eschenbach says:
Good to talk to you, Willis.
“Top-of-the-atmosphere” refers to the idea of computing the energy balance for the entire Earth system. Saying that the ocean isn’t at the top of the atmosphere is a red herring. The point is that just over 3 m layer of ocean has the same heat capacity as all of the atmosphere above it. So, if the Earth system is in net absorbing heat because of a radiative imbalance in the atmosphere, it is going to show up in the ocean. At shorter timescales, you can trade energy between, say, the oceans and atmosphere but over several years the oceans are going to be the dominant reservoir for any extra energy that the Earth system is receiving relative to what it is emitting back out into space.
My point is that the 0.6 W/m^2 is just the current imbalance. If we double CO2, the change in radiative forcing is about 4 W/m^2, which is almost 2% of 240 W/m^2. The reason why the current imbalance is less is because:
(1) We haven’t yet doubled CO2…but we will, and in fact will do much more than that if the folks who don’t want any limitations on CO2 emissions have their way.
(2) Anthropogenic aerosols have likely canceled a significant fraction of the greenhouse gas radiative forcing, but we can’t continue to rely on this because CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere whereas the aerosol concentration is proportional mainly to the current emissions rate. And, of course, aerosols have other negative effects on us that cause us to rightfully make laws to reduce their emissions.
(3) Some of the imbalance has already been alleviated by the Earth warming.
You are confusing two different things. Science isn’t settled by consensus and I agree that it is good to have scientists going against the consensus. However, what is not good is to say that as long as there are a few scientists going against the consensus, we are paralyzed from using the current consensus in the field to inform public policy. That is a recipe for paralysis, i.e., never using science to inform public policy decisions because you can always find scientists who are willing to buck the consensus!
I have yet to hear anybody come up with a viable alternative that would better use science to inform public policy decisions. You have to base decisions on principles. You can’t just make yourself King of the World and say that what you think the science says is what the science says and to heck with what the scientific community has determined! That’s a disastrous idea. Another disastrous idea is to have politicians decide what they think the science says independent of the opinions of the scientific community.
Actually, I have rarely heard anybody on the “AGW skeptic” side ever make even a coherent statement of how science should be used that isn’t disastrous in this way or doesn’t bias things in the direction of their own political ideology. (E.g., something like “When scientists warn of environmental dangers, we should not take any action as long as we can find any scientists who are willing to express doubt about this.”)
joeldshore says:
May 17, 2012 at 11:47 am
Joel, the -0.6 W/m2 is the heat actually absorbed by the ocean. It is not the TOA imbalance, nor does Hansen claim that it is the TOA imbalance. You are claiming that. I don’t know why you think that it must reflect a TOA imbalance of 0.6 W/m2.
As you point out, the top 3 m of the ocean have the same heat capacity as the atmosphere. You say that “at shorter timescales” they can trade energy … but the PDO trades them on half-century scales. And given the huge difference in heat capacity, that is by no means the limit.
Also, even by your numbers (using the TOA solar insolation of 240 W/m2 instead of the total surface DLR of about half a kilowatt), 0.6°C is still only two tenths of a percent, not 2%, so I’m totally unclear what you are talking about.
Look, what we are discussing is the CURRENT IMBALANCE. However, even your example is wrong. You are comparing a change in total downwelling radiation to solar radiation … but that’s not a true comparison. A change in total downwelling radiation can be compared only to total downwelling radiation.
Also, you still have not given me any reason to believe that we can measure the temperature of the top mile of the ocean to anywhere near 0.6 W/m2 … and I have specifically asked for that and pointed to why I think it is inaccurate. In other words, I think Hansen’s claim is neither supported nor supportable by the observations we have available at this time.
No, that’s not what you said. You said:
Joel, we don’t know a) what your claimed consensus involves, or b) who actually believes it. The polls I’ve seen have been self-selected and so poorly written as to be a joke, on the order of “Is the world warming (Yes/No)”, at the end of which a “consensus” is declared.
You refer to the National Academies as though they represented the scientists, or as though they asked their members. To me, the fact that they make such statements indicates that there is no consensus … when’s the last time that they made a statement about the consensus regarding the existence of DNA, or the Second Law of Thermodynamics?
Important contentious public policy decisions have almost always been made either in ignorance of, or in defiance of, or disregarding science. When science is being claimed as a reason for a public policy decision, I reach to make sure my wallet is still there, because you can lay good odds that the science is flawed. Look at the EPA for one of many examples.
You seem to think that science is “used to inform public policy decisions”. Yes, for non-critical decisions it might occasionally be. But everything that is at all contentious, from AIDS to CO2 to fracking to whether there are WMDs in Iraq, is ruled by politics, not by science.
So I fear that you are envisioning an idealistic technocracy, a political system where decisions by scientists actually make a difference. I don’t know of any society like that anywhere.
Joel, the EPA CO2 regs, presumably following the dictates of consensus science, are set to cost us untold billions of dollars. Their hugely expensive regulation are predicted by the EPA itself to make a difference on the order of hundredths of a degree. THAT is what your “follow the consensus science” has brought us.
And to cap it off, folks like you expect us to just shut up and fall in line and say OK, the National Academy of Science and the EPA says its a brilliant plan to waste billions and billions of dollars in the hopes of cooling the world by three hundredths of a degree, and the consensus must be right, guess I should just go along …
Do I have a better system? No, I don’t, because I fear that would require rewiring the human race … but that doesn’t make your consensus claims worth following. James Hansen picked the warmest time of the year for his Congressional testimony in 1988, then turned off the air conditioning … and you still claim that the science is on his and your side? Sorry, if the science is on your side you don’t need to resort to scabby underhanded tricks. If there truly were a consensus your side wouldn’t need to subvert the IPCC rules to get the Jesus Paper accepted.
Given the fact, not theory but fact, that the leaders of the AGW movement have been shown by their own words to be very adept liars, cheats, and crooks, as well as very adept at rousing public opinion to form a consensus through such tricks and subversion, I’m not surprised that there is a consensus.
I’m surprised, however, that there are still folks out there foolish enough to think it means something, particularly folks as smart as yourself …
w.
The only support for AGW is junk science and propaganda, like this. It is a fairly standard tactic. Few people realise how big the Earth is so by calculating a large number without putting it into context it can appear to be catastrophic. It is most often used with regards to ice melting where the figures appear huge, but in context it would take thousands of years to be noticeable.
These are desperate and increasingly pathetic tactics.
Yet again he shows that my euphemism for him is Shroud-Waver-General.