The kidz at Skeptical Science (SkS) have made fools of themselves again, creating an app that is not only morally wrong, but the clearest case of science propaganda disguised as climate information I’ve ever seen.
![Widget[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/widget1.jpg?resize=220%2C330)
First, one wonders what the people of Hiroshima think about the tragedy of war that befell their city being used as a unit of measure for propaganda today? Would they see that as demeaning and insulting to those who lost their lives? You can thank scientist turned activist Dr. James Hansen for making the ugly comparison.
UPDATE: commenter TamLin adds at the Guardian
TamLin 25 November 2013 4:24pm
I’d like to raise a couple of points. First, as an anti-alarmist, I am very glad to see the appearance of this widget, because I am reasonably sure the whole thing will be an own-goal for the CAGW movement that will hasten the end.
Secondly, as a resident alien in Japan for the past 30-odd years, I have a keen appreciation of the general Japanese sensibility about the atomic bombings. The issue of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings has developed what could be described as a “sacred or religious” aura” in this country that makes it totally off limits for purposes of comparison, allegory or humor. This app breaks that taboo in a way that most Japanese people would find deeply offensive just as most Jewish people find inappropriate references to the Holocaust offensive and many devout Muslims found The Satanic Verses and many devout Christians found Piss Christ offensive.
Certainly, one could argue that nobody has the right not be offended or that nobody need be offended by such things. But that’s not the point. The whole point is that many ordinary people do get offended, and often much more deeply offended than an outsider would imagine. Also, there are organizations and other vested interests that will make a point of being offended.
If its a question of winning hearts and minds, using Hiroshima in an app of this kind is like walking into a minefield PR disaster-wise, particularly when it comes to Japan. At the very least, it reveals to people a whiff of something decidedly unpleasant about the nature of the alarmist movement, something that people may not be clearly aware of but that is nonetheless palpable to many of us outside the movement.
Second, for people that don’t understand how much energy the Earth receives each day, “4 atomic bombs per second” sounds frightening, even terrifying. That’s exactly what they are counting on, and that’s why this is pure propaganda. But here’s the reality of the numbers and they aren’t frightening at all.
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. (calculation by Willis Eschenbach here)
So “4 atomic bombs per second” translates to about 1/100 th of the energy emitted by a 60 watt refrigerator lightbulb per square meter of the Earth’s surface. Scary, huh? Compare that to this calculation:
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
1000 Hiroshima atomic bombs on this planet. EVERY SECOND. (h/t bvdeenen)
So the energy difference is 4/1000th of what the total energy received on earth is each second. Not so scary now is it?
UPDATE2: Barry Woods adds in comments that Cook decided privately on the SkS private forum to go for the “impressive” measure of 3 nuclear bombs per second. There is no question that Cook created the app for propaganda purposes.
Barry Woods says:
quote for you (from the SkS private forum, made visible by an admin screwup)
John Cook:
Comment, that’s a lot of energy! I asked various climate scientists for quotes on global warming and Scott Denning gave me this:
“Doubling CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere would add 4 watts to every square meter of the Earth’s surface. This is equivalent to running a child’s night light on every square meter permanently.”.
Somehow, 3 nuclear bombs per second sounds a lot more impressive than a child’s night light! – John Cook
[Wood] Scott Denning sounds like a scientist to me (whilst also being concerned about climate, scientist) – John Cook (or was it Hansen first), not so much, more like ‘misinformation’..
Third, the imagery connection (note the app has a mushroom cloud) is absolutely wrong. Dr. Richard Tol writes in comments at the Guardian
Godwin’s Law now extends to apps.
Metaphors create an image. Few people would associate “Hiroshima” with energy. A more common association is death and devastation. The atom bomb instantly killed 70,000-80,000 people. The image created by this app is that climate change kills 300,000 people per second. That is patently wrong.
This abuse of one of the most atrocious events in human history insults those who perished there and then and their loved ones who survived.
Fourth, others who are in the thick of climate science see the same imagery problem, here is a Twitter exchange from John Cook, the developer of the app and Dr. Doug McNeall from the Met Office on the issue (h/t to Barry Woods):
Dr Doug McNeall (Met Office) had some interesting comments about this – via twitter (my bold)
John Cook @skepticscience
New website about our planet global warming at 4 Hiroshima bombs worth of heat per second http://4hiroshimas.com/ pic.twitter.com/7ZUkThicem
Doug McNeall @dougmcneall
@skepticscience Hi John, as I said before, I think this is a silly way to describe warming: meaningless, and a bit shrill.
Doug McNeall @dougmcneall
@AGrinsted thing is, @skepticscience knows that this is a poor comparison – it’s been pointed out before.
Doug McNeall @dougmcneall
@AGrinsted @skepticscience > because climate change is nothing like atom bombs.
Doug McNeall @dougmcneall
@AGrinsted @skepticscience But, actually, the comparison makes the information available to the public *poorer*, >
Doug McNeall @dougmcneall
@AGrinsted @skepticscience So, , what do we have – a nice soundbite that gets picked up by msmand touted around a bit.
I think in the next tweet, Dr Doug McNeall, echoes Prof Richard Tol’s concerns earlier….
Doug McNeall @dougmcneall
@AGrinsted My problem is that the association of death and destruction is also easy to grasp.
Doug McNeall @dougmcneall
@AGrinsted @skepticscience Doing it in a way that holds deep and terrible cultural resonances with millions of people is not great.
That last comment “Doing it in a way that holds deep and terrible cultural resonances with millions of people is not great.” capsulizes the lack of empathy that Mr. Cook and the SkS seem to have when they are pushing the propaganda envelope to advance their cause of climate alarmism.
Such lack of common sense in “anything for the cause” has been demonstrated before, and it failed miserably. Remember the 10:10 video exploding children?
Fifth, why would anyone trust the messaging about World War II and atomic bombs when the proprietor and participants of “Skeptical Science” play Nazi dress up behind closed doors? Yes, this really happened as I document here.
The image below is of John Cook, the proprietor of “Skeptical Science”. It comes from their “inside members only” forum. Somebody went to great trouble to photoshop the image from the original photo of Himmler to put Cook’s face and the SkS emblems in the uniform.
Like with using the deaths at Hiroshima to score propaganda points, did Cook ever think that an app with a red 10:10 style mushroom cloud button might be at odds with his closet Nazi cosplay?
This kind of science propaganda is what Donna Laframboise described as “delinquent teenager” antics.
Do I smell the rank odour of desperation?
Auto
Sad to say, but the 4 Hiroshima metaphor already has traction in the legacy media. Makes you wonder why.
The Loser is always the last one to realize that he (or she) is just that – A LOSER. Let’s keep the SKS kidz around . . . for entertainment.
Nothing to add to the above, except Peter Gleick’s remark that blowing up children MAY be worse than taking them on a surprise trip to Toys’R’Us …
I used to think that climate change lowers the IQ, but it also leads to moral corruption.
It is sad.
quote for you (from the SkS private forum, made visible by an admin screwup)
John Cook:
Comment, that’s a lot of energy! I asked various climate scientists for quotes on global warming and Scott Denning gave me this:
“Doubling CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere would add 4 watts to every square meter of the Earth’s surface.
This is equivalent to running a child’s night light on every square meter permanently.”.
Somehow, 3 nuclear bombs per second sounds a lot more impressive than a child’s night light! – John Cook
Scott Denning sounds like a scientist to me (whilst also being concerned about climate, scientist) – John Cook (or was it Hansen first), not so much, more like ‘misinformation’..
The Drama Greens really are in the gutter with this stunt.
“Godwin’s Law now extends to apps.” — quoted in OP
Nah, Godwin’s law would be if they used Jews as their standard candle.
They are going for pure alarmism. That the energy is only a fraction of a percent of what the earth receives (and needs) is beside the point. But it can backfire in more ways than they envision. next you will have the lunatics demonstrating against sun light itself (since it delivers all the energy and is responsible for thousands of hiroshimas per second).
“SkS where temperatures are at an all time high and ethics are at an all time low”
Ye but do not forget that the head is hiding in the ocean and thats danger’s!!!!!! Al that head accumulating and then one day it will erupt like a volcano of heat.
The rely sad thing is that those so call t scientist come away whit it whit out any harm.
I always touch t that warm water rises and cold water sinks. But now day I wonder if someone learned me wrong things. Yes warm water hide in the deep oceans, how could I be so stupid not to see that? Or are agwers rely to stupid to see that they are fool d whit???
Absolutely shameful.
May the gods of liability find the way to their door!
Perhaps some anti-warmist could create an app of their own. I am thinking of an app that shows the percentage of C02 in the atmosphere. For instance, it would start at a date as the first line, eg:
PERCENTAGE OF ATMOSPHERIC CO2
AD 1800 = .0003
AD 2013 = .0004
There would only be those two lines on it for some time. It would be an app that could be passed down for generations, and the big milestone would be for it to add just one more line, every two or three generations, maybe…
just by living and breathing Al Gore has produced 56Million watts.
@Steven Mosher – Gore has sired 56 million little Anthonys? 😉
It’s even less scary when you consider that their models predict the number should be a billion (50%) higher.
Wow, so much heat, and almost nothing to show for it. Must be well-hidden.
I think James Hansen desperately needs to go to another salon to get a proper toupee. I mean, that thing on the top of his head is way out of proportion to his head, and for its massive size you’d at least think it would properly disguise his male pattern baldness. But no, it doesn’t. And then there’s the issue of its color. If he’s going to try and disguise his age with a toupee you’d think he’d get something that would wash that gray away. But no, it’s all white. All they would’ve had to do is backlight it to make it dark and take that gray away for a more youthful look for that Knight in Shining Armor. But they didn’t, and don’t tell me Hansen and his ilk don’t know how to backlight things to make ’em look dark.
To be brutally honest, that’s just one of the stupidest looking head pieces I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen some pretty crappy ones.
Dr Warren Pearce- Nottingham university – Making Science Public
“What is bizarre is to think that people will not imagine mushroom clouds and suffering when offered this analogy.”
http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/29197667
three months ago, Dr Pearce took a critical look at the Hiroshima bomb framing,
http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/2013/08/14/more-heat-than-light-climate-catastrophe-and-the-hiroshima-bomb/
John Cook & Dana Nuccitelli turned up in the comments of Warren’s article, where some discussion was had. looks like they did not take the criticisms on board.
These wackos always relate their catastrophic prognostications to massive human death rates. It seems self evident to me that if their predictions were valid – especially concerning nukes, that the population would not have nearly tripled since I was born. (1944) .
Four atomic bombs a second… I wonder how many that would be in cute cuddly kittens?
Oh, and they never give their error bars do they? My best guess on error bars for that would “four atomic bombs a second, plus or minus fifty.”
I’m waiting for the Gift tags, Christmas cards and wrapping paper.
James Hansen is a featured speaker at this year’s annual Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. I find the invitation to this nutcase to be especially offensive. I invite any other AGU members to express their displeasure to AGU for including him in the program as a featured speaker.
The SkS propaganda is based upon Levitus 2012 which found the world’s oceans warmed only 0.09C over the past 55 years.
Due to the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics, the most that a 0.09C warmer ocean could additionally warm the atmosphere and Earth surface is a maximum of 0.09C additional. Since that is, of course, nothing of concern, SkS converts that to scary sounding Joules and Hiroshima bombs.
Due to the huge heat capacity of the oceans and the fact that longwave IR from greenhouse gases cannot penetrate the oceans, increased CO2 is not and cannot heat the oceans:
see Douglass & Knox paper:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/09/paper-global-cooling-began-in-2003.html
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/10/seven-recent-papers-that-disprove-man.html
Longwave infrared from CO2 cannot heat the oceans, even RealClimate admits this:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/09/realclimate-admits-doubling-co2-could.html
Why the ‘one Hiroshima bomb every four seconds’ claim is another AGW lie
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/08/why-one-hiroshima-bomb-every-four.html
“Doing it in a way that holds deep and terrible cultural resonances with millions of people…” is exactly why Cook did it – he and the rest of the kidz want people to think of death and destruction when they think of climate change. They want/need people to be horrified and to link it with the most destructive thing that Man has brought about.
I would fully expect Cook and the Gang to NOT understand the criticisms at all. They’ll be nodding their heads and saying, “Yes, that’s right exactly!” and delighting in it all.
These guys are dysfunctional.
It seems that the more evidence there is that extreme climate projections are, at a minimum, overstated, the more the rhetoric ramps up.
Presposterous and desperate.
Every last bit of SkS’ agenda is a repugnant stinkpile. Bleccch.
Maybe it hides in the ice cores too!
Interesting fellow….he uses nuclear explosions to terrorize the populace, and then confuses everyone by embracing an all-out rush to implement outdated BWR nuclear power plant construction in order to “save the planet.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/02/james-hansen-pushes-nuclear-power-as-saving-more-lives-than-it-has-harmed-with-new-study/
I’m sure the Greens are thoroughly confused by this lunatic….I’m am, if nobody else is!
Due to the asymmetry of land distribution on the planet, the mean global temperature warms about 4 degC during summer in the Northern Hemisphere. (These seasonal changes can’t be seen in the usual plots of temperature anomalies.) So seasonal global warming (a form of natural variation) amounts to about 10 billion Hiroshimas.
Our climate has accumulated …. heap big heaty heat hotnessity
It’s a wonder nobody noticed.
Most curious indeed, all those A-bombs going off and no-one ever noticing it, yet it makes perfect sense once one realizes that they’re all detonated in the deep of the oceans, where they heat them up and cause earthquakes and tsunamis to boot. Or something.
SS is little more and a tribute site for the AGW prophets such as Mann. And like any ‘crazed fan site’ it can see no wrong in its idols and will do ‘anything ‘ to big them up.
Cook and Co’s greatest fear is then go back to being the nobodies they were before ‘the cause ‘ give them a ticket to the big time . Sadly , for them , that is inevitable for they are nothing without ‘the cause ‘ so when it falls they are toast .
John Cook:
This is equivalent to 4 Hiroshima bombs worth of heat per second.
“When I mention this in public talks, I see eyes as wide as saucers. Few people are aware of how much heat our climate system is absorbing. To actively communicate our planet’s energy imbalance, Skeptical Science is releasing the Skeptical Science Heat Widget.”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/4-Hiroshima-bombs-per-second-widget-raise-awareness-global-warming.html
It’s even better! The app says “Our climate is accumulated”. So it would be better to calculate the temperature increase for the entire atmospheric volume. One could use the “effective volume” of about4.2 billion cubic kilometers. This measurement is what the volume would be if the entire atmosphere had the same sea level temperature and pressure. Or you could use the 100km altitude for the beginning of space. In which case the atmospheric volume would be closer to 51 billion cubic kilometers.
Another option would be to calculate the total energy contained within the atmosphere. Then show how small the 2 billion bomb nonsense is in comparison.
I don’t have time to do this myself as I’m at work.
Does anyone know mankind’s greenhouse gas production measured in equivalent termite farts? It would, I assure you, be staggering.
I wonder what it was during the Holocene Climate Optimum? Minoan Warm Period? No wonder we are so hot, it’s all coming out now.
This is certainly no worse than WUWT arguing the toss over Typhoon Haiyan being the biggest on record while they were still searching for thousands of bodies.
All the warming has been sequestered as hot air by the alarmists.
0.6 watts per square meter is equivalent to what, a single Christmas tree mini light bulb?
Douglass & Knox demolish the SkS kidz paper that is the basis of their Hiroshima bomb claims:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037596011201119X
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=PdfExcerptURL&_imagekey=1-s2.0-S037596011201119X-main.pdf&_piikey=S037596011201119X&_cdi=271541&_user=10&_acct=C000228598&_version=1&_userid=10&md5=4b73e042bb959cc8c78a4f189cd0d358&ie=/excerpt.pdf
Steven Mosher says:
November 25, 2013 at 11:00 am
“just by living and breathing Al Gore has produced 56Million watts.”
I think you mean Watt-hours.
Interesting comment from the Big Oil paid Dana Nuccitelli at the Guardian in reply to Barry Woods.
Since SkS is also part of the Lewandowsky propaganda effort, it is not surprising that its leadership is committed to using any straw in its grab to scare people into agreeing with their alarmist obsession. For me it has been entertaining to see them devolve from committed beleiver with at least a veneer of seriousness into a parody of thoughtless extremism. They are now willing to deceive, distract and misrepresent as they feel justified by their CO2 obsession. Far from being skeptical about anything, they are now firmly in the “Keepers Of Odd Knowledge” (KOOK) category of communications.
Tony Banton says:
November 25, 2013 at 12:49 pm
“This is certainly no worse than WUWT arguing the toss over Typhoon Haiyan being the biggest on record while they were still searching for thousands of bodies.”
No Tony, the claim that Haiyan was the biggest on record was basically an effort to claim that Typhoons are getting worse due to AGW. The facts do not support this. The commentors mostly prefaced their points with a statement of sympathy and many even donated money to help. Equating this to the other is worse than stupid.
@ Tony Banton,
Keep stretching, there, big guy. You could be on the verge of developing a new pilates move: The AGW reach for equivalency. Where the stretcher seeks to break the bounds of rational thought to sustain a false equivalence.
I think this app will come back and bite the alarmists right in their self-rightous butts.
It doesn’t take much intelligence to get to: “Hej somebody just exploded 2 billion atomic bombs on our planet………….AND I DIDN’T FEEL A THING !!!”
@The Engineer – I was thinking the same thing. remember MAD? And how we and the old Soviet Union were going to destroy the world? Yet combined we only had a few thousand Hiroshimas. Enough for a few seconds according to this analogy.
The SkS folks ought to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial museum.
http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/virtual/index_e.html
Of course, they might come away thinking it was a rather one-sided presentation.
It will be interesting to see how many died due to the terrible typhoon and compare it to Hiroshima. It would then be interesting to see your comment about how it’s no worse. PS our host’s wife’s partial side of the family are from the Philippines. Read before you leap.
Here is what you must have missed. Do some work next time before making ‘smart’ Alec comments.
and further down we have someone else.
I find it hard to support cultural/religious groups when it comes to the topic of offence, afteral for thousands of years and still to this day they commit atrocities many of which against scientists whom they declared heretics for their scientific discoveries/claims.
I guess the problem with many of the fields in science is the that like politics there is no right answer (at least one that we know of), so it boils down to who can shout the loudest, especially with a issue that has become as political as AGW. This is at odds with how many people see science as the proving/disproving of theory, but in reality bubbling underneath the surface is a hierarchy that controls the scientific ‘beliefs’ of the current day. As you would expect in politics as the policy of one party comes into question they come up with more audacious claims to support it and oust any within their group that dissent against the party line.
What this AGW saga has shown is that science in the wrong hands can be used as a dangerous political tool. The scientific community is open to abuse as it has no real system of validation in subjects like climatology where its near impossible to do so, and the so called experts that control the field debunk any claims that might negate their own. Its clear that in order for science to be used responsibly it needs to have a rating system that distinguishes the level of proof of any particular theory. This would make it easy for the public to establish where science is being used as a political tool and where it has merit applicable to political decision making. How this would be controlled is another question, maybe some sort of council of leading scientists. I guess thats where the idea becomes slightly unstuck, but something is needed otherwise the backlash will be to the detriment of the scientific community.
How many people have died and will die due to high energy and food prices compared to the number who died in those despicable callous evil and unnecessary bombings which were carried out in no small measure as an experiment rather than out of a militaristic need, given that the despicable Japanese government of the time were already all but defeated on the brink of surrender?
How many have died due to the high energy and food prices? Does anybody know the answer?
Just calculate how many Hiroshima bombs are in a typical rain cloud, both due of potential gravitational energy of having that mass of water at that height and due of the latent heat of condensation in the droplets, and be amazed! There is a lot of energy hidden in Nature. Basically, there is mc^2 of it.
Climate accumulates heat? Heat is accumulated somewhere? This would make one fail a basic physics exam. There is no such thing as accumulating heat. Heat only flows. Heat is energy transfer. Energy transfer cannot be accumulated. Energy can, but energy transfer cannot. But when had the ‘science’ a problem with denying physics?
As long as they want to use absurd measures of “global warming”, how about plugging it into E=MC^2 and solving [for] mass? Based on the numbers in the main post, we are adding 279.3 kgs (615.7 lbs) of warming per day.
Some [snip]wit told me that the Antarctic loses 70Gt of ice a year!!!!!!!!!!!
I looked up how much it had, and came to 26,000,000Gt.
If the uniform of National Socialism fits, wear it. Liberal democracy has always been attacked by social engineers imposing their will on others. The uniforms are just part of the fear provoking process. Cook looks right at home.
Tony Banton says:
November 25, 2013 at 12:49 pm
This is certainly no worse than WUWT arguing the toss over Typhoon Haiyan being the biggest on record while they were still searching for thousands of bodies.
Sure it is, Tony. The discussion over the magnitude of Haiyan is about reality. And that is also a critically important argument because the warmist issue is that CG is “causing” something, while reality tells us something completely different. Haiyan was a catastrophe without any doubt or question. Trying to use it for a climate change argument was gratuitous, misleading, warmist exploitation of a disaster. The people suffered from the storm, not climate change, and they would NOT have suffered less if Haiyan were one of the monster storms documented historically – and before AGW had its putative legs under it.
First, there are more people on the planet and they congregate near coast lines. Any storm making land fall on any continent but Antarctica in all probability will affect more people in the 21st century than would have been affected in the 19th. The infrastructure we use is more complex and, unless well defended, more fragile and subject to damage. Power lines, telephone lines, roads, communications antennae, and rail are all exposed and unless properly engineered for such insults will suffer. Also, the material infrastructure is more costly to build and repair, meaning the damage repair is more costly.
In contrast, comparing the amount of energy received by the planet to nuclear-bomb energy releases, especially to the war-time use of them, is gratuitous exploitation to elicit fright and horror effects – darned close to terrorism when you think about it. It repeats a pattern of alarmist “argument” that was revealed in the use of the label “denier” and the association to the Holocaust, the “explosion” of sceptical children in class rooms, arguing that sceptics should be executed or tried for crimes against humanity, etc. Cook’s remark contrasting the difference between a “child’s night” and a nuclear bomb shows that he was well aware of reality and instead wanted to invoke horror and fear among the physically and historically ignorant.
Donations to Phillipine relief are more in order than “we told you so” arguments. As an aside, there many of the Phillipino nurses I know who are sending monetary and goods aid directly to their villages or families, since they do not consider the government trustworthy.
I especially don’t buy SkS’s figure of 2,037,061,382 nukes · perNuke / areaOfEarth which is ≈250,000,000 joules per square meter accumulated since 1998, huh, with no meaningful increase in temperature over that same period? Irregardless whether this is 0.6 J/s/m² or not. Does that data itself make sense to anyone !?!? In other words that is the energy to raise the top meter of the entire Earth 60°C and a bit more if allowing for land. Sorry, I just don’t buy that figure! Heat rises to the top in the waters of the oceans.
Seems John Cook at SkS has just published their own (and Trenberth’s, and Hansen’s) refutation in one very sick app. Now that seems to be a first.
( using: perNuke = 6.28E+013 J, areaOfEarth = 5.1E+14 m², cpH2O = 4187 J/kg/K, think that is calculated correct )
Action now, we must get the energy down to an absolute minimum of something survivable, say 10 KG TnT. Now let’s see, what would happen if the energy input went from 600 hydrogen bombs a second to practically nothing.
Unscientific crap, such dishonesty, though properly and honestly done it is kinda good idea. We need an AGW calculator.
Lives saved by higher temperature
Food increase simulator
Lives saved by more food
Oxygen increase simulator
Conversely
Deaths due to AGW (zero) compared with…..
Lives lost by fuel poverty
Number of deaths from hunger and quantity of food burned in cars
Deaths due to malaria, while we fiddle about with AGW
Deaths due to cancer while we fiddle with AGW
Deaths due to heart disease while we fiddle with AGW
Koala deaths due to clamydia while we fiddle with AGW
Number of phillippino cyclone shelters built
Number of cyclone shelters that could be built with CAGW research funding
Length of seawall that could be built with AGW funding
Number of people that could be fed with AGW funding
@Tony: “This is certainly no worse than WUWT arguing the toss over Typhoon Haiyan being the biggest on record while they were still searching for thousands of bodies.”
How DARE you speak about the annual crop reports while Kulaks are starving! This sophist game is an excellent choice for the party at fault as only the reprobates and con artists benefit from the red herring introduced.
Actually Anthony, we should publish the alarmists salaries in cyclone shelters per annum
Dana:
[T]he widget was conceived to debunk the pervasive ‘pause’ myth. You could argue that the widespread disinformation about the mythical ‘pause’ is helping to slow action to reduce emissions. After all, if global warming has ‘paused’ then surely we’re in no hurry. Thus by debunking that myth, it’s possible that the widget will move us closer to solving the problem. Perhaps that’s wishful thinking, but it certainly won’t hinder those efforts.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/nov/25/global-warming-counter-widget#comment-29221325
@tim: “This would make it easy for the public to establish where science is being used as a political tool and where it has merit applicable to political decision making. How this would be controlled is another question, maybe some sort of council of leading scientists.”
Uh yeh, we’ve done that many times. Put the eggheads in charge and you get all sorts of scientific solutions. Such as Eugenics and Collectivization of Farms. While you properly note that people have gone after scientists, it’s no less true that scientists have gone after people. Or, simply, people have a habit of persecuting outgroups.
The problem is essentially Philosophy. Political ideologies are simply a philosophy, a weltanscauung. As to are Religious ideologies. And make no mistake about science, it’s the fusion of philosophy and engineering. Putting scientists in charge is strictly worse than the other two though. The other two have nothing but rhetoric, but scientists bring very clever sophistries written in undecipherable hieroglyphs. So people don’t question it because they can’t. Often, not even the scientists; which gives them a self-certain Faith of their own truth that not even the Pope can hold a candle to. So if you’re truly serious about putting Top Men or technical merit in charge then the first thing you do is: Drown all the Philosophers. As it’s only the engineers that can and have demonstrated technical merit for time immemorial. Of course, they’ll often tell you to get bent also; which doesn’t make for good ideological fuel.
I commented that the propaganda was an insult to war dead and to my amazement my comment was removed by the Guardian moderator.
Steven Mosher says:
November 25, 2013 at 11:00 am
just by living and breathing Al Gore has produced 56Million watts.
============================================================================
We did twice than an an hour today. At landfills. Renewable energy. Green.
Maybe you should rethink your units.
The new skeptical science Hiroshima bomb widget will lead to indifference about global warming.
When you look at the widget, the number of Hiroshima bombs goes up rapidly. But after a while, you look around at the real world, and see that nothing has changed.
Even after 1000, 2000, 3000 Hiroshima bombs have “gone off”, The real world is still exactly the same as it was before. There is nothing to worry about.
Remember, the younger generation is the “I want it NOW” generation. They don’t want to have to wait to see what happens.
I now look at the Hiroshima widget often. It gives me a reassurance that everything is fine.
There have been over 2 billion Hiroshima bombs gone off since 1998, and the world is still a wonderful place.
Thanks skeptical science.
The fact is that it is clever propaganda. The average occidental green cares as much about the Japanese people as they do Jews. Nothing. They won’t see these people trampled under “the message” which, as I said, is clever propaganda.
Cook is stunning in that Nazi uniform. If he had been around in 1935, he might have been the poster boy for the Nazis.
just as hideous: the “duck & cover” equivalent for CFL bulbs in the German schoolroom is near the start. whatever your opinion of CFL’s, including the fact we’ve had fluorescent bulbs for decades – this 28 minute video is worth watching from start to finish. in the second half, almost every single line exposes the utter insanity of the EU’s CAGW decision-making process, & the cronyism behind those decisions:
2012: Deutsche Welle In Focus: Toxic Light – The Dark Side of Energy Saving Bulbs
John Cook: “As for *why* I use this metaphor, the reason is not political. It’s cognitive. There are several decades of psychological research into misinformation and how to reduce its influence.”
He really does fantasize about being Himmler.
@ DCA
That and what Anthony points out, and yet they don’t want folks to refer to their site using the common method of the first letters of the words “Skeptical Science”- SS !!!
Perhaps he should take a holiday in Dresden and ask the people there what they think.
Unlike the atomic bomb, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere has generated 3.5 trillion dollars work of extra wealth in the world due to enhanced fertilization.
Went and read some of the comments on the Guardian page. The arrogance and lack of scientific understanding on the warmist side is simply exquisite. Endless appeal to authority, nonsensical quid pro quo, and Machiavellianism are rampant. All I can say is let the fools speak. They are only losing the populous.
If it was simply their idiocy we had to combat, I wouldn’t worry so much. The fact that they keep referencing how the “children” understand AGW as opposed to stupid adults (read: those who are logical, wise, educated, experienced, and able to argue back), just shows the true evilness that lies in their “hearts”. Yes, use the indoctrinated youngsters who believe whatever you force them to read. Yes, there’s a sound, scientific stance.
This is a war. If it isn’t, I don’t know what is.
@Jquip “Uh yeh, we’ve done that many times. Put the eggheads in charge and you get all sorts of scientific solutions. Such as Eugenics and Collectivization of Farms. While you properly note that people have gone after scientists, it’s no less true that scientists have gone after people. Or, simply, people have a habit of persecuting outgroups.”
I think you misunderstood my post. I was pointing out that bad science is often misused by those looking to gain political advantage, of which you have pointed out some more examples.
Let me clarify i don’t think scientists should be involved in political decision making, but their theories and papers will always be used to justify political decisions. This makes it important to filter what science is ‘reliable’ to be used in this way, hence a proof rating of scientific studies. This proof rating is not determine if the science is wrong or right which is almost impossible to do and why science is so easy to exploit, but to measure the weight of reliable evidence to back up the theory. This can be done with standardised rules to mark out the what evidence is considered scientifically valid and how much is needed for each level of ‘confidence’.
As you state in your post scientist’s can often have “faith in their own truth” so it becomes even more important to verify the level of proof involved in that truth or we start on a dangerous path of scientific faiths that people are all to ready to follow. This system would hopefully promote more factual science studies whilst showing up studies that are full of unsubstantiated conjecture as exactly that.
@ Richard Tol
Are you sure you want to comment here in the denier den?
When they try you for felony climate denial guilt by association may be enough for a conviction; especially if you are unable to recite the anthropocentric climatological creed without any errors (denier test much like the witch test of reciting the Lord’s Prayer):
I believe in the man induced warming of the world;
the righteousness of the IPCC;
the infallibility of the consensus;
the accuracy of the GCM ensemble;
a high CO2 sensitivity;
wholly positive feedbacks;
the hidden heat;
the hot spot;
hockey sticks;
carbon indulgences;
a price for carbon;
Arrhenius over Milankovitch;
theory over observation;
utility of cartoonist unit creations;
the ends justify the means;
forever Gore.
@ DCA
John Cook may fantasize about being Himmler, but I think his role in the alarmist movement is closer to that of a Goebbels.
@ JohnWho
Thanks for pointing out the acronym. Amazingly, I had never noticed it until now, but it is juicily appropriate as the original SS was the Party’s “Protection Squadron” (or “Protective Echelon”, as Encyclopedia Britannica puts it). Skeptical Science is a long way from scientific skepticism on the subject of climate but is a propaganda organ of the alarmist movement. It was established on the principle that attack is the best form of defense in order to protect the meme of “the scientific consensus on global warming” from any argument that “threatens” to undermine it.
I wouldn’t condemn SS out of hand as it generally operates within the Marquis of Queensbury rules of scientific fisticuffs, it contains well-crafted arguments that you can have endless fun spotting the fallacies behind, and it is actually an important resource that real skeptics can make use of in debate. On at least a dozen occasions I’ve debunked alarmist claims by quoting articles from the SS site. It’s a very satisfying thing to do as they tend to regard SS as a climate science Bible and they really don’t like it when you present them with something from their own literary canon that contradicts what they’ve just claimed because they can’t dismiss it with the usual “denier” or “in the pay of Big Oil” mantras.
Incidentally, I’m the Tam Lin whose comment Anthony quoted above. I go under that name at CIF, and I have had a long-term interest in climate science and in the CAGW issue, which are two very different subjects. I was at the Kyoto International Conference Center on the day Al Gore turned up to sign the Kyoto Protocol, and my disbelief in global warming dates from the time of that circus. But it is only since I’ve been reading WUWT that I’ve begun to get a deeper understanding of what’s up with climate science and climate politics.
Many comments about using SkS and SS in this forum several months ago. SkS is preferred (here on WUWT) to avoid this specific association. Mod
It doesn’t seem to be available for Android. I’m gutted!
And now for some really big numbers:
“Today, the average rate of energy capture by photosynthesis globally is approximately 130 terawatts,[8][9][10] which is about six times larger than the current power consumption of human civilization.[11] Photosynthetic organisms also convert around 100–115 thousand million metric tonnes of carbon into biomass per year.[12][13]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis
At this rate plants will gobble up the entire universe in no time.
@Many comments about using SkS and SS in this forum several months ago. SkS is preferred (here on WUWT) to avoid this specific association. Mod
I understand and I think its a good policy.
In my comment above, by “global warming” I meant “CAGW”, but in point of fact, I haven’t noticed any global warming at all over the past 17 years, and this total lack of apparent global warming over a period in which most observers would agree fairly accurate and reliable measurements exist has impressed me as much as it has disconcerted the alarmists. The fact that they are resorting to Hiroshima bomb analogies to describe anticipated heat that isn’t actually being detected in the atmosphere, at the earth’s surface or in the top 700 meters of the oceans, but which may well be lurking down in the depths along with Godzilla, sea monsters and Captain Nemo, is an indication that their project is well on the way to degenerating into farce.
HGW;
populus is Latin for the people, the population, the folk. Populous is an adjective only: heavily populated. Populace is probably the word you need.
____
A war indeed. Perhaps childhood and teen rebelliousness against pompous authority is on our side. Hope so.
“especially concerning nukes, that the population would not have nearly tripled since I was born. (1944) . ”
As a freshman in college I heard from a speaker paid by the university that humans were doomed by nuke weapons testing. My older sister (1944) would be the last generation. The odd thing was that I was listening to the speaker and I was born in 1949.
Yes the sky is falling, just ask the boy who cried wolf.
In nuclear power we have a term for a very low dose, banana equivalent dose or the exposure from eating a banana. The technician that administered my last whole scan announced that I was a non-smoking banana eater. We can measure natural and man made isotopes to a level far below the level of detectable harm.
There is a problem with crying wolf. News releases about impending doom rarely reach the level of doom predicted. Sometimes, run for your life means just that. Twenty thousand died in Japan who had time to get to higher ground. No one was hurt by radioactive material because they headed the warnings and took complex precautions relative to getting to higher ground.
“outdated BWR nuclear power plant construction in order to “save the planet. ”
Which BWRs are outdated and which one are we building? The same goes for PWRs.
“How many have died due to the high energy and food prices? Does anybody know the answer? ”
Yes, actually! I know the answer. Zeeeeero! Food and energy are dirt cheap. Root cause is part of my nuclear training. There are a lot of poor people who do not have access to power and clean water. That is why they are poor.
@tim: “This makes it important to filter what science is ‘reliable’ to be used in this way, hence a proof rating of scientific studies.”
A quick remind: Science is the fusion of philosophy and engineering. If you can engineer with it, you don’t need proof ratings. Nor, for that matter, any of the philosophy. It works or it doesn’t. Weaken that criterion in any fashion and you’re right back to square one: Top Magi distributing their revealed religion. Which, from the stone age to now, still consists of shamans telling us who we need to sacrifice to please the gods of weather.
You might like this article from Jo Nova on the nonsense of using Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Equivalents (habe’s) as a measure of energy in the climate sciences.
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/06/climate-scientists-move-to-atom-bomb-number-system-give-up-on-exponentials/
Personally, I’d put this app in the same propaganda league as 10:10’s infamous “No Pressure” video.
@Kit P
“How many have died due to the high energy and food prices? Does anybody know the answer? ”
Yes, actually! I know the answer. Zeeeeero! Food and energy are dirt cheap. Root cause is part of my nuclear training. There are a lot of poor people who do not have access to power and clean water. That is why they are poor.
———————————————————————————————————————
Unfortunately, thanks to green politicians, quite a few people have died in northern European winters, because they were unable to heat their homes due to astronomical electricity costs. I believe the in-term is “fuel poverty”.
Please cut the c**p about how it’s insensitive to use [Hiroshima] or any other historic atrocity as an analogy – or that we must tiptoe around the sensibilities of the Japanese or anyone else. That type of fashion-statement faux sensitivity is for lefties and it is used by them to attack their opponents while avoiding the [pertinent] argument. (If you can’t attack the argument itself then just start emoting on the ‘insensitivity’ of the analogy!) Don’t legitimise this tactic by playing it back at them – you are only legitimising their weapons.
[In turn, please moderate your own language. Mod]
Over on Phys.org where I mentioned this new widget, commenter The_Alchemist makes the insider politics claim:
“Though I don’t approve, you’ll notice John Cook stole, twisted and exaggerated my concept. Without crediting me, a no-no demonstrating his ethics.”
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-11-discovery-prompts-global.html
I wish Hansen were the one to thank for this sick analogy, but I can find an article back in 2011 by Mike Sandiford, Director of the Melbourne Energy Institute at University of Melbourne, where he describes the term “hiro”:
The ocean heating is at 5 Hiros over the last few decades – the energy equivalent of detonating more than a 150 million Hiroshima bombs in our oceans each year.
(http://fathertheo.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/our-effect-on-the-earth-is-real-how-we%E2%80%99re-geo-engineering-the-planet/)
I thought I had researched this awhile back and found an earlier reference, but so far this is the earliest reference I can find.
So now APP’s have become the new tools of APParatchiks?
awww – how cute.
The kidz got to come up with a graph that has a scary upward trend to it and some scary words too.
(I like it when the alarmist side keeps going off the deep end like this)
In the foreward to the following publication, Mike Sandiford states:
Each year the 28 billion tonnes of CO2 we make induces heating. The oceans are now heating at the phenomenal rate of 300 trillion watts. In frighteningly human terms that is equivalent to detonating five Hiroshima sized A-bombs every second, every day of every year.[June, 2010]
http://media.bze.org.au/ZCA2020_Stationary_Energy_Report_v1.pdf
And how many Hiroshima bombs did it take to produce the melt water that made sea levels rise from 20kya to 8kya (fast rise) to now (slow rise)? How many per second?
http://theseamonster.net/wp-content/uploads/Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
The very fact that sea levels are still rising at 1.7mm/yr (and decelerating) should make it no surprise that ocean heat content is still increasing. I suspect ocean heat content has been increasing at some rate for 20,000 years. And maybe even the last 55, if Levitus 2012’s 0.09°C measurement is even significant. Are the error bars really less than 0.09°C over that period?
What SkS needs to show is that whatever rate they claim is different from any natural pre-industrial rate (including noise).
Brian H:
I thought it didn’t look right. Lol You are 100% correct. Thanks for the heads up. 🙂
As a German, I would kindly add the suggestion of adding another unit to the app, the “Dresden firestorm equivalent”; just add up the power of the bombs dropped to get the number.
Axis powers are fair game as always; don’t forget Italy in your comparisons, Dana Nuccitelli, hey is that an Italian name?
@DirkH – Sicilian actually
Goanna Girl says:
November 25, 2013 at 7:58 pm
“Please cut the c**p about how it’s insensitive to use [Hiroshima] or any other historic atrocity as an analogy – or that we must tiptoe around the sensibilities of the Japanese or anyone else. That type of fashion-statement faux sensitivity is for lefties and it is used by them to attack their opponents while avoiding the [pertinent] argument. (If you can’t attack the argument itself then just start emoting on the ‘insensitivity’ of the analogy!) Don’t legitimise this tactic by playing it back at them – you are only legitimising their weapons.”
No no, GG; this is important. Because there IS a special reason they use Hiroshima – namely exactly that so many people died. It wasn’t a very big nuke; if they were just interested in a big explosion they could have said, so and so much Tsar type warheads, which was I think the biggest nuke ever detonated.
So it’s THEY, NASA’s James Hansen and the SkS kids, who deliberately use a mass killing as analogy to target the emotions of any reader of their propaganda.
Using mass atrocities in propaganda is called Conditioning By Trauma. If they could find a way they’d use incidents of mass rape for their propaganda or whatever else works.
Don’t forget that one Hiroshima equates to 70 9/11s; in terms of dead people, so global warming causes 280 9/11s a second.
Other Alarmists create new variations on NASA’s James Hansen’s concept of measuring heat in dead bodies via converting it Hiroshima bombs:
“Your Hourly Emissions Will Trap an Atomic Bomb’s Worth of Heat
The CO2 emissions you emit in the next hour will trap over an atomic bomb’s worth of heat.
Thanks a lot.
As I noted before, the CO2 from just one gallon of gasoline will ultimately trap, over the course of its atmospheric lifetime, 100 billion kilocalories of heat,”
http://davidappell.blogspot.de/2012/06/your-hourly-emissions-will-trap-atomic.html
Here, David Appell seems to suggest that any of us burning one gallon of gasoline is morally responsible for 200,000 dead people. Interestingly, in Appell’s headline he seems to suggest that “one Hiroshima bomb” is somehow a typical “an Atomic Bomb”, which it is not.
“That will ultimately trap almost 1,500 trillion Hiros”
So the Alarmists are already so used to measuring potential heat in dead bodies that they casually call their unit if measurement “Hiro”.
Why didn’t they use something more modern, more readily feared by today’s population.
They could have chosen how many suicide bombers going off at once is the equivalent of human co2 emissions? That would be scary.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/15/global-warming-splodeified/#comment-986415
I get the same answer as Willis, but in different units.
400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day 365 days per year
equals
1 standard farticane*
Definitions:
* 1 standard farticane = 1 fart in a hurricane, at standard temperature and pressure
Leonard Weinstein says, November 25, 2013 at 1:15 pm
Nah…Leonard, I think he means: ‘what-ever’ [shrug]. Then again, punctuation is everything, as in the saying: ‘Al Gore is alive and, well?’
Thank god for this cartoonist.
I get so much enjoyment everyday out of seeing douchebags like this destroy the AGW movement with this utter nonsense.
And given the inside info, it makes him look even more stupid than he already is.
The desperation, I can smell it. Coming up on 17 years with no warming, 11 years of cooling, no hurricanes for 3000 days roughly, tornadoes lowest on record etc etc.
Its all going to end very badly for the team, the Hockey Stick is going to be inverted.
“Doubling CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere would add 4 watts to every square meter of the Earth’s surface. This is equivalent to running a child’s night light on every square meter permanently.”.
ATTENTION IPCC: There is your summary for policy makers,.
Crazy, but are we surprised? And as DirkH mentions, the largest nuclear weapon exploded was the Tsar with an estimated yield of ~56 megatonnes of TNT, maybe 10 times more than all the bombs dropped in WW2.
But yes, what is scarier, a childs bedside nightlight or a Hiroshima size bomb? I wish there was a way to expose Cook as the crook he is here in Australia but given the fact we have morally and scientifically corrupt people running the joint, he probably believes he has carte blanche to publish any tripe he likes. Seems obvious to me.
As E = MC^2 it only takes a little bit of maths to show that the additional mass of the energy received since 1968 is 2.38*E-17 % of the mass of the Earth or an extra 2.8*E-7 grams /M^2. Be very afraid.
A thoroughly unscientific poll on the app under discussion
http://14terstock.wordpress.com/2013/11/26/polls-a-bombs-earthquakes-hurricanes-and-climate-change/
“philjourdan says:
November 26, 2013 at 5:04 am”
Yes a bad analogy in terms of “warming”, but not in terms of, potential, total human destruction. All of the weapons would be detonated in large population centres, which would be effective. But there would be many thousands not in cities.
@ Patrick says: November 26, 2013 at 5:14 am
I realize that. But the part of the scare was it would destroy life on the planet. Nevil Shute’s “On the Beach” or even “Beneath the Planet of the Apes”.
Yes, 2 billions of atomic bombs and we do not really feel anything. Maybe this can help for people to ask themselves how realistic are these calculations, how realistics are Hansen’s numbers?
http://claesjohnson.blogspot.se/search/label/OLR
“When climate skeptics state that for sure they understand very well that there is a CO2 greenhouse effect, as any knowledgable scientist must do, they refer to the radiative forcing of 3.7 W/m2 with 1 C warming from doubled concentration, but then forget that this effect has very weak scientific support. “
Tony Banton says:
November 25, 2013 at 12:49 pm
This is certainly no worse than WUWT arguing the toss over Typhoon Haiyan being the biggest on record while they were still searching for thousands of bodies.
It will be interesting to see how many died due to the terrible typhoon and compare it to Hiroshima. It would then be interesting to see your comment about how it’s no worse. PS our host’s wife’s partial side of the family are from the Philippines. Read before you leap.
Excuse me – where did I say that Haiyan “is no worse than Hiroshima” ?
If you put aside you reflexive denialist shoulder-chip then you would realise that I was merely highlighting the hypocracy of criticising the Hiroshima app when WUWT had been arguing against the strength of Haiyan whilst 1000’s of bodies were still unaccounted for.
Amazingly stupid conclusion to jump to my friend.
@Jquip”A quick remind: Science is the fusion of philosophy and engineering. If you can engineer with it, you don’t need proof ratings. Nor, for that matter, any of the philosophy. It works or it doesn’t. Weaken that criterion in any fashion and you’re right back to square one: Top Magi distributing their revealed religion. Which, from the stone age to now, still consists of shamans telling us who we need to sacrifice to please the gods of weather.”
I don’t know why you keep bringing Engineering into this as my point is strictly about political use of science and the common mans ability to gauge the usefulness of the science study in general. However as an Engineer I can assure you that it is imperative to know the limitations of the scientific principles on which the engineering is based, failure to do so can result in personal liability of the damage to life and property that results. In engineering we have regulations and standard practice based on sometimes hundreds of years of practical application, however even if all the procedures are adhered to and redundancies put in place success is not guaranteed. That being said I think your statement of “it works or it doesn’t” doesn’t hold much water, the fact is our understanding of everything has its limitations and its important to know where those limitations lie in every walk of life in order to avoid misuse of such knowledge.
I followed the link to the post about the Photoshopped pictures. They’re all kind of amateurish and quick and dirty photo edits. I’m no expert, by any means, but I could make better images with Photoshops standard tools like color pallet matching and blending (etc.) with little effort.
My point is – these images probably weren’t all that time consuming. Of course, that doesn’t address the subject matter. I can understand why they might create the ones that make skeptics look foolish. But why they would make themselves look like Nazis is bewildering.
I recall a post here at WUWT asking people not to refer to SkepSci as S_S as it equates to elite N_azi paramilitary security organization. The irony is huge.
Is the figure the app gives accurate?
How do you (they) know that?
How did you (they) measure that?
A lot more basic questions need to asked.