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?quality=83)
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.
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@ur momisugly 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.
@ur momisugly DCA
John Cook may fantasize about being Himmler, but I think his role in the alarmist movement is closer to that of a Goebbels.
@ur momisugly 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.