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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“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.
@ur momisugly 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.