With much fanfare from the faithful (a grand total of 15 comments as of this writing), SkepticalScience recently released their 4-Hiroshima-Bombs-per-second widget. Their claimed intent is to “raise the awareness of global warming”.
Nonsense.
Their intent is to scare people—children and adults—into believing that something must be done about global warming. It’s nothing but propaganda—plain and simple. It’s based on estimates of the radiative imbalance caused by human-induced global warming.
Without thought—nothing new there—SkepticalScience has now opened the door for people to illustrate (1) the diminutive size of the radiative imbalance in relation to the amount of sunlight and infrared radiation that warms the planet every day, and (2) the massive uncertainties behind the imbalance.
So that’s the foundation for the first of a series of YouTube videos titled “Comments on Human-Induced Global Warming”. Episode 1 is “The Hiroshima Bomb Metric”.
SkepticalScience has used spambots in the past. I wonder whether they’ll use them again for this offensive widget. So, if you see links to that widget around the blogosphere, please feel free to leave a link to this video:
As you’ll note, the video is about 6 minutes long. My goal is to limit the lengths of all of the videos in this series to 5 to 6 minutes.
The paper referenced in the video is Stephens et al. (2012) An update on Earth’s energy balance in light of the latest global observations.
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Any time now I expect them to say.
Since 46% of Americans do not believe in AGW they should be euthenised as they are just expelling CO2 and contributing to AGW at your expense.
unfortunately, 5-6 minutes will be too long for most people to get through.
@Pamela Gray
A widget within this context, is really a “web widget” with which code for the widget can be copied, and that code placed upon “your own website” and thus the widget will be displayed to those who visit your website. (btw, we must be around the same age, given your description of your journey through the tech world.) Take care.
Every once in a while I run across this amazing essay describing the traits of bad science.
That list includes things like barely discernable responses being given great importance, trends only being detectable by extreme statistical manipulation, data from differing sources recklessly spliced together.
The Hiroshima ploy is a rather entertaining way for the SkS gang to hide from the reality that their position contains nearly every aspect of bad science.
The irony that they pushed a blog claiming to describe the bad science of skeptics only makes this better.
My Organic Chemistry Instructor, Chris Russell, demonstrated that a 1/4 inch of rain falling on NY city released as much energy as the Hiroshima bomb. This of course leads me to the question “So what’s your point Scep Sci?”
You mean we could be sucking energy OUT of the system up to 96 atomic bombs per second and still be correct (as per the error bars)!
All that lost energy!. We need it back to keep out houses warm in this Northern Winter. 🙂
Find the 96 atomic bombs per second and use them productively, please.
Since all absorbed (versus reflected) radiation converts to heat, if the traditional (non supercomputer amplified) thin band (infrared) greenhouse effect adds heat in a way that results in more humidity that instead of acting as an additional greenhouse gas acts as broadband full spectrum radiation reflecting water vapor (clouds), then emissions might cool the planet, overall, or at least be moderated in warming effect.
-=NikFromNYC=-, Ph.D. in carbon chemistry (Columbia/Harvard)
A Big Thank You to George Washington, for making Thanksgiving a great day…
-To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us–and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/GW/gw004.html
Hmmm … don’t we need a “widget” too?
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Thanks Bob, nicely done.
jamesibbitson: “So some months they might get paid $1,800, others $2,200 a month….. ”
Right idea, wrong scale. Assume the average climate scientist make 60k per annum. Then if they were paid by the error bars their patron would pay them between 230k per annum, and -110k per annum. That is, some years the climatologist would be paying his employer almost twice what he expected to be paid by the employer.
Good career advice: Don’t accept wages with such an error bar.
Ha! And I misplaced the decimal point… You get the idea anyways: Negative wages.
When the natural embalance returns to it’s negative long term trend, we will need more of that nuclear energy to stay alive.
JimS says:
November 27, 2013 at 7:57 am
@Pamela Gray
A widget within this context, is really a “web widget” with which code for the widget can be copied, and that code placed upon “your own website” and thus the widget will be displayed to those who visit your website. (btw, we must be around the same age, given your description of your journey through the tech world.) Take care.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Widget is a placeholder name for a manufactured device, or web widget, small app.
Young kids, I was buying that stuff for my kids.
Ah. Thanks Jim. In my own words then, a widget is specific to a clickable web picture with an embedded specific program, and different than a thingamajig, which is different from a dohinky. And definitely not a whatsamacallit. I see that “A” has a bunch of widgets down the right side of the screen. I’ve been calling them icons all this time.
The human language is such a colorful changing entity. I often wonder if it is sentient. When new words are birthed for new concepts (or new meanings given to old words/new words given to old meanings), I am reminded of the Tower of Babel and its consequence. That consequence has multiplied, sending its babies to each individual language, intent on confusing every last human being on Earth.
I long for the return of Latin.
Bob, how did they ever cart around that calculator?
An average thuderstorm is releasing more energy than the Hiroshima bomb. An average hurricane is converting more energy than the Hiroshima bomb ever minute. http://teachertech.rice.edu/Participants/louviere/hurricanes/facts.html
Nice job decoupling reality from propaganda Bob!
I do have a related question.
What impact does all of the man made electrified use of technology do to the energy balance on earth. We have 700-800 satellites beaming their constant 1/4 watt or more signals 24/7/365, millions of miles of high tension lines, and a gazillion cell towers, wireless routers scattered globally like ants, microwave ovens and on and on.
What impact could all of that stuff in aggregate have on the energy balance.
Just curious if anyone has ever calculated that piece of the puzzle, or even considered it, or if I am way off target?
It has been a few years since i asked that question and I have yet to ever get an answer.
Happy turkey day folks in the US.
@jquip
Ok so your climate scientist is paid randomly between $740 and -$300 a day. Assume it’s a normal distribution.
What is the average amount of pay your climate scientist will accumulate in 18years? What is the 1 standard deviation range? Is what Mr Tisdale is saying correct?
They do seem to like the “bomb” metric. Weepy Bill referred to the Keystone Pipeline as “the fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet”.
ossqss says:
“What impact does all of the man made electrified use of technology do to the energy balance on earth. ”
All the broadcast electrical energy on Earth, combined, does not equal- excuse me for getting technical here- a speck of dust on a gnat’s rear end.
Little; since the sources you cite are intended for terrestrial ‘targets’ or audiences (subscribers in commercial wireless industry vernacular) much effort and engineering resources are expended to insure coverage of the earth’s surface with said RF energy from cited RF sources (e.g. cell sites, satellites et al) through (in the ‘old’ days of cellular) through antenna ‘down-tilting’ of the physical antenna or by ‘beam-forming’ (through phased elements, although not dynamic) the RF dissipates as ‘heat’ (through dielectric losses) in the soil, roadways and buildings (those with tinted windows for instance).
This, from an RF (Radio Frequency) Engineer’s point of view (involved RF planning and system ‘coverage’) as having been involved in both cellular (and paging!) industries at one time.
The efficiencies of RF ‘site’ equipment (for AC power in vs RF energy output overall; there is overhead for network gear e.g. line/fiber interface equipment and site controller, plus A/C and heat considerations) can generally on considered to be less than 20%. Actual transmitter efficiency can approach 70% (individual device perhaps 80 to 90%, aside from bias circuits and supervision circuits), but overall system efficiency really has to be considered.
We would talk differently about the ‘losses’ (directly to space) in SW (shortwave) as in ham and SW broadcasters below, saw 30 MHz, however.
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On a past thread about the “Hiroshima bomb” metric, one poster, I don’t remember who said something like ……
“I find the hiroshima bomb metric to be very useful. It points out that the speaker has abandoned scientific measurement terms, and moved into advocacy. Everything else the speaker says can safely be ignored.
Something along those lines anyway.
Pamela Gray says:
November 27, 2013 at 7:28 am
Thanks for dating me. I too recall all of those items. I have a vague notion of what a widget is NOW. But during early business classes a widget was a fictional item a company produced in case studies. All of a sudden the term became more common and I was left wondering what was going on.
Referring to another comment, I too have wondered exactly what a Climate Scientist was/is. My son-in-law was talking about the 97% of all scientists the other night. I said “noboday asked me”. He looked at me blankly. Stpooed him dead. Did it change his mind – no idea.
@Ossqss: “It has been a few years since i asked that question and I have yet to ever get an answer. ”
Satellites I’ve never heard of, actually. But all terrestrial issues are simply the dissipation from the initial energy production. Which is where the normative consideration steps in and we consider only the power plant itself, rather than all the various places it can and does dissipate the energy at.
@James Baldwin: “What is the 1 standard deviation range? Is what Mr Tisdale is saying correct?”
Unless there’s some funky miscommunication going on, then ‘+-‘ as a statement of error is a statement of uncertainty about the mean, and what range of values it falls in. But is not a statement of standard deviation. So the average over 18 years of employment could quite trivially be the employee paying 18 times the lowest bound to his employer. Which is, frankly, a rather enthusiastic notion of a minimum wage.