Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Bill McKibben sees climate change every day, and he wants you to see climate change as well. But his dramatic description of “Hiroshimas” worth of energy leaves out some important context.
How Fast Is the Climate Changing?: It’s a New World, Each and Every Day
By Bill McKibben
September 3, 2020The struggle over climate change is necessarily political and economic and noisy—if we’re going to get anything done, we’ll have to do it in parliaments and stock exchanges, and quickly.
But, every once in a while, it’s worth stepping back and reminding ourselves what’s actually going on, silently, every hour of every day. And what’s going on is that we’re radically remaking our planet, in the course of a human lifetime. Hell, in the course of a human adolescence.
The sun, our star, pours out energy, which falls on this planet, where the atmosphere traps some of it. Because we’ve thickened that atmosphere by burning coal and gas and oil—in particular, because we’ve increased the amount of carbon dioxide and methane it contains—more of that sun’s energy is trapped around the Earth: about three-fourths of a watt of extra energy per square meter, or slightly less than, say, one of those tiny white Christmas-tree lights. But there are a lot of square meters on our planet—roughly five hundred and ten trillion of them, which is a lot of Christmas-tree lights. It’s the heat equivalent, to switch units rather dramatically, of exploding four Hiroshima-sized bombs each second.
We get a sense of what that feels like when we have a week like the one we just came through. Hurricane Laura detonated in intensity in a few hours before it made landfall—that escalation was one of the most rapid that has ever been observed in the Gulf of Mexico, and it’s because of the extra heat that’s available. …
Read more: https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/how-fast-is-the-climate-changing-its-a-new-world-each-and-every-day
Back in the real world, there is a weak correlation between warming and wind speed, but the correlation is not statistically significant (see the graph at the top of the page).
Bill McKibben’s talk of Hiroshima’s worth of energy is very dramatic. But that 3/4 of a watt per square meter Bill talks about has to be seen in the context of other climate phenomena, such as changes to insolation caused by Earth’s not quite circular orbit around the Sun.
In January the Earth is only 0.9833 AU from the Sun, in June the Earth is 1.017 AU from the sun (AU – astronomical unit = 93 million miles). This results in a variation of solar intensity of 1413 w/m2 in early January, when the Earth is closest to the sun, which drops to 1321 w/m2 in June.
Obviously there are other numbers you could use, such as total sunlight striking the Earth’s surface, but my point is natural annual variations in total solar intensity are at least an order of magnitude larger than any anthropogenic CO2 signal.
In the context of this and other large climate shifts such as seasons, variations in snow cover, or random changes in ocean currents and cloudiness, Bill McKibben’s 3/4 of a watt / square meter of anthropogenic warming could best be described as “noise”.
There is no substantial evidence anthropogenic CO2 is adding enough energy to the climate system to make a significant difference to storm intensity.
Correction (EW): 1.017 AU, not 1017AU (h/t Dave Yaussy)
1017 AU should be 1.017 AU? Not being picky, just not familiar with the units.
‘alleged’?
what on earth do you think is happening in California and Washington State?
That’s a new approach – the atmosphere as a casserole that can be thickened with a dash of CO2 and CH4.
It might not be science or cooking, but it is thick.
McKibben, an English major, is a poorly educated, full-on crackpot and a demonstrable liar.
It astounds me that such a flat-out nutcase is employable by (and therefore carries the imprimatur of) an otherwise reputable college (Middlebury should be ashamed). NESCAC obviously isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
I am continuously gobsmacked that his obvious charlatanry isn’t obvious to all. Every time I see him speak to an audience, I am depressed by the realization that there are other equally deluded, gullible and stupid people taken in by his nonsense.
Why use square meters when our atmosphere is three-dimensional? A square meter of surface area expands in area as it moves away from the surface of our near-sphere. Isn’t the real question, “how many watts per cubic meter of atmosphere?”
Here in Michigan it was warm yesterday.
It’s cold today.
It will be hot tamale.
This is proof of climate change.
Where’s my Nobel Prize?
You could write numerous chapters on how not to analyze data and do projections from the climate extremist movement, i.e. climate communication consultants. Such discussions and examples were lacking before. Now you have a treasure trove to pick from. Call it the Irreverent Guide to Climate Extremism Claims.
Wait a minute, hurricanes Laura and Mario were both tracking across the Caribbean toward Gulf Coast, and both had tracks over warm waters. Poor Mario. wind shears aloft sapped his energy, but Laura avoided the blow job and gained strength. There’s a lesson in their somewhere. Maybe Bill McKibben knows?
Alarmist claims like Weepy Bill’s are always just data-free assertions to the gullible public. THey use anecdotal examples while ignoring the the things like no land-falling major US hurricanes for a dozen years. They claim to be following the science but nothing they do if actual science, just alarmist bunk.
McKibben is exactly like some 19th Century snake oil salesman going from town-to-town with his wagon on trinkets and potions, barking his wonder remedies if people would just part with some of their money to buy bottle. Snake-oil sellers like McKibben have just gotten more sophisticated and learned how to use technology to reach more gullible to fleece with their carnival barking scare-stories.
I live just a few miles North of Marco Island FL. The eye of Irma went over my house, which is probably the only reason that my house survived. Marco Island is not on the East coast of Florida. It is as far Southwest in FL as you can get. If that is the quality of their data, no wonder they can never get any predictions right.
Relying on exaggeration to rile the mobs to your side is undignified, Mr. Mckibben.
re. the graph
I love the way scientists take a cloud of dots, plot a straight line and declare that they’ve found a trend. Such a trend is robust only until someone plots the next point on the graph. It has zero predictive value.
1413 – 1321 = 92 w/M2
3/4 = “presumably” 0.75 w/M2
By my amateur mathematician’s eye, that’s more then 2 orders of magnitude.
Looking closer to the graph: The Dry Tortugas are 70 miles West of Key West in the Gulf, which is also not the East coast of FL. Also Donna hit Naples, also on the Southwest coast. Those that hit the Keys first are questionable except for Key Largo. The Labor Day Hurricane hit the Keys coming from the South. It may also have gone through East FL but it did not landfall the East Coast.
I expect Bill McKibben thinks an ‘Erg’ is an endangered species.
Trouble is , if we take note of the rubbish he says it could be the case. Particularly when it refuses to pop out of our wall sockets when told. He doesn’t realise that it has to be fed regularly, consistently and without hiccups.
The line on the graph does not reflect the points on the graph. There is no reason for the slope to be a constant increase. To me it looks like there were lots of storms up to 1965 and then a 55 year period when they were comparatively rare. That could have been “global cooling” but recent “global warming” hasn’t replicated the earlier storm frequency or intensity. Maybe these planetary systems are a bit too complicated to put straight lines on graphs.
Good grief1
McKibbon writes that “we have thickened” the atmosphere through burning of coal and gas and oil.
No wonder I can’t run as fast as I could 40 years ago.
Air is just too thick.
Years ago I lived on a sand bar called “Willoughby Spit”.
It is located just NE of Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia.
The I-64 crosses the very end of it.
Legend has it that in the 1660’s, the wife of Thomas Willoughby II looked out her door after a severe storm came through. She was surprised to find that there was now land where the sea was viewed previously.
Time and tide along with other storms shaped it to the form it is today.
The notion that the storms of today are unusual and unprecedented can only come form those who do not wish to know the past.
According to McKibben Math, shouldn’t that be:
McKibben Math:
Solar irradiance averaged over the surface of the earth is 1/4 of solar irradiance at top of atmosphere due to only half the earth illuminated and the difference in irradiance by latitude, so
1413 – 1321 = 92 w/m²
92 ÷ 4 = 23 w/m²
Multiple 23 over surface of earth (510,072,000,000,000 m²), divide by 63,000,000,000,000 joules (Hiroshima bomb), you get 186 Hiroshimas per second (1 W = 1 Joule per second)
The only thing necessary for the triumph of CAGW is for lukewarmers to do nothing.
Griff did not take my bet. A pity, because Arctic ice is now below 4million square kilometres for the second time since 2007. Taking bets for 2021 autumn equinox.
Bill McKibben sees climate change every day
And Greta can see CO2 – – So What?
GLM …
Green Lies Matter
“…Hurricane Laura detonated in intensity in a few hours before it made landfall—that escalation was one of the most rapid that has ever been observed in the Gulf of Mexico…”
I love that he was struggling so hard to find a powerful synonym for “escalated” that he used “detonated.” Any reasonable person, particularly when comparing hurricanes to Hiroshima bombs, would use detonation to refer to the hurricane unleashed upon landfall, not the rate it formed.
The energy equivalent of 5000 startled elephants.