Alan,
I see your point.... Do you (or does anyone) have a more appropriate
analogy for such large amounts of heat? The tempting thing about the
"Hiro" is it's just the right amount (63 terajoules) for many global
climate numbers.... I have sometimes used "Civ," the power production of
all of human civilization (~15 terawatts), but it's not as intuitive or
readily imagined.
David
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On 10/1/2013 11:30 AM, Alan Robock wrote:
Dear All,
I think this is a terrible comparison to make and should not be used.
I heard someone this summer who was trained by Al Gore use this and
she did not distinguish between all the effects of atomic bombs and
the energy equivalent of the atomic explosions.
Equating nuclear war and global warming is a false comparison. Nuclear
war is a much worse fate for our planet, and is a scare tactic. The
number is correct (I did the calculation myself when I first heard of
this), but trapping energy has completely different effects from
dropping nuclear bombs on people. Using this is distracting,
sensational, and easy to refute if the speaker does not carefully
explain that it is the energy released by the bombs, with no other
effects including radioactivity, fires, and blast.
I told John Cook this at the AGU Chapman Conference on Climate
Communication this summer, and he said he would consider this
recommendation, but I don't know if he plans to continue to feature
this idea on Skeptical Science.
But see
http://thebulletin.org/how-many-hiroshimas-does-it-take-describe-climate-change
for another point of view.
Alan
Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor
Editor, Reviews of Geophysics
Director, Meteorology Undergraduate Program
Department of Environmental Sciences Phone: +1-848-932-5751
Rutgers University Fax: +1-732-932-8644
14 College Farm Road E-mail:[email protected]
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551 USAhttp://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock
http://twitter.com/AlanRobock
Watch my 18 min TEDx talk athttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsrEk1oZ-54
On 10/1/13 1:22 PM, Greg Rau wrote:
To amplify Al's "400,000 Hiroshimas/day" statement below see:
http://theconversation.com/four-hiroshima-bombs-a-second-how-we-imagine-climate-change-16387
It's actually 345,600 Hiroshimas/day or 4 bombs/sec, but you get the
idea. 90% of the heat is going into the ocean. This would seem a
powerful analogy (minus the radionuclides) for what we are doing to
the planet and why we need to intervene.
Greg
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