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Due to global “warming”, Earth’s biosphere is gaining heat at the rate of five Hiroshima bombs per second.
People need to know this; this is what COP27 needs to be discussing – all this talk of one degree, one and a half degrees, even four degrees – it merely disguises the problem. There are 86,400 seconds in a day, so that’s the heat of nearly half a million Hiroshima bombs per day, for year after year after year.
I hope you’ll agree; this needs to stop. Fast.
Here is a widget that can be added to blogs; if you have a blog, please do:
It says four rather than five, but it’s from a few years ago and that’s just in the oceans. And do we really need to quibble? Here’s an article about it, and the research paper it is based upon:
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00376-020-9283-7.pdf
“Global warming” – it sounds so cosy, doesn’t it?
Yes, we need a global fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, as proposed by some island nations and numerous other groups at COP. This would end all new exploration and production, set out targets for a fair phase-out and ensure a just transition for workers. It should be a no-brainer.
We think of global heating as a by-product of burning fossil fuels, but actually it’s the primary effect; for every megawatt hour we actually use, our biosphere heats by a hundred megawatt hours.
Please note that this is a back-of-an-envelope calculation by myself and needs to be checked for accuracy, but it’s in the right ball park; the “unintended consequence” outweighs our actual objective around one hundred to one.
This gives us a rule of thumb for assessing renewable energy infrastructure; yes it does at present require fossil fuels to produce and install solar panels and wind turbines, but to be as harmful as fossil fuels they’d need to cost a hundred times as much energy to build as they produce over their lifetime. They don’t; they cost about one tenth of the energy that they’ll produce overall.
A while back in a different thread I did a back of envelope calculation that heating the atmosphere through 1 Deg Celcius would be equivalent to the energy of 144 million Hiroshima bombs.
That would be one Hiroshima bomb per 3.5 Km square across the entire surface of the planet including water or approx one Hiroshima bomb per square Km if just on land. Note, that is just for the atmosphere. Heating the oceans through 1 Deg Celcius would require 1000 times more energy than the atmosphere. That’s 144 billion Hiroshima bombs or approx one bomb per square metre of land or 3.5 square metres of entire planetary surface area. Pretty toasty.
Beware of backs of envelopes.
Beware also of experts and professionals (bottom line : do it for money [and/or: glory, panache, etc etc etc ..], as per oldest).
Follow the money.Consult Aristophanes : “The Clouds”
– “Follow the money”
That’ll be the fossil fuel companies, then; they apparently own the US and NATO.
Thunderf00t: Global warming in NUKES PER DAY! – YouTube (6m 50s)
This short video talks about and compares total Human energy consumption with amount of energy from the Sun and even mentions Nukes.
Transcript
===============The Tsar Bomb was the biggest bomb ever dropped. It detonated with a yield of about 50 million tons of TNT, and laid waste to the remote island the Russians had chose to test it on.
But is 50 million tons of TNT a lot of energy? Well, a ton of TNT is equal to about 4 billion joules; so 50 million tons at 4 billion joules each is about 200 million billion joules – or 200 with about 15 zeros after it – joules. Well, the average power consumption of mankind is about 10 terawatts – that’s 10 tera joules per second, or 10 with 12 zeros after it – joules per second. So in about 2,000 seconds mankind’s entire energy production is comparable to a single Tsar bomb. That’s about five hours or so.
Which sounds like a lot of energy until you compare it to something really powerful. When sunlight hits the earth, it delivers about a kilowatt – a thousand watts – per square meter. So when you look at the Earth from the Sun, what you see is a circle with radius of six thousand kilometers – that’s six million meters. That means the cross-section that you’re looking at here, the area of this circle you’re looking, at is πr2 – which works out to be about one to the power of 14m2. And each one of those square meters is collecting about 1,000 watts of energy. So the power delivered from the Sun to the Earth is about 100 million billion watts – that’s one hundred million billion joules per second.
Now, that number might start to sound rather familiar, because that’s pretty close to the energy of the Tsar bomb. That is, the Tsar bomb merely delivered as much energy as the Sun delivers to the Earth for about two seconds.
In fact, if you would take every rinky-dink little nuclear weapon that mankind has ever created – to give himself a sense of power – it approximately stacks up to a paltry six and a half thousand megatons, equating to approximately the same energy as the Sun provides to the Earth for about two minutes.
Every single nuclear weapon on Earth is only the same energy as the Sun delivers to the Earth in two minutes; so the sun’s delivering up a hundred million billion watts of power to the Earth, making an absolute mockery of mankind’s entire power consumption.
Mankind’s power production is merely one part in 10,000 of the energy that the Sun delivers to the Earth. I mean let me just show you that. So this is the power that the Sun delivers to the Earth, and this is 1/10 of it, and this is one hundredth of it – which means that this is about 1,000th, and this is one 10,000th.
Yeah, “long ere I tally, lest I start a war I cannot win”.
I mean, let’s just say for the sake of argument that the greenhouse gases that we put into the atmosphere merely increase the energy yield to the Earth by one part in a thousand. That’s 1/10 of a percent. Almost nothing – barely detectable to the human eye – until you realize that nearly one tenth of one percent increases the energy that the Earth is absorbing from the Sun by about the same amount as ten times the entire power production of mankind.
Now, the Tsar bomb was the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, but the Russians actually did some pretty lousy tests footage of it that robs you of the true energy of such weapons.
The Americans however also blew up some hydrogen bombs in the Castle test series; and they were only about ten megatons – one-fifth of the size the Russian bombs – but they had superb test footage that much better conveys the size and power of these things.
[ Narrator ] The distance of the camera aircraft is 50 miles; the frame size of the picture is 14 by 18 miles; the film is running at normal speed.
Camera position: 50 miles at 10,000 feet. Size of picture: 14 by 18 miles. Photographed at half normal speed.
Which means that if the extra energy absorbed from the Sun was merely one part in a thousand extra, merely in the time that you spent watching this video, the extra energy dumped into our atmosphere is about one Castle explosion. And it’s like that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
So that’s just a hypothetical, if the extra energy absorbed from the Sun is one part in a thousand extra. Well, I got bad news for you: it’s been measured, and the extra amount of energy absorbed from the Sun is somewhere between one and two parts per thousand extra. Which means that just in the time that you’ve been watching this video, the extra amount of energy dumped into our atmosphere is that of about two of the Castle (10 megaton) nuclear weapons.
But that carbon dioxide that we’ve added to the atmosphere, that’s going to be there for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. And all the time the Earth’s atmosphere will be pulling in extra energy from the Sun because of it.
And because of this the Earth is now fundamentally a very different place to what it was merely a hundred years ago.
If you or anyone else is interested, Pigeon English, a guy called Lawrence Livermore has rescued and declassified a lot of the footage from those nuclear tests by the USA. He has compiled them into a YT channel and within that channel he gives an interview explaining how and why etc. All that old footage was about to be lost due to it being on degrading old film reel.
All that extra energy goes into weather systems. The extra heat allows more moisture in the air etc etc
Sorry, not a guy Lawrence Livermore, it’s the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and co-ordinated by weapon physicist Greg Spriggs and a crack team of film experts, archivists and software developers. Either way, it’s interesting stuff.
According to this source, five Little Boys per second is an underestimate. Over the last twenty years Earth has gained as much heat as 4.25 billion Hiroshima bombs. The long term trend is currently at about ten such bombs per second.
Perhaps somebody can calculate how many atom bombs are expended by coal fired, oil fired, gas fired and wood chip fired power stations here. This “Hiroshima Bombs per Second” index reminds me of the spurious “BigMac Inflation Guide”
The last couple of days have been fairly good for wind (it’s about a third of needs as I write) but it has been as unreliable as ever with near zero on some days. Solar has been low all winter.
Both have once again proved unreliable for winter needs.So how has the shortfall in supply been made up? …by imports, that’s how. By my rule of thumb it has been around 20% at many times this winter (18% as I write)
Let’s not forget that coal fired power stations that were due for demolition are once again in the mix, but only as a reserve you understand. I’m sure the powers that be don’t want you thinking they’ve finally got clever.
The imports come from anywhere in Europe, but get disguised by only having their IC (interconnector) origin disclosed. It’s not dissimilar to how sanctioned Russian, Venezuelan, Syrian and Iranian oil gets mixed in with oil from other sources.So, although the great and the good are screaming NetZero, the reality is we are relying on gas, imports, with working coal-fired power stations ‘in reserve’.
It’s time to realise that energy policies without fossil fuels in the mix are highly dangerous to pursue…_
DiggerUK:
– “Perhaps somebody can calculate how many atom bombs are expended by coal fired, oil fired, gas fired and wood chip fired power stations here.”
To be frank I can’t be bothered because you could do it yourself quite easily, but it can’t amount to much. I worked out once that all the energy humanity produces (not just electricity) amounts to only between 0.1% and 1% of the global heating thereby produced as an “unintended consequence”.
Here’s a short video that quantifies global energy production, incident solar irradiation, and global heating, all in H-bombs:
“Global warming in NUKES PER DAY!” – YouTube, just under seven minutes.
So “five Hiroshima bombs per second” was under by a factor of two – which again I can barely be bothered with. Why quibble over a factor of two when we need to reduce something to a hundredth?
But DiggerUK, you’re quite right; reducing humanity’s emissions fast enough is essentially impossible unless we transform our way of life. Basically, we should have started decades ago, to have avoided ever getting into this predicament. Maybe 1988, when James Hansen sounded the alarm loud and clear to the US government.
Through negligence, governments have turned a problem into a crisis. Nothing new about that, though.
Look on the bright side. We need to suspend the current mad scramble of consumerism for only two or three decades while some seriously promising technologies catch up with our recently acquired aspirations. That, or we can plough on into the iceberg and then reminisce about our technological potential in the lifeboats.
@Clark, “We need to suspend the current mad scramble of consumerism”
Which I’m guessing you scribbled on your electronic consumerist-society number-one must-have gadget…_
Almost everything I have I obtained pre-used, out of a skip or broken. I repair things. The laptop I’m using isn’t mine, it’s a pre-owned one I fixed up for someone else by replacing the Microsoft software, which by now would have enforced premature obsolescence via updates, with a community-developed GNU/Linux system that’s licensed to the public to protect the freedom of the users. The computer I call my own is about three times older, running a suitably less demanding version of GNU/Linux.
But what any of us do personally really isn’t the issue. Very similar arguments could have been deployed against the measures taken in Britain in 1939 to avoid capitulating to Nazism. Rationing, blackout, evacuation of children from cities, commandeering of commerce and industry to the war effort; do you criticise these for their infringement upon people’s desire to do precisely as they please?
Really, such “argument from accusations of hypocrisy” wore thin a long time ago (and were promoted originally by BP’s PR department). Nature cares even less about our rhetoric than the Nazis did.
“Which I’m guessing you scribbled on your electronic consumerist-society number-one must-have gadget…_ “
‘Strewth, Digger – this is as weak as the arguments we used to hear from global warming denialists, saying it must be a hoax because Al Gore flies around on ‘planes. Oh yes, and he’s fat too. So what more proof is needed.
Mind you, some numpties claim that Covid is a hoax too, because Big Pharma makes profits, not to mention government over-reach.
The lesson is that some people will grasp at anything in their denialism.
DiggerUK, glenn_nl does seem to have a point; there seems to be a pattern to your opinions – global heating, covid, gender bimodality… Do you hold evidence in complete disdain?
Yes, there is a pattern to my opinions….and?
There is also a pattern to others’ opinions….and?If you’re suggesting that electronic communications should not be on the list of consumer items that “We need to suspend the current mad scramble” for, then what area of consumer items will be going to Room 101…?
Everything will go to room 101 permanently if we don’t take action. According to IPCC best estimates, we need to halve emissions by 2030 to stand a 2/3 chance of averting complete global disaster. That’s like, major cities flooded, billions displaced, multiple breadbasket failure, civilisational collapse type disaster.
OK, we’re doomed…_
That’s about the size of it, Digger_uk – particularly when we’ve got a bunch of denialists running around insisting that there is no problem, with the obvious implication that we should do nothing to address it.
Such as, modifying our behaviour to be less destructive and become more sustainable.
Nonsense, you’d say, right? There is no problem! Everything is fine, so we should just carry on destroying our ecosphere, possibly with even greater abandon.
OK, we are seriously doomed…_
Good! Recognition of the problem is a major step forward.
Well I don’t feel personally doomed. The bigger the turd and the fan, the longer the timescale of their intersection, and these are both huge. We’re not adapted to recognise emergencies on this scale, it doesn’t happen fast enough to trigger our danger response, so we’d better deliberately analyse, plan, and take action instead.
OK, we’re not doomed…_
It’s not like falling off a cliff, it’s like walking into a minefield. Let’s try not to set off too many big ones.
When I’m near cliff edges, or minefields, I shall walk very carefully. I don’t want to doom myself…_
At ten A-bombs per second we’re clearly well into the minefield, so what do you reckon; minimise walking while we work out a plan?
I’m gonna walk more and plan less, can’t see the point anymore…_
IMHO greenhouse gasses, economic systems and so on are just symptoms of larger overarching phenomena. The root problems are fundamental laws of nature, specifically relating to ecology and thermodynamics. Humankind is a species in ecological overshoot and has been for tens of thousands of years; whether the starting point was fire, agriculture or civilisation is debatable. Like all species in a state of overshoot we are destroying our environment, displacing other species, consuming resources unsustainably and polluting at a rate that overwhelms the environment. As our population and technological sophistication has grown the rate of this change has increased, since the industrial revolution it has become dramatic.
Carbon pollution and the resultant climate change is just one instance of the damage our runaway species is doing to the biosphere.
We appear to be reaching the end of this process, the crescendo of our proud folly. It seems to me that collapse is inevitable; many of the political, economic, social and psychological problems we see in the world today are a result of this underlying cause. Even the most generous estimates of human population levels without the use of fossil fuels are a fraction of the current world human population. A truly sustainable human population level that did not cause accumulating environmental destruction would be even lower.
I used to be a techno-utopian too: carbon capture, renewable energy, recycling, education and so on. Now I see such an outlook as just another kind of denialism. It’s clear that as a species we are incapable of the level of humility and objectivity required to tackle this problem. We are too hardwired to chase comfort and dopamine in the short term (ie. a human time frame). Even if this were not the case it’s already too late, feedback loops have been triggered. Trying to solve the problems caused by technology, civilisation and progress with more technology, civilisation and progress is like trying to cure a drug addiction by taking more of the drug.
I’m not advocating fatalism or apathy, quite the opposite. My view may be wrong, and even if it isn’t it is our duty to do our utmost to ensure the safety and happiness of our collective progeny and by extension the rest of the biosphere. To do otherwise is the moral equivalent of eating babies. I spend every day digging, learning to grow food, contributing to my local community. Working to minimise dependence on global and national systems and bolster local small scale resilience seems to me to be the best course of action.
@ Flack Bag, …”Now I see such an outlook as just another kind of denialism”
Denialist dysphoria is a new one on me, how many types of denialism do you reckon there are?
I’ve always considered my denialism as being exclusive and singular, not existentialist and ubiquitous…_But there is no conclusive proof that this is being caused by human activity. We have been told that there is a scientific consensus but that is simply not true. There is no real evidence, just a lot of computer modelling which will basically tell you anything you want it to (post Covid we should all now know how useless these are in the real world).
Before committing to policies that will impoverish and disrupt the lives of billions of people across the planet, surely we should exercise some due diligence and really be certain that these policies are likely to have any effect.
Sir Keef:
– “….computer modelling which will basically tell you anything you want it to (post Covid we should all now know how useless these are in the real world)”
Did you actually watch any of the computer models during the pandemic? I did; various universities and scientific groups put their own on line, predicting infection prevalence, hospital admissions and deaths. Did you find them to be terribly inaccurate?
SK – rewritten to more accurately represent the truth :
There is conclusive proof that this is being caused by human activity. We know that there is a scientific consensus because that is simply the truth. There is real evidence, not just a lot of computer modelling which is what denialists, the fossil fuel lobby, its stooges and useful idiots want you to believe (post Covid we should all now know how useful these models are in the real world).
We have to commit to policies that will improve and enrich the lives of billions of people across the planet, surely we should exercise due diligence and really make certain that these policies are fully put into effect.
SK: I helped you out with your writing above, because apparently you’d accidentally dropped your original into some weird inverter before it was posted! Damndest thing… everything in your original was the precise opposite of what was really the case!
Sir Keef:
– “Before committing to policies that will impoverish and disrupt the lives of billions of people across the planet…” [my emphasis]
Aren’t the most powerful governments already committed to policies that already impoverish and disrupt the lives of billions of people across the planet?
Geopolitical and military conflicts over control of resources, especially hydrocarbons, seem the most glaring examples, but the more mundane attritions of poverty, lack of workers’ rights, pollution, environmental degradation etc. are increasingly affecting the entire global population.
FlakBlag, I strongly agree with most of your post, but…
– “Humankind is a species in ecological overshoot and has been for tens of thousands of years; whether the starting point was fire, agriculture or civilisation is debatable”
Humankind has only been in global overshoot for decades or centuries. Yes, humans have caused local extinctions for tens of thousands of years, and even some global extinctions of large animals, but didn’t really threaten the biosphere as a whole until industrialisation. Earth’s capacity to sustain life is being noticeably degraded, and this is relatively new. The rapidly increasing modern extinction rate is caused mostly by collateral damage, habitat degradation. Some habitat degradation is now global, and that too is recent.
Many human societies live close to sustainability, and many have done so throughout human existence.
Another thing that’s recent is the global domination of a unified ideology of maximising monetary profit through ever accelerating indiscriminate extraction, consumption and pollution. Ideologies were variously religious and/or about ruling families, tradition, culture and identity, but they all promoted some reverence and respect for nature, recognition of human dependence upon it. The ascendency of this mechanistic and capitalist ideology is truly creepy. It’s worse than inhuman, it’s anti-organic. It doesn’t grow into existing habitats; it buys and then sterilises anything in its way to impose its own large-scale order.
It’s big and highly coercive, but it must be stupid because its course is obviously self destructive. People can change their behaviours rapidly, if they can see the need, and especially if they can get organised.
Good on you for your resilience work.
I ask you, what’s a girl to do? The same decision taken at the EU has drawn out two entirely different conclusions.
One is that nothing has really changed,https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-ministers-pass-2035-car-engine-ban-law/
and the other is that everything has been throw up in the air.
The Daily Sceptic article expounds the argument in a Daily Telegraph article that is behind a paywall.
Does this mean we can expect even more nuclear bombs. Are we doomed or saved…_
I thought that Volvo and some others were phasing out construction of combustion engines by 2030 to be in a better position when the class action lawsuits about illness start arriving; “e-fuels” will probably be abandoned for the same reasons. Burning even pure hydrogen emits oxides of nitrogen because air is mostly nitrogen.
– “Are we doomed or saved…_”
Neither; thinking in stark binaries seems to be a predilection of your own.
