A billion TJ, or the ocean's total warming is 436 ×10^21 J since 1871[1] is a bit like billion pounds to most of the public - most of whom disliked maths - huge

A billion TJ, or the ocean's total warming is 436 ×10^21 J since 1871[1] is a bit like billion pounds to most of the public - most of whom disliked maths - huge, but utterly meaningless. Why else is every media story associating things with the size of a football field, the area of 63 Wales, or length equivalent to the height of the Empire State or 23 double decker buses? And I always wondered why double decker buses when they're the same length as a single decker... Must be a British thing. :) Guardian reported the ocean warming since 1871 study as "...equivalent of one atomic bomb explosion per second for the past 150 years" (1.5x the power of Hiroshima), which seemed a bit hyperbolic. Except the same article then asked the author of the study[1]: “I try not to make this type of calculation, simply because I find it worrisome,” said Prof Laure Zanna, at the University of Oxford, who led the new research. “We usually try to compare the heating to [human] energy use, to make it less scary.” At which point I think Guardian might have been on to something in their choice of visualisation... [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/116/4/1126 https://www.pnas.org/content/116/4/1126