5 ms·

In this article is the first time I've seen a graph with units "Hiroshimas per Seconds". https://climatecasino.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Ocean_Heating_CERE

• dj_gitmo 3y ago
  very poor taste IMO.
  • connorgutman 3y ago
    What would you rather have us measure a mass-extinction event in, "sad puppies per second?" This shit is life-and-death. I'm sorry that reality offends you.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • dzamo_norton 3y ago
    I agree, Little Boys or Fat Mans per second would be make me think more of physical power and less of kill rate.
  • gautamcgoel 3y ago
    I found it very striking - it's a number that someone like me (not a physicist) can grasp.
    • dredmorbius 3y ago
      One thing that playing with GNU Units has taught me is useful equivalences between various energy measures. 1 Hiroshima ~= 15.5 kiloton TNT ~= 18 GWh. A large powerplant generates roughly 1 GW of electricity, so running for 18 hours is the equivalent of 1 Hiroshima. (GNU units ... seems to have this predefined, along with 'davycrocket", "nagasaki", "fatman", "littleboy", "ivyking", "castlebravo", "tsarbomba", "b53bomb", "trinity", and "gadget".) This also makes clear that it's not merely the amount of energy released, but the rate which matters. A powerplant running for three quarters of a day isn't tremendously destructive. A Little Boy type fission bomb exploding in a few microseconds ... is. Slowing your car from 100 kph to 0 over 10 seconds is a strong stop, doing that in 0.1 seconds is a fatal accident. Typically, a 10x increase or decrease in scale or magnitude is transformative. By very rough averages, a human walks at ~5 kph, an automobile travels at 50 kph, a commercial airliner at 500 kph, a fighter aircraft at 5,000 kph, and a spacecraft at 50,000 kph.
  • diydsp 3y ago
    It's been suggested to state things in terms of 9/11/2001 for Americans who don't understand the distaste in such discussions. E.g. each "Hiroshima" would be worth 65 "9/11/2001"s. The scale of the graph's Y-axis would run from 195 to 585 "9/11/2001"s. Derivation: Hiroshima: 129,000–226,000 deaths. E(death_Hiroshima) ~= 180k. 9/11/2011, NYC: 2,753 people died. 180k/2753 ~= 65.
    • deanCommie 3y ago
      Neither is particularly helpful, though I should point out that American trauma from 9/11 wasn't based on the number of people who died but rather the symbol of how the attack was executed, and the fact that it happened on US soil. If the WTC towers were somehow successfully evacuated before collapse, and only 200 people died instead of 3000 (or however there were on the 2 planes), the cultural effect on the country would've been the same.
    • data_maan 3y ago
      Both are helpful. You need to frame it in the language your audience understands best (which typically nation-wide historical catastrophes).
    • murphyslab 3y ago
      The author is using this as a unit of thermal energy being absorbed, not as a measure of deaths: > As of March, 2023, on an annualized basis, the EEI was 1.61 Watts per square meter. That might not sound like a lot, but on a global basis it is about equal to the energy released from 13 Hiroshima sized nuclear bombs exploding every second. That "1.61 Watts per square meter" figure does sound low to someone who thinks in terms of 60 Watt light bulbs. Thinking of it on the scale of nuclear bombs being dropped may give people pause to reflect on the magnitude of the rate of energy being absorbed.
  • gmuslera 3y ago
    I don't think it is a bad measurement of energy for transmitting a scale. It was an actually used nuclear bomb and with enough understanding of its power and consequences in our current culture. Your message have a target public, and that target must understand it properly. A Tsar bomb or a long number with an unit attached won't be as graphically understood as this one. Scientists may grasp those numbers, but they already know how bad this is, you must reach everyone else.