Alex WellersteinVerified account

I am going to defend it a bit; they do say heat-equivalent, and I think it interesting as a scaling measure. But yes, it's easy to mock this kind of thing and your proposal of Hiroshima-equivalent was worth the laughs. :-)

The average person does not have any intuitive sense of the difference between 40 thousand, 400 thousand, or 4 million Hiroshima equivalents... for that reason, it does not give any real information a a scaling measure, in my opinion.

I'd be curious what you would use, then to give an idea of the energy output and heat-trapping. I mean, I might try to relate it to leaving space heaters on or light bulbs or something (Hiroshima wouldn't be my go-to, personally, but that's me).

I mean, for most people calories don't translate to heat well, bc of the association with food. Watts is a bit better because most folks have had experience with a 100-watt light bulb. But for a lot of people "proper" units might as well be in Aramaic.

Assuming one feels the need to try and convey the number (the article works fine without it), I'd use something that conveyed the heat in a non-explosive fashion. E.g., the amount trapped per day is about the equivalent of the amount of energy produced by the USA per day.