Article: Nuclear winter (also known as atomic winter) is a hypothesized global climatic effect most often considered a potential threat following a countervalue (or city-targeted), nuclear war, as a result of city and natural wildfire firestorms. It is most frequently suggested to manifest as a result of the combined combustion pollution from the burning of at least 100 city sized areas at firestorm-intensity. The term was specifically coined to refer to computer model results where this smoke remained for years, or even decades, and caused massive planet-wide temperature drops ("winters") for as long as it remained.
The climate models in the public domain suggest that the ignition of 100 firestorms, comparable in intensity to that observed in Hiroshima in 1945, would produce a "small" nuclear winter. The burning of these firestorms would result in the injection of soot (specifically black carbon) into the Earth's stratosphere, producing an anti-greenhouse effect that lowers the Earth's surface temperature. The models conclude that the cumulative products of 100 of these firestorms would unmistakably cool the global climate by approximately 1 °C (1.8 °F), largely eliminating the magnitude of anthropogenic global warming for two to three years. The authors speculate, but do not model, that this would have global agricultural losses as a consequence.
A much larger number of firestorms, however, were the initial focus of the computer modelers that coined the term in the 1980s. These were speculated to be a result of any countervalue city-airburst nuclear weapon during an American-Soviet total war. These larger firestorms were believed to cause nuclear winter conditions for as long as a decade, with summer cooling by about 20 °C (36 °F) in core agricultural regions of the US, Europe, and China, and by as much as 35 °C (63 °F) in Russia. This cooling was produced due to a 99% reduction in the natural solar radiation reaching the surface of the planet in the first few years, gradually clearing over several decades.
As nuclear devices need not be involved in the ignition of a firestorm, the term is a common misnomer. This is due to, in greatest part, the vast majority of published papers stating, without qualitative justification, that nuclear explosions are the cause of the modeled firestorm effects. The only phenomenon that is scrutinized and computer modeled in the nuclear winter papers is the climate forcing agent of firestorm-soot, a product which can be ignited and formed by a myriad of other, more common, means.
On the fundamental level, it is known that firestorms can inject soot smoke/aerosols into the stratosphere, as each natural occurrence of a wildfire firestorm has been found to "surprisingly frequently" produce minor "nuclear winter" effects, with short-lived, almost immeasurable drops in surface temperatures, confined to the global hemisphere that they burned in. This is somewhat analogous to the frequent volcanic eruptions that inject sulfates into the stratosphere and thereby produce minor, even negligible, volcanic winter effects.
A suite of satellite and aircraft-based firestorm-soot-monitoring instruments are at the forefront of attempts to accurately determine the lifespan, quantity, injection height, and optical properties of this smoke. Information regarding all of these properties is necessary to truly ascertain the length and depth of the cooling effect of firestorms, independent of the nuclear winter computer model projections.
Presently, from satellite tracking data, stratospheric smoke aerosols are removed in a time span under approximately two months. The existence of any hint of a tipping point into a new stratospheric condition where the aerosols would not be removed within this time frame remains to be determined.
Mechanism
The nuclear winter scenario assumes that 100 or more city firestorms are ignited by the nuclear explosions of a nuclear war, and the firestorms lift large enough amounts of sooty smoke into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, soot lifted by the movement offered by the pyrocumulonimbus clouds that form during a firestorm. At above the Earth's surface, the absorption of sunlight could further heat the soot in the smoke, lifting some or all of it into the stratosphere, where the smoke could persist for years, if there is no rain to wash it out. This aerosol of particles could heat the stratosphere and block out a portion of the sun's light from reaching the surface, causing surface temperatures to drop drastically, and with that, it is predicted surface air temperatures would be akin to, or colder than, a given region's winter for months to years on end.
The modeled stable inversion layer of hot soot between the troposphere and high stratosphere that produces the anti-greenhouse effect was dubbed the "Smokeosphere" by Stephen Schneider et al. in their 1988 paper.
Although it is common in the climate models for the city firestorms to be ignited by nuclear explosions, they need not be ignited by nuclear devices; more conventional ignition sources can instead be the spark of the firestorms. As prior to the previously mentioned solar heating effect, the soot's injection height is controlled by the rate of energy release from the firestorm's fuel, not the size, or lack thereof, of an initial nuclear explosion. For example, the mushroom cloud from the bomb dropped on Hiroshima reached a height of six kilometers (middle troposphere) within a few minutes and then dissipated due to winds, while the individual fires within the city took almost three hours to form into a firestorm and produce a "pyrocumulus" cloud, a cloud that is assumed to have reached upper tropospheric heights, as over its multiple hours of burning, the firestorm released an estimated 1000 times the energy of the bomb.
While the firestorm of Dresden and Hiroshima and the mass fires of Tokyo and Nagasaki occurred with mere months separating them in 1945, the more intense and conventionally lit Hamburg firestorm occurred in 1943. Despite this, these five fires potentially placed five percent as much smoke into the stratosphere as the hypothetical 100 nuclear-ignited fires of modern models. While it is believed that the effects of the mass of soot emitted by 100 firestorms (one to five teragrams) would have been detectable with technical instruments in WWII, only five percent of that would not have been possible to observe at that time.
Aerosol removal timescale
The exact timescale for how long this smoke remains, and thus how severely this smoke affects the climate once it reaches the stratosphere, is dependent on both chemical and physical removal processes.
The most important physical removal mechanism is "rainout", both during the "fire-driven convective column" phase—which produces "black rain" near the fire site—and rainout after the convective plume's dispersal, where the smoke is no longer concentrated and thus "wet removal" is believed to be "very efficient." However these efficient removal mechanisms in the troposphere are avoided in the Robock 2007 study, where solar heating is modeled to quickly "loft" the soot into the stratosphere, "detraining" or separating the darker soot particles from the fire clouds' whiter water condensation.
Once in the stratosphere, the physical removal mechanisms affecting the timescale of the soot particles' residence are how quickly the aerosol of soot collides and coagulates with other particles via Brownian motion, and falls out of the atmosphere via gravity-driven dry deposition, and the time it takes for the "phoretic effect" to move coagulated particles to a lower level in the atmosphere. Whether by coagulation or the phoretic effect, once the aerosol of smoke particles are at this lower atmospheric level, cloud seeding can begin, permitting precipitation to wash the smoke aerosol out of the atmosphere by the wet deposition mechanism.
The chemical processes that affect the removal are dependent on the ability of atmospheric chemistry to oxidize the carbonaceous component of the smoke, via reactions with oxidative species such as ozone and nitrogen oxides, both of which are found at all levels of the atmosphere, and which also occur at greater concentrations when air is heated to high temperatures, which will be discussed later.
Historical data on residence times of aerosols, albeit a different mixture of aerosols, in this case stratospheric sulfur aerosols and volcanic ash from megavolcano eruptions, appear to be in the one-to-two-year time scale.
The satellite tracking of wildfire smoke aerosols from the 17 North American pyrocumulonimbus-cloud-injection events in 2002, indicates that the aerosols are removed in a time span under approximately two months, although the exact mechanisms by which they are removed, and the existence of any hint of a tipping point into a new stratospheric condition were the aerosols would not be removed within this timeframe, remains to be experimentally determined.
Aerosol–atmosphere interactions are still poorly understood.
Soot properties
Sooty aerosols can have a wide range of properties, as well as complex shapes, making it difficult to determine their evolving atmospheric Optical depth value. The conditions present during the creation of the soot are believed to be considerably important as to their final properties, with soot generated on the more efficient spectrum of burning efficiency considered almost "elemental carbon black," while on the more inefficient end of the burning spectrum, greater quantities of partially burnt/oxidized fuel are present. These partially burnt "organics" as they are known, often form "tar balls" and "brown carbon" during common lower-intensity wildfires, and can also coat the purer carbon black particles. However, as the soot of greatest importance is that which is injected to the highest altitudes by the pyroconvection of the firestorm—a fire being fed with storm-force winds of air—it is estimated that the majority of the soot under these conditions is of the more oxidized carbon black nature.
Consequences Climatic effects
A study presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December 2006 found that even a small-scale, regional nuclear war could disrupt the global climate for a decade or more. In a regional nuclear conflict scenario where two opposing nations in the subtropics would each use 50 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons (about 15 kiloton each) on major populated centres, the researchers estimated as much as five million tons of soot would be released, which would produce a cooling of several degrees over large areas of North America and Eurasia, including most of the grain-growing regions. The cooling would last for years, and according to the research could be "catastrophic".
Ozone depletion
A 2008 study by Michael J. Mills and coauthors, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that a nuclear weapons exchange between Pakistan and India using their current arsenals could create a near-global ozone hole, triggering human health problems and causing environmental damage for at least a decade. The computer-modeling study looked at a nuclear war between the two countries involving 50 Hiroshima-sized nuclear devices on each side, producing massive urban fires and lofting as much as five million metric tons of soot about into the mesosphere. The soot would absorb enough solar radiation to heat surrounding gases, causing a series of surface chemistry reactions that would break down the stratospheric ozone layer protecting Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation.
Nuclear summer
A "nuclear summer" is a hypothesized scenario in which, after a nuclear winter has abated, a greenhouse effect then occurs due to CO2 released by combustion and methane released from the decay of the organic matter that froze during the nuclear winter. It is supported scientifically far less, than nuclear winter, as a risk.
History Early work
In 1952, a few weeks prior to the Ivy Mike (10.4 megaton) test on Elugelab island, there was a concern that the "small particles"/aerosols lifted by the explosion might cool the Earth. Major Norair Lulejian, USAF, and astronomer Natarajan Visvanathan, studied this possibility reporting their findings in
Effects of Superweapons Upon the Climate of the World. According to a document by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, this report was the initial study of the "nuclear winter" concept that was popularized by others decades later. It indicated no appreciable chance of explosion-induced climate change.
Following numerous surface bursts of high yield "Hydrogen bomb" explosions on Pacific Proving Ground islands such as those of Ivy Mike in the year 1952 and Castle Bravo (15 megaton) in 1954, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons by Samuel Glasstone was published in 1957 which contained a section entitled "Nuclear Bombs and the Weather" (pages 69–71), which states: "The dust raised in severe volcanic eruptions, such as that at Krakatoa in 1883, is known to cause a noticeable reduction in the sunlight reaching the earth … The amount of [soil or other surface] debris remaining in the atmosphere after the explosion of even the largest nuclear weapons is probably not more than about 1 percent or so of that raised by the Krakatoa eruption. Further, solar radiation records reveal that none of the nuclear explosions to date has resulted in any detectable change in the direct sunlight recorded on the ground."
In the 1966 RAND corporation memorandum The Effects of Nuclear War on the Weather and Climate by E. S. Batten, while primarily analysing potential dust effects from surface bursts, it notes "in addition to the effects of the debris, extensive fires ignited by nuclear detonations might change the surface characteristics of the area and modify local weather patterns...however, a more thorough knowledge of the atmosphere is necessary to determine their exact nature, extent, and magnitude."
In the 1985 The Effects on the Atmosphere of a Major Nuclear Exchange, it argues that a "plausible" estimate on the amount of stratospheric dust injected following a surface burst of 1 megaton is 0.3 teragrams, of which "8 percent" would be in the submicron/micrometer range. The potential cooling from soil dust was again looked at in 1992, in a US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report on geoengineering, which estimated that about 1010 kg [100 teragrams] of stratospheric injected soil dust with particulate grain dimensions of 0.1 to 1 micrometer would be required to mitigate the warming from a doubling of atmospheric , that is, to produce ~ 2 degree celsius of cooling.
In 1969, Paul Crutzen discovered that NOx (oxides of nitrogen) could be an efficient
catalyst for the destruction of the ozone layer/stratospheric ozone. With studies on the potential effects of NOx generated by engine heat in stratosphere flying Supersonic Transport (SST) airplanes in the 1970s serving as a backdrop, John Hampson in 1974 suggested in the journal Nature that due to the nuclear fireballs creation of atmospheric NOx, a full-scale nuclear exchange could result in depletion of the ozone shield, possibly subjecting the earth to ultraviolet radiation for a year or more. Hampson's hypothesis "led directly", in 1975, to the United States National Research Council (NRC) reporting on the models of ozone depletion following nuclear war in the book Long-Term Worldwide Effects of Multiple Nuclear-Weapons Detonations. In this 1975 book it states that a nuclear war involving 4000Mt (megaton) from present arsenals would probably deposit much less dust in the stratosphere than the Krakatoa eruption, judging that the effect of dust and oxides of nitrogen would probably be slight climatic cooling which "would probably lie within normal global climatic variability, but the possibility of climatic changes of a more dramatic nature cannot be ruled out". While on the issue of fireball generated NOx and ozone layer loss therefrom, its model calculations in the early-to-mid 1970s on the effects of a nuclear war with the use of large numbers of multi-megaton yield detonations returned conclusions that this could reduce ozone levels by 50 per cent or more in the northern hemisphere.
More reliably, in 1976 a study on the experimental measurements of an earlier atmospheric nuclear test as it affected the ozone layer found that nuclear detonations are tentatively exonerated in depleting ozone, after initially discouraging model calculations. In total about 500 megatons were atmospherically detonated between 1945 and 1971, with a peak occurring in 1961–62, when 340 megatons were detonated in the atmosphere by the United States and Soviet Union. During this 1–2 year peak, counting only the multi-megaton range detonations in the two nations nuclear test series, a total yield estimated at 300 megatons of energy was released, due to this, 3 × 1034 additional molecules of nitric oxide (about 5000 tons per megaton) are believed to have entered the stratosphere, and while ozone depletion of 2.2 percent was noted in 1963, the decline had started prior to 1961 and is believed to have been caused by other meteorological effects, thus the 1985 book The Effects on the Atmosphere of a Major Nuclear Exchange states: "one can not draw definite conclusions about the effects of nuclear explosions on stratospheric ozone".
In 1982 Australian physicist Brian Martin, who frequently corresponded with John Hampson, penned a short historical synopsis on the history of interest in the effects of the direct NOx generated by nuclear fireballs, and in doing so, also outlined Hampson's other non-mainstream viewpoints, particularly those relating to greater ozone destruction from upper-atmospheric detonations as a result of any widely used anti-ballistic missile (ABM-1 Galosh) system. However, Martin ultimately concludes that it is "unlikely that in the context of a major nuclear war" ozone degradation would be of serious concern. Singling out views about potential ozone loss and therefore increases in Ultraviolet light leading to the widespread destruction of crops, as advocated by journalist Jonathan Schell in his popular 1982 book The Fate of the Earth, as highly unlikely.
More recent accounts on the specific ozone layer destruction potential of NOx species, are much less than earlier assumed from simplistic calculations, as "about 1.2 million tons" of natural and anthropogenic generated stratospheric NOx is believed to be formed each year according to Robert P.Parson in the 1990s.
Science Fiction
The first published suggestion that a cooling of climate or winter could be an effect of a nuclear war, appears to have been originally put forth by Poul Anderson and F.N Waldrop in their post war story "Tomorrow's Children", which was contained in the March 1947 issue of the Astounding Science Fiction magazine, the story which is primarily about a team of scientists hunting down mutants, warns of a "Fimbulwinter" caused by dust that blocked sunlight after the recent fictitious nuclear war and speculates that this may even trigger a new ice age. Anderson went on to publish a novel based partly on this story in 1961 titling it; Twilight World. Similarly in 1985 it was noted by T.G Parsons that the story Torch by C. Anvil, which likewise appeared in Astounding Science Fiction magazine but in the April 1957 edition, contains the essence of the "Twilight at Noon"/"nuclear winter" hypothesis. In the story a nuclear warhead ignites an oil field and the soot produced "screens out part of the sun's radiation" which results in Arctic temperatures for much of the population of North America and the Soviet Union.
1980s
The 1988 Air Force Geophysics Laboratory publication An assessment of global atmospheric effects of a major nuclear war by Muench, H. Stuart et al. contains a chronology and review of the major reports on the nuclear winter hypothesis from 1983-86. In general these reports arrive at similar conclusions as they are based on the same "assumptions, the same basic data" with minor model-code differences "to arrive at the same answer". They skip the modeling steps of assessing the possibility of fire and the initial fire plumes and instead start the modeling process with a "spatially uniform" "soot cloud" which has found its way into the atmosphere.
In 1981, William J. Moran began discussions and research in the NRC on the dust effects of a large exchange of nuclear warheads, having seen a possible parallel in the dust effects of a war with that of the asteroid created K-T boundary and its popular analysis a year earlier by Luis Alvarez in 1980. An NRC study panel on the topic met in December 1981 and April 1982 in preparation of the release of The Effects on the Atmosphere of a Major Nuclear Exchange in 1985.
As part of a study on the creation of oxidizing species such as NOx and ozone in the troposphere after a nuclear war, launched in 1980 by Ambio, a journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Paul Crutzen and John Birks began preparing for the 1982 publication of a calculation on the effects of nuclear war on stratospheric ozone, using the latest models for the time. However they found that in part as a result of the trend towards more numerous but less energetic, sub-megaton range nuclear warheads (made possible by the ceaseless march to increase ICBM warhead accuracy/Circular Error Probable) the ozone layer danger was "not very significant".
It was after being confronted with these results that they "chanced" upon the notion, as "an afterthought" of nuclear detonations igniting massive fires everywhere and most crucially, the smoke from these conventional fires, then going on to absorb sunlight and with that surface temperatures plummeting. In early 1982 the two colleagues circulated a draft paper with the first suggestions of alterations in short-term climate from fires, presumed to occur following a nuclear war. Later in the same year, the special issue of Ambio devoted to the possible environmental consequences of nuclear war by Crutzen and Birks was titled "Twilight at Noon" and largely anticipated the nuclear winter hypothesis. The paper which looked into fires and their climatic effect discussed particulate matter from large fires, nitrogen oxide, ozone depletion and the effect of nuclear twilight on agriculture. Crutzen and Birks' calculations suggested that smoke particulates injected into the atmosphere by fires in cities, forests and petroleum reserves could prevent up to 99% of sunlight from reaching the Earth's surface, with this darkness persisting "for as long as the fires" burned, which was assumed to be many weeks, with climatic consequences: "The normal dynamic and temperature structure of the atmosphere would therefore change considerably over a large fraction of the Northern Hemisphere, which will probably lead to important changes in land surface temperatures and wind systems." A policy implication of their work was that a successful nuclear decapitation strike could have severe climatic consequences for the perpetrator.
Interest in nuclear war environmental effects also arose in the USSR. After becoming aware of the papers by N.P.Bochkov and E.I.Chazov, Russian atmospheric scientist Georgy Golitsyn applied his research on dust-storms to the situation following a large nuclear war. His suggestion that the atmosphere would be heated and that the surface of the planet would cool appeared in The Herald of the Academy of Sciences in September 1983.
In 1982, the so-called TTAPS team (Richard P. Turco, Owen Toon, Thomas P. Ackerman, James B. Pollack and Carl Sagan) undertook a 1-dimensional computational modeling study of the atmospheric consequences of nuclear war, publishing their results in Science in December 1983. The phrase "nuclear winter" was coined by Turco just prior to publication. In this early paper, TTAPS used assumption based estimates on the total smoke and dust emissions that would result from a major nuclear exchange, and with that, began analyzing the subsequent effects on the atmospheric radiation balance and temperature structure as a result of this quantity of assumed smoke. To compute dust and smoke effects, they employed a one-dimensional microphysics/radiative-transfer model of the Earth's lower atmosphere (to the mesopause), which defined only the vertical characteristics of the global climate perturbation.
Upon learning of the TTAPS scenarios, Vladimir Alexandrov and G. I. Stenchikov also published a report in 1983 on the climatic consequences of nuclear war based on simulations with a three-dimensional global circulation model. (Two years later Alexandrov disappeared under mysterious circumstances.) Richard Turco and Starley L. Thompson were critical of the Soviet model, Turco calling it "a primitive rendition of an obsolete US model". Both however largely rescinded their "demeaning" and "particularly harsh" quotes some time later, stating that this Soviet model had the same weaknesses as all others and applauded Alexandrov's "pioneering contribution" that "deserved special recognition".
In 1984 the WMO commissioned Georgy Golitsyn and N. A. Phillips to review the state of the science.They found that studies generally assumed a scenario that half of the world's nuclear weapons would be used, ~5000 Mt, destroying approximately 1,000 cities, and creating large quantities of carbonaceous smoke – 1– being most likely, with a range of 0.2– (NAS; TTAPS assumed ). The smoke resulting would be largely opaque to solar radiation but transparent to infra-red, thus cooling by blocking sunlight but not causing warming from enhancing the greenhouse effect. The optical depth of the smoke can be much greater than unity. Forest fires resulting from non-urban targets could increase aerosol production further. Dust from near-surface explosions against hardened targets also contributes; each Mt-equivalent of explosion could release up to 5 million tons of dust, but most would quickly fall out; high altitude dust is estimated at 0.1-1 million tons per Mt-equivalent of explosion. Burning of crude oil could also contribute substantially.
The 1-D radiative-convective models used in these studies produced a range of results, with coolings up to 15–42 °C between 14 and 35 days after the war, with a "baseline" of about 20 °C. Somewhat more sophisticated calculations using 3-D GCMs produced similar results: temperature drops of between 20 and 40 °C, though with regional variations.
All calculations show large heating (up to 80 °C) at the top of the smoke layer at about 10 km; this implies a substantial modification of the circulation there and the possibility of advection of the cloud into low latitudes and the southern hemisphere.
The report made no attempt to compare the likely human effects of the post-war cooling to the direct deaths from explosions.
1990
In 1990, in a paper entitled "Climate and Smoke: An Appraisal of Nuclear Winter," TTAPS give a more detailed description of the short- and long-term atmospheric effects of a nuclear war using a three-dimensional model:
First 1 to 3 months:
10 to 25% of soot injected is immediately removed by precipitation, while the rest is transported over the globe in 1 to 2 weeks
SCOPE figures for July smoke injection:
22 °C drop in mid-latitudes
10 °C drop in humid climates
75% decrease in rainfall in mid-latitudes
Light level reduction of 0% in low latitudes to 90% in high smoke injection areas
SCOPE figures for winter smoke injection:
Temperature drops between 3 and 4 °C
Following 1 to 3 years:
25 to 40% of injected smoke is stabilised in atmosphere (NCAR). Smoke stabilised for approximately 1 year.
Land temperatures of several degrees below normal
Ocean surface temperature between 2 and 6 °C
Ozone depletion of 50% leading to 200% increase in UV radiation incident on surface.
Kuwait wells in the first Gulf War
Following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and Iraqi threats of igniting the country's 800 or so oil wells were made, speculation on the cumulative climatic effect of this, presented at the World Climate Conference in Geneva that November in 1990, ranged from a nuclear winter type scenario, to heavy acid rain and even short term immediate global warming. As threatened, the wells were set ablaze by the retreating Iraqis by March 1991 and the 600 or so successfully set Kuwaiti oil wells were not fully extinguished until November 6, 1991, eight months after the end of the war, and they consumed an estimated six million barrels of oil daily at their peak intensity.
In articles printed in the Wilmington morning star and the Baltimore Sun newspapers of January 1991, prominent authors of nuclear winter papers – Richard P. Turco, John W. Birks, Carl Sagan, Alan Robock and Paul Crutzen together collectively stated that they expected catastrophic nuclear winter like effects with continental-sized effects of "sub-freezing" temperatures as a result of if the Iraqis went through with their threats of igniting 300 to 500 pressurized oil wells and they burned for a few months.
Later when Operation Desert Storm had begun in late January 1991, coinciding with the first few oil fires being lit, Dr. S. Fred Singer and Carl Sagan discussed the possible environmental effects of the Kuwaiti petroleum fires on the ABC News program Nightline. Sagan again argued that some of the effects of the smoke could be similar to the effects of a nuclear winter, with smoke lofting into the stratosphere, a region of the atmosphere beginning around above sea level at Kuwait, resulting in global effects and that he believed the net effects would be very similar to the explosion of the Indonesian volcano Tambora in 1815, which resulted in the year 1816 being known as the Year Without a Summer.
He reported on initial modeling estimates that forecast effects extending to south Asia, and perhaps to the northern hemisphere as well. Sagan stressed this outcome was so likely that, "It should affect the war plans." Singer, on the other hand, said that his calculations showed that the smoke would go to an altitude of about and then be rained out after about three to five days and thus the lifetime of the smoke would be limited. Both height estimates made by Singer and Sagan turned out to be wrong, albeit with Singer's narrative being closer to what transpired, with the comparatively minimal atmospheric effects remaining limited to the Persian Gulf region, with smoke plumes, in general, lofting to about and a few times as high as .
Sagan later conceded in his book The Demon-Haunted World that his predictions obviously did not turn out to be correct: "it was pitch black at noon and temperatures dropped 4–6 °C over the Persian Gulf, but not much smoke reached stratospheric altitudes and Asia was spared."
Sagan and his colleagues expected that a "self-lofting" of the sooty smoke would occur when it absorbed the sun's heat radiation, with little to no scavenging occurring, whereby the black particles of soot would be heated by the sun and lifted/lofted higher and higher into the air, thereby injecting the soot into the stratosphere, a position where they argued it would take years for the sun blocking effect of this aerosol of soot to fall out of the air, and with that, catastrophic ground level cooling and agricultural effects in Asia and possibly the Northern Hemisphere as a whole.
The atmospheric scientist tasked with studying the atmospheric effect of the Kuwaiti fires by the National Science Foundation, Peter Hobbs, stated that the fires' modest impact suggested that "some numbers [used to support the Nuclear Winter hypothesis]... were probably a little overblown."
Hobbs found that at the peak of the fires, the smoke absorbed 75 to 80% of the sun’s radiation. The particles rose to a maximum of , and when combined with scavenging by clouds the smoke had a short residency time of a maximum of a few days in the atmosphere.
Pre-war claims of wide scale, long-lasting, and significant global environmental effects were thus not borne out, and found to be significantly exaggerated by the media and speculators, with climate models by those not supporting the nuclear winter hypothesis at the time of the fires predicting only more localized effects such as a daytime temperature drop of ~10 °C within ~200 km of the source.
The idea of oil well and oil reserve smoke pluming to the stratosphere serving as a main contributor to the soot of a nuclear winter was a central tenet of the early climatology papers on the hypothesis; they were considered more of a possible contributor than smoke from cities, as the smoke from oil has a higher ratio of black soot, thus absorbing more sunlight. Hobbs compared the papers' assumed "emission factor" or soot generating efficiency from ignited oil pools and found, upon comparing to measured values from oil pools at Kuwait, which were the greatest soot producers, the emissions of soot assumed in the nuclear winter calculations are still "too high". Following the results of the Kuwaiti oil fires being in disagreement with the core nuclear winter promoting scientists, the 1990s nuclear winter papers generally attempted to distance themselves from suggesting oil well and reserve smoke will reach the stratosphere.
In 2007, a nuclear winter study, which will be discussed later, noted that modern computer models have been applied to the Kuwait oil fires, finding that individual smoke plumes are not able to loft smoke into the stratosphere, but that smoke from fires covering a large area like some forest fires can lift smoke into the stratosphere, and this is supported by recent evidence that it occurs far more often than previously thought. The study also suggested that the burning of the comparably smaller cities, which would be expected to follow a nuclear strike, would also loft significant amounts of smoke into the stratosphere:
Stenchikov et al. [2006b] conducted detailed, high-resolution smoke plume simulations with the RAMS regional climate model [e.g., Miguez-Macho et al., 2005] and showed that individual plumes, such as those from the Kuwait oil fires in 1991, would not be expected to loft into the upper atmosphere or stratosphere, because they become diluted. However, much larger plumes, such as would be generated by city fires, produce large, undiluted mass motion that results in smoke lofting. New large eddy simulation model results at much higher resolution also give similar lofting to our results, and no small scale response that would inhibit the lofting [Jensen, 2006].
However the above simulation notably contained the assumption that no dry and wet deposition/rain would occur.
Recent modeling
Based on new work published in 2007 and 2008 by some of the authors of the original studies, several new hypotheses have been put forth. However far from being "new", the very same beginning to "significant" nuclear winter effects, was in the mid 1980s models, similarly regarded to have been a threat from a total of 100 or so city firestorms.
A minor nuclear war with each country using 50 Hiroshima-sized atom bombs as airbursts on urban areas could produce climate change unprecedented in recorded human history. A nuclear war between the United States and Russia today could produce nuclear winter, with temperatures plunging below freezing in the summer in major agricultural regions, threatening the food supply for most of the planet. The climatic effects of the smoke from burning cities and industrial areas would last for several years, much longer than previously thought. New climate model simulations, which are said to have the capability of including the entire atmosphere and oceans, show that the smoke would be lofted by solar heating to the upper stratosphere, where it would remain for years.
Compared to climate change for the past millennium, even the smallest exchange modeled would plunge the planet into temperatures colder than the Little Ice Age (the period of history between approximately A.D. 1600 and A.D. 1850). This would take effect instantly, and agriculture would be severely threatened. Larger amounts of smoke would produce larger climate changes, and for the 150 teragrams (Tg) case produce a true nuclear winter (1 Tg is 1012 grams), making agriculture impossible for years. In both cases, new climate model simulations show that the effects would last for more than a decade.
2007 study on global nuclear war
A study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in July 2007, "Nuclear winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals: Still catastrophic consequences", used current climate models to look at the consequences of a global nuclear war involving most or all of the world's current nuclear arsenals (which the authors judged to be one the size of the world's arsenals twenty years earlier). The authors used a global circulation model, ModelE from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which they noted "has been tested extensively in global warming experiments and to examine the effects of volcanic eruptions on climate." The model was used to investigate the effects of a war involving the entire current global nuclear arsenal, projected to release about 150 Tg of smoke into the atmosphere, as well as a war involving about one third of the current nuclear arsenal, projected to release about 50 Tg of smoke. In the 150 Tg case they found that:
A global average surface cooling of –7 °C to –8 °C persists for years, and after a decade the cooling is still –4 °C (Fig. 2). Considering that the global average cooling at the depth of the last ice age 18,000 yr ago was about –5 °C, this would be a climate change unprecedented in speed and amplitude in the history of the human race. The temperature changes are largest over land … Cooling of more than –20 °C occurs over large areas of North America and of more than –30 °C over much of Eurasia, including all agricultural regions.
In addition, they found that this cooling caused a weakening of the global hydrological cycle, reducing global precipitation by about 45%. As for the 50 Tg case involving one third of current nuclear arsenals, they said that the simulation "produced climate responses very similar to those for the 150 Tg case, but with about half the amplitude," but that "the time scale of response is about the same." They did not discuss the implications for agriculture in depth, but noted that a 1986 study which assumed no food production for a year projected that "most of the people on the planet would run out of food and starve to death by then" and commented that their own results show that, "This period of no food production needs to be extended by many years, making the impacts of nuclear winter even worse than previously thought."
2014
In 2014, Michael J. Mills (at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, NCAR), Owen B. Toon (of the original TTAPS team), Julia Lee-Taylor, and Alan Robock published "Multi-decadal global cooling and unprecedented ozone loss following a regional nuclear conflict" in the journal Earth's Future. The authors used computational models developed by NCAR to simulate the climatic effects of a regional nuclear war in which 100 "small" (15 kt) weapons are detonated over cities. They concluded, in part, that
global ozone losses of 20-50% over populated areas, levels unprecedented in human history, would accompany the coldest average surface temperatures in the last 1000 years. We calculate summer enhancements in UV indices of 30-80% over Mid-Latitudes, suggesting widespread damage to human health, agriculture, and terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Killing frosts would reduce growing seasons by 10-40 days per year for 5 years. Surface temperatures would be reduced for more than 25 years, due to thermal inertia and albedo effects in the ocean and expanded sea ice. The combined cooling and enhanced UV would put significant pressures on global food supplies and could trigger a global nuclear famine.
Criticism and debate
The four major underpinnings that the nuclear winter concept has, and continues to receive criticism over are regarded as, first in the fire domain; would cities readily firestorm and how much soot would be generated. Secondly, atmospheric longevity; would the quantities of soot assumed in the models remain in the atmosphere for as long as projected and would far more soot precipitate as black rain much sooner. Third, timing of events; how realistic is it to regard the firestorms/wars would occur in the month of may/summer as most papers assume for the maximum cooling results and lastly, the issue of darkness or opacity; how much light-blocking effect would the assumed quantity of soot reaching the atmosphere have.
While the highly popularized initial 1983 TTAPS model forecasts were widely reported and criticized in the media, in part because every later model predicts far less of its "apocalyptic" level of cooling, most models continue to suggest that some deleterious global cooling would still result.
A major criticism of the assumptions that continue to make these model results possible appeared in the 1987 book Nuclear War Survival Skills, a civil defense manual by Cresson Kearny for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. According to the 1988 publication An assessment of global atmospheric effects of a major nuclear war, Kearny's criticisms were directed at the excessive amount of soot that the modelers assumed would reach the stratosphere, with Kearny citing a Soviet study that modern cities would not burn as firestorms, as most flammable city items would be buried under [non combustible] rubble and that the TTAPs study included a massive overestimate on the size and extent of non-urban wildfires that would result from a nuclear war. The TTAPs authors responded that, amongst other things, they did not believe target planners would intentionally blast cities into rubble, but instead argued fires would begin in relatively undamaged suburbs when nearby sites were hit, and partially conceded his point about non-urban wildfires. Dr. Richard D. Small, director of thermal sciences at the Pacific-Sierra Research Corporation similarly disagreed strongly with the model assumptions, in particular the 1990 update by TTAPs that argues that some 5,075 teragrams (trillions of grams) of soot would be released from a total US-Soviet nuclear war, as analysis by Small of blueprints and real buildings returned a maximum of 1,475 teragrams of material could be burned, "assuming that all the available combustible material was actually ignited".
Although he was of the opinion that further more accurate models would "indicate there will be even smaller reductions in temperature", which did not so readily accept firestorms would occur so readily, Kearny summarized the comparatively moderate cooling estimate of no more than a few days, from the 1986 Nuclear Winter Reappraised model by Starley Thompson and Stephen Schneider, in an effect to convey to his readers that contrary to the popular opinion at the time, in the conclusion of these two climate scientists, "on scientific grounds the global apocalyptic conclusions of the initial nuclear winter hypothesis can now be relegated to a vanishing low level of probability."
However, a 1988 article by Brian Martin in Science and Public Policy states that although Nuclear Winter Reappraised concluded the US-Soviet "nuclear winter" would be much less severe than originally thought, with the authors describing the effects more as a "nuclear autumn", other statements by Thompson and Schneider show that they "resisted the interpretation that this means a rejection of the basic points made about nuclear winter". In the Alan Robock et al. 2007 paper they write that "because of the use of the term 'nuclear autumn' by Thompson and Schneider [1986], even though the authors made clear that the climatic consequences would be large, in policy circles the theory of nuclear winter is considered by some to have been exaggerated and disproved [e.g., Martin, 1988]." In 2007 Schneider expressed his tentative support for the cooling results of the limited nuclear war (Pakistan and India) analyzed in the 2006 model above, saying "The sun is much stronger in the tropics than it is in mid-latitudes. Therefore, a much more limited war [there] could have a much larger effect, because you are putting the smoke in the worst possible place." As "anything that you can do to discourage people from thinking that there is any way to win anything with a nuclear exchange is a good idea."
The contribution of smoke from the ignition of live non-desert vegetation, living forests and so on near to many missile silos, a source of smoke originally assumed to be possibly very large in the initial Twilight at Noon paper and also found in the popular TTAPs publication. Was examined by Bush and Small in 1987 who found that the burning of live vegetation would contribute only slightly to the estimated total "nonurban smoke production". With the vegetations potential to sustain burning only probable if it is within a radius or two from the surface of the nuclear fireball, which is at a distance that would also experience extreme blast winds that would influence any such fires. This reduction in the estimate of the non-urban smoke hazard is supported by the earlier preliminary Estimating Nuclear Forest Fires publication of 1984, and by the 1950-60s in-field examination of tropical forests after Operation Castle, and Operation Redwing.
In a paper by the United States Department of Homeland Security finalized in 2010, fire experts stated that due to the nature of modern city design and construction, with the US serving as an example, a firestorm is unlikely after a nuclear detonation in a modern city. This is not to say that fires won't occur over a large area after a detonation, but that the fires would not coalesce and form the all important stratosphere punching firestorm plume that the nuclear winter papers require as a prerequisite assumption in their climate computer models. The nuclear bombing of Nagasaki for example, did not produce a firestorm. This was similarly noted as early as 1986-88, when the assumed quantity of fuel "mass loading" (the amount of fuel per square meter) in cities underpinning the winter models was found to be too high and intentionally creates heat fluxes that lofts smoke into the lower stratosphere, yet assessments "more characteristic of conditions" to be found in real-world modern cities, had found that the fuel loading, and hence the heat flux the results from burning, would rarely loft smoke much higher than 4 km.
Russell Seitz, Associate of the Harvard University Center for International Affairs, argues that the winter models' assumptions give results which the researchers want to achieve and is a case of "worst-case analysis run amok". Seitz criticized the theory for being based on successive worst-case events: “The improbability of a string of 40 such coin tosses coming up heads approaches that of a pat royal flush. Yet it was represented as a "sophisticated one-dimensional model"—a usage that is oxymoronic, unless applied to [the British model Lesley Lawson] Twiggy.”
Seitz cited Carl Sagan, adding an emphasis: "In almost any realistic case involving nuclear exchanges between the superpowers, global environmental changes sufficient to cause an extinction event equal to or more severe than that of the close of the Cretaceous when the dinosaurs and many other species died out are likely.” Seitz comments: “The ominous rhetoric italicized in this passage puts even the 100 megaton scenario … on a par with the 100 million megaton blast of an asteroid striking the Earth. This astronomical mega-hype … has been repeatedly cited in the literature of strategic doctrine as evidence.” Seitz concludes:
As the science progressed and more authentic sophistication was achieved in newer and more elegant models, the postulated effects headed downhill. By 1986, these worst-case effects had melted down from a year of arctic darkness to warmer temperatures than the cool months in Palm Beach! A new paradigm of broken clouds and cool spots had emerged. The once global hard frost had retreated back to the northern tundra. Mr. Sagan's elaborate conjecture had fallen prey to Murphy's lesser-known Second Law: If everything must go wrong, don't bet on it.
Seitz's opposition caused the proponents of nuclear winter to issue responses in the media, and while both sides made important points, they were largely incapable of collaborating as the proponents believed it was simply necessary to show only the possibility of climatic catastrophe, often a worst-case scenario, while opponents insisted that to be taken seriously, nuclear winter should be shown as likely under "reasonable" scenarios. One of these areas of contention, as elucidated by Lynn R. Anspaugh, is upon the question of which season should be used as the backdrop for the US-USSR war models, as most models choose the summer in the Northern Hemisphere as the start point to produce the maximum soot lofting and therefore eventual winter effect, whereas it has been pointed out that if the firestorms occurred in the fall or winter months, when there is much less intense sunlight to loft soot into a stable region of the stratosphere, the magnitude of the cooling effect from the same number of firestorms as ignited in the summer models, would be negligible according to a January model run by Covey et al., and an issue that Scheider conceded in 1990, "a war in late fall or winter would have no appreciable [cooling] effect".
John Maddox, editor of the journal Nature, issued a series of skeptical comments about nuclear winter studies during his tenure, being a long-time critic of environmental doomsdayism, his critical analysis of the hypothesis is regarded to have withstood the test of time. Similarly S. Fred Singer was a long term vocal critic of the hypothesis in the journal and in televised debates with Carl Sagan. In a 2011 response to the more modern papers on the hypothesis, Russell Seitz published a comment in Nature challenging Alan Robock's claim that there has been no real scientific debate about the 'nuclear winter' concept. As climatologist Kerry Emanuel similarly wrote a review in nature that the winter concept is “notorious for its lack of scientific integrity” due to the unrealistic estimates selected for the quantity of fuel likely to burn, the impercise GCM/global circulation models used, and ends by stating that the evidence of other models, point to substantial scavenging of the smoke by rain. Seitz also contends that many others are reluctant to speak out for fear of being stigmatized as closet Dr. Strangeloves, physicist Freeman Dyson of Princeton for example stated "It's an absolutely atrocious piece of science, but I quite despair of setting the public record straight." Stephen Schneider for example was labelled a "fascist" for writing the critical paper, "Nuclear Winter Reappraised" according to Rocky Mountain News.
Lynn R. Anspaugh also expressed frustration that although a managed (Chapleau, Ontario) forest fire in Canada on 3 August 1985 is said to have been lit by proponents of nuclear winter, with the fire potentially serving as an opportunity to do some basic measurements of the optical properties of the smoke and smoke-to-fuel ratio, which would have helped refine the estimates of these critical model inputs, the proponents did not indicate that any such measurements were made. Peter V. Hobbs, who would later successfully attain funding to fly into and sample the smoke clouds from the Kuwait oil fires in 1991, also expressed frustration that he was denied funding to sample the Canadian, and other forest fires in this way. Richard Turco (of TTAPs fame) simply wrote a 10-page memorandum with information derived from his notes and some satellite images, that the smoke plume reached 6 km in altitude.
In 1986, atmospheric scientist Joyce Penner from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory published an article in Nature in which she focused on the specific variables of the smoke's optical properties and the quantity of smoke remaining airborne after the city fires and found that the published estimates of these variables varied so widely that depending on which estimates were chosen the climate effect could be negligible, minor or massive.
The assumed optical properties for black carbon in more recent nuclear winter papers (2006) are still "based on those assumed in earlier nuclear winter simulations".
William R. Cotton Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, specialist in cloud physics modeling and co-creator of the highly influential, and previously mentioned RAMS atmosphere model, had in the 1980s modeled and supported the predictions made by earlier nuclear winter papers, but has since reversed this position according to a book co-authored by him in 2007, stating that, amongst other systematically examined assumptions; far more rain out/wet deposition of soot will occur than is assumed in modern papers on the subject and that "We must wait for a new generation of GCMs to be implemented to examine potential consequences quantitatively" and "that nuclear winter was largely politically motivated from the beginning".
Policy implications
During the early 1980s, Fidel Castro recommended to the Kremlin a harder line against Washington, even suggesting the possibility of nuclear strikes. The pressure stopped after Soviet officials gave Castro a briefing on the ecological effect on Cuba of nuclear strikes on the United States. In 2010 Alan Robock, a co-author of nuclear winter papers was summoned to Cuba to help Castro promote his new view that nuclear war would bring about Armageddon, Robock's 90 minute lecture was later aired on nationwide television in the country.
However, according to Robock, in so far as getting US government attention and affecting nuclear policy, he has failed. In 2009, together with Owen Toon, he gave a talk to the United States Congress but nothing transpired from it and the then presidential science adviser, John Holdren, did not respond to their requests in 2009 or at the time of writing in 2011.
In an interview in 2000, Mikhail Gorbachev, in response to the comment "In the 1980s, you warned about the unprecedented dangers of nuclear weapons and took very daring steps to reverse the arms race," said "Models made by Russian and American scientists showed that a nuclear war would result in a nuclear winter that would be extremely destructive to all life on Earth; the knowledge of that was a great stimulus to us, to people of honor and morality, to act in that situation."
However a 1984 US Interagency Intelligence Assessment expresses a far more skeptical and cautious approach by stating that as the hypothesis is not convincing scientifically, they predicted that Soviet nuclear policy would be to maintain their strategic nuclear posture, such as their fielding of the high throw-weight SS-18 missile and they would merely attempt to exploit the hypothesis for propaganda purposes, such as directing scrutiny on the US portion of the nuclear arms race. Moreover, it goes on to express the belief that if Soviet officials did begin to take nuclear winter seriously, it would probably make them demand exceptionally high standards of scientific proof for the hypothesis, as the implications of it would undermine their military doctrine—a level of scientific proof which perhaps could not be met without field experimentation. The un-redacted portion of the document ends with the suggestion that substantial increases in Soviet Civil defense food stockpiles might be an early indicator that Nuclear Winter was beginning to influence Soviet upper echelon thinking.
In 1985 Time magazine noted "the suspicions of some Western scientists that the nuclear winter hypothesis was promoted by Moscow to give anti-nuclear groups in the U.S. and Europe some fresh ammunition against America's arms buildup."
In 1986, the Defense Nuclear Agency document An update of Soviet research on and exploitation of Nuclear winter 1984–1986 charted the minimal research contribution on, and Soviet propaganda usage of, the nuclear winter phenomenon.
Dr. Vitalii Nikolaevich Tsygichko, a Senior Analyst at the Soviet Academy of Sciences, author of the study, Mathematical Model of Soviet Strategic Operations on the Continental Theater, and a former member of the General Staff, has said that Soviet military analysts discussed the idea of a "nuclear winter" (although they did not use that exact term) years before U.S. scientists wrote about it in the 1980s. Starley L. Thompson, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, says that Soviet research into nuclear winter in 1983 used US computer models that had been developed in the early 1970s. Soviet intelligence officer Sergei Tretyakov, who defected in 1990, maintained that "the KGB was responsible for creating the entire nuclear winter story to stop the Pershing II missiles".
In 1989 Carl Sagan and colleague Richard Turco wrote a policy implications paper that appeared in Ambio that suggests that as nuclear winter is a "well-established prospect", both superpowers should jointly reduce their nuclear arsenals to "Canonical Deterrent Force" levels of 100–300 individual warheads each, such that in "the event of nuclear war [this] would minimize the likelihood of nuclear winter."
As the implications of nuclear winter began to be taken seriously in the late 1980s, military analysts turned to reinforce "existing trends" in warhead miniaturization, of higher accuracy and lower yield nuclear warheads. This trend, enabled by GPS navigation etc., was motivated by the desire to still destroy the target but while reducing the severity of fallout collateral damage depositing on neighboring, and potentially friendly, countries. As it relates to the likelihood of nuclear winter, the hazard from thermal radiation ignited fires would also be reduced. While the TTAPS paper had described a 3000 Mt counterforce attack on ICBM sites; Michael Altfeld of Michigan State University and political scientist Stephen Cimbala of Pennsylvania State University argued that smaller, more accurate warheads and lower detonation heights could produce the same counterforce strike with only 3 Mt and produce less climatic effects, even if cities were targeted, as lower fuzing heights, such as surface bursts, would limit the range of the burning thermal rays due to terrain masking and shadows cast by buildings, while also temporarily lofting far more radioactive soil into the atmosphere. This logic is similarly reflected in the 1984 Interagency Intelligence assessment, which suggests that targeting planners would simply have to consider target combustibility along with yield, height of burst, timing and other factors to reduce the amount of smoke to safeguard against the potentiality of a nuclear winter. Therefore, as a consequence of attempting to limit the target fire hazard by reducing the range of thermal radiation with fuzing for surface and sub-surface bursts, this will result in a scenario where the far more concentrated, and therefore deadlier, local fallout that is generated following a surface burst forms, as opposed to the comparatively dilute global fallout created when nuclear weapons are fuzed in air burst mode.
Altfeld and Cimbala also argued that belief in the possibility of nuclear winter would actually make nuclear war more likely, contrary to the views of Sagan and others, because it would inspire the development of more accurate, and lower explosive yield, nuclear weapons. As it suggests that the replacement of the then Cold War viewed strategic nuclear weapons in the multi-megaton yield range, with weapons of explosive yields closer to tactical nuclear weapons, such as the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, would safeguard against the nuclear winter potential. Tactical nuclear weapons, on the low end of the scale have yields that overlap with large conventional weapons, and are therefore often viewed "as blurring the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons", making the prospect of using them "easier" in a conflict.
Mitigation techniques
A number of solutions have been proposed to mitigate the potential harm of a nuclear winter if one appears inevitable; with the problem being attacked at both ends, from those focusing on preventing the growth of fires and therefore limiting the amount of smoke that reaches the stratosphere in the first place, to food production under dimmed skies with the assumption that the very worst-case analysis results of the nuclear winter models prove accurate and no other mitigation strategies are fielded.
Fire control
In a report from 1967, techniques included various methods of applying liquid nitrogen, dry ice, and water to nuclear-caused fires. The report considered attempting to stop the spread of fires by creating firebreaks by blasting combustible material out of an area, possibly even with nuclear weapons, along with the use of preventative Hazard reduction burns. According to the report, one of the most promising techniques investigated was initiation of rain from seeding of mass-fire thunderheads and other clouds passing over the developing, and then steady-state, firestorm.
Producing food without sunlight
David Denkenberger and Joshua Pearce have proposed in Feeding Everyone No Matter What a variety of alternate foods which convert fossil fuels or biomass into food without sunlight to address nuclear winter. The solution using a fossil fuel energy source is natural-gas-digesting bacteria. One example of a biomass alternate food is that mushrooms can grow directly on wood without sunlight. Another example is that cellulosic biofuel production typically already creates sugar as an intermediate product.
Large-scale food stockpiling
The minimum annual global wheat storage is approximately 2 months. To feed everyone despite nuclear winter, years of food storage prior to the event has been proposed. While the suggested masses of preserved food would likely never get used as a nuclear winter is comparatively unlikely to occur, the stockpiling of food would have the positive result of ameliorating the effect of the far more frequent disruptions to regional food supplies caused by lower-level conflicts and droughts. There is however the danger that if a sudden rush to food stockpiling occurs without the buffering effect offered by Victory gardens etc., it may exacerbate current food security problems by elevating present food prices.
Climate engineering
Despite the name "nuclear winter", nuclear events are not necessary to produce the modeled climatic effect. In an effort to find a quick and cheap solution to the global warming projection of at least two degrees of surface warming as a result of the doubling in CO2 levels within the atmosphere, through solar radiation management (a form of climate engineering) the underlying nuclear winter effect has been looked at as perhaps holding potential. Besides the more common suggestion to inject sulfur compounds into the stratosphere to approximate the effects of a volcanic winter, the injection of other chemical species such as the release of a particular type of soot particle, to create minor "nuclear winter" conditions, has also been proposed by Paul Crutzen and others. According to the threshold/minor "nuclear winter" computer models, if one to five teragrams of firestorm-generated soot is injected into the low stratosphere, it is modeled, through the anti-greenhouse effect, to heat the stratosphere but cool the lower troposphere and produce 1.25 °C cooling for two to three years; after 10 years, average global temperatures would still be 0.5 °C lower than before the soot injection.
Potential climatic precedence
Similar climatic effects to "nuclear winter" followed historical supervolcano eruptions, which plumed sulfate aerosols high into the stratosphere, with this being known as a volcanic winter.
Similarly, extinction-level comet and asteroid impacts are also believed to have generated impact winters by the pulverization of massive amounts of fine rock dust. This pulverized rock can also produce "volcanic winter" effects, if sulfate-bearing rock is hit in the impact and lofted high into the air, and "nuclear winter" effects, with the heat of the heavier rock ejecta igniting regional and possibly even global forest firestorms.
This global "impact firestorms" hypothesis, initially supported by Wolbach, Melosh and veteran nuclear winter modeler Owen Toon, suggests that as a result of massive impact events, the small sand-grain-sized ejecta fragments created can meteorically re-enter the atmosphere forming a hot blanket of global debris high in the air, potentially turning the entire sky red-hot for minutes to hours, and with that, burning the complete global inventory of above-ground carbonaceous material, including rain forests. This hypothesis is suggested as a means to explain the severity of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, as the earth impact of an asteroid about 10 km wide which precipitated the extinction is not regarded as sufficiently energetic to have caused the level of extinction from the initial impact's energy release alone.
The global "impact firestorms"/firestorm winter, however, has been questioned in more recent years (2003–2013) by Claire Belcher, Tamara Goldin<ref></ATMOSPHERIC INTERACTIONS DURING GLOBAL DEPOSITION OF CHICXULUB IMPACT EJECTA by Tamara Joan Goldin, dissertation 2008</ref> and H. Jay Melosh, with this re-evaluation being dubbed the "Cretaceous-Palaeogene firestorm debate" by Belcher. The issues raised by these scientists in the debate are the perceived low quantity of soot in the sediment beside the fine-grained iridium-rich asteroid dust layer, if the quantity of re-entering ejecta was perfectly global in blanketing the atmosphere, and if so, the duration and profile of the re-entry heating, whether it was a high thermal pulse of heat or the more prolonged and therefore more incendiary "oven" heating, and finally, how much the "self-shielding effect" from the first wave of now-cooled meteors in dark flight contributed to diminishing the total heat experienced on the ground from later waves of meteors, in part due to the Cretaceous period being a high-atmospheric-oxygen era, with concentrations above that of the present day. In 2013, Owen Toon et al. were critical of the re-evaluations the hypothesis is undergoing. It will be difficult to successfully tease out the percentage contribution of the soot in this period's geological sediment record from living plants and fossil fuels present at the time, in much the same manner that the fraction of the material ignited by the meteor's heating effects will be difficult to determine, as other ignition sources that were also present at, or soon after, the impact such as mantle lava flows complicate the matter.
See also Doomsday device
Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, a similarly controversial hypothesis that an impact event & fires triggered the last ice age.
Impact winter Volcanic winter
Krakatoa, 1883 eruption, which caused approximately 1 kelvin of global cooling for 2 years due to sulfate emissions.
Year Without a Summer, 1815, created by a volcanic eruption in Tambora.
Laki, 1783 eruption of an Icelandic volcano which produced continentally localized cooling for 1–2 years.
Toba catastrophe theory, a controversial hypothesis that a volcanic winter produced by the eruption of a volcano in Toba, Indonesia, created a human population bottleneck approx 80,000 years ago.
List of states with nuclear weapons
Global dimming, global reduction in ground insolation, due to the atmospheric injection of aerosols from various sources.
Dalton minimum, 1790 to 1830, a period of prolonged solar minimum activity, resulting in Earth receiving lower insolation values.
Maunder Minimum, 1645 to 1715, a period of deeper solar minimum activity resulting in reduced insolation and coinciding with the little ice age.
Documentaries
On the 8th Day – Nuclear winter documentary (1984) filmed by the BBC and available on Internet video hosting websites; chronicles the rise of the hypothesis, with lengthy interviews of the prominent scientists who published the nascent papers on the subject.
Media
The Cold and the Dark: The World after Nuclear War: A book co-authored by Carl Sagan in 1984 which followed his co-authoring of the TTAPS study in 1983.
Threads: A 1984 docu-drama that Carl Sagan assisted in an advisory capacity.
A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race: A book authored by Richard P. Turco and Carl Sagan, published in 1990; it explains the nuclear winter hypothesis and, with that, advocates nuclear disarmament.
Nuclear Winter is a mini documentary by Retro Report that looks at nuclear winter fears in today's world.
External links
The Encyclopedia of Earth, Nuclear Winter Lead Author: Alan Robock. Last Updated: July 31, 2008
Nuclear Winter Simulation Animation
New studies of climatic consequences of regional nuclear conflict from Alan Robock, including links to new studies published in 2007.
References
The Atmosphere After a Nuclear War: Twilight at Noon
Golitsyn, G.S. and Phillips, N.A. WCRP, Possible climatic consequences of a major nuclear war, WCP-113, WMO/TD #99, 1986.
Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions
Nuclear Winter: The Human and Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War
Massive global ozone loss predicted following regional nuclear conflict http://acd.ucar.edu/~mmills/pdf/2008MillsPNAS_MassiveOzoneLoss.pdf
Multi-decadal global cooling and unprecedented ozone loss following a regional nuclear conflict http://acd.ucar.edu/~mmills/pubs/2014_EarthsFuture_Mills_et_al.pdf
Man, nature and the future of civilization: "nuclear winter" and the problem of a "permissible threshold"
Guide to Nuclear Winter Study Papers, 1972–1993. Lawrence Livermore Laboratory
Climatic consequences of regional nuclear conflicts http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/acp-7-2003-2007.pdf
Nuclear winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals: Still catastrophic consequences http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockNW2006JD008235.pdf
Atmospheric effects and societal consequences of regional scale nuclear conflicts and acts of individual nuclear terrorism http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/acp-7-1973-2007.pdf
Consequences of regional-scale nuclear conflicts http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/SciencePolicyForumNW.pdf
Environmental consequences of nuclear war http://ptonline.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_61/iss_12/37_1.shtml
Climate and Smoke: An Appraisal of Nuclear Winter
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instead. j0nnyb0y05 IBelieveInBelivin Registered: 09/01/07 Posts: 2,076
Loc: Going Going, Bac
k Back to
Last seen: 9 years, 9 months
something you should kow about 2012
#8887459
- 09/06/08 04:19 PM (15 years, 7 months
ago ) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
so this is a video about 2012, its from the history channel so you know its legit.
i thought it was really interesting, and after seeing this i believe we are all going to die.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1 83_1220721376 -------------------- ..... H ealing O f P eople E verywhere..... Extras: Top b2x Tawhid Registered: 05/04/08 Posts: 168 Loc: New Mexico
Last seen: 2 years, 5 months
Re: something you should kow about 2012
[Re: j0nnyb0y05 ] #8887476
- 09/06/08 04:26 PM (15 years, 7 months
ago ) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
Nearly every single decade has had its fill of "THIS is the REAL end of the world. I know last time we got it wrong, but THIS time, it's the real deal, we are all FUCKED." The idea of the end of the world is more than likely older than civilization itself.
At the end of the day, you just have to remind yourself that even IF there were going to be an actual end of the world, that there is jack squat you can do about it. If its going to happen, its going to happen regardless of what you think about it. So in the end, you worrying about it is nonsensical. Besides, there isn't going to be an end of the world. Just go to work on Monday, keep living your life, and if you're lucky you might just live to 100 and remember the day when you saw some dumb show on the History channel.
-------------------- Power Overwhelming
Edited by b2x (09/06/08 04:29 PM)
Extras: Top Nihlus ζ Registered: 07/21/08 Posts: 659 Loc: PNW
Last seen: 10 years, 10 months
Re: something you should kow about 2012
[Re: j0nnyb0y05 ] #8887480
- 09/06/08 04:28 PM (15 years, 7 months
ago ) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply Quote: j0nnyb0y05 said:
so this is a video about 2012, its from the history channel so you know its legit.
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Extras: Top adnix Stranger Registered: 06/30/08 Posts: 44
Last seen: 9 years, 1 month
Re: something you should kow about 2012
[Re: Nihlus ] #8887502
- 09/06/08 04:34 PM (15 years, 7 months
ago ) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
Please send me all your drugs and worldly possessions as you won't need them anymore.
Extras: Top BoneMan Shrimpin ain't e asy Registered: 02/09/05 Posts: 2,032
Loc: new new england
Last seen: 12 years, 5 months
Re: something you should kow about 2012
[Re: j0nnyb0y05 ] #8887542
- 09/06/08 04:46 PM (15 years, 7 months
ago ) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply Quote: j0nnyb0y05 said:
its from the history channel so you know its legit.
The history channel broadcasts bad information all the time. Especially on the subjects of the paranormal, UFOs, ancient civilizations and prophecies. They often do half assed research and throw a cheap show together to get viewers who don't know any better and won't bother to check if any of their information is correct.
Don't go around telling people stuff that you think must be legit because it came from the history channel. You'll make an ass of yourself if someone actually knows better.
This is a letter from Physicist Stanton Friedman to the history channel, basically yelling at them about their crappy info.
http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/s fhschnl.html Extras: Top freeDOOM Stranger then yo u Registered: 07/28/08 Posts: 1,536
Loc: New York, USA
Last seen: 2 years, 3 months
Re: something you should kow about 2012
[Re: adnix ] #8887590
- 09/06/08 04:58 PM (15 years, 7 months
ago ) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply Quote: adnix said:
Please send me all your drugs and worldly possessions as you won't need them anymore.
-------------------- Extras: Top jackgreen JG Registered: 05/08/03 Posts: 735
Last seen: 7 years, 8 months
Re: something you should kow about 2012
[Re: freeDOOM ] #8887625
- 09/06/08 05:04 PM (15 years, 7 months
ago ) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
Going to work on Monday is what I consider the end of the world every week.
Extras: Top 513orangejuice ... Registered: 07/19/08 Posts: 397
Re: something you should kow about 2012
[Re: Nihlus ] #8887630
- 09/06/08 05:05 PM (15 years, 7 months
ago ) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
cool vid. never heard of internet oracles before! lol
Quote:
At the end of the day, you just have to remind yourself that even IF there were going to be an actual end of the world, that there is jack squat you can do about it. If its going to happen, its going to happen regardless of what you think about it. So in the end, you worrying about it is nonsensical. Besides, there isn't going to be an end of the world. Just go to work on Monday, keep living your life, and if you're lucky you might just live to 100 and remember the day when you saw some dumb show on the History channel.
AY! this be bad thinkin bro, fo sure. (and that be bad grammer, so we're even
) but i think we should get prepared. nothing lasts forever, even walmart. Someday we're not gonna have a tube ta be fed threw anymore, and some people might just be fucked. Start gettin close ta nature, thats the only hope for anyone in the future. We already have everything and more in nature. Wanting anything else is fukking up balance, and when balance gets fucked up, then bad shit gos down. Thats true in anything. Happyness in the natural state when living the way we were made to live. Think about, even all you "hippie haters" out there, when theres no more economy ta depend on, whos hand you gonna eat outta? We're made ta smoke pot. We're made ta eat shrooms. We're made ta be happy. BUT WE'RE NOT made ta incinerate huge chunks of life for greed and power, enslave ourselves mentally and physically, kill or mutate anything, exc exc exc... this is a disrespect to the maker of this life. Remember who your family is. How would you feel if the sky turned its back on you, and the lakes and oceans packed up and left? What if the air we breath got sick of being polluted and took off? What about every little single thing we eat and drink? DID these corperations bring these things into being!?! DID they have any part in any of there creation!?!... NO! they were given to him. So how does any man have the right to say "this is mine, and i own it" Will he take it when he leaves his body at death?
Oh, wait, my bad, i forgot, the whole western hemispheres reality consists of "born, school, fuck, job, die"
My bad. I forgot. lol What im tryin ta say summed up can be expressed in a quote from a resent prophet:
"COME TO REALITY" - Robert Nesta Marley
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America is a rapist.
Edited by 513orangejuice (09/06/08 05:09 PM)
Extras: Top Doctortrip
The Doctor of Fu
n Registered: 08/28/08 Posts: 84
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Re: something you should kow about 2012
[Re: 513orangejuice ] #8887688
- 09/06/08 05:24 PM (15 years, 7 months
ago ) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
I recently quit my job and headed to mississippi to hunt down hogzilla after watching their show on the history channel. Thank you history channel, I have lost my home, my wife and dignity since I took your show as credible and misplaced my responsibilities to find this monster of the swamps.
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Making your journey a little more fun~
http://doctortrip.com Extras: Top deCypher Registered: 02/10/08 Posts: 56,232
Re: something you should kow about 2012
[Re: Doctortrip ] #8887695
- 09/06/08 05:25 PM (15 years, 7 months
ago ) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply Quote: Doctortrip said:
I recently quit my job and headed to mississippi to hunt down hogzilla after watching their show on the history channel. Thank you history channel, I have lost my home, my wife and dignity since I took your show as credible and misplaced my responsibilities to find this monster of the swamps.
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We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Extras: Top combs Stranger Registered: 06/10/07 Posts: 219
Last seen: 7 years, 10 months
Re: something you should kow about 2012
[Re: deCypher ] #8887707
- 09/06/08 05:29 PM (15 years, 7 months
ago ) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
what orange juice said I agree with! Amen brother, get close to Nature! learn to live the way people did on this very land and all lands before the Takers took over.
A Leaver am I.
And dude dont believe the History Channel, shit.
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All I wanna do is shake jars with you, stay up late at night and make spawn.
Extras: Top PilzeEssen Registered: 12/24/07 Posts: 7,312 Loc: USA
Last seen: 13 years, 20 days
Re: something you should kow about 2012
[Re: j0nnyb0y05 ] #8887807
- 09/06/08 05:55 PM (15 years, 7 months
ago ) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply Quote: j0nnyb0y05 said:
and after seeing this i believe we are all going to die.
haha it took you a video from the history channel to realize we're all going to die?
"98% of people die at some point in their lives" - ricky bobby
--------------------
"The soul has greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist, it is by the ideal that we live."
If you want to get a hold of me, my email address is in my profile. Just click on my screen name. I got banned from using private messages cause I didn't follow the rules...
Extras: Top Entropymancer Registered: 07/16/05 Posts: 10,207
Re: something you should kow about 2012
[Re: j0nnyb0y05 ] #8887828
- 09/06/08 06:00 PM (15 years, 7 months
ago ) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
This thread has earned a smilingpuppy
-------------------- Bufotenine Yopo/Cebil Info |
Guide to Hunting/Using Fly Agarics
Good Drug Books PCPiHKAL | Rhodium Extras: Top Nature Boy Stranger than most Registered: 07/09/07 Posts: 8,246 Loc: Samsara
Last seen: 1 month, 15 days
Re: something you should kow about 2012
[Re: j0nnyb0y05 ] #8887866
- 09/06/08 06:10 PM (15 years, 7 months
ago ) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
Man, the gullability of people never ceases to amaze me. You saw it on TELEVISION, and believe it????
The History Channel is no more credible a source of information than any other media fantasy-land. Did it ever occur to you that "the end of the world" theme is simply a metaphor for a change in perspective, and not to be taken literally as "the whole planet and all of humanity is doomed???"
Absent an asteroid of epic proportions (which we would be aware of by now) there is no force (not even all-out nuclear) that would end the world for all creatures.
I suspect you are going to live...
N.B. --------------------
All submitted posts under this user name are works of pure fiction or outright lies. Any information, statement, or assertion contained therein should be considered pure unadulterated bullshit. Note well: Sorry, but I do not answer PM's unless you are a long-time trusted friend. If you have a question, ask it in the appropriate thread.
Extras: Top 513orangejuice ... Registered: 07/19/08 Posts: 397
Re: something you should kow about 2012
[Re: Nature Boy ] #8887942
- 09/06/08 06:29 PM (15 years, 7 months
ago ) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply Quote:
there is no force (not even all-out nuclear) that would end the world for all creatures.
this says your right:
Nuclear winter is a theoretical concept which has been put forward by some members of the scientific community. It originated in 1982 with John Birks and Paul Crutzen. Put briefly, the detonation of large numbers of nuclear weapons could trigger a dramatic change in the global climate, causing extreme cold and potentially resulting in serious trouble for the living organisms which call Earth home. Numerous studies on the possibility of nuclear winter have been conducted, and it is difficult to prove that it would happen in the event of a nuclear war, but it is one of the many arguments used against nuclear attacks on other nations.
According to the theories, nuclear winter would be caused by a huge cloud of dust, smoke, and particulate matter resulting from large-scale detonations over cities around the world. As the cities and surrounding areas burned, they could inject huge amounts of material into the atmosphere, slowly blocking sunlight. Because sunlight would not be able to reach Earth, global temperatures would drop dramatically, and our ability to produce food would be greatly reduced.
Scientists have also suggested that a large-scale detonation of nuclear weapons could damage the ozone layer. Because harmful UV radiation can penetrate layers of particulate matter, people would still be at risk of UV exposure despite the fact that it would be dark and cold. People would be at risk from fallout. This could combine with low food production to threaten many organisms on Earth, from humans to birds.
Most of the studies on nuclear winter point out that a massive number of nuclear weapons would need to be detonated to trigger climate change on this scale; something along the lines of half of the known nuclear devices on Earth. It has also been suggested that the detonations would need to be fairly close together, creating a steady stream of material which would work its way up into the atmosphere. Nuclear winter is probably also more likely to impact the Northern Hemisphere, given that this is where the bulk of potential nuclear targets are located.
Critics of the nuclear winter theory have suggested that while we might see some climate change, it wouldn't be as dramatic as the nuclear winter theory proposes. These critics suggest that the particulate matter would be scrubbed from the atmosphere by rain and wind. However, proponents of the theory have pointed out that massive volcanic eruptions have historically caused climate change by shooting streams of smoke and ash into the atmosphere, and the climactic effects of the oil fires in Kuwait during the First Gulf War also lend credence to the theory.
Source: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is- nuclear-winter.htm ...,also this:
[From The Wall Street Journal, Wed., November 5 1986]
The Melting of 'Nuclear Winter'
By Russell Seitz
"Apocalyptic predictions require, to be taken seriously,
higher standards of evidence than do assertions on other
matters where the stakes are not as great."
---Carl Sagan, Foreign Affairs,
Winter 1983 -84
The end of the world isn't what it used to be. "Nuclear Winter," the
theory launched three years ago this week that predicted a nuclear exchange
as small as 100 megatons ("a pure tactical war, in Europe, say" in Carl
Sagan's phrase), in addition to its lethal primary effects, would fill the
sky with smoke and dust, ushering in life-extinguishing sub-zero darkness,
has been laid to rest in the semantic potter's field alongside the "Energy
Crisis" and the "Population Bomb." Cause of death: notorious lack of
scientific integrity.
The Nuclear Winter conjecture has unraveled under scrutiny. Yet not
so long ago, policy analysts took it so seriously that there is reason to
examine how the powerful synergy of environmental concern and the politics
of disarmament drove some scientists to forge an unholy alliance with
Madison Avenue. Mere software has been advertised as hard scientific fact.
How did this polarization arise?
In 1982, a question arose within the inner circle of disarmament
activists: Could the moral force of Jonathan Schell's eloquent call to lay
down arms, "The Fate of the Earth," be transformed into a scientific
imperative? Peace-movement strategists wanted something new to dramatize
nuclear war's horrors. As Ralph K. White put it in his book "The Fearful
Warriors": "Horror is needed. The peace movement cannot do without it."
What they got was surreal -- a secular apocalypse.
A 1982 special issue of the Swedish environmental science journal
Ambio considered the environmental consequences of a nuclear war. This
special issue did little to evoke a mass response of the sort needed to
change the course of strategic doctrine. But one article contained the
seed of what would become Nuclear Winter.
Mr. Sagan seized upon an article by Messrs. Paul Crutzen and Steven
Birks that raised the question of a "Twilight at Noon" if the fires ignited
by nuclear holocaust were to convert much of the fuel in both woodlands and
cities into enough soot to enshroud the globe. In the hands of others
their concerns would be transformed into an exhortation.
The chilling climatic impact of this soot can be modeled with existing
software. The paper that resulted came to be known as TTAPS, after the
initials of its authors beginning with Richard Turco and ending with Carl
Sagan.
Audubon Society president Russell Peterson, whose wife was editor of
Ambio, sent the issue to Robert Scrivner of the Rockefeller Family Fund.
Mr. Scrivner convened an ad hoc consortium of foundations and scientific
groups with a bent for disarmament. Cornell astrophysicist and media
personality Carl Sagan assembled a scientific advisory board that drew
heavily from such organizations as the Union of Concerned Scientists,
Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Federation of American Scientists
and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Two-dozen foundations and more
than 100 scientists were recruited.
A BONE-DRY BILLIARD BALL
Nuclear Winter never existed outside of a computer, except as a
painting commissioned by a PR firm. Instead of an earth with continents
and oceans, the TTAPS model postulated a featureless, bone-dry billiard
ball. Instead of nights and days, it postulated 24-hour sunlight at one-
third strength. Instead of realistic smoke emissions, a 10-mile-thick soot
cloud magically materialized, creating an alien sky as black as the ink you
are reading. The model dealt with such complications as geography, winds,
sunrise, sunset and patchy clouds in a stunningly elegant manner -- they
were ignored. When later computer models incorporated these elements, the
flat black sky of TTAPS fell apart into a pale and broken shadow that
traveled less far and dissipated more quickly.
The TTAPS model entailed a long series of conjectures: if this much
smoke goes up, if it is this dense, if it moves like this, and so on. The
improbability of a string of 40 such coin tosses coming up heads approaches
that of a pat royal flush. Yet it was represented as a "sophisticated one-
dimensional model" -- a usage that is oxymoronic, unless applied to Twiggy.
To the limitations of the software were added those of the data. It
was an unknown and very complex topic, hard data was scant, so guesstimates
prevailed. Not only were these educated guesses rampant throughout the
process, but it was deemed prudent, given the gravity of the subject, to
lean toward the worst-case end of the spectrum for dozens of the numbers
involved. Political considerations subliminally skewed the model away from
natural history, while seeming to make the expression "nuclear freeze" a
part of it.
"The question of peer review is essential. That is why we have
delayed so long in the publication of these dire results," said Carl Sagan
in late 1983. But instead of going through the ordinary peer-review
process, the TTAPS study had been conveyed by Mr. Sagan and his colleagues
to a chosen few at a closed meeting in April 1983. Despite Mr. Sagan's
claim of responsible delay, before this peculiar review process had even
begun, an $80,000 retainer was paid to Porter-Novelli Associates, a
Washington, D.C., public-relations firm. More money was spent in the 1984
fiscal year on video and advertising than on doing the science.
The meeting did not go smoothly; most participants I interviewed did
not describe the reception accorded the Nuclear Winter theory as cordial or
consensual. The proceedings were tape recorded, but Mr. Sagan has
repeatedly refused to release the meeting's transcript. (The organizers
have said it was closed to the press to avoid sensationalism and premature
disclosure.) According to Dr. Kosta Tsipis of MIT, even a Soviet scientist
at the meeting said, "You guys are fools. You can't use mathematical
models like these to model perturbed states of the atmosphere. You're
playing with toys."
Having premiered on Oct. 30, 1983, as an article by Mr. Sagan in the
Sunday supplement Parade, the TTAPS results finally appeared in Science
magazine (Dec. 23, 1983). This is the very apex of scholarly publication,
customarily reserved for a review article expounding a mature addition to
an existing scientific disipline -- one that has withstood the testing of
its data and hypotheses by reproducible experiments recorded in the peer-
reviewed literature. Yet what became of the many complex and uncertain
variables necessary to operate the Nuclear Winter model? They were not set
forth in the text -- 136 pages of data were instead reduced to a reference
that said, simply, "In preparation." The critical details were missing.
They have languished in unpublished obscurity ever since.
The readers of Science were still bewildered when, just one week
later, another article by Mr. Sagan -- "Nuclear War and Climatic
Catastrophe" -- appeared in Foreign Affairs. Mr. Sagan argued that,
because of the TTAPS results, "What is urgently required is a coherent,
mutually agreed upon, long-term policy for dramatic reductions in nuclear
armaments..."
In hastening to maximize the impact, Mr. Sagan made mistakes. While
he cited the following passage as coming from a companion piece in Science
that he had co-authored, it did not actually appear in the published
version of that article: "IN ALMOST ANY REALISTIC CASE involving nuclear
exchanges between the superpowers, global environmental changes sufficient
to cause an extinction event equal to or more severe than that of the close
of the Cretaceous when the dinosaurs and many other species died out are
likely. (Emphasis added)." The ominous rhetoric italicized in this
passage puts even the 100 megaton scenario of TTAPS on a par with the 100
million megaton blast of an asteroid striking the Earth. This astronomical
mega-hype failed to pass peer review and never appeared in Science. Yet,
having appeared in Foreign Affairs, it has been repeatedly cited in the
literature of strategic doctrine as evidence.
Rather than "higher standards of evidence," Mr. Sagan merely provided
testimonials. He had sent return-mail questionnaires to the nearly 100
participants at the April meeting, and edited the replies down to his
favorite two-dozen quotations. What became of the hard copy of the less
enthusiastic reports remains a mystery, but it is evident from subsequent
comments by their authors that TTAPS received less than the unanimous
endorsement of "a large number of scientists." Prof. Victor Weisskopf of
MIT, sized up the matter in early 1984: "Ah! Nuclear Winter! The science
is terrible, but, perhaps the psychology is good."
Many scientists were reluctant to speak out, perhaps for fear of being
denounced as reactionaries or closet Strangeloves. For example, physicist
Freeman Dyson of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton was
privately critical in early 1984. As he put it, "It's (TTAPS) an
absolutely atrocious piece of science, but I quite despair of setting the
public record straight....Who wants to be accused of being in favor of
nuclear war?"
Most of the intellectual tools necessary to demolish TTAPS's bleak
vision were already around then, but not the will to use them. From
respected scientists one heard this: "You know, I really don't think these
guys know what they're talking about" (Nobel laureate physicist Richard
Feynman); "They stacked the deck" (Prof. Michael McElroy, Harvard); and,
after a journalist's caution against four-letter words, "'Humbug' is six
[letters]" (Prof. Jonathan Katz, Washington University).
In 1985, a series of unheralded and completely unpublicized studies
started to appear in learned journals -- studies that, piece by piece,
started to fill in the blanks in the climate-modeling process that had
previously ben patched over with "educated" guesses.
The result was straightforward: As the science progressed and more
authentic sophistication was achieved in newer and more elegant models, the
postulated effects headed downhill. By 1986, these worst-case effects had
melted down from a year of arctic darkness to warmer temperatures than the
cool months in Palm Beach! A new paradigm of broken clouds and cool spots
had emerged. The once global hard frost had retreated back to the northern
tundra. Mr. Sagan's elaborate conjecture had fallen prey to Murphy's
lesser known Second Law: If everything MUST go wrong, don't bet on it.
By June 1986 it was over: In the Summer 1986 Foreign Affairs,
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientists Starley Thompson
and Stephen Schneider declared, "...on scientific grounds the global
apocalyptic conclusions of the initial nuclear winter hypothesis can now be
relegated to a vanishingly low level of probability."
Yet the activist wing of the international scientific estabishment had
already announced the results of the first generations of interdisciplinary
ecological and climatological studies based on Nuclear Winter. Journalists
paid more attention to the press releases than the substance of these
already obsolescent efforts at ecological modeling, and proceeded to inform
the public that things were looking worse than ever. Bold headlines
carried casualty estimates that ran into the proverbial "billions and
billions."
This process culminated in the reception given the 1985 report of the
National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Stressing the uncertainties that
plagued the calculations then and now, it scrupulously excluded the
expression "Nuclear Winter" from its 193 pages of sober text, but the
report's press release was prefaced "Nuclear Winter...'Clear Possibility.'"
Mr. Sagan construed the reports to constitute an endorsement of the theory.
But in February 1986, NCAR's Dr. Schneider quietly informed a
gathering at the NASA-Ames Laboratory that Nuclear Winter had succumbed to
scientific progress and that, "in a severe" 6,500-megaton strategic
exchange, "The Day After" might witness July temperatures upwards of 50-
plus degrees Fahrenheit in mid-America. The depths of Nuclear Winter could
no longer easily be distinguished from the coolest days of summer.
As the truth slowly emerged, private skepticism turned often to public
outrage, and not just among the "hawks." Prof. George Rathjens of MIT,
chairman of the Council for a Livable World, offered this judgement:
Nuclear Winter is the worst example of the misrepresentation of science to
the public in my memory."
THE POLITICS OF THE MATTER
On Jan. 23, 1986, the leading British scientific journal Nature
pronounced on the political erosion ofthe objectivitiy vital to the
scientific endeavor: "Nowhere is this more evident than in the recent
literature on 'Nuclear Winter,' research which has become notorious for its
lack of scientific integrity."
But it is by no means solely within the halls of science that
responsibility lies or where redress and the prevention of a recurrence
must be sought. Policy analysts have shown themselves to be the lawful
prety of software salesmen. They seem to be chronically incapable of
distinguishing where science leaves off and the polemical abuse of global-
systems modeling begins. The results of this confusion can be serious
indeed. Doesn't anybody remember the last example of the "Garbage In,
Garbage Out" phenomenon -- the "Energy Crisis"? That crisis also began as
a curve plotted by a computer. But it ended as "The Oil Glut." Factoids,
scientific or economic, have a strange life of their own; woe to the polity
that ignores the interaction of science, myth and the popular imagination
in the age of the electronic media.
To historians of science, the Nuclear Winter episode may seem a
bizarre comedy of manners; having known sin at Hiroshima, physics was bound
to run into advertising sooner or later. But what about the politics of
this issue? Does all this matter? Mr. Sagan evidently thinks it does.
His homiletic overkill has been relentless. An animated version of his
obsolete apocalypse has been added to his updated documentary "Cosmos -- A
Special Edition." This fall, prime-time audiences will watch in horror as
the airbrushed edge of nuclear darknes overspreads planet Earth. Marshall
McLuhan was right on the mark -- with television's advent, advertising has
become more important than products.
What is being advertised is not science but a pernicious fantasy that
strikes at the very foundation of crisis management, one that attempts to
the transform the Alliance doctrine of flexible response into a dangerous
vision. For despite its scientific demise, the specter of Nuclear Winter
is haunting Europe, Soviet propagandists have seized upon Nuclear Winter in
their efforts to debilitate the political will of the Alliance. What more
destabilizing fantasy than the equation of theater deterrence with a global
Gotterdammerung could they dream of? What could be more dangerous than to
invite the Soviets that the Alliance is self-deterred -- and thus at the
mercy of those who possess so ominous an advantage in conventional forces?
The Roman historian Livy observed that "where there is less fear,
there is generally less danger." Until those who have put activism before
objectivity come to apprehend this, nuclear illusions, some spontaneous and
some carefully fostered, will continue to haunt the myth-loving animal that
is man. __________________
Mr. Seitz is a Visiting Scholar in Harvard University's Center for
International Affairs. This is based on an article in the fall issue of
The National Interest. Source: http://www.textfiles.com/surviva l/nkwrmelt.txt
.......still, i wouldnt put anything past the worlds governments. If there good at anything, its destroying everything.
And all this could always be propaganda against any "anti-nuclear peace movement" that would get in the way of men who grow fat off death.
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America is a rapist.
Extras: Top funguy_84 Muncie IN Registered: 07/02/08 Posts: 314 Loc: Muncie IN
Last seen: 10 years, 9 months
Re: something you should kow about 2012
[Re: 513orangejuice ] #8888065
- 09/06/08 07:03 PM (15 years, 7 months
ago ) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
cool topic to post with a bunch of people tripping or getting ready to trip soon. thanks
--------------------
Why can't we not be sober?
Extras: Top Aiko Aiko Registered: 05/13/05 Posts: 6,424
Loc: Lazy River Road
Last seen: 5 hours, 9 minutes
Re: something you should kow about 2012
[Re: Nature Boy ] #8888087
- 09/06/08 07:09 PM (15 years, 7 months
ago ) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
Actually, it is possible for a comet to be heading for us right now without us knowing about it. They travel a lot faster than asteroids.
--------------------
Easily test the dosage of your tabs at home!
qtests.org
Man says, "God, show me and I will believe." God says, "Believe and I will show you."
Extras: Top Aiko Aiko Registered: 05/13/05 Posts: 6,424
Loc: Lazy River Road
Last seen: 5 hours, 9 minutes
Re: something you should kow about 2012
[Re: funguy_84 ] #8888091
- 09/06/08 07:10 PM (15 years, 7 months
ago ) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
Dude, the worlds not going to end 2012...at least I hope not...;)
--------------------
Easily test the dosage of your tabs at home!
qtests.org
Man says, "God, show me and I will believe." God says, "Believe and I will show you."
Edited by Aiko Aiko (09/06/08 07:11 PM)
Extras: Top tyler_0_durden Stranger Registered: 10/28/07 Posts: 1,861
Last seen: 12 years, 5 months
Re: something you should kow about 2012
[Re: 513orangejuice ] #8888264
- 09/06/08 08:09 PM (15 years, 7 months
ago ) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply Quote: 513orangejuice said: Quote:
there is no force (not even all-out nuclear) that would end the world for all creatures.
Anything is possible. If we were somehow to get a hold of pure anti-matter of an element (like say, a pound of it), and collide it with respective matter of that same element, you could blow up the Earth a thousand times over. Actually, galaxies...
But why the hell would you care? You wouldn't even feel it, it'd be that powerful. Believe it.
And the world will end someday. We have a black hole in the center of our galaxy, just like every other galaxy out there. However, the Earth is at the outer edge of the Milky Way, and it would take light 25,000 years to reach the center.
The sun is predicted to explode in about 5 billion years.
So...the most likely scenario for the end of the world will probably be brought about by humans themselves.
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"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter." --Max Planck
Extras: Top spanky43 Just a thought Registered: 06/08/07 Posts: 305 Loc: Vermont
Last seen: 12 years, 6 months
Re: something you should kow about 2012
[Re: tyler_0_durden ] #8888300
- 09/06/08 08:22 PM (15 years, 7 months
ago ) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
2012 is a misunderstanding.
I don't know how...but something got blown way out of proportion.
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