The discussion centers on the scientific validity of the nuclear winter theory, particularly in the context of potential climatic effects following a large-scale nuclear conflict. Key references include works by Robock et al. (2007) and the historical context of volcanic eruptions like Pinatubo and Agung. Critics, including Freeman Dyson, argue that the nuclear winter theory is fraught with gaps and assumptions. Recent studies indicate that even a small-scale nuclear conflict could have catastrophic global climatic consequences, significantly cooling the planet and affecting atmospheric structures.
PREREQUISITESClimate scientists, environmental policy makers, historians of science, and anyone interested in the potential global impacts of nuclear conflict on climate and society.
and more relevant to the AGW politics of today:... I judge the nuclear winter theory to be sloppy piece of work, full of gaps and and unjustified assumptions. As a human being, I hope fervently that it is right... since I am a scientist dedicated to truth, I will criticize nuclear winter theory as harsly as I would criticize any other half-baked scientific theory.
...Few of my colleagues have had the courage to make this ... response
Do you have a reference that is not a quarter of a century old? I don't doubt that early versions were filled with holes, but I'm curious if all the recent work is also debunked or discredited.mheslep said:From Freeman Dyson's book http://books.google.com/books?id=Ca...BA&sig=VVVOiyUD15imEdTaZLw_KnSXVKQ#PPA260,M1":
I don't know how good or bad such a comparison would be, but I can't think of very much better empirical data to use (nuclear tests, for instance, are not great to use because they are much smaller, and designed specifically to avoid civilization and hence minimize the size of dust plumes that might affect climate). The differences, however, are notable, and might be enough to make any extrapolation useless. For instance, with volcanic activity far removed from urban settlements, almost all long term climatic effects are supposedly due to sulfates that get dispersed in the atmosphere. This is not the case with a nuclear event.Andre said:I don't know, but what we do know is the effect of large aerosol producing volcanoes on the weather. For instance the 'recent' Agung, El Chichon and Pinatubo volcanoes in http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/pubs/brochures/2005/clim_green/slide31.pdf, causing the year without summer in 1816, is that equivalent to a nuclear winter?
I think this may be the best theory currently, but perhaps it's not the only one. I don't know if alternate theories even come close, but I know very little about this field. But, for whatever it's worth, I too am not aware of anything new that has put it in doubt, but I was also not aware that it was essentially the cooling period following impact that was proposed as the cause of extinction.vanesch said:I thought that the extinction at the K-T boundary was due to such a "nuclear" (impact) winter scenario, or is this put in doubt ?
Thanks for the links.Gokul43201 said:Do you have a reference that is not a quarter of a century old? I don't doubt that early versions were filled with holes, but I'm curious if all the recent work is also debunked or discredited.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/04/regional-nuclea.html..."Our research supports that there would be worldwide destruction," said Michael Mills, co-author of the study and a research scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "It demonstrates that a small-scale regional conflict is capable of triggering larger ozone losses globally than the ones that were previously predicted for a full-scale nuclear war."
Combined with the climatic impact of a regional nuclear war -- which could reduce crop yields and starve hundreds of millions -- Mills' modeling shows that the entire globe would feel the repercussions of a hundred nuclear detonations, a small fraction of just the U.S. stockpile. After decades of Cold War research into the impacts that a full-blown war between the Soviet Union and the United States would have had on the globe, recent work has focused on regional nuclear wars, which are seen as more likely than all-out nuclear Armageddon. Incorporating the latest atmospheric modeling, the scientists are finding that even a small nuclear conflict would wreak havoc on the global environment (.pdf) -- cooling it twice as much as it's heated over the last century -- and on the structure of the atmosphere itself.
Mills' work, which appears online today in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, used a model from National Center for Atmospheric Research to look at the impact of throwing 5 million metric tons of black carbon, or soot, into the atmosphere. [continued]
fluidistic said:Humans already have exploded hundreds of atomic bombs and some H-bombs, of course not over cities (well, except in Japan). From this stupidity Earth is contaminated, especially the calcium...
fluidistic said:Which says that the European Community has established a maximum dose of radioactivity for milk. (Which is well known to contain calcium). I'm pretty sure this resolution is quite new compared to the beginning of the atomic bomb era.
So trust what you want, but it seems that calcium was more affected by radioactivity than "the global environment".