Nuclear war simulation forgets the Medieval Climate Optimum
Story submitted by P. Wayne Townsend
Yesterday’s Daily Mail carried an article about a simulation of the climate consequences of nuclear war. The paper Multidecadal global cooling and unprecedented ozone loss following a regional nuclear conflict is not paywalled gives the usual horror stories (nuclear winter, crop failures, etc.).
What caught my eye was this idea intellectual relic found in both the Daily Mail article and here quoted from the abstract of itself.
Our calculations show 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
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1000 years would be 1014, during the Medieval Climate optimum. Digging deeper we find that, indeed, Michael Mann’s discredited hockey stick is the zombie reference for this claim.
The severe increases in UV radiation following a regional nuclear war would occur in conjunction with the coldest average surface temperatures in the last 1000 years [Mann et al., 1999].
Of course, this is a model of climate after a nuclear wars so, perhaps these may be disciples or wannabes of the distinguished Mr. Mann. With a reference to Mann this long after refutation, will we ever be able to get rid of this zombie science, or are we doomed to living in the land of the walking dead papers?
The paper is available here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013EF000205/abstract
Abstract
We present the first study of the global impacts of a regional nuclear war with an Earth system model including atmospheric chemistry, ocean dynamics, and interactive sea ice and land components. A limited, regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan in which each side detonates 50 15 kt weapons could produce about 5 Tg of black carbon (BC). This would self-loft to the stratosphere, where it would spread globally, producing a sudden drop in surface temperatures and intense heating of the stratosphere. Using the Community Earth System Model with the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model, we calculate an e-folding time of 8.7 years for stratospheric BC compared to 4–6.5 years for previous studies. Our calculations show 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 midlatitudes, 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. Knowledge of the impacts of 100 small nuclear weapons should motivate the elimination of more than 17,000 nuclear weapons that exist today.
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A nuclear winter would have to be pretty impressive to beat the “year without a summer” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer
Perhaps you might have to acknowledge that Mann is ‘refuted’ only in your particular corner of the rarely-visited edges of the internet, and not in real life or the real world? In reality, whether you like it or not, he is a highly cited researcher -http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/about/cv.php
Maybe everyone should accept reality and move on to the next obsession from the distant past…
“Mann’s Hockey Stick Goes Zombie”?
Well just how do you tell the difference between a zombie and someone who short centrers data prior to principal component analysis?
They are both staggering around seeking “brains…brains…”
So are the authors of this sadly Sageneque study. Volcanoes put the lie to the nuclear winter tripe.
@Konrad
But one is looking for one to use, the other to eat.
J Murphy says:
July 22, 2014 at 3:21 am
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“Maybe everyone should accept reality…”
Are you prepared to accept that adding radiative gases to the atmosphere will not reduce the atmosphere’s radiative cooling ability?
Just how long can you deny reality?
What seems more probable in the near future is an eruption of the icelandic vulcan Katla.
That will lower the global temperatures about 2C and then we’ll long for some warming again.
“With a reference to Mann this long after refutation, will we ever be able to get rid of this zombie science, or are we doomed to living in the land of the walking dead papers?”
But don’t you see, Mann’s schtick has been resurrected as a “super hockey stick” in 2013 so all that ancient history was just technicalities in early work as climate “science” moved on to today‘s newfangled right-in-your-face fraud instead of yesterday’s statistical black box magic:
http://s6.postimg.org/jb6qe15rl/Marcott_2013_Eye_Candy.jpg
Science has nothing to do with the odd practice of climatology. It’s not so much fraud as much as a social science agenda masquerading as physical science. It’s not even in the same ball park as hard emperical science. Enter psychologist Lewandowsky featured on a climate model paper this week. It’s no different in scope or kind from the last hundred years of an upside down toilet as being the pinnacle of fine art. It’s not about climate. It’s about destroying the authority of objective facts and intuition in favor of the purely arbitrary power of state sponsored facts.
One of Mann’s walking dead zombie minions seems to have got hold of an internet connection and posted a brain dead comment here. Speaking of Walking Dead, season 5 starts in October:-)
You can simulate a nuclear explosion with enough dynamite. All dynamite must be eliminated.
J Murphy says:
July 22, 2014 at 3:21 am
Perhaps you might have to acknowledge that Mann is ‘refuted’ only in your particular corner of the rarely-visited edges of the internet..
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Sorry J; Mann was heavily dissed by his peers, or did you not read what they said about him in “Climate-gate” ?
They have spent the last decade plus slowly erasing his work, at the same time trying not to give up the ghost, at the same time admitting the know “fuck-all” about 100 year periods, even if they did their best combined work. Did you read the Wegman report? Even NAS admitted the Wegman report was essentially correct.
“1000 years would be 1014, during the Medieval Climate optimum” – correct, but the (quoted) statement was: “…in the last 1000 years”, i.e. a time interval including the LIA.
I estimate it would take 10-40% of the energy of each bomb (assuming 15kt = 63TJ) to put 0.05Tg of black carbon into the stratosphere (10 – 50km up). That seems a lot. All the mushroom clouds I’ve seen portrayed were white.
(But I’m a relative dumbass: someone smart should have a go.)
I’m going to need a lot of popcorn for this thread. Hehe.
Here is my comparison to illustrate what kind of statistical trickery was used to create the hockey stick graph. Imagine if we could take the average gain of every running back in NFL history. We take the yearly avg. starting in the modern pro football era. I will speculate that the number will be between 2 and three yards for the last hundred years or so. Then we take the avg. gain of each rookie running back’s first carry in the last 10 years. Let’s say that number comes out to be 8.7 yards. Small sample with some break away gains that skew the avg. Next we splice together the two data sets to produce a hockey stick graph. OMG, it’s worse than we thought. Running backs are taking over the NFL. HS and college coaches will start training their QBs to run as well. (Feedbacks). By 2100 there will be no more passing because the avg. run will be 80 yds. after we pass the tipping point. There were some tackles for a loss in the recent 10 year data set, but those were ignored so that only positive gains were considered. In this way we “hide the decline.”
The old saying about a bad penny comes to mind.
J Murphy says regarding Michael Mann ” In reality, whether you like it or not, he is a highly cited researcher “. and J Murphy is quite correct. God is also a highly cited source as are the various prophets not to mention dictators and despots throughout history,. The Buddha gets many mentions as does Sun Tzu. And so what? We are supposed to slavishly follow all their peachings and teachings like robots? I refer J Murphy to the comments by Professor Richard Muller of the BEST project etc ( hardly a ‘denier’ and the mildest of skeptics I think but eminently qualified to comment) regarding Michael Mann and what he thinks of the Hockey Schtick and Hiding the Decline.
And how do they “model” this nuclear war? Ground bursts? Air bursts? Looks to me to just be a whole bunch of suppositions packed into a group think grant search.
Or just sucking up to other alarmists.
J Murphy is right and it’s not fair that he, and people like him, should suffer climate catastrophe because the rest of us won’t face up to the truth.
We should divert global warming research funding to the construction of a giant spaceship, perhaps captained by Dr Mann, that can take those who realise we are doomed to a new planet, This new planet can then be populated by those who understand the importance of living in an environmentally sustainable way.
The rest of us will be stuck on Earth to suffer the hell of our own making.
@ur momisugly Doug – Can you pick out Mann in this video?
http://youtu.be/NON4hksO77I
philjourdan says:
July 22, 2014 at 4:06 am
The old saying about a bad penny comes to mind.
– – –
Ah yes, Pennywise the evil clown. Scary movie filmed in one of my old neighborhoods I used to haunt (one scene anyways). I don’t remember the old saying though.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099864/
@garymount – ““A bad penny always turns up” is a very old proverb that dates back to at least the mid-18th century and is probably much older. ” – From http://www.word-detective.com/2010/03/bad-penny/
Mann’s hokey stick is like a bad penny.
J Murphy, it doesn’t matter if people still cite Mann’s hockeystick, phlogiston or that the world is flat.
It ain’t so.
It sure ain’t proven to be so.
And It’s not justified to say it is so because you won’t make it so by doing so.
Citing it discredits the fools who do so. It doesn’t add support to the folly. Reality exists whether you wish it were so or no. Unless you are Dumbledore in disguise.
If you aren’t a wizard I hope you haven’t made the blunder of citing it yourself.
J Murphy says:
July 22, 2014 at 3:21 am
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Mann’s claims are demonstrably false but, you are correct that his work is probably well accepted in most climate circles. Although, encouraging people to follow a false path in order to fit in is a questionable line of reasoning at best.
-The Real J Murphy 😀
Above ground nuclear weapons tests in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s were many times higher (number and power) than this simulation and nothing like the consequences proposed in this study occurred.
Mann often comments on blogs using the alias ‘J Murphy’.
What’s that? This paper is worth the respect to dig that up, I assume it’s the time period or just the time for all that black carbon to settle out of the stratosphere.
Volcanic aerosols settle out over a year or two, those are tiny droplets of sulphuric acid. I suspect soot and other structures will settle out pretty well too, IIRC, that’s one of the reason Sagan’s nuclear winter hypothesis is little heard from these days. I suppose some heating at the topmost soot might be able to cause some convection and keep soot suspended a while longer, but that’s an awfully strong temperature inversion to break.
Oh Noe – not the dreaded global nuclear famine! Let’s hope it’s not as bad as the frumious Anthropogenic Catastrophic Global Nuclear Famine or the odd Weirdly Global Nuclear Famine.
I thought the Kuwait oil fires put to rest the “theory” that fires alone could loft soot to the stratosphere.
J Murphy says:
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Wow, all the talking points. Nice job.
J Murphy
“In reality, whether you like it or not, he is a highly cited researcher ”
– Can you explain how this is in anyway synonymous with being correct?