Eric Nielsen writes to me via Facebook:
I find it disturbing the National Geographic would suggest something like this
Well, um, yeah. This sort of thing is why I don’t subscribe to National Geographic anymore. Could there ever be a dumber headline related to global warming?
Click for article
Here’s an excerpt, your tax dollars at work:
To see what climate effects such a regional nuclear conflict might have, scientists from NASA and other institutions modeled a war involving a hundred Hiroshima-level bombs, each packing the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT—just 0.03 percent of the world’s current nuclear arsenal.
…
After ten years, average global temperatures would still be 0.9 degree F (0.5 degree C) lower than before the nuclear war, the models predict.
Years Without Summer
For a time Earth would likely be a colder, hungrier planet.
“Our results suggest that agriculture could be severely impacted, especially in areas that are susceptible to late-spring and early-fall frosts,” said Oman, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The full article is here.
While basic research might be useful, the whole nuclear winter scenario proposed by Carl Sagan has long been accepted, so I really don’t see the point of doing another study on the effects of nuclear war, especially in the context of global warming. It’s rather obvious science.
I wonder how much taxpayer money was wasted on this?
For those of you unfamiliar with my headline spoof:
One of the most famous quotes of the Vietnam War was a statement attributed to an unnamed U.S. officer by AP correspondent Peter Arnett. Writing about the provincial capital, Bến Tre, on February 7, 1968, Arnett said: “‘It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,’ a United States major said today.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%E1%BA%BFn_Tre
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Kind of geo-engineering, don’t worry.
I thought Saddam burning the wells in the oil fields was supposed to have already done this?
dang, they missed another prediction
Perhaps a few nuclear power plants would be a more satisfying solution.
This has become symptomatic of the Warmists. Their blind panic leads them to ever escalating “solutions”. They believe their increased hysteria will convince the growing number of people who cannot see things as they do. They do not realize they look like fools. A very good friend of mine, a science writer and a Warmist for 12 years is now withdrawing from Warmonology. Because of nonsense like this.
“Our results suggest that agriculture could be severely impacted, especially in areas that are susceptible to late-spring and early-fall frosts,”
…so colder is bad?
[sarcasm]
Go cooling the planet ! Don’t forget to close the door and the last one shut’s down the light !
[/sarcasm]
“For a time Earth would likely be a colder, hungrier planet.”
Not unlike today (see UAH, see North African unrest, see FAO’s food prize index).
I find this sort of thing a little bit more than just disturbing.
It’s like when some Austrian madman decided to kill millions of ethnic minorities to save the master race’s god given green country.
I also dropped National Geographic due to their biased slant on warming. I also don’t pick up Canadian Geographic, Popular Mechanics/Science like I used to.
let me get this straight – a 0.5C DROP in temperature would help cause catastrophic crop failure? and yet a 0.7C (roughly) supposed rise in global temps is supposed to a catastrophic in terms of AGW?
I need to visit Confused.com………
Very good! Just let them go on with it.
Not intentionally being insensitive, but did Nagasaki and Hiroshima do anything to the global climate? What about all the above ground test shots? Is the next claim going to be related to the global cooling craze of the 70’s? Is there causation or correlation between natural variability and idiocy?
This is calculated subliminal messaging. Essentially what they are telling us is: “The longer we wait, the more drastic our **action** will have to be.”
So sit down, shut up, and hand over the carbon credits, or else.
Yes, there is some sarcasm there but sometimes I wonder what these nut cases are thinking.
“Finally National Geographic injects some sense in this debate. I hope this position will be endorsed by most scientific organizations soon and that the sole minor question remaining will only be where the nuclear conflict will take place. I now sleep better at night knowing we do have a solution for global warming! “sarc off.
“The researchers predicted the resulting fires would kick up roughly five million metric tons of black carbon into the upper part of the troposphere, the lowest layer of the Earth’s atmosphere.
In NASA climate models, this carbon then absorbed solar heat and, like a hot-air balloon, quickly lofted even higher, where the soot would take much longer to clear from the sky”
Europe’s answer to Kyoto was to switch to diesel cars (50%).
How much carbon soot do they give off?
How much of the claimed warming in the northern hemisphere was CAUSED BY KYOTO???
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/29/oh-soot/
But seriously, most climate models come from those simulation during the period of aerial nuclear tests. That also explains why in France for instance, the labs involved in IPCC and thus flowing with money for climate alarmism are depending from the French Atomic Energy Commission or CEA. They would never leave the field to climatologists… LOL
I support this idea 100%. They only tested 100 Hiroshima sized devices. I recommend 20 for the middle east, 40 for China, 10 for Africa, 5 for South America, 19 for France, and 1 for washington dc. The last 5 will be fired at a random direction and will land where they land….like a unlucky lottery.
War is the answer. Instead of reducing the size of your carbon footprint, eliminate millions of feet completely. Cool the world, too. I see the logic, kinda….
Talk about curing a cold with a flamethrower.
“Our results suggest that agriculture could be severely impacted”
So cooling is also bad and will impact crops????
I wonder if they ran a model to determine what would happen if the bombs were neutron bombs (those nasty ones that primarily kill people and leave the infrastructure). From a social justice point of view I wonder which one is worse: since we are in a PNS world now I guess this is a fair question- well maybe not……….
I also stopped my subscription to National Geographic a few years back.
There are libruls I know who have actually wished for just such things. Too many Indians and Pakistanis, you see, messing the world up for their post-Christian libtard kidz. The worrywart culture taken to its logical conclusion will always decide that death is preferable to dirty, untidy life.
Geez. My buddy was modeling nuclear winter for Sandia Natl Labs 25 years ago.
Now I get it! We don’t really need to worry about nuclear war itself. It is the dreaded Climate Disruption in the aftermath that is the problem.
But wait… if things ‘blow up real good,’ hopefully there will be enough fallout to produce mutants which can survive the catastrophic rise in sea levels and hellish temperature changes. Maybe polar bears will grow fins?
I find it disturbing the National Geographic would suggest something like this.
NG didn’t suggest anything like this. It describes a “what if” computer model experiment as in “What if India and Pakistan had a nuclear war?”
To see what climate effects such a regional nuclear conflict might have, scientists from NASA and other institutions modeled a war …
REPLY: He’s referring to the headline, which is written by NG – Anthony