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
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
Is that the same as “abandon[ing] free market principles to save the free market system?” — RINO Pres George W Bush.
Here’s the quote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1G2Jyvpje8
And the full interview: http://tv.breitbart.com/bush-abandoned-free-market-principles-to-save-economy/
To mention this kind of solution to a non-problem actually makes it look kind of funny, until one come to think what kind of people is behind such ideas. Then it turns into a tragedy.
“Could there ever be a dumber headline related to global warming?”
Imagine, if you will, panzer pantsy Romm in a Tiger tank with the head line: Romm Leading the Charge for Presidency?
That would be much dumber . . . since crazed hippies has always ran away from their own charge. :-p
Its called eschatology, a desire for the end of the world.
A number of religions preach eschatology, including the more fundamentalist sides of Christianity and Islam. Now we have the Church of Global Warming jumping on the eschatological bandwagon too. Does AGW preach an afterlife and a second coming too?
.
It seems that National Geographic really has changed with the times.
Remember when we were kids and we’d sit and search through old issue of Nat Geo to oogle topless natives??
Now, it seems, kids will be thumbing through the pages in search of worst case war scenarios during breaks from playing World of Warcraft.
I cancelled my subscription to Nat Geo and Sci Am years ago when they got biased. I got tired of the preaching in place of simple, unbiased presentation.
So a drop in average temp of .9C results in catastrophic cooling. A temperature rise of .9C will cause catastropic warming. So we poor humans can only sustain our lifestyle in a less than 2C average temperature range without catastrophe. Clearly we’re doomed.
Nonsense on stilts.
You’ve got to be kidding?
We already tried this. Over 2000 tests above and below ground world wide from 1945 to 1996, not counting N. Korea. Some quite a lot larger than what NG proposes. Idiots. :<
National Geographic has become barking mad.
I’ve stopped reading their garbage and I’ve stopped watching their TV programs.
Finally putting those computer games, err “models”, to good use. ;->
As I learned from reading an “unauthorized” biography of Dr. Sagan, he oftimes penned his most brilliant tomes after partaking a bit of wacky weed. Obviously the practice continues…
“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.”
Uh, yeah. So, the science is settled on that then? So they reached a consensus did they? I seem to remember quite a bit of controversy that never was resolved. The point was made mute by the fall of the Soviet Union.
As previous posters have alluded, there were well over 100 nuclear weapons set off during the testing of the 50’s – I think Russia hit that total all by itself.
Was the world hit by massive crop failures?
Nuclear winter was just another doomsday scare tactic. Kind of a stupid one, really, because nuclear war is bad enough to want to avoid without having to try and spice up the horror even more. “Oh, my, I was all for it before I knew it would make things cold!!!” Sheesh.
Atomic bomb test photos:
click1
click2
And there was me thinking that “comedy blowing up children” and drowning dogs was as mad as the CAGW debate could get.
I rather suspect that in the aftermath of a small regional nuclear war global warming will be the last thing on anyone’s mind.
Perhaps the warmists are just covering the bases. By re-hashing this old news, if some nut-bar detonates a nuke somewhere, they can then blame the already cooling (and then continuing) trend on that saying: “we must still act on C02 because once the effect of the nuke is gone, we’re all gonna fry!”
On the up side, it should be easy to recruit an overwhelming army of eco-warriors to go out and do battle with any bad guy who would so injure Mother Earth. Yeah-yeah… I know… /sarc.
Speed says:
February 26, 2011 at 11:36 am
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?”
The headline says “Small Nuclear War Could Reverse Global Warming for Years”
sounds like a suggestion to me
Isn’t that Nat Geo lead photo really from Bikini Atoll … NOT Mururoa?
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/atomic-weapons.htm
Always good practice to check that Nat Geo is giving us the correct information.
Just sayin 😉
@R. de Haan Thee and me.
I thought we had the “nuclear winter” problem examined long since in the 1960s. Oh, sorry CO2 makes a bit different. Did they account for all the CO2 in the atmosphere as a result of the combustion products of men, women, and children, towns and villages, not to mention cities and all the rest? If not, please do not tell them. They will want more grant money.
Do wind turbines still turn after an EMP? Or are the electronics fried.
Ha ha sounds like George C Scott in Dr Strangelove with his folder
“Top Targets in Megadeaths”
Reassuring the President ” look 20, 30 million dead – tops.”
So it seems that Big War is Green too.
Key in the Tsar Bomba video. A few of those ought to do the trick, which is a travesty.
Anybody else recall the nuclear winter hysteria of the 1980’s?
You make a fair point. You have to love warmer logic.
Then again I stopped even looking at warmer arguments once the EPA classified CO2, the (increasingly rare pre-industrialisation) base of the food chain for most life on Earth, as a pollutant. A large brain may yet turn out to be another evolutionary dead end as that particular view becomes accepted dogma.
Nuclear war, viable scheme for sequestration of CO2 from the atmosphere – more extinction events.
Actually I’ve suggested this several times beginning at least 10 years ago. (Anthropogenic global warming) + (anthropogenic nuclear winter) = (anthropogenic just right).
Not a nuclear war of course but rather a timed sequence of nuclear explosions set up to drive the maximum amount of dust into the stratosphere somewhere like the Sahara. Using the cleanest nukes we have it would probably raise worldwise cancer rate by some tiny fraction and that would be the extent of the downside aside from needing to quarantine a 50 square mile piece of already lifeless useless desert. The money saved by this versus other schemes to elminate AGW (if and when global warming actually became a problem) could instead be directed towards a cure for cancer. Then if (as likely) global warming never becomes a problem we wouldn’t have to use the nukes and we’d still have a cure for cancer anyway. A win-win situation!
Now if the earth starts into a round of global cooling as the Holocene interglacial comes to its natural end I can’t think of any way to stop the ice age. So just to be safe we ought to be pumping all the CO2 into the atmosphere as is practical in order to extend the interglacial period and if it gets too warm there’s an easy way to fix that.
Smokey says:
February 26, 2011 at 11:59 am
Atomic bomb test photos:
==================================
Smokey, the adult in me is going “oh my”
….but the kid in me is going “that is so totally cool”…………………….
The next thing we’ll see is a paper on how the above ground nuclear testing of the 50’s and 60’s clearly caused all the ‘global cooling’ that lasted until the 70’s. They’re trying to ‘disappear’ that cooling phase, just as they tried to disappear the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period. Makes the entire CAGW meme all the better.
Can’t you just hear it now?
Of course, they're already shooting themselves in the foot if they want to take this tack, because the amount of above ground tests were far far more than 100 Hiroshima sized bombs. If they really wanted to play this card, they'd've had to match up the yields used with the actual recorded temp drops. So in one fell swoop they've not only blown it for their future predictions, but also for efforts to disappear those decades of cooling.
It IS a rather intriguing thought that perhaps the testing might have played a part in the cooling those decades, however, isn't it? Oops, but then there's all the existing research papers about all the excess aerosol's we eeeevil thoughtless huuu-mons released during those decades that have ALREADY accounted for the cooling – doh! How'll they reconcile that with their new nuke premise?
On a lighter note, did I pepper in too many eeeevils, should I have gone with rotating in other pejoratives instead? 😉
When the warmists started suggesting that China’s sulphur aerosol emissions might mean temperatures would not rise so much, I thought they were just trying to cover their backs. If they now need a nuclear war to hide the decline I think that proves how desperate they have become.
wws says:
February 26, 2011 at 11:58 am
“As previous posters have alluded, there were well over 100 nuclear weapons set off during the testing of the 50′s – I think Russia hit that total all by itself.
Was the world hit by massive crop failures?”
Oh great. You just gave the climate boffins an explanation for why the tree ring data diverged from thermometer data circa 1960. Thanks a lot.
The CAGW train is running on empty. This is one of the signs.
Next research paper from this group. “Comparative study of expected global cooling from nuclear weapons use above oceans vs. above ground as shown by our most excellent global climate modeling computer algorithms” Oops, or would the 15 papers of degrees of global cooling expected based on a comparative study of above ground testing over various types of geological surfaces/strata come first?
Trouble is if Pakistan keeps heading into the Jihadist morass, we may see that reagional nuclear war.
However for a good quick climate change nothing beats a good VE-8 or 9 volcanic eruption or several smaller ones at once….
More hype or propaganda to desensitize the population to an apparent problem hoping that the people will then buy into smaller solutions that do not appear to be as bad as the initial solution.
Propaganda 101 and no matter what side of the debate you are on it is shameful that so many people in science, who should be above this sort of manipulation of information, are openly involved in it.
But then, in the past scientists got too involved in the social side of the debate, especially when it concerned their status or place in society. Then they got wrapped up in the financial aspects, you can not blame big business or governments for that, scientists took the money. Now we have too many top scientists wrapped up in politics. Add that to the status and financial issues and who can you really trust to turn out unbiased science? Science that helps us understand the world around us rather than science that divides us. We certainly can not claim to be better scientists in this way than those who went before us. So much for Newton’s, standing on the shoulders of giants.
When my student teachers ask me about the present day debates in science, I have to admit that far too many scientists seem more concerned about status, money or political positioning than they are about the science.
I haven’t verified/double checked their data, but here are charts of the above ground yields from actual worldwide above ground tests (scroll down the page to find them): http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/rert/nuclearblast.html#exposure
The ‘research’ claims that a regional nuclear exchange causing global cooling would REDUCE precipitation? How in the world do they get that when you’ve just pumped a gazillion tons of fine particulates into the atmo for cloud nuclei?
Smokey, thank you very much for providing the links. I suggest more people take a looksie at what nuclear weapons are really all about. VERY scary stuff, in my opinion. And just think, the nuclear weapons of today are MUCH more powerful. I think people in general have really lost sight of what nuclear war would be all about. Again, scary stuff.
Coincidentally, I just happen to be watching “Broken Arrow” right now .. hehehe
Wow, a lot of us have dropped NG and Canadian Geographic. I used to buy it. When my kids left home I also bought a subscription for my kids for Christmas. But I dropped it over 10 years ago as the bias was so bad. Kind of sad.
Amazing article for those of us who were taught the useless “duck and cover” routine in school. I still remember the day President Kennedy was assassinated. We all thought they were about to say that ICBM’s were coming in from Russia as they announced that we were to listen carefully and go straight home afterwards. Scared the daylights out of everyone. Then we all went home to watch the replays of the event on television. I always think of the song about Buddy Holly when I think of that day – “The day the music died”. The end of an era.
I sometimes think the green movement started about then. I recall protests over the US underground tests at Amchitka, Alaska not long after, traveling with draft dodgers and Vietnam vets.
Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” We have. We do.
“Anybody else recall the nuclear winter hysteria of the 1980′s?”
I do recall media reports where the Nuclear Winterists were claiming that if Saddam set Kuwait’s oil wells on fire it would disrupt agriculture across Asia and kill lots of people.
Of course he did and it didn’t.
The highly ‘nuclear winter’ models are one of the reasons why I never put much faith in ‘global warming’ models.
Seriously,
This question haunts me for many years.
Carl Sagan and James Hansen.
?? Somehow they had personal or professional relationships too close??
Venus, CO2, Mariner 2,
Thanks
I stopped reading NG years ago, due to their biased message, but 2 cover stories last year really drove the point home.
One read ” Global Warming causes massive drought in Australia.”
The next one, the very next week, read ” Global Warming causes excessive flooding in Australia.
I now only use the mag in my fireplace, which I am using to help heat the house, as it is -6 outside.
There was a large-scale field test of this mechanism in the spring of 1945 when something like 150 square miles of built up area was burned in Germany and Japan. Nothing particular happened.
There was an even larger test back in October 1871 when about 2000 square miles of Wisconsin forest, the town of Peshtigo and 4 square miles of Chicago burned down on the same day. Nothing happened then either.
To judge from the amount of soot in the Greenland ice there was one or more forest fires many times larger than the Peshtigo fire somewhere in Canada, Alaska or Siberia in the summer of 1854. Same thing, nothing special weatherwise.
Anthony,
You sure can tell when the scientists have been toking up with the psychedelic drugs.
Wayne Delbeke says:
February 26, 2011 at 12:46 pm
“Wow, a lot of us have dropped NG and Canadian Geographic. I used to buy it. When my kids left home I also bought a subscription for my kids for Christmas. But I dropped it over 10 years ago as the bias was so bad. Kind of sad.”
I wrote several articles for Can Geo back in the late 1980s – when they were just starting to go off on their current ‘planet saving’ mission – then got in a dust up with the editor over some blatantly false information in a particularly ridiculous ‘green advocacy’ that appeared in it, and that was that. Never looked back. It just got worse from there.
A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 (Minus North Korea’s)
http://www.geekosystem.com/every-nuclear-explosion-time-lapse/
Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project’s “Trinity” test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan’s nuclear tests in May of 1998.
And after all these test Earth is not cooling????????
Mark Miller says: “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). ”
What the lefties didn’t tell you was that the infrastructure that was left was people’s houses with the owners cowering in the basements shielded from the neutrons by the surrounding damp dirt and the people who would be killed was invading soldiers in their tanks who’s steel armor the neutrons passed through like it wasn’t even there.
Back on topic, wouldn’t it make more since to have aircraft eject some lampblack as they flew if that’s what we really wanted to do? Using nuclear devices to put carbon in the atmosphere would be like doing plastic surgery with a chain saw.
Does anyone happen to know what causes the difference between the nuclear test photos where the ‘stem’ of the mushroom cloud has those fabulous smooth geometric cones and so on, versus the far more commonly seen rough stems? Shutter speed?? Or ??
There are soooOOoooOOOoooo many reasons why I don’t subscribe to propaganda rags like the National Geographic, however, this recent reason is certainly one of ’em.
Too bad – they used to be awesome before their minds went soft…
I could cure global warming and it would only take two bombs. One for GISS and the other for Berkeley.
They must have their figures wrong. The Castle Bravo test in 1954 was, by itself, one thousand times bigger than Hiroshima. In 1961-62 there was an absolute frenzy of H-bomb testing in Russia, culminating in the “Tsar Bomba” test three or four times the size of Bravo.
Soviet atmospheric testing in 1961-62 was about 229 megatons, equivalent to about 15,000 Hiroshima bombs.
It’s possible that there was some effect on global climate in 1962. I think John Daly had an article on this some years ago.
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 . . .
No, it has not ‘long been accepted.’
The ‘TTAPS’ study was done using an atmospheric model that was of laughable resolution and quality even 20 years ago. You could run it on a Nintendo today. Sagan stuck his name on the end of the paper just for the publicity value, since he was a TV scientist. The paper was published in Parade Magazine, a slick-paper supplement stuck in Sunday newspapers, right next to the comics.
Subsequent studies showed the Nuclear Winter to be no more than a cool week in the Spring, and serious folks involved with nuclear arms were skeptical of it even back then.
Oh only a small, regional nuclear explosion — that’s alright then………..
Plonkers!
I think I will write to National Geographic…… hand written, on paper with a pen. It is surprising how hard it is to sit down and hand write a letter after using a key board for years. To do so shows commitment. I know in government, a hand written letter that doesn’t follow a form letter (typically sent out by lobby organizations, is considered to represent 1000 constituents.
I did that with an organization I was involved with. The government department received 130 hand written letters. The organization got 2 million dollars and the senior bureaucrats asked me very politely not to do it again.
So the Nat Geo thinks setting off 100 Little Boys could solve AGW. It takes talent to be so daft. Perhaps they should conduct an experiment with just one Little Boy.
I would suggest Durban, South Africa, sometime between November 28 to December 9, 2011. The 17th Conference of the Pillocks would have a fireworks display second to none and they would solve the AGW debate once and for all.
I find it irritating that they’re basing this on computer simulations when we have so many nuclear weapons sitting idle.
For some reason I am reminded of the comment attributed by the Roman historian Tacitus to the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus at the time of Agricola’s campaign in AD 83 that led to the Battle of Mons Graupius.
“they make a desert and call it peace”.
There are two planets in the solar system, Venus and Mars, which could conceivably be suitable for terra-forming experiments. Venus is too hot and Mars is too cold. I suggest that all global cooling technologies be first tested on Venus and similarly that Mars be used to demonstrate that global warming is the outcome of adding novel green house gases to a planetary atmosphere.
At the very least adopting these proposals would produce a worthwhile scientific and technological challenge for the space industry with the prize of demonstrating that humanity really can adjust the environmental conditions of a whole planet at will.
There were roughly 1000 above ground nuclear tests, 10 times the number of explosions mentioned in this “study”.
The other main factor is the amount of smoke that can be created after a atomic blast. However empiric data does not support the high estimates, as Hiroshima and Nagasaki did notcreate significantly more smoke than conventionally bombed cities, and bombed cities do not smoke as much as these models assume. The whole nuclear winter scenario is a publicity stunt about making a terrible thing sound even worse.
Even if it were a realistic mechanism, putting it into context with global warming is simply disgusting!
@ Squidly says:
February 26, 2011 at 12:45 pm
And just think, the nuclear weapons of today are MUCH more powerful.
Actually no, they are not. Smaller in size and weight, but more efficient. Yield is much lower for the majority of special weapons due to more precise targeting capability, etc. City busters (5mt and up ) are obsolete and no longer in inventory. You won’t find anything in any countries inventory greater than about 1.5mt. Ref. http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/nuclear.htm
I have always advocated that each household should have at least one tactical thermonuclear device at their disposal. Something along the lines of a 15 to 20 kilo-banana yield ground burst weapon for home defence would suffice. Maybe just one bomb per neighbourhood would be enough, but then the deterrent would likely need to be in the mega-banana range to be effective.
Seriously though, if the Notional Geopornographic is advocating thermonuclear climate change, does that mean they now support nuclear power generation? Where else would they get the fissile material for the bombs? Oh, I forgot. They could buy it from the Iranians. Silly me.
@ Rational Debate says:
February 26, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Does anyone happen to know what causes the difference between the nuclear test photos where the ‘stem’ of the mushroom cloud has those fabulous smooth geometric cones and so on, versus the far more commonly seen rough stems? Shutter speed?? Or ??
Among other things (altitude of detonation, ground reflection, etc. ), it has to do with the design of the weapon. Thermonuclear ( so-called “H” bomb )will generally have a thick stem, Hiroshima type atomic will have a thin stem.
Btw, you might be surprised at how close you can be to a nuke blast and survive.
Here is some scenes from the next greenpeace commercial.
It only needs a voice over from James Cameron.
Nuke says:
February 26, 2011 at 12:12 pm
Yes, and the Civil Defense shelters of the 60’s.
We were so relieved to see the Berlin Wall come down and the Soviet Empire collapse.
That didn’t last long, as along comes a hypothestical offshoot that now seeks to save the Planet by fire-roasting in the madness.
Worrying but at the same time it shows how desperate the AGW’s are….the climate has not developed how they predicted and they are running out of ideas.
Whatever next?
Just a little bitty Nukular war is ok.
By that thinking (modeled by computer, of course) an excuse to use WMD’s is gilded by those seized with a madness.
They never thought one second about the unintended consequences…. uninhabitable land, escalation, etc.
James Mayeau says:
February 26, 2011 at 1:56 pm
I could cure global warming and it would only take two bombs. One for GISS and the other for Berkeley.
Four bombs actually you forgot the UK met office and UEA
No pressure 😮
A rise in eschatological tendencies is usually followed by a split of the church, like “the end is nigh” of 1000 – x was followed by the schism of 1054. What should we expect from the CAGW church?
George Turner says: February 26, 2011 at 2:12 pm
I find it irritating that they’re basing this on computer simulations when we have so many nuclear weapons sitting idle.
Patience, but keep your thermometer calibrated and ready.
The way the Administration’s foreign policy initiatives are going in the Middle East, we may have a small scale experiment running before we know it.
Ah I just happened to be reading this earlier, 3.2.2:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/42064820/Global-Electrical-Atmospheric
Nothing new with editorial policy there.
Despite Mutations, Chernobyl Wildlife Is Thriving
Kate Ravilious
for National Geographic News
April 26, 2006
“One of the great ironies of this particular tragedy is that many animals are doing considerably better than when the humans were there” [Tim Mousseau from the University of South Carolina (USC) in Columbia says]
We need lots of badly designed nuclear plants with no built in safety whatsoever. This is a cost effective way to get rid of nasty humans.
From the article:
“Today, with the United States the only standing superpower, nuclear winter is little more than a nightmare. But nuclear war remains a very real threat—for instance, between developing-world nuclear powers, such as India and Pakistan.”
OK, then, that takes care of the India-as-a-major-GHG-emitter problem!!
Well done, NASA!! Who needs Kyoto?
Congress, you may cut the NASA budget anytime you wish.
Too many people, too many nuclear bombs, too much CO2 —
Its a good thing we have Nat. Geo. to suggest a solution!!
@george Turner Do you really want these wackos to go on a fission expedition?
I’m getting so tired of this stuff. We get bogged down with arguing about temps and stuff, where is the proof that warming is bad?
The “duck and cover” safety precaution is another casualty of the Leftist black propaganda campaign. Today, most people have been indoctrinated by Leftist propaganda in the media to associate “duck and cover” solely with a futile attempt to avoid injury in the event of a nuclear attack. As consequence of this Leftist propaganda, we have recent generations of people who think it is just fine to stand around and crane their necks around to see what is going on around them like a herd of deer caught in the headlights while a catastrophe is taking place. As a consequence of such bravado and ignorance, there are many people who are and will be totally unnecessary casualties in catastrophes which have nothing whatsoever to do with a nuclear attack.
The “duck and cover”safety precaution was being taught in industry safety training and military training long before nuclear weapons were invented. The purpose of the “duck and cover” safety precaution was to protect people from flash burns, shrapnel, blast debris, and other high velocity debris during natural gas explosions, other detonations of explosives during structural fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornadoes. Standing in front of a glass window when it is shattered by a pressure wave or standing above a barrier where an explosion can inflict a deadly flash burn is a great way of being killed or very painfully injured, and it can be easily prevented by a reflexive “duck and cover” precaution.
In their zeal to maneuver public opinion against the budgets of the Western military establishments and their nuclear weapons armaments, the Soviet and Leftist political propaganda targeted the Western civil defense programs to create a feeling of hopelessness and helplessness. The “duck and cover” safety precaution extended to the civil defense training for preparedness in the event of a nuclear attack became a focus point for the propaganda. The effectiveness of the propaganda can be seen in these comments where people uncritically accept the false notion that “duck and cover” is a “useless” safety precaution.
Atomic explosions from the first through to 1998, by country and by magnitude:-
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-07/6/japanese-artist-nuclear-weapons
Turn on the sound, view in full-screen mode. Keep an eye on the numbers!
Does anyone have any sort of idea what this has done to us and this planet?
And we are worried about the contained waste from nuclear plants?
Beam me up, Scotty this planet is dangerous.
Nuclear winter was discredited, then it was disproven by the Kuwaiti oil fires after the first Bush’s war. People who won’t let go say you need bigger fires to get smoke and soot into the stratosphere.
It would seem to me unlikely as bad as an explosive volcanic eruption that injects sulfuric acid aerosols into the stratosphere – they settle out in only a year or so. Dust, smoke, and ash would likely wash out of the troposphere before reaching the stratosphere, and I doubt much would make it into the stratosphere, and what did would settle out quickly.
Various references found instead of starting dinner:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/08/climate_of_fear_from_nuclear_w.html
Climate of Fear: From Nuclear Winter to Global Warming
http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=8882.0 says
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter says:
ShrNfr says:
February 26, 2011 at 2:56 pm
> @george Turner Do you really want these wackos to go on a fission expedition?
That was aweful!
INGSOC says:
February 26, 2011 at 2:34 pm
Here is some scenes from the next greenpeace commercial.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxD44HO8dNQ&w=480&h=390%5D
Even better, they could buy several untamed Tsar bombs from the Russians, 100 Megatons each and solve the the problem once and for all. Are they cowards or what?
/desperate sarc off – for those who wouldn’t get it
ShrNfr
Great. Nearly fell off my chair!
DaveE.
I seem to remember at the end of Gulf War I the predictions of some scientists that the Iraqis firing Kuwaiti oil wells and how long it’d take to put them all off would lead to this kind of scenario as well. Doesn’t seem to have.
“The effectiveness of the propaganda can be seen in these comments where people uncritically accept the false notion that “duck and cover” is a “useless” safety precaution.”
To be fair, by the time it became popular it pretty much was a useless safety precaution. In the early atomic era where you might expect a 20 kiloton bomb dropped on a major industrial area, port, military base or whatever it made a lot of sense; many or most of the people in a town could have survived such an attack if they took cover away from the heat flash and blast. But once megaton-plus H-bombs became common any attack with such a weapon would kill most people within a few miles and anyone who survived by ducking under a desk would be likely to die of radiation poisoning within a few days (almost certain to do so if it was a groundburst bomb).
Suggesting a small nuclear war to halt global warming sure sounds like anti-agw satire.
But so does photoshopped polar bears on drifting into the ocean on a tiny flake of ice, or commercials graphically blowing global warming sceptics into tiny bloody pieces, or for that matter the head of IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri.
It is all so incredibly stupid, I sometimes wonder if it really is happening.
Unfortunately it is, and how will this all end?
With a bang or a whimper?
I don’t see how a few cans of sunshine can reverse all the damage done by beer bubbles, they need to think bigger as a precautionary principal and use up most of the arsenal.
Models are so unreliable.[ /Sarc factor 10.]
And if the global temperature has increase 0.7C since the 100 years or so, how did crops grow 100 years ago?
Wild sugar cane in the tropics in Indonesia gives a better yield than farmed sugar cane crops in much cooler Australia.
Don’t forget about the Indonesia Peat Fire experiment.
“According to a 2002 study published in the scientific journal Nature, somewhere between 0.81 and 2.57 million tons of carbon were released by tropical lowland forest and peat land fires in Indonesia in 1997. The incident was one of the leading culprits behind what turned out to be the largest annual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations since records began in the late 1950s.”
2.57 million tons of carbon is about 50% of what they claim the small nuclear war would release.
With global warming morphing into climate change and then into climate disruption, why not change its name once again to “Strategic Arms Reduction and Climate Solutions.” The only question is where to explode all these wonderful climate curing bombs? Washington D.C. is the obvious best choice and by doing so, most other problems this nation is plagued with will be solved too.
NG has always been biased, nothing has changed….
..I think some of you guys were just a lot younger and didn’t realize it was biased
Now you’re older, realize what a load of propaganda it is, so it seems like it changed
Those “Climatologists” are a genuine worry.
Heres a quote from Newsweek 28/4/1975 fending off proposals to melt the ice caps.
“Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality. ”
http://denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm
D. Patterson says: February 26, 2011 at 3:19 pm
The “duck and cover” safety precaution………
In the event of a nuclear attack, and I may be close to the event, I am going to use the ole “duck under the covers” ruse one last time.
If this is correct, thus far we’ve seen ‘nuclear winters’ in Florida (just ask the iguanas) and in Mexico this year alone. There’s a nuclear winter coming to California tonight, where peach, almond, plum, etc. blossoms are ready to go.
Or what about in mid April 2007 when it got down to 25 in Nashville, Tennessee for their most recent nuclear winter.
How about the nuclear winter of October 2009, which begged the infamous question “Where’s all the missing heat?” from a shivering climate scientist in Denver.
“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.”
It is ridiculous nonsense that 100 small nukes are going to affect the climate for years or probably even at all. That total yield was only 1.5 megatons. The Soviets dropped one in the Arctic of October 1961 that had a yield of 50 megatons and that was just one of the many they dropped though it was by far the largest. The US had several that were far more powerful than all the 100 that are supposed to change the climate for years. Sagan didn’t know what he was talking about but at least he was talking about a significant exchange which that isn’t even from historical actual atmospheric tests. Sagan was only accepted because it was part of the anti-nuclear hysteria. If you have someone dropping 100 “low yield” nuclear weapons, you have serious problems but global climate change isn’t going to be one of them. You don’t get the sulfur in the upper atmosphere even close to the same level as you would in a large explosive volcanic eruption.
The Warmist want global warming to happen they dont what to stop it.
They need it for there global policys to be put in place.
Once upon a time, primitive peoples believed that, with enough human sacrifice, they could change the weather.
Today’s advanced post-industrial peoples believe that, with enough human sacrifice, they can change the climate.
That’s human progress for you.
Does this mean that PNS failed us in the past, by invoking the precautionary principle to insist that all nuclear testing was below ground – “We coulda really cooled da wurld and reversed da hokey stick!!” (sarc.)
The mind boggles!!
These guys are nuts. I remember Carl Sagan running his computers to predict a nuclear winter after Saddam Hussein torched the oil fields of Kuwait. As it happened, the damage wasn’t as catastrophic as Sagan predicted.
“Professor Carl Sagan of the Turco, Toon, Ackerman, Pollack, Sagan (TTAPS) study hypothesized in January 1991 that enough smoke from the fires “might get so high as to disrupt agriculture in much of South Asia….” Sagan later conceded in his book The Demon-Haunted World that this prediction 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.”[15]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter
I recall searching google groups for the earliest reference to climage change, and found a usenet article from the 80s about nuclear winter. He was questioning the use of computer models way back then. It would be interesting to go back and look over the “science” of nuclear winter and find out if the problem was poor models, or deliberate junk science.
I had asked (@ Rational Debate says: February 26, 2011 at 1:42 pm)
To which Curiousgeorge replied: (Curiousgeorge says: February 26, 2011 at 2:31 pm)
Interesting to hear that fusion typically has thick stem v fission being thin – I don’t recall hearing that before. That said, in my initial question which I still hope someone can/will answer, I wasn’t referring to thick v thin stem size, but rather smooth and containing clearly defined geometric cones/shapes vs. rough and far less geometric shapes within the stem.
Take a look, for example, at http://izismile.com/2008/12/22/nuclear_explosions_88_photos.html, photos 3-5, 17, 26, 28-31, 38, 75-6. To varying degrees – or even within various parts of the stem – each of those has the very smooth geometric shapes in the stem that I’m referring to, as compared to the other photos in that set.
Some of the most aesthetically beautiful (even if it’s entirely un-pc to refer to nuke photos as aesthetically beautiful or intriguing!) are those where the entire stem seems to be made up of concentric or nesting very sharply defined geometric shapes or cones. Some of the most intriguing, however, may be those where parts of the stems have the very clean cut geometric cones, inter-spaced with long segments of very rough stem.
So….I was hoping someone might know the detailed cause of the geometric vs. rough, as they are so amazingly distinct from each other. A number of possibilities had already occurred to me when I asked the question, although I just mentioned shutter speed, in part because it seemed to be perhaps the most likely answer…. I’d also considered that there could be any number of factors such as atmospheric conditions or ground surface type under the blast, blast height, etc.
That still left me with the question – which factors cause the one type compared to the other, and how? e.g., if atmospheric, just what specific atmospheric conditions cause the geometric shapes to appear in the stem vs not appear? Just spitballing here… Super high humidity but yet not atoll or over ocean bursts? (as it seems to me, without going to double check it, that I’ve seen lots of atoll or over ocean burst photos that do NOT have the smooth/geo stem) If atmo condition, then what conditions yield geo vs rough? If it’s ground surface type, just what is it about the surface that leads to geometric vs rough stems – and then how do you get the mixed stems, especially ones where you see geo/rough/geo/rough?
You see what I mean? Each of the off the cuff answers for possible causes would seem to have logical flaws. And answers of the nature ‘atmo & surface conditions’ doesn’t really answer the question anyhow — too vague. Heck, even if the answer does happen to be shutter speed alone (a factoid in and of itself that I’d like to know & that would be a start in answering this conundrum), I’d still be curious just how fast or how much difference does there have to be in shutter speed for the geo shapes to ‘appear’ vs the photos where there’s nothing but rough stems. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking for an answer that’s a dissertation with equations etc., but there’s got to be a technical yet fairly concise answer to what conditions, even if it requires some combination of factors, that will result in photos with geo shapes vs just rough. Gotta say the water burst version like #14 is another intriguing version with the rather discrete yet not smooth/geo multiple downward pointing ‘cones’ sticking out all around the entire stem.
Also very curious if anyone knows the technical cause of the downward spikes in the ‘milliseconds after explosion” photos (e.g., #70 out of that same set linked above, or from the NYT’s set someone else linked to above http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/09/14/science/20100914_atom.html?ref=science photos #5 & 7).
Sigh – many years ago my grad profs gave us some books on dealing with nuke warfare/survival, fallout facts, blast radius, etc., and/or with a lot of details on various weapons tests and so on, lots of photos in one of ’em iirc. So, no, between my degree & those books & post Hiroshima/Nagasaki facts, I probably wouldn’t be surprised at all by how close one can be to ground zero and survive — or how rapidly areas can recover and be habitable again post blast either, although I’m certain most of the general public would be! see: Nagasaki ground zero: http://www.kyushu-tourist.com/groundzero.html and Hiroshima ground zero: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_Peace_Memorial & according to wiki “Eizo Nomura (野村 英三, Nomura Eizō?) was the closest known survivor, who was in the basement of a reinforced concrete building (it remained as the Rest House after the war) only 170 m (560 ft) from ground zero (the hypocenter) at the time of the attack.[49][50] Akiko Takakura (高蔵 信子, Takakura Akiko?) was among the closest survivors to the hypocenter of the blast. She had been in the solidly built Bank of Hiroshima only 300 meters (980 ft) from ground-zero at the time of the attack.”).
Anyhow, I know I’ve still got those books from grad school somewhere…. maybe I’ll have to dig the suckers out and see if I can find anything in them on the stem geo vs rough shapes if no one here can shed any light on the subject. I sure hope someone can provide me with a bit of enlightenment, however, it’d be a lot easier (especially on my blasted back after all the f’ing spine surgeries I’ve had the last few years, talk about nuking something, my back & body feels about like it’s been nuked).
Not all the climate change people are panicking. Some of them are convinced that we’re already screwed and that even if we stopped adding extra carbon to the carbon cycle now, we’d still overheat.
Something tells me you should probably hope the panicking people are correct.
At least you are sensible enough to still adopt a more eco-friendly lifestyle. But for the life of me I cannot figure out why so many scoff at the notion that taking carbon out of the ground and adding it to the carbon cycle will have no effect on the worldwide climate whatsoever.
Justifies the C in CAGW. Things are so bad that it requires nuclear bombs to reverse global warming. I have a less C suggestion. Mandate every country increase its electricity production from nuclear to match the French. CO2 emission would be cut dramatically or the AGW proponents’ hypocrisy would be exposed.
Also it’s fascinating that you think vegans are elitist and don’t understand how it is to live in the world without voluntary access to meat, but you and some of your readers scoff at the notion that people could cause climate change or that nuclear weapons are bad because you yourselves are not facing the effects of either. Ask someone who survived Hiroshima or Nagasaki how much fun that was. It was as bad as being at Dresden, except when the fires burned out at Dresden, that was it. Maybe you still had some residual stuff from smoke inhalation or whatever but that was pretty much the end of it.
Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Elitism is elitism even if it serves your own cause.
While you talk about diet being species-appropriate you might think about how much certain other aspects of our lives are species-appropriate as well.
Can we just go back to a simpler time and just toss a Virgin(Maddona claims shes like a virgin, will that count?) or AlGore or something in a volcano and call it a day?
sorry for the PostyMcPostPost… I’m not vegan by the way–not sure if that was clear. I’m one of those odd people who loves meat, is offended by vegan evangelism, is pretty sure anthropogenic climate change is occurring, isn’t sure whether we can do anything about it and isn’t convinced giving up meat-eating would help. I’m a mixed bag. I just get tired of seeing people apologize for the very worst aspects of industrial/agricultural civilization. Look at what rabbits did to Australia. We’re more powerful than rabbits. It’s not rocket science.
OK, the Nat Geo headline was dumb. But I disagree that the science was obvious (and have too little information to say it was wrong). Previous nuclear tests are poor models for such exchanges on population centers, as the test sites were selected for isolation or were in many cases, underground. Previous examinations of nuclear winter that I am familiar with looked at a US/USSR exchange, typically far larger that 100 single-stage weapons.
However, examining the global effects of a regional nuclear exchange, involving the arsenals of powers such as Israel, Pakistan or India, seems pertinent. Depending on the target areas, the oil-field fires themselves could be substantial.
“George Turner says:
February 26, 2011 at 2:12 pm
I find it irritating that they’re basing this on computer simulations when we have so many nuclear weapons sitting idle.”
Their computer models aren’t any good. If they really tried this something bad could happen.
Found the Global Warming Blunder by R. w. Spencer on google books. I could not read all pages, just 50%, and it was just enough for me.. This madness has to end. The few controlling the many is what it looks like.
I thought I read somewhere that Mount St. Helens had the equivalent energy as 20,000 Hiroshima-level bombs when it blew. Thats 200 times what this study used. Did we experience nuclear winter after that event?
re post by: belvedere says: February 26, 2011 at 5:46 pm
Hi Belvedere, would you provide a link for that please? General search using google books gives many returns, most of which don’t look like they would be likely to contain more than a very few pages that could be read, if that even…
A better solution: Build hundreds of CERN-sized accelerators and use them to produce and distribute lots of antimatter CO2. This will annihilate the regular CO2, with a bonus gift of using up all the electricity in the world so it can’t be used by evil humans.
With no CO2, all plants will die, which will then starve all humans and animals without having to officially ship us to the ovens.
“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.
That says it all AND it’s their own words: Warmer is better!!!
We had to nuke the planet to save it from global warming.
Uh, the “NIMBY”* folks will probably be a major stumbling block.
*Not In My Back Yard
I’m pretty sure the “nuclear winter” scenario was pretty thoroughly debunked when Carl Sagan claimed the Kuwaiti oil fires would produce the effects of a regional nuclear exchange, and Fred Singer said nothing of the kind would happen and was proven right. I’m surprised that you are buying the “consensus” on nuclear winter when you doubt a similar consensus on “global warming”. They both stem from the same poor sources, which is a cooked computer simulation that is run until it gives the right result.
Lovely.
As others have pointed out, cooling is found to be a bad thing. So is warming. Eeek! we are on a knife-edge!
In a related new article from Huff-Puff:
http://nation.foxnews.com/culture/2011/02/26/huff-po-could-small-nuclear-war-reverse-global-warming
Ummmm…..
So the cooling caused by a nuclear war may outweigh the benefits caused by reducing Global Warming. What about the cons of the nuclear war itself, exactly?
Still, at least the world can now see the Alarmist Global Warming brigade is floundering in its final death-throes.
“mute” > “moot”
IanM
Dana says:
February 26, 2011 at 4:59 pm
1. Because there is so very little of it being added to the very large atmosphere. We have apparently* altered the composition of the air by 0.01%.
2. Most of that addition adds little additional ‘greenhouse’** effect as most of the effect due to CO2 is caused by the (recent) original 0.03% if the air.
3. Most of the ‘greenhouse’ effect, about 97%, is caused by water vapour and other gasses, not CO2 anyway. Our effect, if we caused the CO2 rise, could be as little as 0.28%
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
4. Clouds trump CO2, and other ‘greenhouse’ gases at all times.
*There is no proof this increase in CO2 is not caused by natural warming since the LIA, as the ice cores strongly suggest would happen. Any additional negligible CO2 released by us could be being swallowed up happily by hungry plants.
**’greenhouse’ is in quotes, because the effect is nothing like a greenhouse. Greenhouses prevent convection, not radiation. While on the subject of convection, this is one reason the whole Global Warming idea does not stand up – convection is FAR more important heat transfer mechanism than radiation (where would you prefer to be, 2m to one side of a roaring fire, or 2m above it?). That CO2 molecule that gets slightly warmer my be rising faster than any ‘re-radiation’ downwards could matter. That would COOL the air overall by taking the heat upwards to where it will be lost to space more easily.
Did we read the same article? I didn’t see any suggestion that this would be a good thing or something to be used to halt the assumed AGW? Then again it is 5 in the morning so maybe my reading skills are a bit off.
@ Rational Debate says:
February 26, 2011 at 4:56 pm
I don’t think it has anything to do with shutter speed (cones ) since these are likely single frames from hi-speed cameras, but I’m just guessing here. Great pics, btw. 🙂 Have you contacted any of those crazy guys at LANL? If anybody knows they would.
Anthony wonders, “Could there ever be a dumber headline related to global warming?”
Another one from National Geographic is in the running: “Global Warming Could Cool N. America in a Few Decades”
See http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/09/090914-north-america-cooling-warming.html
@James Mayeau
Can we all agree that it should be dropped on a greenie elitist enclave? That way, either way, we’ve saved the planet.
Yes lets not bother knowing what would happen to the climate if india and pakistan went to war.
Far better to just wallow in ignorance and/or pretend we already know
Rational Debate says: February 26, 2011 at 4:56 pm
I had asked (@ Rational Debate says: February 26, 2011 at 1:42 pm)
Does anyone happen to know what causes the difference between the nuclear test photos where the ‘stem’ of the mushroom cloud has those fabulous smooth geometric cones and so on, versus the far more commonly seen rough stems?. . .
I’ll give it a try. I’m not an expert, but I’ve patted many a (what may or may not have been) nuke on the nose during weapons preflight (make sure the letter in the little window is a green ‘S’ and not a red ‘A’).
The fireball rolls upward as a toroid, much like the bubble rings the dolphins blow or the warm water donuts thinning the ice in Lake Baikal. The underside of the donut rolls inward, and since the fireball is travelling at an unnaturally high speed, it might be drawing ambient air into the narrow ring between the donut and the static stem. As more air is drawn in, the air inboard is squeezed or extruded out and downward as that smooth white skirt. Being at a higher altitude than it started, the air cools and water condenses out.
If you watch the videos, you’ll see the skirts being extruded from that space between the donut and the stem. The different lengths and separations might be due to the humidity of the different layers the fireball is passing through. This British test is an airburst without the stem, and still shows the skirt extending down.
That’s my guess.
Very poorly written article just from the quoted excerpt alone
“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.”
The way it is written it sounds like 100 warheads is 0.03% of the current arsenal. This sounds like there are 300,000 warheads in the arsenal. The current arsenal contains 20,565 warheads of varying yields with 4740 active. so 100 of these will be a far greater percentage of the total arsenal.
Granted yields are up and sizes are down so a physically smaller sized warhead has a far greater yield than Fat Man or Little Boy
Nomad, M5, Landrau. All were computers run amok that Captain Kirk talked into shutting down.
Now, we have computer models talking men (who should know better) into shutting down civilization.
How ironic. Gene Roddenberry missed that episode.
Ralph says:
February 26, 2011 at 11:41 am
says
“Its called eschatology, a desire for the end of the world.”
No. “ology” – is the study of the end of the world, not a desire for it.
A desire for the end of the word would possibly be eschatophilia or eschatomania
@Ian L. McQueen, “mute” > “moot”
But, the spell checker didn’t tell me it was wrong.
Thanks for the correction. I did mean to write moot, really, I did.
As someone mentioned the Russian Tsar before, it had an estimated yield of ~56 m/ton TNT. More than all the bombs dropped and bullets fired in World War 2 put together. Didn’t seem to do any cooling either.
But this is like many sci-fi movies, the solution to a megadisaster is a bomb. Films like “The Core”, with materials like “unobtainium” and “Armageddon” and even before that, the 1960’s British sci-fi classic “The Day the Earth Caught Fire” etc…bit of a laugh really.
Look on the bright side. Iran and North Korea might save the world from global warming.
I hope this headline and some of the quotes from the article posted by Anthony make it quite clear that it is not about ‘changing the climate’ to cool.
The various posts in regard to test explosions illustrated thatthis would be a pipe dream.
What it is about, and what should not be missed but emphasized is that test explosions didn’t kill hecatombs of people – but a nice little nuclear war most certainly would.
Haven’t we heard often enough that our planet, and thus the climate, ‘suffers’ from overpopulation? Isn’t it obvious that this is the underlying aim of all those who yearn for a World Government? So a small nuclear war here and there would not grieve them at all.
As a famous German saying has it: ‘I can’t eat as much as I want to vomit’.
These people are mad.
You are simply repeating the unscientific fallacies of the false propaganda from the Leftists. Some three-fourths of the populations within the area affected by blast damage from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki fission weapon detonations survived. Among the one quarter of the populations who did not survive, half of those people died after the blast from flash burns suffered as a consequence of being in lightweight clothing outdoors or indoors in line of sight of the detonation. Although the introduction of thermonuclear weapons with yields greater than one megaton increased the area of damage and lethality by a substantial measure, the greater height above ground level (AGL) required to maintain the necessary overpressure against the intended target also resulted in more atmospheric attenuation of the flash. This attenuation had the effect of reducing the proportion of casualties in the linear range. In other words, the total number of casualties were increased by the usage of the larger weapon and its increased radius of effect, but the percentage of the casualties inflicted upon the population in the affected area decreased due to attenuation of the effects.
With the increased accuracy of ballistic missiles and warheads and development of multiple independent re-entry vehicles (MIRV), the sizes and yields of most of the warheads were greatly reduced well bellow the one megaton and greater. Today, Russia has 77 of these warheads deployed. China’s arsenal still deploys the >3 megaton warheads at present, but that they are also ,limited in number. The vast majority of warheads are now of the ~440kt yield and less. Their danger lies more in their use to target an area with multiple warheads rather than a single warhead.
In any event, the assumption that fallout radiation will inevitably doom all or most the survivors of the nuclear weapons blast is wildly exaggerated, unscientific, and false political propaganda. People caught in the hypocentr of the atground zero may survive in well protected structures and underground rooms. The majority of the people who are at least some miles/kilometers away from ground zero will survive the blast, except for those who failed to duck and cover to avoid the flash burn and shrapnel. Half or more of the survivors within the downwind fallout for a distance of tens of miles/kilometers who remain outside of basements or comparable heavy shelters for 24 hours and longer may receive fatal does of radiation. The downwind survivors taking shelter in basements and comparable shelters tens of miles away and greater will mostly tend to survive the fallout radiation. The survivors upwind of ground zero a distance of a few miles and greater suffer few radiation casualties, and the vast majority of those people can survive the fallout radiation outside and inside basement and comparable shelters.
The greatest threat presented by fallout radiation is the risk of multiple ground zero sites blanketing broad urban and rural regions with downwind fallout. Even then, however, most of the population taking shelter in basements and comparable shelters in the outside ranges of the downwind fallout can easily survive the exposure to fallout radiation.
While the casualties resulting from a general nuclear war would be catastrophic to say the least, the forecasts for fallout radiation indicated most of the populations would survive the nuclear detonations and the subsequent fallout radiation. The greatest risk was the losses of life due to the mammoth disruptions of the economy and its transportation networks. The ridicule of the safety precautions are scientifically unwarranted and could double the mortality and casualties by persuading people to unnecessarily dispense with them and needlessly sacrifice their lives and suffer truly horrible burns and other injuries.
Even in the absence of a nuclear attack, the attitude which ridicules and disregards the “duck and cover” safety precautions is unnecessarily costing lives and unimaginable pain. There have been a number of incidents in recent years where pipelines transporting natural gas or other fuels have been ruptured and exploded within residential neighborhoods. Among the casualties have been some people who got too curious, ignored safety precautions like “duck and cover”, and ended up being burned too death while trying to see what was going on outside. Training workers in refineries and fuel handling facilities has been made more difficult by the tendency to show bravado. When lightning set fire to a fuel storage tank, one of the workers reflexively followed his training, ducked behind a concrete curbing in the street, and escaped serious injury when the fuel tank exploded. His co-workers standing next to him in the street did not want to appear too chicken and were burned alive in the flash and blast wave. There ae innumerable other examples ranging from Halifax, Pearl Harbor, and Port Hueneme to Texas City where “duck and cover” could have and often did save lives and other casualties.. You don’t need a nuclear attack to justify using the “duck and cover” safety precaution as a learned response to an explosive or othr catastrophic event.
Encouraging people to disregard commonsense safety precautions in conventional disasters as well as unconventional warfare for the sake of looking cool among your peers and some political propaganda is…(fill in the blank).
I am strongly reminded of the (very) short story by Isaac Asimov entitled “Silly Asses”. Its in his short story collection “Buy Jupiter and Other Stories”.
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James Mayeau says:
February 26, 2011 at 1:56 pm
I could cure global warming and it would only take two bombs. One for GISS and the other for Berkeley.
============
make that 4! you forgot HAD crowd, and gores place
The purpose of the neutron bomb was to protect innocent lives. One of the key war plans of the Group of Soviet Forces Germany (GSFG) and its Warsaw Pact allies was to initiate a war with NATO and conduct offensives through the Fulda Gap and/or across the North German Plain, cross the Rhine River, and divide the NATO armies against the English Channel and in the Low Countries. Since NATO lacked the quantities of manpower and weaponry required to successfully defend the Rhine River against a Soviet-Warsaw Pact offensive, NATO developed OPERATION REFORGER, which prepositioned weapons for U.S. Army personnel to use after being flown into Europe by trans-Atlantic air transports. NATO’s war plan consisted of fighting a losing defensive campaign in the hopes of trading space for time while delaying the Soviet-Warsaw Pact offensive long enough for the U.S. reinforcements to arrive in Europe, draw their prepositioned weapons, and begin a counter-offensive to force the invaders out of the NATO territories.
In response to OERATION REFORGER, Soviet war plans contemplated the option of using Soviet tactical nuclear weapons to destroy and/or deny the U.S forces access to the REFORGER weapons depots needed to equip the U.S. personnel being flown into Europe as reinforcements. Although the overt Soviet policy did not allow for a limited nuclear war with tactical nuclear weapons only in the European theater of operations, the covert war plans were certainly available as a surprise reversal of overt pre-war official policies. Without the REFORGER depots and reinforcements in the event of a Soviet first strike and limited war in the European theater of operations with tactical nuclear weapons, there was virtually no hope of a successful NATO defensive campaign in Europe.
Even if the defensive campaign somehow managed to succeed in the final struggles, the NATO territories and civilian populations would be devastated by the battles conducted on NATO territories. If there were a limited tactical nuclear war in the theater, most of the offensive and defensive tactical nuclear weapons would necessarily be targeted in NATO territories. NATO would be confronted with the choice of responding to Soviet tactical nuclear weapons and invading armies with NATO’s tactical nuclear weapons against Soviet targets among the NATO populations and communities. Without the tactical nuclear weapons, NATO would be unable to hold its defensive positions against the Soviet tactical nuclear weapons and huge Soviet advantages in numbers. Using the standard tactical nuclear weapons against the invading Soviet armies also meant the destruction of the co-located NATO communities and civilians.
To solve the problem, the neutron (bomb) tactical nuclear warhead offered NATO the ability to confront an invading Soviet army with a weapon that could kill and incapacitate the Soviet soldiers in the open and in the armored fighting vehicles without destroying many of the nearby structures or the civilians taking shelter in their basements. Since the defensive NATO armies would no longer be so limited in responding to a Soviet limited tactical nuclear offensive, any such Soviet war plan became too risky and unprofitable to pursue so long as neutron tactical nuclear weapons were deployed to halt the Soviet offensive.
In response to NATO’s defensive plans for the use of neutron (bombs) tactical nuclear weapons to halt a Soviet offensive, Soviet intelligence used its influence among the Leftists in the NATO nations and the global community to prevent the deployment of the weapons. Using half-truths about the ability of the weapons to kill people without harming property, they conveniently neglected the other half of the truth that the weapons did more to kill the invading enemy soldiers doing the killing while doing more to not kill innocent civilians than conventional and standard tactical nuclear weapons. Also left unsaid was the number of lives saved by the neutron bomb’s deterrence altogether of any Soviet invasion of NATO. Instead, the Western news media collaborated with Soviet intelligence to mislead the public into falsely believing the scientists who developed the neutron bomb and the NATO command cared more for NATO property than NATO civilian lives.
Rational Debate says:
February 26, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Oh – the URL http://izismile.com/2008/12/22/nuclear_explosions_88_photos.html you posted later makes it clear.
The white smooth things are clouds. It looks like convection of the fireball (mushroom cap) is sucking up air underneath it. As that cools due to the falling pressure with height, the watervapor begins to condense making a cloud. The convection outside of the stem and cap is laminar flow, and if the water vapor is well mixed, then you’ll get those symmetric shapes. The conical shapes suggest that the convective flow is also pulling air toward the stem. (Equivalently, the the convective flow widens with time as more air gets pulled into the column.)
Someone asked about various streaks in some photos. The skinny ones are from rockets launched just before the explosion that left a smoke trail. Their purpose was to let people analyze the effects away from the fireball. There are some other images where the streaks are ground blasts blowing out a crater.
It has been a while since comments in and after a blog entry at WUWT have bugged me so much!
“As someone mentioned the Russian Tsar before, it had an estimated yield of ~56 m/ton TNT. More than all the bombs dropped and bullets fired in World War 2 put together. Didn’t seem to do any cooling either.”
“Soviet atmospheric testing in 1961-62 was about 229 megatons, equivalent to about 15,000 Hiroshima bombs.”
For all the similar conclusions, I suggest people read the article.
The relevant factor is not the total yield of the bomb, but the fires they will create. Testing was typically conducted over oceans or over deserts or underground. None of these would ignite massive fires. A war would typically be conducted over more populated areas, which would cause more fires.
“let me get this straight – a 0.5C DROP in temperature would help cause catastrophic crop failure?
For all the similar conclusions, I suggest people read the article. Then maybe you would “get it straight”.
The numbers you give are global results 10 years later. The predicted changes are 6-8 times worse in key regions for 2-3 years.
“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…”
“Geez. My buddy was modeling nuclear winter for Sandia Natl Labs 25 years ago.”
We seem to have a collection of “settled science” folks who think there is nothing new to learn. That computers & computer models have not gotten better; that all scenarios for nuclear war were already modeled; that the magnitudes of fires would be the same even though population and land use have changed significantly in the past 25 years.
And finally, there is the headline “We had to nuke the planet to save it from global warming”.
I don’t see how anyone could read the original article and conclude that nuclear war is a desired outcome or that nuclear war would “save” anything. This headline is as good of an example of a strawman argument as I have seen in a while! People have been attacking Anthony’s caricature, not the original science or the original article. If someone can find any quote from the article that makes nuclear war seem positive or desired, I’ll be willing to listen!
Since everything is moderated here, I thought putting this in a comment was a good way to get it into the hopper. It’s O/T for this thread but I think worth a thread on its own. The troubling thing about it is that the Washington Post gave this guy a column. It suggests to me that they don’t think he’s crazy.
I think that the people who imagine that the arguments against the C in CAGW are having an effect, ponder the plight of the author of this piece.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/25/AR2011022503176.html?nav=hcmoduletmv
REPLY: I read it, it’s sad and funny at the same time. From boogeyman to bunker mentality. This guy obviously reads Joe Romm and doesn’t have the wherewithal to be able to distinguish reality from trumped up fiction. He uses power outages as a metric, not understanding that our power system is under strain and aging. What can you say to a guy like this that sees the demons of “climate disruption” in everything? – Anthony
We did this experiment in the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s. There was an article in PNAS about 3 years ago on this same nonsense. I think this sort of thing is an indictment of two things: (1) the ability to distinguish between computer simulation and the real world, and (2) the peer review system as currently established:
http://depriest-mpu.blogspot.com/2008/04/wanted-fact-checker.html
BTW, many nuclear engineers (including Dyson Freeman) don’t believe in Sagan’s apocalyptic nuclear winter scenario. I know that I don’t.
D. Patterson says:
February 27, 2011 at 6:11 am
D- Thanks for putting the development and rational for the neutron bomb into perspective. I only know of it from a friend (a west point grad) who was stationed in the DMZ in Korea back in the 1970’s.
As a deterrent I think Mike, my west point friend, would of liked to have it in his arsenal in the DMZ area. I was unaware of it’s original intent and that a civilian population could escape the effects of having to use it in a war environment. In fact, I think in terms of a war situation it would be a very good deterrent in the DMZ area today. Hopefully, we still have some of the bombs available to support our front line troops and the civilian populations they are protecting.
Yep, smoke rockets. Specifically to visualize the shockwave parameters: shape, height, speed. I believe there were sounding rockets with instrumentation as well. Those tests we more carefully choreographed than an Obama campaign rally. An astounding amount of planning and data collection. Pardon the pun, but there was real science happening.
My favorite collection of nuke footage is the DVD (actually a 3-DVD set) called Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie, narrated by Shatner (he is excellent on this). Fact filled and historical, even Teller himself is interviewed. Came out in 1995, so it’s probably just a few bucks at Amazon these days.
And he would do it too. Ironically and hypocritically, James Cameron (climate debate coward) has already incorporated much of our (USA taxpayer funded and owned) atomic test footage into many of his blockbuster movies! We deserve royalties. He often seemed determined to use a nuke scene in his work, and the motive wasn’t real clear until the
WaterWorldAbyss fiasco. Lukewarmers take note: if that movie, with the towering tidal waves ready to crush humanity (no pressure?) doesn’t wake people up to what lies in the sick mind of an eco-phobiac, nothing will.Personally I think the one movie he made that really needed a Crossroads or Ivy Mike interlude was Titanic, but hey that’s just my opinion 😉
I used this as a modest proposal about a decade ago with one of the “we must do something now!” types, and added that if we were judicious in the choice of targets and selected an aspiring 3rd or 4th world nation that was industrializing, we could kill two birds with one stone. After the initial look of horror, she realized that I was twitting her. At that point her expression became scorn. “No one will ever consider that, and you’re a bad person for having suggested it.”
I guess it’s official, Nat Geo employs bad people.
Whoops, left out a couple of sentences. The killing two birds with one stone was because it would simultaneously give us the “benefit” of a nuclear winter, and the second was that it show the world that we’re serious about decreasing emissions from anyone who would dare to challenge our supremacy, and that that would be increasingly important as the peoples of the world decided that they wanted to live as we do and be so free and rich as to be able to worry about phantasms like Anthropogenic Global Warming.
******
Rational Debate says:
February 26, 2011 at 4:56 pm
Also very curious if anyone knows the technical cause of the downward spikes in the ‘milliseconds after explosion” photos (e.g., #70 out of that same set linked above, or from the NYT’s set someone else linked to above http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/09/14/science/20100914_atom.html?ref=science photos #5 & 7).
*****
Rational, I’ve read a fair bit on nukes from what’s on the internet, so I’ll offer an opinion.
The bomb design is trying to squeeze the inner core. As it does, the pressure inside rises enormously & tries to find a way out. If the inward compression wave of the high-explosive (or the small fission trigger) isn’t perfect (it never is), the high-pressure inner core will find those weaknesses or asymmetry & escape outward before reacting. In fact, the whole idea of an efficient bomb is to make the most consistent, uniform, and symmetrical implosion as possible. Any inner core fissionable material escaping will not reach the required temp & pressure to fission, and is just wasted. IIRC, the best efficiency is no more than 50%.
What you’re seeing in those “spikes” & bumps are “after the fact” manifestations of localized weaknesses/irregularities that were present in the implosion’s inward-moving shock-wave.
Well, I think this whole idea is just down-right ridiculous. Firstly, we don’t hold many Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons anymore – they’re too puny. 15 kiltons, pah! Try 20+ megatons. Throw a few of those around and it’s fully game over, never mind an early Autumn and a late Spring. Secondly, why would anyone want a colder world than we already have, laced with radioactive dust. These stupid idiots need to get a life and do something worthwhile.
What a great idea!
First, the EMP would destroy so much of our electronics, our consumption of electricity, and hence, greenhouse gas emissions would drastically decrease.
Second, we could reduce the human population to more manageable levels. Korea is culling cattle herds to fight hoof-and-mouth disease and there’s no reason the same principles can’t be applied to people.
Third, think about the urban renewal benefits. We would have a wonderful opportunity to rebuild our cities the right way and also ensure a more equitable distribution of global resources.
Fourth, think about how the economy would benefit. With fewer workers, unemployment would be reduced and wages and benefits would be increased. We could also create jobs to clean up the destruction (see urban renewal benefits, above).
It’s win-win-win-win!
@Tim Folkerts
I agree that the text of the article did not explicitly propose regional nuclear exchange as a cure for Global Warming, however, the subheading to the second section of the article reads, “Reversing Global Warming?.” What are we to make of that?
In reading the article, it would seem that it was published for the same reason Nuclear Winter was pushed 30 years ago — to infer global suffering to the use of nuclear weapons, with the new twist, that even a limited or regional exchange would cause long-term global catastrophe.
I, for one, would welcome further study into Nuclear Winter models. It is high time this bogeyman was finally put to rest. It is my opinion that AGW was put into play as the new bogeyman, as the specter of Nuclear Winter faded. The same tactics were applied.
I believe that it has been established that there is no valid comparison between what happens after a volcanic eruption and a large conflagration, yet the article cites Mt. Tambora. If you read all the comments here, you will find many references to historic fires and their effects on weather.
About your comment on the location of testing and changes in land use. Are Cairo, Tel Aviv, Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran located in lush, forested settings? Is replacing forest, scrub or grassland with asphalt, concrete, masonry and steel going to create more ash?
REPLY: Folkerts complains about everything here, pay no attention to him – Anthony
I thought Michael Crichton had already pretty well debunked the “Nuclear Winter” hypothesis.
Map of nuclear tests
Fallout patterns from U.S. nuclear testing
Great non-catastrophes
We’re healthier and we live longer. And AGW isn’t gonna getcha.
Don’t worry, be happy!
Tim Folkerts missed the humor in Anthony’s headline. I wonder if he really thought it was intended to be factual?
for the sake of accuracy:
The United States does not have any nuclear warheads with a yield of “20+ megatons.” The United Statees does have hundreds of B61 tactical-strategic nuclear warheads with selectable variable yields in the range of 0.3, 1.5, 5, 10, 45, 60, 80, 170, 340 kilotons. The other U.S. nuclear warheads are typically 100, 150, 170, 300, 335, 475, 1,200 kilotons. The 100 kiloton warheads are 1/200th the yield of a 20 megaton warhead, and they represent a significant part of the arsenal of nuclear warheads.
You’re welcome.
The Carter Administration used the Leftists’ protests as an excuse to delay and then stop the deveeolpment and deployment of the Enhanced Radiation Warheads (ERW). The Reagan Administration revived the program in 1981 and deployed the W79 warheads for use with artillery. The tritium material in the warhead was subject to degradation, and it needed to be refurbished after a period of time. By 1992 the warheads were withdrawn from deployment by the Bush Administration following the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union and the threat they represneted to Western Europe.
D. Patterson says:
February 27, 2011 at 1:52 pm
“…By 1992 the warheads were withdrawn from deployment by the Bush Administration following the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union and the threat they represneted to Western Europe.”
I think our forces in the DMZ (and the S. Korean government and likely Japan) would feel a bit more secure if we had a few of W79 warheads available. North Korea is a bit unstable…………………………
“REPLY: Folkerts complains about everything here, pay no attention to him – Anthony”
I quoted specific statements that I though were wrong (statements that were typically echoed thru many posts), cited relevant information, and offered my understanding of a more correct interpretation. I offer no apology if I “complain” about specific information that is wrong.
There is a lot I DON’T complain about here. I agree that scientists have been sloppy about records and computer code. I agree the locations of weather stations in parking lots is serious concern. I agree that the “doom and gloom” mentality should not infect the reporting of the basic science.
I may be a little brusque in my responses sometimes, but I try to base my responses on facts. If people don’t like the answer, then question my information or reasoning. Offer a better answer and add to the discussion. Like Andrew Parker did.
Andrew (Andrew Parker says: February 27, 2011 at 10:33 am )
Thanks for a thoughtful response.
I don’t read much into the heading “Reversing Global Warming?.” The article so far had discussed cooling from nuclear wars. It would seem only reasonable to related this “climate change” to other “climate change”. I simply read the heading as “how does the magnitude of these effects compare to the magnitude of (historic and/or projected) global warming?” I don’t see it as advocating nuclear war at all, but perhaps some would read it that way.
As for testing and the results, tests above- or below-water would generate almost no soot. Tests below-ground would generate almost no soot. Only above-ground testing has the potential for generating soot. From what I have found, most US above-ground testing was done in Nevada (almost no vegetation) or is similar arid areas in the USSR. Certainly more soot than underground or underwater testing, but still quite limitid.
While cities do contain a lot of non-flammable materials like concrete, they also contain a lot of wood, plastic, chemical plants, oil storage, and similar flammable materials. My suspicion is that pretty much any large city (including the ones you listed) would produce WAY more soot than a Nevada desert (but I would be happy to have more data and input from someone with more expertise on this topic).
I don’t know the answer to your comment about comparisons (either from actual data or from models) of conventional fires, nuclear-induced fires, and volcanoes. As I understand it, volcanoes and nuclear weapons both lift material higher than conventional fires. But the soot from nuclear-induced fires would come in large part after the initial mushroom cloud. I assume the authors considered such effects, but I would have to go back to the original work (not Anthony’s comments about NG’s summary of the original work) to get an understanding of details of the study.
As for the reasons for the articles, I won’t try to speculate. I try to stick with science as much as possible and leave the politics and motivations to others.
“To see what climate effects such a regional nuclear conflict might have, scientists from NASA and other institutions modeled a war … ”
In my day NASA and National Geographic pushed the envelope… actually sent men to explore the farthest reaches of the natural world.
Now we are relegated to viewing cartoons of their sick fantasies without any commitment to prove up the hypotheses.
The expression “seing is believing” no longer holds true.
Doing is believing.
“Tim Folkerts says:
February 27, 2011 at 6:56 am”
The Russian test of the Tsar was done in a desert. No fires there other than the explosion itself.
J. Felton says:
I stopped reading NG years ago, due to their biased message, but 2 cover stories last year really drove the point home.
One read ” Global Warming causes massive drought in Australia.”
The next one, the very next week, read ” Global Warming causes excessive flooding in Australia.
Any chance you have the dates / issue numbers for those?
——————–
On the main topic – I’m beginning to think we’re about ripe for an ELE. Time to immanentize the escathon.
Mark Miller says:
February 27, 2011 at 2:51 pm
D. Patterson says:
February 27, 2011 at 1:52 pm
“…By 1992 the warheads were withdrawn from deployment by the Bush Administration following the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union and the threat they represneted to Western Europe.”
I think our forces in the DMZ (and the S. Korean government and likely Japan) would feel a bit more secure if we had a few of W79 warheads available. North Korea is a bit unstable…………………………
There are a number of factors which make doing so impractical.
First, the tactical circumstances in Korea are reversed, because the civilian population is more exposed to the lethal effects of neutron bombs than the North Korean armed forces.
In 1950, the Truman Administration deliberately refused to equip the South Korean armed forces with heavy armaments. They were instead equipped for counter-insurgency operations as a constabulary military force with light weapons to avoid “provoking” Commuist North Korea. Stalin, meanwhile, equipped, trained, and prepared the North Korean armed forces to conduct a heavily armed and major tank army offensive in a campaingn to conquer South Korea. Stalin waited until Truman withdrew the post-war occupation force from South Korea before giving the order to begin the conventional combined arms offensive and the Korean Conflict.
The South Korean armed forces and the remanant U.S. Army Military Advisory Group (MAG) had no mediem or heavy tanks, little artillery, and few other forces to defend against the major North Korean-Soviet tank army offensive. Conseequently, the initial South Korean and U.S. forces were overrun and forced to fall abck into the final defensive battle in the Pusan perimeter until the U.N. counteroffensive mostly destroyed the North Korean Army prior to the massive entry of Communist Chinese forces.
The circumstances today are quite different. Today’s South Korea is heavily armed, well trained, experienced, and prepared to defend itself. There is no longr a Soviet Union leading and equipping the North Korean armed forces; and no Soviet air defense troops, air forces, or combat support troops supporting the North Korean armed forces. There is little chance of China using its army groups to participate in an offensive for conquest of South Korea. North Korea is nearly on its own in any military offensivees it may choose to undertake against South Korea. Its armed forces are heavily protected in underground bases, depots, and tunnels along, behind, and sometimes beneath the demilitarized zone. Seoul is heavily targeted for massive destruction by North Korean artillery from heavily protected caves, tunnels, revetments, and other heavily fortified positions. The South Korean defenses are hampered by the location of its major civilian assets within artillery range of North Korean forces behind the demilitarized zone.
South Korean structures don’t offer as many basements and other heavy structures capable of offering protection against neutron radiation as those found in NATO’S European battlefields. While the subways and large buildings do offer protection to some of the urban populations, most of the other South Korean and North Korean civilian populations are much more exposed to the lethal effects of the neutron bombs than the field troops of the North Korean armed forces. Consequently, the neutron bombs could be counter-productive to an effort to save innocent civilian lives.
Secondly, the Deemocrats in the U.S. Goveernment have been and are busy dismantling the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. They are in no mood whatsoever to permit the redeployment of any additional nuclear warheads, much less neutron bombs. They will oppose any such appropriations for neutron bombs by promoting the idea that they kill people without destroying property and have too short of a shelf life making them too costly to maintain their Tritium weapon cores.
The Tsar Bomba was tested on 30 October 1961 at the Soviet nuclear test range on the Novaya Zemlya islands in the Arctic Ocean.
It proved to be a real ice breaker.
We must kill humanity, to save humanity…
Population reduction (and subjugation) is the goal of the entire venture of the globalists behind the AGW scam. Nuking the planet would suit these Satanists just fine.
Let us not forget that these guys have been caught worshipping a giant owl and burning a mock human effigy in a sacrificial ritual, which they do every year at Bohemian Grove. Who paid for the Georgia Guidestones? Where the goal of killing billions of people is written for all to read?
The AGW scam is part of a larger plan. It sounds crazy at first, but if you learn about their shenanigans and then put yourself in the shoes of the most powerful elites on the planet – it makes perfect sense.
Hi, as a Brit I find this sort of thing bloody scary, it starts in the USA and the “crazies” in the UK latch onto it as trendy up to the moment thinking. National Geographic will not get another penny from me after this.
Thank you for the info.
Congrats on the award by the way, well deserve if I might say so.
IIRC, this is exactly why Atomic Annie was built, the ability to take out large amounts of invading infantry all relatively bunched together. This is pretty much the definition of tactical nukes. The idea is that a relatively small USA/etc force could be stationed there near the 38th DMZ and decimate the invading NKA efficiently (also see Romulans, Neutral Zone).
Unfortunately also to be considered is the fact that mere possession of such invasion stoppers isn’t enough. One must have the fortitude to pull the trigger on quite possibly one million invaders. I can assure everyone (pssst don’t tell Lil Kim) that the current occupant of the oval office has no such strength. The defense of Seoul will have to rest upon bloodshed on both sides, instead of bloodshed mostly on the enemy side. (sigh).
Of course one might ask just why South Korea didn’t just move Seoul further south in the decades that have since passed. Herculean feats such as massive evacuation and relocation can be accomplished in a very short time-frame when lives are at stake (see German invasion WWII Russia). I wonder if they couldn’t have created a new capitol sufficiently removed from the zone. I mean they are practically asking for Seoul to be destroyed. If it gets destroyed it will necessarily affect all world markets. We all will pay for it which likely would include re-building it yet again! Man, thinking about this really gets me angry. The Korean conflict IMHO is not the way to end a war (by setting the stage for the next one!).
@ Rational Debate
Regarding the downward-pointing spikes in the first few milliseconds of the explosion, I read about this somewhere but can’t find the link.
The spikes correspond to the cables holding up the tower with the bomb-shack perched on top of it. Early researchers were puzzled as to why the cables became incandescent so quickly, since they are outside the advancing fireball, and they couldn’t conduct heat that quickly either. Investigations led to them to conclude that the sheer intensity of the light from the fireball was enough to vapourise the cables.
Some experiments were done which showed that black cables produced big thick spikes, while cables painted white or wrapped in foil produced shorter or negligible spikes.
So then everything is alright? That’s great news, for awhile I thought there was some great weather emergency. Glad it all boils down to some silly headlines and manufactured media footage. Thanks for not falling into the trap of political dogma and inconvenient truths. I feel a lot safer under your tutelage and the laser etched minds on display here.
Thanks, C.K.
This solves global warming, for small money.
And you dont need atomic bombs.
Here’s how the bombs would cool the earth: The bombs lift carbon black, from fires, into the troposphere. A few million tons is enough. 5 million tons would make it too cold. That would cause catastrophes “similar to the crop failures and famines experienced in 1815”
You dont need bombs to make carbon black. They use it for filler in tires.
And you dont need bombs to lift it into the troposphere. You can use airplanes. A dozen 747s would be plenty.
But here’s the problem. With global warming put to bed, we got to get a new catastrophe. These scientists, they’ll still need Uncle Sam’s gravy. And more, they’ll still need something to feel important