Eric Nielsen writes to me via Facebook:
I find it disturbing the National Geographic would suggest something like this
Well, um, yeah. This sort of thing is why I don’t subscribe to National Geographic anymore. Could there ever be a dumber headline related to global warming?
Click for article
Here’s an excerpt, your tax dollars at work:
To see what climate effects such a regional nuclear conflict might have, scientists from NASA and other institutions modeled a war involving a hundred Hiroshima-level bombs, each packing the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT—just 0.03 percent of the world’s current nuclear arsenal.
…
After ten years, average global temperatures would still be 0.9 degree F (0.5 degree C) lower than before the nuclear war, the models predict.
Years Without Summer
For a time Earth would likely be a colder, hungrier planet.
“Our results suggest that agriculture could be severely impacted, especially in areas that are susceptible to late-spring and early-fall frosts,” said Oman, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The full article is here.
While basic research might be useful, the whole nuclear winter scenario proposed by Carl Sagan has long been accepted, so I really don’t see the point of doing another study on the effects of nuclear war, especially in the context of global warming. It’s rather obvious science.
I wonder how much taxpayer money was wasted on this?
For those of you unfamiliar with my headline spoof:
One of the most famous quotes of the Vietnam War was a statement attributed to an unnamed U.S. officer by AP correspondent Peter Arnett. Writing about the provincial capital, Bến Tre, on February 7, 1968, Arnett said: “‘It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,’ a United States major said today.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%E1%BA%BFn_Tre
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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”…………………….