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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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.
@ur momisugly 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 Baldwin 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 (@ur momisugly 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.