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.
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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
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.
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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.
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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).
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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…………………………