From The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists via SAGE Publications comes this press release claiming that because nuclear fallout was tracked by meteorological instrumentation and synoptic scale models, it somehow relates to climate science. I think it’s a stretch. About the only connection I see is that many of the same people who worry greatly about nuclear annihilation also worry greatly about annihilation by Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Nuclear weapons’ surprising contribution to climate science
Los Angeles (July 13 2012). Nuclear weapons testing may at first glance appear to have little connection with climate change research. But key Cold War research laboratories and the science used to track radioactivity and model nuclear bomb blasts have today been repurposed by climate scientists. The full story appears in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, published by SAGE.
In his article for the July-August issue of the Bulletin, “Entangled histories: Climate science and nuclear weapons research,” University of Michigan historian Paul Edwards notes that climate science and nuclear weapons testing have a long and surprisingly intimate relationship. In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, for example, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization tracked the radioactive plume emanating from damaged Japanese nuclear reactors via a global network of monitoring stations designed to measure airborne radionuclides. That network is a direct descendant of systems and computer models created to trace the fallout from weapons tests, Edwards explains.
But ways of tracking radiation as it moves through the atmosphere have applications that extend far beyond the nuclear industry. Tracing radioactive carbon as it cycles through the atmosphere, the oceans, and the biosphere has been crucial to understanding anthropogenic climate change.
Mathematical models with nuclear science roots have also found a place in the environmental scientists’ toolboxes. The earliest global climate models relied on numerical methods, very similar to those developed by nuclear weapons designers, for solving the fluid dynamics equations needed to analyze shock waves produced in nuclear explosions.
The impacts of nuclear war on the climate represent another major historical intersection between climate science and nuclear affairs. Without the work done by nuclear weapons designers and testers, scientists would know much less than they do now about the atmosphere. In particular, this research has contributed enormously to knowledge about both carbon dioxide, which raises Earth’s temperature, and aerosols, which lower it. Without climate models, scientists and political leaders would not have understood the full extent of nuclear weapons’ power to annihilate not only human beings, but other species as well.
Facilities built during the Cold War, including US national laboratories constructed to create weapons, now use their powerful supercomputers, expertise in modeling, and skills in managing large data sets to address the threat of catastrophic climate change. This has benefitted the labs themselves — without a new direction, the argument to continue funding these laboratories would have been less compelling — and the science and scientists who are studying climate change.
“Today, the laboratories built to create the most fearsome arsenal in history are doing what they can to prevent another catastrophe – this one caused not by behemoth governments at war, but by billions of ordinary people living ordinary lives within an energy economy that we must now reinvent,” Edwards says.
“Entangled histories: Climate science and nuclear weapons research” by Paul N. Edwards published July 13 2012 in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
The article will be free to access for a limited time here: http://bos.sagepub.com/
SAGE is a leading international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational, and professional markets. Since 1965, SAGE has helped inform and educate a global community of scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students spanning a wide range of subject areas including business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology, and medicine. An independent company, SAGE has principal offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC. http://www.sagepublications.com
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists informs the public about threats to the survival and development of humanity from nuclear weapons, climate change, and emerging technologies in the life sciences. The Bulletin was established in 1945 by scientists, engineers, and other experts who had created the atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project.
Those basic fluid dynamic equations (e.g.Navier-Stokes) existed nearly 100 years before the first atomic bomb. Those equations were used by the Germans (air flight) before WWII and compared to experimental data from wind tunnels. The equations were simplified using order of magnitude analyses and dynamic similitude to ultimately solve closed form solutions with the aid of the slide rule. These methods led to many modern scientific and engineering developments, without the influence of atomic discoveries.
As clearly seen, the use of our now super fast computers do not mean better solutions and accuracy. It is still the judgement and experience of the analyst and his development of a representative math model of the real world that may lead to a proper solution. Confidence can only be gained by comparing predicted results with actual observable experimental data.
GW climatologists have not yet accomplished this.
Just for the record here’s the plot of atmospheric C14 reduction after the period of airborne test had ended.
http://i47.tinypic.com/x288ex.png
data file attribution:
***********************************************************
* Carbon-14 Measurements in Atmospheric CO2 from Northern *
* and Southern Hemisphere Sites, 1962-1993 *
* *
* Authors: Reidar Nydal and Knut Lovseth *
* Radiological Dating Laboratory *
* The Norwegian Institute of Technology *
* N-7034 Trondheim NTH *
* NORWAY *
* *
* NDP057 (November 1996) *
***********************************************************
gary murphy says: Confidence can only be gained by comparing predicted results with actual observable experimental data.
Oh no. Science has come a long way that was the case. You’re out of date.
confidence is now gained by comparing the observable experimental data to super evolved climate models in order to detect biases and errors in data. The data can then be adjusted to correct for the bias.
In the late 40s ,early 50s whenever it was too hot, too cold,too anything my father would always say,” those damn A-bomb tests”
This is John Holdren’s old stomping ground, he was on the editorial board in 1984.
http://www.keywiki.org/index.php/John_Holdren#Bulletin_of_the_Atomic_Scientists
Union of Concerned Scientists. Need to say more?
(Kenji would surely rejoice)
Curiousgeorge says:
July 13, 2012 at 1:23 pm
=============
Thanks for the link to the video.
No, that would require laser-powered trepanation.
Another myth.
http://www.fpri.org/ww/0505.200407.eberstadt.demography.html
Human rabbits are 2 or 3 decades from beginning to die off faster than they breed.
Re:
Interstellar Bill says: July 13, 2012 at 11:18 am
and
DocMartyn says: July 13, 2012 at 6:29 pm
and
P. Solar says: July 14, 2012 at 12:02 am
Chapter 9 (Nuclear Weapons) of “Environmental Radioactivity” by Eisenbud & Gesell (Academic Press) provides much information independent of the climate-science-related literature. Regarding the fallacy of a CO2 residence time on the order of a century:
“Carbon-14
“It has been seen in Chapter 6 that cosmic-ray reactions in the upper atmosphere result in the transmutation of atmospheric nitrogen to 14C and that this nuclide has been in secular equilibrium in the biosphere in a concentration of 7.5+/-2.7 pCi (280+/- 100 mBq) of 14C per gram of total carbon. This equilibrium is believed to have been unchanged for at least 15,000 years prior to 1954 when the advent of large thermonuclear explosions produced additional 14C that perturbed the natural equilibrium. Carbon-14 in the atmosphere is believed to exist as 14CO2. However, introduction into the atmosphere of CO2 from combustion of fossil fuels tends to dilute the 14C in the atmosphere.
“Because the half-life of 14C is 5730 years, the collective dose when it is introduced into the environment will be delivered for many generations. . .
“Carbon-14 distributes itself quickly among the major environmental compartments – the stratosphere, troposphere, biosphere, and surface ocean waters. Transfer among these compartments takes place with time constants on the order of a few years, but transfer to the deep ocean water proceeds more slowly. Following an injection of 14C into the stratosphere, the biosphere will reach equilibrium after a relatively few years, and the 14C will decrease slowly thereafter at a rate determined by transfer to deep ocean water and possibly humus (NCRP, 1985b).
“By the end of 1967, the concentration of 14C in the troposphere had increased to about 60% above natural levels in the Northern Hemisphere and a little less in the Southern Hemisphere. (Nydal 1968). Because the short time constants involved in transfer from the atmosphere to biosphere, the 14C content of human tissues and foods increased rapidly following the heavy testing schedules of 1961 and 1962. The dose equivalent from 14C in fallout is estimated to have reached a peak of 0.96 mrem y^-1 (9.6 uSv y^-1) in 1965 and had diminished to 0.37 mrem y^-1 (3.7 uSv y^-1) by 1984 (NCRP 1985b). Because of its long half-life, bomb-produced 14C will persist in the environment for many thousands of years.” (end quote)
For an independent estimate of residence time, the key numbers are 0.96 mrem/year in 1965 and 0.37 mrem/year in 1984. Conservatively neglecting radioactive decay, and given dose rates 19 years apart, the time for dose rate to decrease from 0.96 mrem/year to 0.48 mrem/year is slightly less than 14 years. This can be shown graphically as a straight line on semi-log paper or calculated by
D(1985) / D(1965) = e^(-kt)
where k is the decay constant and t is time (19 years)
Residence time is equal to half-time divided by ln(0.5), or alternatively, 1 divided by decay constant. Residence time is equal to slightly less than 20 years.
@neil
Thanks, that is the right calc. Confirms my back of the phone bill 14.5 years.
IMHO, I think we should say:
the same people who spent 40 years working to design the weapons for nuclear annihilation, after the end of the Cold War found themselve JOBLESS, so they were forced to start worry about annihilation by something else.
After excluding an alien invasion, someone invented the “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming”, and a giant flux of “research fundings” started again…
[sorry if my English is not so fluent…]