Nuclear war simulation forgets the Medieval Climate Optimum
Story submitted by P. Wayne Townsend
Yesterday’s Daily Mail carried an article about a simulation of the climate consequences of nuclear war. The paper Multidecadal global cooling and unprecedented ozone loss following a regional nuclear conflict is not paywalled gives the usual horror stories (nuclear winter, crop failures, etc.).
What caught my eye was this idea intellectual relic found in both the Daily Mail article and here quoted from the abstract of itself.
Our calculations show that global ozone losses of 20%–50% over populated areas, levels unprecedented in human history, would accompany the coldest average surface temperatures in the last 1000 years
.
1000 years would be 1014, during the Medieval Climate optimum. Digging deeper we find that, indeed, Michael Mann’s discredited hockey stick is the zombie reference for this claim.
The severe increases in UV radiation following a regional nuclear war would occur in conjunction with the coldest average surface temperatures in the last 1000 years [Mann et al., 1999].
Of course, this is a model of climate after a nuclear wars so, perhaps these may be disciples or wannabes of the distinguished Mr. Mann. With a reference to Mann this long after refutation, will we ever be able to get rid of this zombie science, or are we doomed to living in the land of the walking dead papers?
The paper is available here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013EF000205/abstract
Abstract
We present the first study of the global impacts of a regional nuclear war with an Earth system model including atmospheric chemistry, ocean dynamics, and interactive sea ice and land components. A limited, regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan in which each side detonates 50 15 kt weapons could produce about 5 Tg of black carbon (BC). This would self-loft to the stratosphere, where it would spread globally, producing a sudden drop in surface temperatures and intense heating of the stratosphere. Using the Community Earth System Model with the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model, we calculate an e-folding time of 8.7 years for stratospheric BC compared to 4–6.5 years for previous studies. Our calculations show that global ozone losses of 20%–50% over populated areas, levels unprecedented in human history, would accompany the coldest average surface temperatures in the last 1000 years. We calculate summer enhancements in UV indices of 30%–80% over midlatitudes, suggesting widespread damage to human health, agriculture, and terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Killing frosts would reduce growing seasons by 10–40 days per year for 5 years. Surface temperatures would be reduced for more than 25 years due to thermal inertia and albedo effects in the ocean and expanded sea ice. The combined cooling and enhanced UV would put significant pressures on global food supplies and could trigger a global nuclear famine. Knowledge of the impacts of 100 small nuclear weapons should motivate the elimination of more than 17,000 nuclear weapons that exist today.
Over the years I have written a few poems about some of the major
creeps involved in the CAGW scam. This was the first one I wrote.
THE HOCKEY STICK
There was a crooked Mann
Who played a crooked trick
And had a crooked plan
To make a crooked stick
By using crooked math
That favored crooked lines
Lysenko’s crooked path
Led thru the crooked pines
And all his crooked friends
Applaud what crooked seems
But all that crooked ends
Derives from crooked means
Eugene WR Gallun
@Eugene WR Gallun
You have a flair for the creative! Excellent! Beware the lawsuits!
Z < X
Z < X+Y
Both statements are true, right?
==========
not for Y <= Z-X
We NEED a graph # of Mann citations vs Time, of course it would also need to be broken down into PRO /NEUTRAL / anti hockey stick. Id like to see if he trends down with the warmest climate crowd, and up with the “denier of AGW-CC-CD crowd”
I really hated that Kuwait nuclear winter.
I saw the article and what occurred to me was “A limited, regional nuclear war .. in which each side detonates 50 x 15kt weapons could produce about 5 megatons of black carbon”
um.
My understanding is, roughly 6kg plutonium is used to make a blast of an equivalent of 15kt TNT, so they talk 50 per side = 100, so 600kg plutonium.
where the heck does 5 million tons (Tg) of “black carbon” come from??
ah.. maybe the original pub date might give us a clue ‘Article first
published online: 1 APR 2014’
I believe in Michael Mann made global warming…..and I’m a zombie.
“not for Y <= Z-X"
I figured, in context, Y being a positive integer could be assumed and not have to get pedantic about it.
Err.. value, being an integer is irrelevant 🙂
Neil DeGrasse Tyson can tell us. He is widely cited. Television never lies.
Even during the Medieval Warm Period, there are proxies that show very cold years during that time. Lake Kottajarvi that led to upside-down Mann is one such example. My first attempt at explaining it someone, I said look at this decade, picking one at random. They looked at it and said, yes it is very cold then, what’s your point?
Forget climate for a minute the study fails on the nuclear side. 100 15kt weapons means a total of 1.5 MT in nuclear yield. During the 1950’s and 1960’s over 500 MT of yield was exploded with no nuclear winter.
Also, the study is based on all 100 warheads being ground burst. Air burst has maximum damage so it is a waste to use a ground burst unless you are going for underground complexes or hardened structures. The amount of dirt and debris from an air burst is very low and could never reach their required levels.
So without even getting to the question of if 5 Tg of carbon and it’s impact on climate the study fails because 100 warheads of this yield would never produce that amount of dust. A single ground burst of a 9 MT warhead over Bikini Atoll never created that much carbon so how can 1.5 MT do it?
” Goodmongo says:
July 22, 2014 at 8:56 am
A single ground burst of a 9 MT warhead over Bikini Atoll never created that much carbon so how can 1.5 MT do it?”
Ummm….maybe they are counting on it coming from burning cities?
Anyone know how much soot was put up from the fire-bombing of Dresden during WWII?
I particularly liked the “that Mann is ‘refuted’ only in your particular corner of the rarely-visited edges of the internet” line. The alarmist web sites only dream of getting the traffic this site does.
<J Murphy says:
July 22, 2014 at 3:21 am
Perhaps you might have to acknowledge that Mann is ‘refuted’ only in your particular corner of the rarely-visited edges of the internet, and not in real life or the real world?
What do you personally think of Mann’s Hockey Stick? Are you personally OK with the fact that he omitted 30 years of proxy data while simultaneously replacing it with thermometer data – without mentioning it on the graph, in the paper, or even in response to FOIA requests? Are you OK with that?
I love this link:
https://bb.cgd.ucar.edu/run-scam-cesm
CESM = Community Earth System Model
Well accepted by climate researchers or well respected by mainstream journalists, politicians, UN bureaucrats, climate pimps and climate racketeers?
J Murphy (suggested by Billy Liar to really be M.M.) says: “Mann is ‘refuted’ only in your particular corner of the rarely-visited edges of the internet”
15 minutes after the article is posted YOU arrive in this “rarely-visited” edge!
Goodmongo says: “During the 1950’s and 1960’s over 500 MT of yield was exploded with no nuclear winter.”
Strange that global cooling existed at that same time — a dip between 1930 (warm) and present (warm) — 1970’s were an era of fear of the next ice age.
rgbatduke says: “Note that in two separate years the threshold of 100 atmospheric bombs/year was exceeded, and these were not small bombs — in the 1961/1962 tests the largest bombs ever exploded were set off.”
Producing negligible “black carbon” I suspect. Do it over cities and see what happens.
From Wiki on List of Test – Largest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests
Date (GMT)Yield (Mtons)Deployment Country Test Site Name or Number
23-Oct-61 12.5 air drop Soviet Union Novaya Zemlya Test #123
30-Oct-61 50 parachute air Soviet Union Novaya Zemlya Tsar Bomba, Test #130
5-Aug-62 21.1 air drop Soviet Union Novaya Zemlya Test #147
25-Aug-62 10 air drop Soviet Union Novaya Zemlya Test #158
19-Sep-62 10 air drop Soviet Union Novaya Zemlya Test #168
25-Sep-62 19.1 air drop Soviet Union Novaya Zemlya Test #173
27-Sep-62 20 air drop Soviet Union Novaya Zemlya Test #174
24-Dec-62 24.2 air drop Soviet Union Novaya Zemlya Test #219
166.9 166,900 Kiloton
So the old USSR had a nuclear war with itself and in a little over 14 months air dropped 166,900 Ktons. Where is the data showing the vanished ozone layer? India & Pakistan have 50 nuclear weapons between them??
The real question is do these ‘researchers’ believe no one is alive that remembers these things?
So 100 15kt nuclear detonations – amounting to 1,500kt – will cause all sorts of mayhem to the climate, will they?
Wikipedia’s “List of nuclear weapons tests” indicates that so far there has been a total of 2119 nuclear tests with a total yield of 540,739kt.
Some difference there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests
More alarmist rubbish, in other words.
Don’t these frauds do ANY research before publishing their drivel?
Ah, I forgot, these are “climate scientists” we’re discussing…
I picked up (and read!), those nuke-winter tomes in the ’80s. Even drew circles on maps of Calgary of air blast overpressure for 1, 3 and 6 megaton strikes. Conclusion: we’re screwed. But interesting in a forensic way. Clearly simplistic physics, though. Very linear, minimal moderating influences. Really a Michael Bay look-how-it-all-blows-up drama. Sort of like the Vietnam War narrative of holding the line so the Commies don’t take over the world. Zombie-cool horror imagery but obviously an extreme scenario.
One result was supposed to be high temperatures at altitude that would melt all the alpine glaciers and catastrophically flood the lowlands while everyone down there froze and starved in the dark. That seemed weird: an unstable situation as it is so unlike how the planet operates. And then, once you spotted the first stretcher, as Twain called this stuff, you started a line that was very unpopular.
You couldn’t object to the science without the world jumping down your throat. Smart people – Sagan for one – had done the math. Who the hell are you to have an opinion on such an important subject. It’s for a good cause: nuclear disarmament. Pointing out errors was evidence you were a right-wing, Reagan-loving, military-industrial bastard who tortured small animals for fun.
Sound familiar?
“Knowledge of the impacts of 100 small nuclear weapons…”
“Knowledge”??
Michael2 says: “Strange that global cooling existed at that same time — a dip between 1930 (warm) and present (warm) — 1970’s were an era of fear of the next ice age.”
So is that really your definition of nuclear winter? If so we can sure live with it since we actually did live with it.
Goodmongo says: “So is that really your definition of nuclear winter? If so we can sure live with it since we actually did live with it.”
That’s the spirit! We have lived through Roman Optimums and Little Ice Ages so what’s a degree here and a degree there among humans?
dbstealey says: “Mann’s Hokey Stick has been thoroughly debunked. It is nonsense. Deal with it, sycophant.”
Name calling, tsk tsk.
But until Mann ‘98 paper is withdrawn from Nature — it is not — it will be cited at the same high rate it has always been. I think that is the point that J Murphy (the sycophant) is making.