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.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
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?…….”
Yes, I’m sure that Mann is frequently cited, though some climate scientists have a pretty low opinion of him.
As for reality: it has been repeatedly demonstrated that Mann’s method generates perfect hockey sticks from random data. He must be aware of this but he has not retracted his paper. He is therefore a scientific fraud. And as for his tricks which enabled him to invert data to get the desired result….
The fact that Mann still gets awards etc shows the depths that climate science has descended to.
Chris
Doh!
“Chris Wright says:
July 23, 2014 at 3:09 am
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?…….”
Yes, I’m sure that Mann is frequently cited, though some climate scientists have a pretty low opinion of him.”
Don’t forget to include ‘citing to refute’ in the totals…
“…in your particular corner of the rarely-visited edges of the internet,”
Isn’t this the most visited site in the world on climate change?
This site located on the “edge” only if the world is flat
Many of you have mentioned Carl Sagan and the ‘nuclear winter’ theory he was pushing in order to persuade the west to unilaterally disarm ourselves from nuclear weapons, even if the Soviet Union kept theirs.
I liked Sagan at first, then gradually came to the realization that he was a phony. Almost every time he appeared on the news or on talk shows, he would throw his anti-nuclear or anti-military views into the discussion. He was on Nightline or some other late night talk show, discussing Halley’s comet’s flyby in 1986. He was complaining that the USA was not sending a space probe out to examine the comet and that we could have funded one for the price of ‘just one B-1 bomber’! I think that space exploration is great but complaining about military spending is pointless because the two are apples and oranges. And there’s no guarantee that even if we cut military spending by the price of one B-1 bomber, that it wouldn’t be spent on something else instead of space exploration. More likely, it would go towards more perks for congressmen or more bureaucrats for the Dept of HHS.
His entire ‘nuclear winter’ scenario was merely a red herring for his political views. If he were still alive today, he would be one of the leading proponents of AGW, in prominence somewhere near Hansen or Mann.
I see this more and more. Warmists completely ignore the specifics with respect to the construction of the Hockey Stick. They simply state that he hasn’t been condemned by his own . . . yet. That speaks volumes.
Am I slow or what? Now I get it. The watermelon people want nukes dropped because it will solve 2 problems at once. First, it will get rid of those pesky humans causing global warming. Second, a nuclear winter will halt that runaway warming in its tracks making the planet habitable again. What a solution!!!! ( Sarcasm of course, but nonetheless, people sit around and discuss such things. Wishing they could come back as a virus to wipe out mankind. Who said that?…. There are some scary people on this planet)
Why does this matter? Do you want to comment on the specific construction of Mann’s Hockey Stick?
McCown
Nuclear winter is not caused by nuclear explosion but by firestorm that may follow the nuclear or conventional TNT explosions. But I doubt the nuclear winter theory because black carbon is an aerosol and aerosols don’t stay 30 years in the atmosphere. It may affect the climate for 2 or 3 years. Being solid particles, black carbon eventually fall to the ground by gravity. If not, with all the dusts being blown to the air every day, we will be in an ice age.
Dr. Strangelove says:
July 23, 2014 at 7:42 pm
McCown
Nuclear winter is not caused by nuclear explosion but by firestorm that may follow the nuclear or conventional TNT explosions.
That is my understanding. Sagan was claiming the fires ignited at oil & gas wells would be a major cause of the particulate matter in the air. However, during the first Persian Gulf war, the Iraqis ignited many of the wells in Kuwait as they retreated and there was little effect on weather.