Left: The Atlantic's climate genius Robinson Meyer. Fair Use, Low Resolution Image to Identify the Subject. Right: 23Kt Badger Test Shot detonated April 18 1953 in Nevada

The Atlantic: Even a Minor Nuclear War would be a Climate Problem

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

h/t Breitbart; Atlantic contributor Robinson Meyer mentions all the dead people and wrecked cities, before progressing on to discussing important climate consequences.

On Top of Everything Else, Nuclear War Would Be a Climate Problem

Even a “minor” skirmish would wreck the planet.

By Robinson Meyer
MARCH 10, 2022

When we talk about what causes climate change, we usually talk about oil and gas, coal and cars, and—just generally—energy policy. There’s a good reason for this. Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide, which enters the atmosphere, warms the climate, and … you know the drill. The more fossil fuels you burn, the worse climate change gets. That’s why, a couple of years ago, I spent a lot of time covering the Trump administration’s attempt to weaken the country’s fuel-economy standards. It was an awful policy, one that would have led to more oil consumption for decades to come. If pressed, I would have said that it had a single-digit-percentage chance of creating an uninhabitable climate system.

But energy is not the only domain that has a direct bearing on whether we have a livable climate or not. So does foreign policy—specifically, nuclear war.

Consider a one-megaton nuke, reportedly the size of a warhead on a modern Russian intercontinental ballistic missile. (Warheads on U.S. ICBMs can be even larger.) A detonation of a bomb that size would, within about a four-mile radius, produce winds equal to those in a Category 5 hurricane, immediately flattening buildings, knocking down power lines, and triggering gas leaks. Anyone within seven miles of the detonation would suffer third-degree burns, the kind that sear and blister flesh. These conditions—and note that I have left out the organ-destroying effects of radiation—would rapidly turn an eight-mile blast radius into a zone of total human misery. But only at this moment of the war do the climate consequences truly begin.

This is not the first time WUWT has commented on Robinson Meyer’s work.

Babylon Bee was quick to respond (h/t Breitbart).

Media personality Buck Sexton was also impressed.

Not much I can add to those responses, other than, whatever you are smoking Robinson Meyer, you should maybe consider cutting back a little.

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March 14, 2022 9:42 am

The art of buffoonery has no limits.

Neo
March 14, 2022 9:44 am

Regional nuclear war could trigger global cooling and famine
Even a limited nuclear conflict could spark “unprecedented climate change,” U.S. government scientists warn.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/110223-nuclear-war-winter-global-warming-environment-science-climate-change
Published February 23, 2011

Even a regional nuclear war could spark “unprecedented” global cooling and reduce rainfall for years, according to U.S. government computer models.
Widespread famine and disease would likely follow, experts speculate.

Reply to  Neo
March 14, 2022 2:45 pm

comment image

ResourceGuy
March 14, 2022 9:57 am

Show this to Putin since he views this nonsense as the basis for his invasion and weakness in the West. He may want to expand the campaign.

Old.George
March 14, 2022 10:42 am

There ain’t no such thing as a “minor” nuclear war. As meaningful as only a “little bit” pregnant.

March 14, 2022 11:08 am

Nuclear war is probably 100- rimes less frightening than most people think. It the heat and blast dont get you, you will probably survive without radiation poisoning. Nuclear winter is pure fantasy. And if it happened that half the world that burns oil gor wiped out and te world got colder, well that is what greens want, innit?

March 14, 2022 11:14 am

“Genius” may be relative to the demonstrated mediocrity of consensus climate scientists. From Steve McIntyre:

“In my opinion, most climate scientists on the Team would have been high school teachers in an earlier generation – if they were lucky. ”

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/04/quote-of-the-week-high-school-climate-science/

Meyers has been called a genius! His article is garden variety dummy class. A true genius’s mind could not be circumscribed by this already falsified construct (50 failed predictions and no successful ones, models running “a way too hot and we don’t know why” …). If a genius were to take up this science, he would without question make his own major contribution, not just holus bolus swallow the whole thing.

March 14, 2022 11:15 am

If millions of people suddenly left the earth in a nuclear war, then they would no longer be able to release CO2 into the atmosphere.

Since it is only human released CO2 from sequestered fossil carbon that is what causes climate tipping points, why would an immediate reduction in these releases be bad for the climate?

I don’t think Robinson Meyer has thought this through enough.

ResourceGuy
March 14, 2022 12:03 pm

Here is one back at the English majors.

If a nuclear blast damaged tree falls in a burned forest with no one around, does it make a sound?

ResourceGuy
March 14, 2022 12:15 pm

Make that the Russian Space Station after they bring this astronaut back.

US astronaut to ride Russian spacecraft home during tensions – ABC News (go.com)

Tom Abbott
Reply to  ResourceGuy
March 15, 2022 5:03 am

Musk can reach the space station. The Russians no longer have a monopoly on taking people to orbit.

I think the Russians may move their space operations over to the Chicom space station.

AWG
March 14, 2022 1:53 pm

These psychopaths are far more concerned about hypothetical climate alterations and couldn’t care less about human death and misery.

Allen Stoner
March 14, 2022 3:21 pm

Mt Saint Helens was 24 megatons and was barely a blip on the line for the global climate line…

Really tired of the scare everyone stuff. A minor nuclear war will be less that barely a blip on the global climate.

What it will be is a massacre of those who have taken the mRNA vaccines who will die by the hundreds of millions and those who do not die quickly will jam our hospitals well past the point of uselessness.

The vaccines damage the immune system, specifically the parts that fight cancer.

Clawmute
March 14, 2022 5:45 pm

Meh . . . SCIENCE tells us that Mother Earth will reach a tipping point in 2010 . . . or 2012 . . . or whenever. So what difference will it make if we have a nuclear war in 2021?

OH! WAIT!

March 14, 2022 7:56 pm

Hadley center has introduced another average global temperature report; HadCRUT5. The calculated human contribution to warming since 1909 remains at about 63%. The human contribution is from increased water vapor. The method is documented at http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com

aintsm sine H5 1850 to2021.jpg
Tom Abbott
Reply to  Dan Pangburn
March 15, 2022 5:05 am

What a joke!

Reply to  Tom Abbott
March 15, 2022 4:25 pm

The joke or perhaps travesty is that so many people have been falsely indoctrinated to believe that planet warming has been significantly contributed to by the rising CO2. It is easy to calculate the water vapor increase from temperature increase and show that the measured WV is substantially greater.

TPW meas & calc H5 &5 29 RH thru Dec 2021 6.7 pc FB.jpg
roaddog
March 14, 2022 8:31 pm

So, nuclear war would unquestionably kill billions, but Robinson Meyer has far greater concern over entirely theoretical Climate Change which might threaten a far lesser number of people.

Yeah, Moron.

roaddog
Reply to  roaddog
March 14, 2022 8:36 pm

I really don’t think the percentage of lunatics in the population is today any higher than its ever been; but today they all have megaphones.

Clay Sanborn
March 14, 2022 9:44 pm

One Megaton – peanuts. On Oct, 1961, the 500 MegaTon Soviet Tsar Bomba aerial Hydrogen bomb was detonated inside the Arctic Circle of Russia. The scientists got leadership to ratchet back from 1000 Megatons, which was possible.
Video here: https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=1310
Article here: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a33797319/tsar-bomba-nuclear-explosion-russia-new-video/

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Clay Sanborn
March 15, 2022 5:06 am

That’s a big bomba!

Tom Abbott
March 15, 2022 3:02 am

From the article: “When we talk about what causes climate change, we usually talk about oil and gas, coal and cars, and—just generally—energy policy. There’s a good reason for this. Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide, which enters the atmosphere, warms the climate, and … you know the drill. The more fossil fuels you burn, the worse climate change gets.”

Yes, we know the drill: You, and other alarmists claim CO2/fossil fuels cause the Earth’s climate to change, yet there is no evidence to back up this claim. It is just an unsubstantiated asserion/assumption.

Mr. Meyer couldn’t prove humans cause the climate to change if his life depended on doing so. Mr. Meyer has partaken of the Climate Change Koolaide. If Mr. Meyer would look a little deeper, he would see he is on very shaky ground when claiming he knows what CO2 will do in the Earth’s atmosphere. He doesn’t know, he just thinks he knows. And then he proceeds to mislead the public with his unsubstantiated take on things.

True Believers are such a pain.

March 15, 2022 2:44 pm

I’m not in favor a minor nuclear war.
However, I have to wonder what would the difference on “the climate” from a “minor nuclear war” and the decades of testing nuclear weapons in the past?
What do they claim all those tests did to the climate?

CapitalistRoader
March 15, 2022 5:32 pm

A detonation of a bomb that size would, within about a four-mile radius, produce winds equal to that of President Biden’s long, loud fart while speaking with the Duchess of Cornwall at the COP26 summit.

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