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Extra details would indeed be interesting. There are known global climate impacts linked to single volcanic events e.g. Tambora in the 19th century, Krakatoa,

by neffy 11y ago

Extra details would indeed be interesting. There are known global climate impacts linked to single volcanic events e.g. Tambora in the 19th century, Krakatoa, etc. "All" you have is START 1, which resulted in an 80% reduction of nuclear weapons. In addition there was a fair amount of behind the scenes assistance from the US in helping clean up the somewhat precipitous situation the USSR left itself in with the nuclear weapons - granted they started removing them months before the collapse. The public debate changed subtly after that report. The folks arguing - as you appear to be - that a nuclear war wouldn't be that big a deal, got a lot quieter. "I’m not afraid of nuclear war. There are 2.7 billion people in the world; it doesn’t matter if some are killed. China has a population of 600 million; even if half of them are killed, there are still 300 million people left." Mao Tse Tung, 1957

hga 11y ago
In short, the study uses a 1 dimensional model of the atmosphere, a particle of soot can go up or down, but there are no winds, no oceans, etc. These models are said to be especially prone to failing hard when given extreme inputs, and the second part is the soot they claimed would be lofted into the air, sizes and quantities, which they did not justify, or justify well (can't remember, it's been decades since I read the paper). Their excuse for using such a model was a lack of computing resources, and they were indeed dear back then. But that made their running a massive propaganda campaign based on this inadequate at best "science" all the worse. Anyway, LLNL, which had serious supercomputer resources for designing nuclear warheads and such, ran 3D simulations with more plausible inputs, and indeed found effects were possible, but they weren't a big deal. Certainly not on the scale of some of the bigger volcanic events. (It's a bit arrogant to automatically humans are so capable of changing the earth that much, especially that quickly; compare, as you do, to events like Tambora.) The folks arguing - as you appear to be - that a nuclear war wouldn't be that big a deal, got a lot quieter. Not that I noticed. Especially since we never argued that, only that it wouldn't be "the end of the world". Maybe we just got more thoroughly ignored by the media, after all, the sainted Carl Sagan was wielding SCIENCE! and we were nobodies. Note Sagan and Turco of the TTAPS team should have been a little more modest when the prospect of Kuwait's oil wells getting set on fire in the first Gulf War came up, their theorizing did not match the reality to soon follow. Of course, to the extent this might be an issue (and even modest effects would be less than welcome in the aftermath of a major nuclear exchange), it made SDI/BMD all the more important, to prevent city busting in the first place....
- neffy 11y ago
  Ah, the infamous Goodyear Balloon Simulation mistake: http://www.gkstill.com/CV/PhD/Chapter4.html http://www.gkstill.com/CV/PhD/Chapter4.html I go two ways on that one. As you point out, on the one hand it is hard to beat Mother Earth when it comes to massive climate impacts, up to and including two eras where the world was a complete snowball, and multiple wipe out of anything bigger than a rodent by asteroids. On the other, the Russians got up to 50Megatons before the test ban treaty kicked in - and while you may wish to argue that a few of those flying around wouldn't be the end of the world - I on the other hand would wonder what would happen if some evil bastard targeted the north pole/greenland with them, thereby changing the albedo of the entire planet. (Yes, I know you couldn't melt the entire glacier, but dump enough soot on it, and I wouldn't want to predict the short term consequences.) I agree the Gulf War thing was entertaining for anybody paying attention. It is more than a little irritating that in so many areas of science, there's no follow-up on prophecies like that. Some kind of this day last year, X predicted Y, which didn't happen would make a fun end of the news item.
  - hga 11y ago
    If they didn't care about fallout, the Tsar Bomba would have had probably twice the yield, by substituting depleted uranium for the lead or whatever that was used for the fusion tampers. What I've read is that, aside from bragging rights, and the occasional extremely hard target like Cheyenne Mountain Complex, somewhere slightly above 1 Mt you reach diminishing returns, because more and more of the energy released radiates out into space (note how "small" the normal size of nuclear warheads is nowadays, several hundred Kt times many and more accurately targeted warheads is generally the way to go). But there's fortunately a lot we don't know about would be planet-busters, so let's not find out any time soon.... As for melting lots of water, you'd probably be better off with the Antarctic ice pack, per Wikipedia it's a order of magnitude larger, or 58 meters of ocean rising vs. a much more manageable 7.2. Dumping soot on any of these would take a trick or three, since nuclear warheads are, if anything, I'm pretty sure way too energetic to directly do the chemistry, but I haven't really thought about it yet. You'd need to create soot upwind, which might be possible for Greenland, but wouldn't it be a trick for either pole? As for directly, if http://www.onlineconversion.com http://www.onlineconversion.com and my use of it is correct, 50 or even 100 Mt, perfectly applied to a cubic mile of ice, wouldn't even come close to melting it, you'd need more than 334 Mt. Mt -> joules and cubic mile -> cubic centimeters are astonishing close to equal, like within 0.4%, and 334 joules are required to convert a cubic centimeter at 0C to water at the same temperature, you got to love hydrogen bonding. Yeah, the Earth is big, and we're pretty puny. If only the bi-coastals who fly over fly-over country were inclined to do math when they looked down....

by neffy 11y ago

hga 11y ago

In short, the study uses a 1 dimensional model of the atmosphere, a particle of soot can go up or down, but there are no winds, no oceans, etc. These models are said to be especially prone to failing hard when given extreme inputs, and the second part is the soot they claimed would be lofted into the air, sizes and quantities, which they did not justify, or justify well (can't remember, it's been decades since I read the paper). Their excuse for using such a model was a lack of computing resources, and they were indeed dear back then. But that made their running a massive propaganda campaign based on this inadequate at best "science" all the worse. Anyway, LLNL, which had serious supercomputer resources for designing nuclear warheads and such, ran 3D simulations with more plausible inputs, and indeed found effects were possible, but they weren't a big deal. Certainly not on the scale of some of the bigger volcanic events. (It's a bit arrogant to automatically humans are so capable of changing the earth that much, especially that quickly; compare, as you do, to events like Tambora.) The folks arguing - as you appear to be - that a nuclear war wouldn't be that big a deal, got a lot quieter. Not that I noticed. Especially since we never argued that, only that it wouldn't be "the end of the world". Maybe we just got more thoroughly ignored by the media, after all, the sainted Carl Sagan was wielding SCIENCE! and we were nobodies. Note Sagan and Turco of the TTAPS team should have been a little more modest when the prospect of Kuwait's oil wells getting set on fire in the first Gulf War came up, their theorizing did not match the reality to soon follow. Of course, to the extent this might be an issue (and even modest effects would be less than welcome in the aftermath of a major nuclear exchange), it made SDI/BMD all the more important, to prevent city busting in the first place....

neffy 11y ago
Ah, the infamous Goodyear Balloon Simulation mistake: http://www.gkstill.com/CV/PhD/Chapter4.html http://www.gkstill.com/CV/PhD/Chapter4.html I go two ways on that one. As you point out, on the one hand it is hard to beat Mother Earth when it comes to massive climate impacts, up to and including two eras where the world was a complete snowball, and multiple wipe out of anything bigger than a rodent by asteroids. On the other, the Russians got up to 50Megatons before the test ban treaty kicked in - and while you may wish to argue that a few of those flying around wouldn't be the end of the world - I on the other hand would wonder what would happen if some evil bastard targeted the north pole/greenland with them, thereby changing the albedo of the entire planet. (Yes, I know you couldn't melt the entire glacier, but dump enough soot on it, and I wouldn't want to predict the short term consequences.) I agree the Gulf War thing was entertaining for anybody paying attention. It is more than a little irritating that in so many areas of science, there's no follow-up on prophecies like that. Some kind of this day last year, X predicted Y, which didn't happen would make a fun end of the news item.
- hga 11y ago
  If they didn't care about fallout, the Tsar Bomba would have had probably twice the yield, by substituting depleted uranium for the lead or whatever that was used for the fusion tampers. What I've read is that, aside from bragging rights, and the occasional extremely hard target like Cheyenne Mountain Complex, somewhere slightly above 1 Mt you reach diminishing returns, because more and more of the energy released radiates out into space (note how "small" the normal size of nuclear warheads is nowadays, several hundred Kt times many and more accurately targeted warheads is generally the way to go). But there's fortunately a lot we don't know about would be planet-busters, so let's not find out any time soon.... As for melting lots of water, you'd probably be better off with the Antarctic ice pack, per Wikipedia it's a order of magnitude larger, or 58 meters of ocean rising vs. a much more manageable 7.2. Dumping soot on any of these would take a trick or three, since nuclear warheads are, if anything, I'm pretty sure way too energetic to directly do the chemistry, but I haven't really thought about it yet. You'd need to create soot upwind, which might be possible for Greenland, but wouldn't it be a trick for either pole? As for directly, if http://www.onlineconversion.com http://www.onlineconversion.com and my use of it is correct, 50 or even 100 Mt, perfectly applied to a cubic mile of ice, wouldn't even come close to melting it, you'd need more than 334 Mt. Mt -> joules and cubic mile -> cubic centimeters are astonishing close to equal, like within 0.4%, and 334 joules are required to convert a cubic centimeter at 0C to water at the same temperature, you got to love hydrogen bonding. Yeah, the Earth is big, and we're pretty puny. If only the bi-coastals who fly over fly-over country were inclined to do math when they looked down....