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Alarming point was, permafrost has as much of carbon as our atmosphere. Once they thaw, the temperature skyrockets. I think at this point, we might need to de
by Ygg2 10y ago
Alarming point was, permafrost has as much of carbon as our atmosphere.
Once they thaw, the temperature skyrockets.
I think at this point, we might need to detonate some hydrogen bombs, just to even out the temperature.
- mirimir 10y agoIt's not nuclear explosions that cause cooling. It's the firestorms that they cause. So that would be a painful strategy. However, I suppose that it's possible to build devices that created SOX. The hard part would be minimizing the radionuclides.
- Cieplak 10y ago> The hard part would be minimizing the radionuclides. Not necessarily. Tsar Bomba, the highest yield device ever detonated, was also among the cleanest because they tampered the third stage with lead instead of U-238.
- M_Grey 10y agoIt was cleaner than their original design, but still a wildly dirty, and stupidly inefficient device.
- dsfyu404ed 10y ago> stupidly inefficient device. Any idiot can say that in 2017. In 1967 you'd have to special kind of idiot to discount it as ineffective.
- M_Grey 10y agoNo, idiots are still impressed by big explosions. There's a reason it was scaled down from 100 MT, and even then it was known to be a waste, it used no new tech, was not practically deliverable, and oh yes... much of the blast energy just shot up and out into the stratosphere. How useful. It was designed to be a political statement as part of Cold War politics, and it was known by even its designers then that it was a silly fucking thing to be doing. To be honest, most nuclear testing by that point fell into the, "Silly fucking thing to be doing category..." but idiots still haven't figured that out.
- mirimir 10y agoIf they'd had a Pacific test site, they might well have gone with 100 MT.
- M_Grey 10y agoI suspect that you're right, although I hope that sanity might have prevailed. It's hard to imagine the damage the uranium liner + 50 megatons would have done to that ecosystem. Of course if the US hadn't been experiencing so much political upheaval, they might have tried responding in kind.
- mirimir 10y agoSanity ;) The global nuclear arsenal is still over 2500 MT, I bet :(
- ourmandave 10y agoI wish the North Koreans would get that memo.
- M_Grey 10y agoThe sad fact is that they kind of are the exception to that rule. Kind of. They actually need to test to develop their weapons, and they want the weapons to ensure continuity of their regime, but also to sell the tech (probably). It's a pretty evil/batshit thing to be doing I grant you, but... if they want nukes despite that, they at least need to test. The crazy bastards.
- hueving 10y agoIt was so large there was no feasible way to even transport such a device other than maybe building it on a suicide ship. It was purely a dick measuring contest at that point.
- flukus 10y ago> It was so large there was no feasible way to even transport such a device other than maybe building it on a suicide ship. Why is that not feasible? If they could get it on a submarine they could detonate in most of the worlds major cities.
- M_Grey 10y agoMost of the world's major cities are not under water AFAIK.
- vidarh 10y agoNo, but most of the largest cities are coastal, and you are somewhat more likely to get into a harbour with a hostile sub than with a hostile warship.
- M_Grey 10y agoI really doubt that. I can't imagine that the US and the UK for example, don't have sonar networks and other means to detect subs. It might be nearly impossible to track a boomer in open ocean, but they're not designed for littoral operations and sonar networks are much more effective there. You also have to cope with an airforce and patrolling navy. All in all, you're mostly likely to nuke the nearby ocean, rendering it mostly a radiological/environmental weapon. When you consider that you can far more easily launch a combined 100MT in smaller payloads, with a higher resulting degree of destruction than a single 100MT warhead...
- vidarh 10y agoThe key phrase being "somewhat more likely". I'm not arguing effectiveness. I was arguing against the "not under water" bit, after the person you responded to suggested a sub over a ship.
- mirimir 10y agoSorry, I wasn't clear. I meant that it would be hard to design a device that released lots of SOX without also releasing lots of radioactive stuff. The simplest idea is an S-32 "casing". The good thing is that S-35 is the most stable sulfur isotope, with a half-life of 87.4 days. But I don't know what other products would be.
- M_Grey 10y agoChlorine. Just Chlorine.
- mirimir 10y agoSo you get normal Cl-35 from S-35 by beta decay. Can you get Cl-36 from S-32 by neutron capture?
- M_Grey 10y agoActually you get 32-Phosporous from that. If you want 36-Cl you need cosmic rays interacting with 36-Ar, 39-K, 40-Ca, or neutron activation of 35-Cl.
- mirimir 10y agoDoh. S-32 + n -> P-32 + p And then P-32 decays back to S-32 with ~14 day half-life. I wonder if people are working on this. It'd be a minor tweak to nuclear weapons models.
- richchurcher 10y ago> As more permafrost thaws, more and more carbon is exposed to microbes. The microbes consume the carbon, producing methane and carbon dioxide as waste products. These greenhouse gases are then released into the atmosphere, accelerating warming further. Yeah, the amount of sequestered carbon that could be released is concerning.
- pvaldes 10y agoConifers returning to the area could be our allies in this
- JBiserkov 10y agoAlso, the permafrost contains lots of methane which is a much more effective (bad) greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Global_warming_potential https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Global_warming_...
- M_Grey 10y agoFlailing attempts at geoengineering will come later, after it becomes clear to even the thickest person that we're desperately screwed.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- beedogs 10y agoAnd, shortly thereafter, mass extinction of the human race and most other multicellular life.
- M_Grey 10y agoProbably, yes. It's looking more and more like 'The Great Filter' hypothesis is valid, and the filter is in our relatively near future. That said, I'm sure tardigrades, bacteria, plenty of fungi and the like won't even notice.
- adrianN 10y agoThe planet has been warmer in the past and supported multicellular life.
- senorjazz 10y agoThat isn't quite the same as the human race with it's current standard of living is it. "don't worry everyone, there will still be slime in the seas"
- hueving 10y agoWill they? It seems it would just trigger migrations inland away from rising sea levels. The significant improvements in agricultural technology over the last 100 years likely means it wouldn't significantly impact the ability to grow food in countries rich enough to have the ability to geoengineer in this manner, so it might not happen.
- 10y ago
- pavel_lishin 10y agoWouldn't it make more sense to launch solar shields into orbit?
- flukus 10y agoYes, but that's beyond our capabilities, nukes aren't.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoWe've got launch capability, and we've launched solar sails before.
- flukus 10y agoNow we've got to launch either a really massive solar sail or a lot of small ones. And they've got to be really massive or have enough fuel to maintain position.
- Retric 10y agoYou could setup the shield around Lagrange point 1 which has the advantage of not creating noticeable rings around the earth. This does not reduce material needed by all that much, but it does prevent kessler syndrome as your sunshade breaks down. However, a much cheaper option is simply cover large regions of the earth with a reflective coating. Between those extremes are things like hot air balloons in the upper atmosphere.
- M_Grey 10y agoOr you know, polluting with vast quantities of SOX. You're dreaming too big, and not dirty or dumb enough.
- macintux 10y agoI can't begin to imagine the difference in scale here. Perhaps a solar sail a few million times larger than all the solar sails we've ever launched, combined?