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Except we know what happens when major cities are fire bombed from World War II, and we know the effects of the much worse 1991 Kuwait oil fires which caused no

Except we know what happens when major cities are fire bombed from World War II, and we know the effects of the much worse 1991 Kuwait oil fires which caused no such effects.

vilhelm_s 9y ago
I think it's not quite so easy. There were many cities bombed in World War II (maybe 60 in Japan and additional ones in Germany), but there were only 5 or 6 firestorms. Similarly, the Kuwait oil fires created a lot of soot, but the plume is isolated to a given point, which causes it to disperse before reaching the stratosphere. The claim is that firestorms in particular would create climate change, because a single city-sized plume could carry the soot much higher than if the city burned and released the same amount of soot in an ordinary fire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestorm#City_firestorms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestorm#City_firestorms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter
- ghostcluster 9y ago
  700 oil wells along with several lakes of oil burned for months in 1991. Many of the same people who projected 'nuclear winter', advanced the same environmental winter projections for the hypothetical fires before the conflict. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Kuwait_wells_in_the_first_Gulf_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Kuwait_wells_in...
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dwringer 9y ago
I don't think we had either climate models or remote sensing capabilities during World War II adequate to assess what climate effects may have resulted from the several firestorms that occurred. The 1991 Kuwait oil fires were apparently projected by some to cause a "petroleum winter", but these models were disputed and many simulations apparently suggested that the particles would not reach the stratosphere (and evidently they did not)[0]. However, it seems that since 1998[1] it has been known that smoke from naturally occurring firestorms (resulting from wildfires) can reach the stratosphere and cause regional climate effects significant enough to alter hemispheric temperature patterns. [0] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-94-011-1685-5_3 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-94-011-1685-... [1] http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006AGUFM.U14A..04F http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006AGUFM.U14A..04F
- ghostcluster 9y ago
  Except Carl Sagan himself was one of the scientists advancing the "petroleum winter effect" in 1991 in the lead up to the gulf conflict, just as he advanced his nuclear winter scenario earlier.
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  - dwringer 9y ago
    If your point is that Carl Sagan may not be the foremost authority on nuclear winter, I think it's already been made (though, that is an interesting catch). I have no ability to speak on that subject, I was merely pointing out that I find it misleading to suggest that firestorms have been shown not to cause climate effects when the opposite is also true in some instances.

Except we know what happens when major cities are fire bombed from World War II, and we know the effects of the much worse 1991 Kuwait oil fires which caused no such effects.

vilhelm_s 9y ago

I think it's not quite so easy. There were many cities bombed in World War II (maybe 60 in Japan and additional ones in Germany), but there were only 5 or 6 firestorms. Similarly, the Kuwait oil fires created a lot of soot, but the plume is isolated to a given point, which causes it to disperse before reaching the stratosphere. The claim is that firestorms in particular would create climate change, because a single city-sized plume could carry the soot much higher than if the city burned and released the same amount of soot in an ordinary fire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestorm#City_firestorms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestorm#City_firestorms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter

ghostcluster 9y ago
700 oil wells along with several lakes of oil burned for months in 1991. Many of the same people who projected 'nuclear winter', advanced the same environmental winter projections for the hypothetical fires before the conflict. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Kuwait_wells_in_the_first_Gulf_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Kuwait_wells_in...
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dwringer 9y ago

I don't think we had either climate models or remote sensing capabilities during World War II adequate to assess what climate effects may have resulted from the several firestorms that occurred. The 1991 Kuwait oil fires were apparently projected by some to cause a "petroleum winter", but these models were disputed and many simulations apparently suggested that the particles would not reach the stratosphere (and evidently they did not)[0]. However, it seems that since 1998[1] it has been known that smoke from naturally occurring firestorms (resulting from wildfires) can reach the stratosphere and cause regional climate effects significant enough to alter hemispheric temperature patterns. [0] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-94-011-1685-5_3 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-94-011-1685-... [1] http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006AGUFM.U14A..04F http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006AGUFM.U14A..04F

ghostcluster 9y ago
Except Carl Sagan himself was one of the scientists advancing the "petroleum winter effect" in 1991 in the lead up to the gulf conflict, just as he advanced his nuclear winter scenario earlier.
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- dwringer 9y ago
  If your point is that Carl Sagan may not be the foremost authority on nuclear winter, I think it's already been made (though, that is an interesting catch). I have no ability to speak on that subject, I was merely pointing out that I find it misleading to suggest that firestorms have been shown not to cause climate effects when the opposite is also true in some instances.