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Thank you for the links. I'll have to read your articles very closely later, but recent climate simulations by Alan Robock at Rutgers and analysis by Ira Helfan
by SapphireSun 9y ago
Thank you for the links. I'll have to read your articles very closely later, but recent climate simulations by Alan Robock at Rutgers and analysis by Ira Helfand at IPPNW and others show that a nuclear autumn, created by 100 15-kT (Hiroshima sized) nukes could cause a famine that affects up to 2B people.
I wrote to Dr. Robock and asked him about his model (explicitly on the record, so I'm not disclosing a private conversation). I asked specifically why did the Iraq oil well fires from the Gulf War not inject soot into the stratosphere and cause climatic effects. He wrote back that the difference lies in the formation of firestorms. I draw from this by implication that he believes there remains enough combustable material to start a firestorm in enough places to matter. It's worth noting that while cities have changed a lot, a firestorm did develop in one of the two Japanese cities bombed. I'll have more to say about this in a month or so once I do more research and review your materials.
Here's a link to some of their work: http://ippnw.org/nuclear-famine.html http://ippnw.org/nuclear-famine.html
- randyrand 9y ago> affects up to 2B people "Affects." Saying it affects 2B people without saying how much means very little. The tailpipe emissions from my single car family affect 7B+ people, just very slightly. I think we should start with lives lost as an easy to understand measure. Thanks for linking the source.
- SapphireSun 9y agoI agree with your criticism. We'll have to read the paper to find out what that means. ;)
- SapphireSun 9y agoI dug up the correspondence. Here's what Dr. Robock said. Again, I explicitly asked permission to quote him. Here's the relevant excerpt. Me: "I understand that you've conducted 100 Hiroshima simulations that describe a nuclear autumn that could lead to mass starvation. Is it known where the crossover point is located between deaths due to direct effects and incidental effects of nuclear war? Furthermore, is this even a useful question to ask?" Dr. Robock: "We simulated one case of an India-Pakistan nuclear war. We estimated 20,000,000 direct casualties, and Ira estimated 1,000,000,000 to 2,000,000,000 indirect deaths. We have a new project to do much better jobs of investigating more credible scenarios and quantifying the impacts on agriculture and food availability." I'd recommend digging into the paper for more info. Probably in a month or two, I'll have an article that explores this question based on available credible sources in more depth. He has a TEDx talk here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsrEk1oZ-54 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsrEk1oZ-54 EDIT: added TEDx link
- randyrand 9y agoThanks!
- nabla9 9y agoThese estimates look only cities and their fuel loading. It would be interesting to see how California would manage during dry 'fire season' if nuclear bombardment caused massive forest fires all over the place. If large fires create massive combined updraft it could be a global catastrophe. We already know that large-area wildfires sometimes cause firestorms that throw soot into the stratosphere.
- flukus 9y ago> I draw from this by implication that he believes there remains enough combustable material to start a firestorm in enough places to matter Well recently the world has learned just how combustible many buildings are (Grenfell Towers) because they are covered in flammable cladding. We might not have a lot of wood construction anymore, but we've moved on from the concrete jungle as well.