4 ms·

Global food insecurity due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection

48 points by Luc 4y ago

Loughla 4y ago
I don't understand, honestly, why this is a new study. I thought the fallout (hah!) from a nuclear war was known to be catastrophic to the planet. That's why everyone is so hesitant to use them (on top of MAD). What about this study is new? Is it the scientific detailing and modeling?
- sudosysgen 4y ago
  There has recently been people disputing the scale or probability of nuclear winter, so this is relevant and useful.
- mjreacher 4y ago
  There's mixed scientific consensus on the full impact of nuclear winter. This paper shows evidence that it would be really bad (in the sense of several billion dead).
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    As I understand it, the contention with the nuclear winter hypothesis is not whether a ton of soot in the atmosphere would wreck the climate, but rather whether a nuclear war would actually loft that amount of soot into the stratosphere.
    - 20after4 4y ago
      And this study suggests it would, in fact, loft a lot of soot into the stratosphere.
      - MichaelCollins 4y ago
        To my reading, no. That's not the question the study is addressing. The study is examining the climate impact of six soot-injection scenarios, not the premise of soot injection itself. It cites other papers (some modern, some from the 80s) to justify the six soot-injection scenarios considered, but this study is about applying climate models to those scenarios.
dieselgate 4y ago
oh jeez guess that's one reason out of many why they call it mutually assured destruction
photochemsyn 4y ago
Fires have to generate a massive updraft to punch into the stratosphere, and this is well-known in major volcanic eruptions like Pinatubo, but it looks like recent evidence shows this is entirely plausible: > "Recent catastrophic forest fires in Canada in 2017 and Australia in 2019 and 2020 produced 0.3–1 Tg of smoke (0.006–0.02 Tg soot), which was subsequently heated by sunlight and lofted high in the stratosphere. The smoke was transported around the world and lasted for many months. This adds confidence to our simulations that predict the same process would occur after nuclear war." Also, if the world's major nuclear reactors, spent fuel rods pods, and dry cask waste storage were targeted with nuclear weapons, there'd be massive radioactive fallout on top of everything else.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  > massive radioactive fallout on top of everything else. You get plenty of fallout with the weapons themselves unless they're exclusively air-bursts. By the time the primary targets like air fields, military command centres, missile silos , and the cities and other infrastructure have all been hit, enough nuclear weapons have been detonated to kill more or less everyone on the planet. The SIOP contained tens of thousands of targets.
makerofspoons 4y ago
Owen B. Toon is famously one of the T's in the groundbreaking TTAPS paper. It's credited with bringing the idea of nuclear winter into the public consciousness, alongside co-author Carl Sagan's article in Parade which made the topic more accessible.
comrad 4y ago
Next they find out that capitalism exploits the masses and the planet and only benefit the few.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  with the current crop of neoliberals, I wouldn't hold by breath
- ketanmaheshwari 4y ago
  how is this point relevant to the current discussion and topic of the thread?
mariojv 4y ago
I think I remember reading somewhere that the US government hired firms during the Cold War - maybe RAND - to do game theoretic analyses of strategic nuclear defense. I'd be curious if there are any summaries of this historical research or new game theoretic analyses happening with today's events and the advent of hypersonic capabilities. Terrifying stuff.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  No not really. They don't make a difference. What could make a difference is whether or not the old Soviet nukes have actually been maintained and actually work. Not something one wants to test but it would make for some great sci fi to imagine the missiles launch, everyone clenches their butthole, and when everything's over, Russia is a crater in the ground and the west is fine. edit: for reference hypersonic missiles tend to refer to the shorter range stuff. All the ICBMs of old were already hypersonic.
  - credit_guy 4y ago
    It is actually very likely that Russia's nuclear weapons are fine. CIA thinks [1] that they are conducting hydronuclear tests, i.e. nuclear tests where the yield is small enough to not turn the bomb into a plasma or a gas, but just to liquefy the plutonium pit. [1] https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2019/08/08/yes_the_russians_are_testing_nuclear_weapons_and_it_is_very_important_114651.html https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2019/08/08/yes_the...
    - mjreacher 4y ago
      That's a very interesting article, I'm surprised it doesn't seem to be more widely known.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  In the movie "Dr Strangelove", it's never mentioned, but General Buck Turgidson is seen carrying around a binder with the title "World Targets in Megadeaths". I assume that's a reference to those kinds of studies. It's a really great movie and a good distillation of how absurd the whole Cold War was.
aaron695 4y ago

48 points by Luc 4y ago

I don't understand, honestly, why this is a new study. I thought the fallout (hah!) from a nuclear war was known to be catastrophic to the planet. That's why everyone is so hesitant to use them (on top of MAD). What about this study is new? Is it the scientific detailing and modeling?

sudosysgen 4y ago
There has recently been people disputing the scale or probability of nuclear winter, so this is relevant and useful.
mjreacher 4y ago
There's mixed scientific consensus on the full impact of nuclear winter. This paper shows evidence that it would be really bad (in the sense of several billion dead).
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  As I understand it, the contention with the nuclear winter hypothesis is not whether a ton of soot in the atmosphere would wreck the climate, but rather whether a nuclear war would actually loft that amount of soot into the stratosphere.
  - 20after4 4y ago
    And this study suggests it would, in fact, loft a lot of soot into the stratosphere.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      To my reading, no. That's not the question the study is addressing. The study is examining the climate impact of six soot-injection scenarios, not the premise of soot injection itself. It cites other papers (some modern, some from the 80s) to justify the six soot-injection scenarios considered, but this study is about applying climate models to those scenarios.

dieselgate 4y ago

oh jeez guess that's one reason out of many why they call it mutually assured destruction

photochemsyn 4y ago

Fires have to generate a massive updraft to punch into the stratosphere, and this is well-known in major volcanic eruptions like Pinatubo, but it looks like recent evidence shows this is entirely plausible: > "Recent catastrophic forest fires in Canada in 2017 and Australia in 2019 and 2020 produced 0.3–1 Tg of smoke (0.006–0.02 Tg soot), which was subsequently heated by sunlight and lofted high in the stratosphere. The smoke was transported around the world and lasted for many months. This adds confidence to our simulations that predict the same process would occur after nuclear war." Also, if the world's major nuclear reactors, spent fuel rods pods, and dry cask waste storage were targeted with nuclear weapons, there'd be massive radioactive fallout on top of everything else.

adhesive_wombat 4y ago
> massive radioactive fallout on top of everything else. You get plenty of fallout with the weapons themselves unless they're exclusively air-bursts. By the time the primary targets like air fields, military command centres, missile silos , and the cities and other infrastructure have all been hit, enough nuclear weapons have been detonated to kill more or less everyone on the planet. The SIOP contained tens of thousands of targets.

makerofspoons 4y ago

Owen B. Toon is famously one of the T's in the groundbreaking TTAPS paper. It's credited with bringing the idea of nuclear winter into the public consciousness, alongside co-author Carl Sagan's article in Parade which made the topic more accessible.

comrad 4y ago

Next they find out that capitalism exploits the masses and the planet and only benefit the few.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
with the current crop of neoliberals, I wouldn't hold by breath
ketanmaheshwari 4y ago
how is this point relevant to the current discussion and topic of the thread?

mariojv 4y ago

I think I remember reading somewhere that the US government hired firms during the Cold War - maybe RAND - to do game theoretic analyses of strategic nuclear defense. I'd be curious if there are any summaries of this historical research or new game theoretic analyses happening with today's events and the advent of hypersonic capabilities. Terrifying stuff.

spywaregorilla 4y ago
No not really. They don't make a difference. What could make a difference is whether or not the old Soviet nukes have actually been maintained and actually work. Not something one wants to test but it would make for some great sci fi to imagine the missiles launch, everyone clenches their butthole, and when everything's over, Russia is a crater in the ground and the west is fine. edit: for reference hypersonic missiles tend to refer to the shorter range stuff. All the ICBMs of old were already hypersonic.
- credit_guy 4y ago
  It is actually very likely that Russia's nuclear weapons are fine. CIA thinks [1] that they are conducting hydronuclear tests, i.e. nuclear tests where the yield is small enough to not turn the bomb into a plasma or a gas, but just to liquefy the plutonium pit. [1] https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2019/08/08/yes_the_russians_are_testing_nuclear_weapons_and_it_is_very_important_114651.html https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2019/08/08/yes_the...
  - mjreacher 4y ago
    That's a very interesting article, I'm surprised it doesn't seem to be more widely known.
hotpotamus 4y ago
In the movie "Dr Strangelove", it's never mentioned, but General Buck Turgidson is seen carrying around a binder with the title "World Targets in Megadeaths". I assume that's a reference to those kinds of studies. It's a really great movie and a good distillation of how absurd the whole Cold War was.

aaron695 4y ago