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Yeah, arguably the war in Ukraine is teaching everyone who is listening that nobody is willing to be the first to use nukes and destroy the planet, which means

Yeah, arguably the war in Ukraine is teaching everyone who is listening that nobody is willing to be the first to use nukes and destroy the planet, which means that nuclear powers can actually fight wars--which is incredibly dangerous, of course.

mullingitover 2mo ago
My takeaway is that Russia, China's vassal, wanted to use nukes and China told them they can't[1]. I don't believe Russia really cares about the rest of the planet. At the same time, China doesn't care if Russia gets a bloody nose on Putin's little vanity project and realizes a nuclear war is bad for their mercantile economy. [1] https://www.politico.eu/article/volodymyr-zelenskyy-china-urged-vladimir-putin-not-use-nuclear-weapons-in-ukraine/ https://www.politico.eu/article/volodymyr-zelenskyy-china-ur...
- toyg 2mo ago
  This coming from the leader of the other country in a war... I mean, I do find it credible that Xi might have told Putin to think very hard before doing something extremely stupid, but from there to stating that Russia is "China's vassal" and will do whatever they're told by a party who has long been a direct competitor (China and Russia have been solid "frenemies" for a long time, pushing very different views of what "real socialism" looks like)... It's a big jump.
  - mullingitover 2mo ago
    The Soviet Union's relationship with China was more of a peer rivalry situation. The Russian relationship with China is nowhere near parity. Russia would fold tomorrow if China withdrew their backing and went along with the US/EU sanctions. So Russia is only able to prosecute their war with China's permission. When your foreign policy is decided by another power, that's the textbook definition of a vassal.
    - toyg 2mo ago
      It's not a binary choice between material support and sanctions, there are plenty of intermediate states. I think you are being hyperbolic again. And I disagree that USSR and PRC were just "rival peers". Rival peers would be UK/US (at least until Suez), or UK/FR until the 90s. USSR and PRC actively fought each other and almost started a nuclear war; that's way beyond "peer rivalry", that's actual direct competition.
      - mullingitover 2mo ago
        Regardless, Russia is far weaker today then when it was in the USSR, and China is far stronger than what it was when it was getting into shoving matches with the USSR. It's relegated to a chess piece China can move around without much thought.
roncesvalles 2mo ago
Nukes don't "destroy the planet", they're just really powerful bombs. Nuclear munitions have been detonated 2058 times already. https://www.atomicarchive.com/almanac/test-sites/testing-chronology.html https://www.atomicarchive.com/almanac/test-sites/testing-chr...
- pvaldes 2mo ago
  Living systems actively regulate water, stabilize soils, moderate heat, absorb shocks, reduce flood peaks, buffer storm surge, sustain food systems, support biodiversity, protect public health, and preserve the ecological conditions that make human communities viable Ecosystem resilience is based in the so called natural buffers. They are a product of the interactions between life beings. Imagine the life bar in a videogame. A natural buffer is like a 4-D life bar, where each character actualize their life bars at the same time. You lose some life and your friends will change their energy automatically to fix your health bar, Is paid with energy but also needs some "time currency". With healthy buffers, even big impacts in an ecosystem are absorbed and the system returns to the initial situation again and again. But it has a coast in the buffer. The life bar gets shorter. When the buffer is spent, the system is not 'elastic' anymore. At this moment the danger is extreme, but the warnings are subtle or none. Just further impacts, even tiny impacts, on the ecosystem cause a total, devastating and irrevocable collapse that may extend over several years and can't be stopped. Is unclear if we had crossed this line yet. The life has recovered from huge collapses at a planetary level five times yet, but it needed millions of years for that. Just because we had luck before, does not mean that we will have luck forever.
- dualvariable 2mo ago
  Cause civilizational collapse then. And of those nuclear tests, 528 were above ground, and only 200-300 of them were probably true airbursts. And all of them were in areas like atolls, deserts, and Arctic tundra where nothing burns. Their climate impact was near zero because they caused no fires and no dust, and they were spread out over 35 years. That is different from thousands of detonations in an afternoon causing raging fires all over the globe. Estimates are that it would generate around 150 billion kg of stratospheric soot. For comparison, yearly generation is around 7-8 billion kg of soot, generally confined to the troposphere and therefore rains out fairly quickly. A nuclear exchange would produce 20 years of soot and dump it into the stratosphere, above the rain. The largest pulses of soot that we've ever observed are the 2019 Australian megafires and the Canadian 2023 fires. These were roughly less than or equal to 1 billion kg and produced measurable climate effects that lasted months. A full nuclear exchange would likely produce -10C of global cooling in its immediate aftermath, which would be catastrophic to agriculture and civilization. It would stabilize on the order of decades, but there would be a lot fewer humans in the world.

mullingitover 2mo ago

My takeaway is that Russia, China's vassal, wanted to use nukes and China told them they can't[1]. I don't believe Russia really cares about the rest of the planet. At the same time, China doesn't care if Russia gets a bloody nose on Putin's little vanity project and realizes a nuclear war is bad for their mercantile economy. [1] https://www.politico.eu/article/volodymyr-zelenskyy-china-urged-vladimir-putin-not-use-nuclear-weapons-in-ukraine/ https://www.politico.eu/article/volodymyr-zelenskyy-china-ur...

toyg 2mo ago
This coming from the leader of the other country in a war... I mean, I do find it credible that Xi might have told Putin to think very hard before doing something extremely stupid, but from there to stating that Russia is "China's vassal" and will do whatever they're told by a party who has long been a direct competitor (China and Russia have been solid "frenemies" for a long time, pushing very different views of what "real socialism" looks like)... It's a big jump.
- mullingitover 2mo ago
  The Soviet Union's relationship with China was more of a peer rivalry situation. The Russian relationship with China is nowhere near parity. Russia would fold tomorrow if China withdrew their backing and went along with the US/EU sanctions. So Russia is only able to prosecute their war with China's permission. When your foreign policy is decided by another power, that's the textbook definition of a vassal.
  - toyg 2mo ago
    It's not a binary choice between material support and sanctions, there are plenty of intermediate states. I think you are being hyperbolic again. And I disagree that USSR and PRC were just "rival peers". Rival peers would be UK/US (at least until Suez), or UK/FR until the 90s. USSR and PRC actively fought each other and almost started a nuclear war; that's way beyond "peer rivalry", that's actual direct competition.
    - mullingitover 2mo ago
      Regardless, Russia is far weaker today then when it was in the USSR, and China is far stronger than what it was when it was getting into shoving matches with the USSR. It's relegated to a chess piece China can move around without much thought.

roncesvalles 2mo ago

Nukes don't "destroy the planet", they're just really powerful bombs. Nuclear munitions have been detonated 2058 times already. https://www.atomicarchive.com/almanac/test-sites/testing-chronology.html https://www.atomicarchive.com/almanac/test-sites/testing-chr...

pvaldes 2mo ago
Living systems actively regulate water, stabilize soils, moderate heat, absorb shocks, reduce flood peaks, buffer storm surge, sustain food systems, support biodiversity, protect public health, and preserve the ecological conditions that make human communities viable Ecosystem resilience is based in the so called natural buffers. They are a product of the interactions between life beings. Imagine the life bar in a videogame. A natural buffer is like a 4-D life bar, where each character actualize their life bars at the same time. You lose some life and your friends will change their energy automatically to fix your health bar, Is paid with energy but also needs some "time currency". With healthy buffers, even big impacts in an ecosystem are absorbed and the system returns to the initial situation again and again. But it has a coast in the buffer. The life bar gets shorter. When the buffer is spent, the system is not 'elastic' anymore. At this moment the danger is extreme, but the warnings are subtle or none. Just further impacts, even tiny impacts, on the ecosystem cause a total, devastating and irrevocable collapse that may extend over several years and can't be stopped. Is unclear if we had crossed this line yet. The life has recovered from huge collapses at a planetary level five times yet, but it needed millions of years for that. Just because we had luck before, does not mean that we will have luck forever.
dualvariable 2mo ago
Cause civilizational collapse then. And of those nuclear tests, 528 were above ground, and only 200-300 of them were probably true airbursts. And all of them were in areas like atolls, deserts, and Arctic tundra where nothing burns. Their climate impact was near zero because they caused no fires and no dust, and they were spread out over 35 years. That is different from thousands of detonations in an afternoon causing raging fires all over the globe. Estimates are that it would generate around 150 billion kg of stratospheric soot. For comparison, yearly generation is around 7-8 billion kg of soot, generally confined to the troposphere and therefore rains out fairly quickly. A nuclear exchange would produce 20 years of soot and dump it into the stratosphere, above the rain. The largest pulses of soot that we've ever observed are the 2019 Australian megafires and the Canadian 2023 fires. These were roughly less than or equal to 1 billion kg and produced measurable climate effects that lasted months. A full nuclear exchange would likely produce -10C of global cooling in its immediate aftermath, which would be catastrophic to agriculture and civilization. It would stabilize on the order of decades, but there would be a lot fewer humans in the world.