For justa-hairyape — maybe global warming, the current climatological fear of liberals, will counteract nuclear winter, the previous climatological fear of liberals? /sarc
We don't have any way to objectively test either theory in advance, but I think it's pretty obvious that solar disruptions cause more problems in our atmosphere than CO2 emissions, and as bad as a nuclear war would be, I have major doubts about whether nuclear weaponry is capable of destroying the planet. Realistically, the only nuclear war we're likely to fight in the near future would be if a terrorist group got a nuclear bomb, and turning North Korea, Afghanistan or Pakistan into a sheet of glass isn't going to affect world climate.
China is a whole different ball game. I would not want to fight a major war against a nation that considers population reductions to be a positive outcome, and has a billion people with many “extras” with which to repopulate vacant spaces.
Turning the Chinese into profitmaking capitalists makes a whole lot more sense than fighting a war with them. It worked with the Japanese after World War II in converting their Bushido warrior code into aggressive free enterprise, and it might just work with China.
If it doesn't, we have a major problem on the eastern horizon.
The Chinese are actually facing the prospect of underpopulation, and it is probably the greatest danger to their future plans or even power. Their one-child policy not only wiped out huge numbers of children who would be alive now, but resulted in such a bias towards male children that there simply aren’t enough mothers to go around to produce future generations. The country is expected to feel the effects of this in the not very distant future, perhaps by 2030 or so, and will suffer from a shortage of both markets (consumers) and labor. Capitalism requires population, a fact that our theorists for the last 50 years seem to have been unable to master.
It is possible, I suppose, that the Chinese will become aggressive in seeking women, and in any case, a major gender imbalance where there are more men than women is frequently a pre-condition for war.
In the case of the Japanese, would that change in thinking have occurred had not nearly their entire country been burned to the ground?
Don't worry about Japan. It will no longer exist in 50 years. Consider it the new Atlantis. Could go into an explanation why the continuing radiation releases from Fukushima are overwhelming the Island, but that would take too much typing. Just realize that radiation contamination levels in water and soil have been increasing on the island the past year. Everywhere. It cannot be stopped. We do not have the technology to stop the releases. We do not have the technology to adequately clean up the contamination. The Japanese nation just experienced its greatest annual population loss ever. The Chinese will annihilate what remains of Atlantis in a few years.
So now magnify Fukushima by 50 to 100 and you will see what is going to kill most of the planet off. No way to stop that freight train now. We are being led by crony criminal psychopaths.