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'Nuclear Winter' May Kill More Than A Nuclear War
'Nuclear Winter' May Kill More Than A Nuclear War ^ | 3-2-2007 | Debora MacKenzie

Posted on 03/01/2007 5:22:58 PM PST by blam

'Nuclear winter' may kill more than a nuclear war

19:00 01 March 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Debora MacKenzie

A regional exchange of relatively small nuclear weapons could plunge the world into a decade-long "nuclear winter", destroying agriculture and killing millions, according to a new study.

Weapons experts to consider that small-scale nuclear exchanges are now more likely than the massive US-Soviet exchanges feared during the Cold War.

In the 1980s, scientists calculated that such exchanges would put enough smoke into the atmosphere to shade the Earth from the Sun, causing a nuclear winter.

Now scientists have re-calculated the likelihood of nuclear winter using modern, vastly improved climate models and a more likely modern scenario for small-scale nuclear war. Brian Toon, head of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Alan Robock of Rutgers University in New Jersey, both in the US, predict less cooling than the 1980s modellers. However, they predict the cooling would last longer, with potentially devastating consequences.

Different targets

The pair modelled the impact of 100 explosions in subtropical megacities. They modelled 15-kilotonne explosions, like the Hiroshima bomb. This is also the size of the bombs now possessed by India and Pakistan, among others.

The immediate blast and radiation from the exchange of 100 small nuclear bombs killed between three million and 16 million people, depending on the targets. But the global effect of the resulting one-to-five million tonnes of smoke was much worse. “It is very surprising how few weapons are needed to do so much damage,” says Toon.

(Excerpt) Read more at environment.newscientist.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: ajntsa; iceage; littleiceage; nuclear; nuclearwar; nuclearwinter; war; winter
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To: editor-surveyor
global worming

I like that term. Can I use it? Earth could become like Arrakis, the desert planet in the Dune series of books. We could all get rich harvesting the lucrative spice, Melange.

21 posted on 03/01/2007 5:46:24 PM PST by oyez
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To: GSlob
That's what I thought.
22 posted on 03/01/2007 5:46:54 PM PST by b4its2late (Liberalism is a hollow log and a mental disorder.)
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To: editor-surveyor
Carl Sagan thinks he's on Venus or Mercury.
23 posted on 03/01/2007 5:48:30 PM PST by oyez
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To: blam

Remember Carl Sagan and the Kuwaiti oil wells burning? "It could be the worst ecological disaster man has ever known".

BZZTT. Nuclear Winter is hogshiznit.


24 posted on 03/01/2007 5:51:10 PM PST by Malsua
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To: blam
...using modern, vastly improved climate models ...

Would these be the modern, vastly improved climate models that predicted the horrendous 2006 Atlantic Hurricane Season?

25 posted on 03/01/2007 5:51:10 PM PST by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: blam

Didn't Carl Sagan assert that if the Iraqis torched the Kuwaiti oil wells in 1991 that "nuclear winter" was sure to follow?


26 posted on 03/01/2007 5:52:41 PM PST by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: Malsua
One minute, 31 seconds.

Harumph.

27 posted on 03/01/2007 5:53:28 PM PST by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: blam

If it kills off the mosquitoes then I'm all for it.


28 posted on 03/01/2007 5:54:48 PM PST by Buck W. (If you push something hard enough, it will fall over.)
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To: blam

Not at Al Gore's estate. I will assume they will be nice and toasty.


29 posted on 03/01/2007 5:56:11 PM PST by DalcoTX
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To: blam
LOL!

The solution to Global Warming is at hand for all of humanity, if we just allow Islamics, failed communists and fascist dictatorships, access to about 100 nuclear weapons!

Of course, we will have to beam a signal that simultaneously explodes them all in place, in order for the rest of the world to live happily ever after....
30 posted on 03/01/2007 5:58:21 PM PST by sarasmom ( War is not the most vile of the evils humanity commits . There is always apathy...)
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To: oyez; Dutch Boy

They have a new crop of poorly educated youngsters to dupe about this and half a dozen or so other old canards -- and it's working


31 posted on 03/01/2007 5:58:35 PM PST by BenLurkin
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To: blam

Nuclear winter. That is so 1982.


32 posted on 03/01/2007 5:59:48 PM PST by Larry Lucido (Duncan Hunter 2008)
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To: oyez

The spice that comes from a dangerous source? (only started reading the first book in the series, and then stopped after a few chapters).


33 posted on 03/01/2007 6:00:41 PM PST by Jedi Master Pikachu ( What is your take on Acts 15:20 (abstaining from blood) about eating meat? Could you freepmail?)
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To: blam
Shades of this movie.
34 posted on 03/01/2007 6:01:47 PM PST by WestVirginiaRebel (A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel-Robert Frost)
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To: Diana in Wisconsin
No, just "The Day After."

As the National Review asked, "Why did they have to make all the survivors look just like Senator Alan Cranston?"

35 posted on 03/01/2007 6:02:58 PM PST by Larry Lucido (Duncan Hunter 2008)
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To: blam

Anyone remember Carl Sagan promising about the same thing if Saddam H. set the oil fields on fire? It's just always something isn't it?


36 posted on 03/01/2007 6:05:52 PM PST by pepperdog
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To: DuncanWaring

Yes, he did, and I just posted that question before reading the thread. I'm never the first in these things, still I post before I read....looks like I'd learn.


37 posted on 03/01/2007 6:08:24 PM PST by pepperdog
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To: BenLurkin
You can't expect too much of a population that watches "reality" tv and crap like the Academy Awards, and then believes what they see. It is really depressing.
38 posted on 03/01/2007 6:11:04 PM PST by pepperdog
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To: Jedi Master Pikachu
The Fremen were the native inhabitants of Araqis. As i get it Fremen wasthe only free society of the whole federation. The spice came from a dangerous source because the gigantic worms protected it.

Oyez has not read all the books and is not considered to be an expert on the subject, but he did work a midnight shift with a pair of Dune scholars, who spoke of little else)

39 posted on 03/01/2007 6:24:42 PM PST by oyez
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To: pepperdog

And Malsua beat me by "One Minute, 31 Seconds"... :-P


40 posted on 03/01/2007 6:26:52 PM PST by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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