Nuclear war would set off climate catastrophe

[Jimbo101]

Climate News Network

Four US scientists have just introduced one more good reason not to launch a nuclear war. It would not simply guarantee the mutual destruction of the participants. It would also precipitate catastrophic climate change.

And, they argue in the journal Environment Magazine, even a single nuclear missile strike could darken the skies, chill the atmosphere, stop rainfall, ruin harvests and cost a billion lives.

Observers with memories that stretch back to the Cold War and the arms race between the US and Nato powers on the one hand and the USSR on the other will know something of this already.

In 1983 the astronomer Carl Sagan and colleagues introduced the idea of global annihilation, or at least the end of human civilisation, in a “nuclear winter” as a consequence of a nuclear weapons exchange.

Years later, as the Soviet Union collapsed and the Russian Federation was born, the same scientists did their calculations again, and reduced the threat to a kind of “nuclear autumn”.

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. Humans have proven they dont deserve the earth, time for us to be shed.

[TheBlackAdder]

2. 2654 Nuclear detonations, Several hundred above ground, including the 50-MT Tsar Bomb.

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/this-map-shows-every-nuclear-explosion-in-history-a6914056.html

http://www.arcgis.com/apps/Time/index.html?appid=b8540a8a2500472c8037bdd2a35c4be0

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[NickB79]

4. So how are we not all dead yet?

The researchers in the article claim a single Hiroshima-sized bomb could starve a billion people, yet we've detonated hundreds so far? What's changed?

[crosinski]

6. It depends on where that bomb falls. n/t

[Girard442]

3. Kinda ironic that climate catastrophe could also trigger nuclear war.

[The_jackalope]

7. +100. I was just going to add that, and I saw your comment.

That escape hatch over there is starting to look awful small...

[Blue_Tires]

5. WTF? If warheads start flying, the climate is the least of our worries

[Lee-Lee]

8. Yeah given that thousands of bombs have already been detonated I am doubting this

A video of all through 2010, a few more have happened since then.

And even in their smoke from a city scenario, I doubt that would be a bigger effect than some of the major volcanoes that have erupted.

[NightWatcher]

9. Was this published in this week's No Shit Journal?

[lpbk2713]

10. MAD

Those not killed immediately will envy the dead.