Its amazing that people get paid to recycle the same old crap year after year.
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 ...
"nuclear winter" - But dont'we have a global warming right now? the things will nicely balance off.
Well, there goes global warming.
Well between this and global warming mebbe we could even things out. I say light up iran and Mr. Kim and save the planet!
Its amazing that people get paid to recycle the same old crap year after year.
A human creature made "Little Ice Age," similar to the one made from the the explosion of [Anak] Krakatoa a couple of centuries ago? (And the earlier one during European Dark Age times, when the original Krakatoa blew).
Uh, decade after decade.
Where's Carl Sagan when you need him?
A large volcano explosion can toss up enough dirt and dust into the air to block enough sunlight to lower temperatures enough that crops fail; replacing one moderate volcano with a hundred nuclear explosions to cause a similar effect isn't such a stretch.
It must be the 1980's again....
Debora MacKenzie "may" be a head case
There is just no pleasing these people, first they're whining about global warming, NOW they're wringing their hands about "nuclear winter", hey either get naked or put on a sweater, but *SHUT UP ALREADY!!!*
It's a whole lot better than those stupid "carbon credits!"
Quick, someone tell Algore, we've found an equitable and economical way to end his global worming! Bomb Iran.
WHAT WILL AL GORE DO NOW!!!! He will do just what he's been doing all along heating and air conditioning all of his homes, driving his SUV's, flying to and fro on the airlines, and convincing all of us global warming is real! I can't help laughing when he had a conference on global warming in NYC DURING A HEAVY SNOW STORM. The only thing GREEN in his life is his shorts
Getting his tootsies toasted in a hot, stinky place, no doubt.
Whether it is global warming, global cooling, or nuclear winter it will certainly be due to Republican abuse of the planet and will hit minorities the hardest.
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