Clinton: India and Pakistan have "upset the balance of nuclear deterrent"

[bananas]

Front Page article from The Hindu:

http://www.hindu.com/2010/04/11/stories/2010041158801200.htm

Front Page

Hillary: India, Pakistan have upset nuclear deterrent balance

Narayan Lakshman

‘U.S. working with both countries to ensure that their stockpiles are safeguarded'

The risk of a nuclear attack has increased

U.S. to boost funding for maintaining weapons stockpile

WASHINGTON DC: India and Pakistan have pursued nuclear weapons “in a way that has upset the balance of nuclear deterrent,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday.

That was why the United States was working with both countries “very hard to try to make sure that their nuclear stockpiles are well tended to, and that they participate with us in trying to limit the number of nuclear weapons,” she said.

Speaking at at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, Ms. Clinton argued that the nature of the nuclear threat had changed. “As President Obama has said, the risk of a nuclear attack has actually increased. And the potential consequences of mishandling this challenge are deadly.” Nuclear terrorism presented a different challenge, but the consequences would still be devastating, she said.

Doomsday scenario

Highlighting the growing threat of nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation a few days ahead of the 47-nation Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, Ms. Clinton illustrated what a doomsday scenario would look like, given these risks. “A 10-kiloton nuclear bomb detonated in Times Square in New York City could kill a million people. Many more would suffer from the haemorrhaging and weakness that comes from radiation sickness.”

<snip>

Full text of her speech at http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/04/139958.htm

Upsetting the nuclear deterrent balance is a very bad thing, because it makes nuclear war more likely, and even a small nuclear war between India and Pakistan would unleash a nuclear winter with devastating environmental effects,

Nuclear weapons are an Environment and Energy problem.

Even a small nuclear war between India and Pakistan would unleash a nuclear winter with devastating environmental effects,
as Dr. Jeff Masters, co-founder and Director of Meteorology at "Weather Underground", pointed out in his blog last year:

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1208

Nuclear winter revisited

Posted by: JeffMasters, 2:00 PM GMT on April 10, 2009

In the 1980s and early 1990s, a series of scientific papers published by Soviet scientists and Western scientists (including "rock star" scientists Dr. Carl Sagan, host of the PBS "Cosmos" TV series, and Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen) laid out the dire consequences on global climate of a major nuclear exchange between the U.S. and Soviet Union. The nuclear explosions would send massive clouds of dust high into the stratosphere, blocking so much sunlight that a nuclear winter would result. Global temperatures would plunge 20°C to 40°C for several months, and remain 2-6°C lower for 1-3 years. Up to 70% of the Earth's protective stratospheric ozone layer would be destroyed, allowing huge doses of ultraviolet light to reach the surface. This UV light would kill much of the marine life that forms the basis of the food chain, resulting in the collapse many fisheries and the starvation of the people and animals that depend it. The UV light would also blind huge numbers of animals, who would then wander sightlessly and starve. The cold and dust would create widespread crop failures and global famine, killing billions of people who did not die in the nuclear explosions. The "nuclear winter" papers were widely credited with helping lead to the nuclear arms reduction treaties of the 1990s, as it was clear that we risked catastrophic global climate change in the event of a full-scale nuclear war.

Even a limited nuclear exchange can cause a climate disaster
Well, it turns out that this portrayal of nuclear winter was overly optimistic, according to a series of papers published over the past few years by Brian Toon of the University of Colorado, Alan Robock of Rutgers University, and Rich Turco of UCLA. Their most recent paper, a December 2008 study titled, "Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War", concludes that "1980s predictions of nuclear winter effects were, if anything, underestimates". Furthermore, they assert that even a limited nuclear war poses a significant threat to Earth's climate. The scientists used a sophisticated atmospheric/oceanic climate model that had a good track record simulating the cooling effects of past major volcanic eruptions, such as the Philippines' Mt. Pinatubo in 1991. The scientists injected five terragrams (Tg) of soot particles into the model atmosphere over Pakistan in May of 2006. This amount of smoke, they argued, would be the likely result of the cities burned up by a limited nuclear war involving 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs in the region. India and Pakistan are thought to have 109 to 172 nuclear weapons of unknown yield.

<snip>

This magnitude of this cooling would bring about the coldest temperatures observed on the globe in over 1000 years (Figure 1). The growing season would shorten by 10-30 days over much of the globe, resulting in widespread crop failures. The effects would be similar to what happened after the greatest volcanic eruption in historic times, the 1815 Tambora eruption in Indonesia. This cooling from this eruption triggered the infamous Year Without a Summer in 1816 in the Northern Hemisphere, when killing frosts disrupted agriculture every month of the summer in New England, creating terrible hardship. Exceptionally cold and wet weather in Europe triggered widespread harvest failures, resulting in famine and economic collapse. However, the cooling effect of this eruption only lasted about a year. Cooling from a limited nuclear exchange would create two to three consecutive "Years Without a Summer", and over a decade of significantly reduced crop yields. The authors found that the smoke in the stratosphere cause a 20% reduction in Earth's protective ozone layer, with losses of 25-45% over the mid-latitudes where the majority of Earth's population lives, and 50-70% ozone loss at northern high latitude regions such as Scandinavia, Alaska, and northern Canada. A massive increase in ultraviolet radiation at the surface would result, capable of causing widespread and severe damage to plants and animals. Thus, even a limited nuclear exchange could trigger severe global climate change capable of causing economic chaos and widespread starvation.

Climate change and the Doomsday Clock
It is sobering to realize that the nuclear weapons used in the study represented only 0.3% of the world's total nuclear arsenal of 26,000 warheads. Fortunately, significant progress was made in the 1990s and 2000s to reduce the threat of nuclear war. If the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) is fully implemented by the U.S. and Russia as planned, by 2012 the world's stockpile of nuclear weapons will be just 6% of the 70,000 warheads that existed at the peak of the cold war in 1986. However, the threat of a more limited regional nuclear war has increased in recent decades, since more countries have been joining the nuclear club--an average of one country every five years. The 2007 move by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to move the hands of their Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight--the figurative end of civilization--helped call attention to this increased threat. In addition, they also mentioned climate change for the first time as part of the rationale for moving the clock closer to midnight. I believe that climate change does not pose an immediate threat to civilization--at least for the next 20 years or so--and there is still time to significantly reduce the threat of "doomsday" levels of climate change to civilization if strong action is taken in the next 20 years to cut carbon emissions. Thus, setting the hands of the clock closer to midnight because of climate change is probably premature. However, climate change triggered by a limited nuclear war is a whole different situation. The twin disasters of a limited nuclear war, coupled with the devastating global climate change it could wreak, should remind us that there is no such thing as a small scale nuclear war. Even a limited nuclear war is a huge threat to Earth's climate. Thus, there is no cause more important to work for than peace, so, this Easter weekend, I plan on making myself--and thus the world--more peaceful.

Jeff Masters

Nuclear weapons are a problem with nuclear energy, as Al Gore pointed out in a May 2006 interview:

"For eight years in the White House, every weapons-proliferation problem we dealt with was connected to a civilian reactor program."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12743273

Al Gore, movie star, talks of his latest role
Grist magazine interviews former vice president on his climate flick
By David Roberts
updated 12:49 p.m. ET May 24, 2006


<snip>

Grist: Let's turn briefly to some proposed solutions. Nuclear power is making a big resurgence now, rebranded as a solution to climate change. What do you think?

Gore: I doubt nuclear power will play a much larger role than it does now.

Grist: Won't, or shouldn't?

Gore: Won't. There are serious problems that have to be solved, and they are not limited to the long-term waste-storage issue and the vulnerability-to-terrorist-attack issue. Let's assume for the sake of argument that both of those problems can be solved.

We still have other issues. For eight years in the White House, every weapons-proliferation problem we dealt with was connected to a civilian reactor program. And if we ever got to the point where we wanted to use nuclear reactors to back out a lot of coal -- which is the real issue: coal -- then we'd have to put them in so many places we'd run that proliferation risk right off the reasonability scale. And we'd run short of uranium, unless they went to a breeder cycle or something like it, which would increase the risk of weapons-grade material being available.

When energy prices go up, the difficulty of projecting demand also goes up -- uncertainty goes up. So utility executives naturally want to place their bets for future generating capacity on smaller increments that are available more quickly, to give themselves flexibility. Nuclear reactors are the biggest increments, that cost the most money, and take the most time to build.

In any case, if they can design a new generation that's manifestly safer, more flexible, etc., it may play some role, but I don't think it will play a big role.

<snip>