Are Rethugs planning a nuclear winter to offset global warming?

[pnwmom]

It's an insane idea, therefore worthy of them.

http://www.physorg.com/news85031063.html

Even a small-scale, regional nuclear war could produce as many direct fatalities as all of World War II and disrupt the global climate for a decade or more, with environmental effects that could be devastating for everyone on Earth, university researchers have found.

These powerful conclusions are being presented Dec. 11 during a press conference and a special technical session at the annual meeting of American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. The research also appears in twin papers posted on Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, an online journal.

SNIP

"The results described in one of the new papers represent the first comprehensive quantitative study of the consequences of a nuclear conflict between smaller nuclear states," said Toon and his co-authors. "A small country is likely to direct its weapons against population centers to maximize damage and achieve the greatest advantage," Toon said. Fatality estimates for a plausible regional conflict ranged from 2.6 million to 16.7 million per country.

SNIP

"Considering the relatively small number and size of the weapons, the effects are surprisingly large. The potential devastation would be catastrophic and long term," said Richard Turco, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, and a member and founding director of UCLA's Institute of the Environment. Turco once headed a team including Toon and Carl Sagan that originally defined "nuclear winter."


http://www.geotimes.org/dec06/WebExtra121206_2.html

Large wildfires inject smoke, largely composed of black carbon, into the upper troposphere, where it is ultimately rained out. However, the models suggest that if enough fires ignited at once — such as a giant fireball produced by a nuclear explosion — their smoke would form a massive cumulous cloud in the troposphere. When warmed by the sun, the cloud could induce large-scale circulation that could lob it even higher into the stratosphere, Toon said. Once in the stratosphere, the smoke would not be rained out, but could persist far longer and travel around the globe.

Although rare, such "lofting" has been observed in nature with forest fires, Toon said. The Chisholm fire, a massive wildfire that raged in Alberta, Canada, in May 2001, created a massive fire plume, called a "pyro-cumulonimbus," that released five kilotons of smoke and produced enough energy to send it soaring into the stratosphere, said Michael Fromm, a meteorologist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.

The ultimate effect of catapulting so much smoke into the stratosphere would be to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth, thus cooling surface temperatures by several degrees Celsius over large areas of North America and Eurasia, reducing the average global growing season and reducing precipitation by 10 percent of the current global average, Robock said.

Although such effects would change the ultimate profile of the controversial "hockey stick" climate predictions, Robock said, "it's not a solution to global warming."

http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/061211_nuclear_climate.html

The study showed it doesn't take much nuclear power to drive meteoric results. Whereas the scenarios presumed the countries involved would launch their entire nuclear arsenals, that total is just three-hundredths of a percent of the global arsenal.

Will the conclusions result in worldly changes? "We certainly hope there will be a political response because nuclear weapons are the most dangerous potential environmental danger to the planet. They're much more dangerous than global warming," Robock said.

[Prophet 451]

1. Dear Lord...

I would say "don't even joke about that" but it's an insane enough idea that it's probably already occured to the Bushistas and they're even now working on how to sell it to the public.

[pnwmom]

3. I'm not joking. I'm sure they are thinking about it. Here's more:

http://www.thepeakist.com/regional-nuclear-war-could-spark-climate-change/

The scientists said that smoke from a regional conflict would spread across the entire world within weeks and even produce a cooling effect as the sun’s rays are partially blocked.

“This is not a solution to global warming because you have to look at the devastating climate changes,” said Alan Robock of the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers, who has studied the impact of climatic change from regional nuclear war.

SNIP

But the climatic disruption resulting from Tambora lasted for only about one year, the authors note. In their most recent computer simulation, in which carbon particles remain in the stratosphere for up to 10 years, the climatic effects are greater and last longer than those associated with the Tambora eruption.

“With the exchange of 100 15-kiloton weapons as posed in this scenario, the estimated quantities of smoke generated could lead to global climate anomalies exceeding any changes experienced in recorded history,” Robock said. “And that’s just 0.03 percent of the total explosive power of the current world nuclear arsenal.”

[C_U_L8R]

2. Just get yourself a nuclear winter home...

in Paraguay