<
https://www.sciencealert.com/nuclear-war-would-be-worse-for-our-climate-than-predicted-in-the-cold-war>
"Christopher Nolan's biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer has revived morbid
curiosity in the destructive power of nuclear weapons. There are now an
estimated 12,512 nuclear warheads.
A war in which even a fraction of these bombs were detonated would create blast
waves and fires capable of killing millions of people almost instantly. The
radiation-induced cancers and genetic damage would affect the remaining
population for generations.
But what sort of world would remain amid the radioactive fallout?
For the last four decades, scientists modelling the Earth system have run
computer simulations to find out.
Using their knowledge of chemistry and climate modelling, atmospheric
scientists Paul Crutzen and John Birks wrote a short paper in 1982 which
suggested a nuclear war would produce a smoke cloud so massive that it would
cause what became known as a nuclear winter. This, they claimed, would
devastate agriculture and with it, civilization.
A year later, scientists from the US and Soviet Union confirmed first that
cities and industrial complexes hit by nuclear weapons would indeed produce
much more smoke and dust than burning the equivalent area of forest. And
second, this global layer of smog would block out sunlight, causing conditions
at Earth's surface to become rapidly colder, dryer, and darker.
Climate modelling shows the reduced sunlight would plunge global temperatures
by up to 10˚C for nearly a decade. These freezing conditions, combined with
less sunlight for plants to photosynthesize, would have catastrophic
consequences for global food production and lead to mass starvation worldwide.
Modern climate models are much more sophisticated than those used in the 1980s.
And while there are fewer nukes in working order today, more recent results
from computer simulations suggest that the grim prophecy delivered by
scientists 40 years ago may actually have been an underestimate."
Via Rixty Dixet.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
