There was some recent research done on it, in light of the drastic reduction of nuclear arsenals after the cold war. I recently read and article by a guy who promoted the idea back in the day. Atmospheric radiation and fallout would be my big concern, nobody will waste nukes on non nuclear targets or countries, especially the Russians and Uncle Sam will go after their nukes first and subs will destroy their cities down to 100K after the first strike on their nukes, if required. I think Uncle Sam should develop a non nuclear precision first strike capability against Russian nuclear assets, just in case, using stealth cruse missiles and such. I think we have the technology to do it these days and could take them out with conventional weapons, as an act of desperation.
I’d like a link if you have it handy.
I remember nuclear winter being a hot topic when I started grad school. One notably socially-conscious professor recommended a book that suggested nuclear winter would be an extinction-level event. I found this hard to swallow from my assumption that our arsenals (these were the peak years, Reagtime. Both arsenals were near max for total deliverable yield. Scary paper:
(edit) the paper informing the vid you posted; thanks (/edit)
I never deepened my search, so I don’t know.
I do know that comparing megatons is a poor measure of the real issue: the mass quanity and chemical nature of tiny particles ejected or condensing in[to] the stratosphere beyond the cleaning power of weather.
I believe that volcanoes are much more efficient at loading the stratosphere. Take Pinatubo, estimated to be 70 Mt. The kicker is that it injected twenty million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. Sulfur compounds are much more active per mass unit than nuclear cloud injecta appear to be.
I cannot find a reference for global cooling by nuclear weapons. The largest airblast Tsar Bomba yielded est. 50 megatons energy, more than half a Pinatubo, which dumped enough to cause global cooling of 0.5 degrees Celsius.
Warming/cooling degrees are “bigger” than weather degrees.
Global warming since 1975 has been less than 1 degree C, and we are witnessing frank global effects that will get much worse even if we all stopped generating any greenhouse gas waste products at all.
With us requiring enough energy to keep billions alive at a low standard of living, that will make the coming spot of bother worse than much worse.
The fact that we have such a weak response to the warning cry to stop emitting and hunker down for a century of untold misery -
that places a number on the political power of the fossil fuel producing corporations.
So even though I do not think nuclear winter is gonna be near as bad as scary paper suggests. We are in for it from another bearing.
The average global temperature has increased by a little more than 1° Celsius (2° Fahrenheit) since 1880. Two-thirds of the warming has occurred since 1975.
earthobservatory.nasa.gov
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