Nuclear Winter vs Global Warming.

[Legbreaker]

My understanding is that there are many schools of thought on this - nobody really knows.

The lastest thinking (I think) is that a full scale nuclear winter to the point of blacking out the sky and snow all year round is EXTREMELY unlikely. The number of nukes required to cause this to occur would essentially leave the planet a lifeless hunk of charred rock floating about in space - do we really care about the winter if we're nothing but glowing ashes?

Yes, there are likely to be some negative effects (like there'd be positive?) but on a much more limited scale.

Would global warming negate nuclear winter? Well, that's probably a bit like torching the house just to keep warm for the night.... Effective in the short term, but catastrophic the next morning.

Seriously though I doubt nuclear winter would balance global warming - it might even make the situation worst....

[pmulcahy11b]

My guess is that it will mix into an unpredictable and unguessable climatic situation that not even the top supercomputer in the world could predict. And that billions will still die a horrible death, whether quickly or slowly.

[Targan]

Global warming would stop with the Twilight War and with the nuclear winter effect it would start to reverse. Once all the big fires had burned out human-created carbon emissions would crash. I think that is pretty obvious. I think the global warming that has already occurred would reduce the effects of a full blown nuclear winter.

[headquarters]

I am thinking about a volcanic eruption in the early 1800s..1814 ?

Anyways it occurred the same year that was dubbed "the year with no summer " -a meterological anomaly that meant that temperatures were unusally low that year , in some places meaning that there was hardly any thaw at all.

I guess that "winter " is relative , even a drop on average of a few degrees would distort growth cycles etc

as you say , no one really knows for sure - so I guess there can be found theories to support the blackened skies argument and the three year snowfall...

[Marc]

Originally Posted by headquarters

I am thinking about a volcanic eruption in the early 1800s..1814 ?

Anyways it occurred the same year that was dubbed "the year with no summer " -a meterological anomaly that meant that temperatures were unusally low that year , in some places meaning that there was hardly any thaw at all.

I guess that "winter " is relative , even a drop on average of a few degrees would distort growth cycles etc

as you say , no one really knows for sure - so I guess there can be found theories to support the blackened skies argument and the three year snowfall...

You make me remember one meteorologist talking about this theme, when inquired about the real chance of a nuclear winter. Confronting the studies that related individual nuclear explosions with the quantities of material expelled to the atmosphere, he warned that, when talking about the environment, the final effect used to be greater than the sum of each part.

[Graebarde]

It was Carl Sagan and his cronies that termed the Nuclear Winter phrase after doing their "TTAPS" study, in which they predicted the massive drop in temps etc after global nuclear war. Their model however was found flawed as it was a smooth ball, not taking into affect the mountains, rivers, lakes and other physical features that effect climate. The final prognosis is Nucler Autumn. Still not a pretty future from agrarian perspectives.

This debate has been going on for nearly 30 years, and of course, short of war, the therory can't be tested.

[pmulcahy11b]

On a somewhat different tack:

A couple of weeks ago I saw on the National Geographic channel a show about the extinction about the dinosaurs. One NOAA guy said that the amount of heat and energy unleashed was so much that it may have generated what he called a "hypercane" -- a hurricane with winds of 500 miles per hour or more, and extending as high as 60-70,000 feet and as wide as the entire Gulf of Mexico.

Granted the explosion of that asteroid was in the neighborhood of 20-50 gigatons, but it seems that coastal nuclear explosions might generate hurricanes (Category 1-3 or so). What say you guys?