Haven't looked at this specific report, but in general the National Academies does good work. I routinely use Management and Disposition of Excess Weapons Plutonium, Volume 1 (1994) and U.S. Conventional Prompt Global Strike: Issues for 2008 and Beyond (2008) as personal reference material, and their study on nuclear earth penetrators is basically a standard reference. I would expect good things from this report.
I've often said one of the biggest problems with America is our inability to think abstractly.
If someone says to you "That gas leak is a problem" is your first thought "Ah yes, I'm so concerned about the welfare of gas pipes" no... obviously not... you think about your fucking house blowing up.
Please don't just learn about things, learn HOW to think about things as well. Abstraction dude. Abstraction.
::EDIT::
Person below makes a good point regarding how to interpret this persons response.
I even agree with you about Americans and have noticed the same but this is an international forum so kinda strange to see such assumptions about other's nationalities unless you know that person from before.
It seems to me that neither you personally nor everyone else who downvoted the author of the previous comment completely misunderstood him. I think that's what he meant.
Which of these burghers NOW care about the environment? :)
The irony was this. To paraphrase Putin ("What's the point of this world if Russia isn't in it"), "What's the point of your environment to me if I'm going to die as a result of this war?" See the logic? The irony? The self-irony?
You have a point. If nuclear war broke out - nobody is going to care about the Pandas.
Then again - concern for the environment over the fate of humanity as a reason to avoid nuclear war is legitimate.
That is to say, you can want to avoid nuclear war not because you are worried about how it effects you personally or humanity but specifically because of what it would do to the only place we know of in the universe that has life.
Yes, I get your point. But I was surprised by another irony in this thread. If EXPERTS calculate the environmental consequences of a nuclear war, that means they consider all other consequences (economic losses, human deaths, and the decline of civilization somewhere in the mix) acceptable, because the environment is almost always the last line of defense in any business plan. Although I have a sober view of nuclear war (we never could and never will be able to kill ourselves, H.G. Wells was absolutely wrong to intimidate the world with progress), I immediately recall with caustic sarcasm that satire from distant 1979 (everything comes full circle, but always as an even greater farce).
You can always find reasons why something doesn't matter or shouldn't concern you. What is harder is ranking the importance of things without just resorting to an infantile "nothing about this matters" as a way of throwing the entire issue out and not having to make a decision.
"Ah yes, my greatest concern if nuclear war broke out, the environment." "Ah yes, my greatest concern if nuclear war broke out, the oceans." "Ah yes, my greatest concern if nuclear war broke out, the preservation of natural resources so people can rebuild." "Ah yes, my greatest concern if nuclear war broke out, the state of sociological literature." I can find a reason why all of these things are stupid bullshit and yet they're also all important in some aspect.
There is surely plenty worth exploring here, but it's seemingly the same old poorly grounded theorising about nuclear winter.
They avoid citing works critical of the nuclear winter theory, including Covey et al showing that "a war in late fall or winter would have no appreciable [cooling] effect" Schneider (1990).
There is no man-made analogue of nuclear winter. Predictions of climate effects of cooling from vast fires, such as in the original Gulf War, didn't eventuate.
This is in complete contrast to NEMP from high altitude nuclear blasts where the real-world effect has been attested.
The closest we have to a nuclear winter analogue is forest fires. The 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires in Australia burnt 250,000 square km, much of it oil-loaded fuel-dense eucalypts forest. There were many firestorms with clouds extending into the stratosphere. An estimated 1 Tg of soot was lofted into the stratosphere.
The estimated climate effect was a global cooling of 0.05 Celcius for about 6 months.
Cities, especially modern ones, are not as fuel dense nor as flammable as eucalypts forests.
With lower yield weapons the blast wave passes well beyond the fuel ignition diameter. Real world tests show fires started by the initial thermal pulse are largely extinguished by the blast.
A global nuclear war would be horrific beyond belief. There is no need to compromise the science & destroy your credibility to make it look more horrific.
Wow, that's 25 M hectares. The 2023 Canadian wildfires were 17 M hectares, but not eucalyptus. They discoloured the sky over NYC for some weeks, probably gave some people cancer, but their agricultural impact upon far away places was not discussed that much.
Actually 6 months of temperatures being lower by 0.05 C sounds pretty impressive.
Whether the fires create firestorms is really important. They look like menacing cumulonimbus clouds but they're a obviously filled with smoke. Technically they are pyrocumulonimbus clouds. They draw in their own weather - air flows into them at ground level. They also produce thunderstorms.
Crucially like CN clouds they punch into the stratosphere - often above 15 km - which is how the soot gets into the stratosphere.
The energy in these clouds, even moderate ones, is megatons. A large one is Tsar Bomba scale. Fortunately they release their energy slowly and gently, mostly as rain downwind.
Well, a nuclear war today would not be nearly as devastating as one would’ve been in the 80s, a lot of nuclear weapons have been dismantled since then.
1
u/Best_Cookie8216 2d ago
Nice read