Nuclear war would be more devastating for Earth's climate than cold war predictions – even with fewer weapons
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Tuesday, August 1, 2023
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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.
Key Points:
- 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.
- For the last four decades, scientists modelling the Earth system have run computer simulations to find out.
- 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.
Clear and present danger
- At the height of the arms race in the mid-1980s there were over 65,000 nuclear weapons.
- What starts with one tactical nuclear strike or a tit-for-tat exchange between two countries could escalate to an all-out nuclear war ending in utter destruction.
- A global nuclear war including the US, Europe and China could result in 360 million people dead and condemn nearly 5.3 billion people to starvation in the two years following the exchange.
The threat remains
- The international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize that same year for its work in highlighting the catastrophe that would result from any use of nuclear weapons.
- The threat of nuclear war has not gone away, and a nuclear ice age which would doom much of life on Earth for millennia is still a possibility.
- Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue.