Fallout's Government Apparently Stupid

[charwo]

But that's the thing, we DO have historical precedent for the sot called 'Nuclear Winter.' This effect is named for the cause of a global cooling event, but the cooling mechanism itself is well described in he literature. In this case, we're dealing with the same phenomena in VEI-6-8, possibly VEI-5 volcanoes: there's an explosion/fireball that pushes large amounts of dirt and material into the upper atmosphere, where rain cannot wash it out and drag it down into the earth. In the science of nuclear aftermath, all the dirt sucked up by a fireball must either reaming in the atmosphere for years or fall back down to the earth, in the next few weeks as fallout or post fallout. And it can be any kind of mix. Now, the notion of death by a thousand cuts, in that nuclear war takes place over many, many smaller areas would seem to be the ticket, but that's a red herring too. In the first place, the Tambora displaced twice of three orders of magnitude of dirt into atmosphere than the 150 megatonne aftermath in the model Tomato provided. I'm incredulous that wide dispersal could make up for the exponent deficiency in the tonnage release. Then we look at the Tombora explosion and find that atmospheric effects were not localized, even in scale. Indonesia didn't freeze, or suffer a total crop loss. In fact, China got it a LOT worse and Indonesia. The effects where global and nearly universal in distribution. Just like the proposed nuclear winter. We do have precedent for nuclear winter, we have a lot of them actually.

 

Something is seriously wrong when a model says total crop loss for 1-3 years and freezing temperatures in the summer in prime growing areas, when in 1815, a release of 2,000 times that effect were made manifest, culminating with one bad harvest, the worst of which was in New England which suffered a 75% corn failure, but significantly less terms other crops. Not to mention even in 1816, no one called the thin rocky New England soil prime agricultural land.

 

And the reason I keep it to recorded eruptions is a very salient point: nuclear winter is fear mongered because of it's effect on agriculture. Therefore, for comparisons, we would do best to stick with explosions that should have had this effect on human agriculture. It's not that I'm not willing to take in the Toba or Yellowstone explosions, but, they weren't concurrent with human agriculture and thus we have less direct means of measuring possible effects. With historic eruptions, we can use real evidence, not model extrapolation. I know models are all the rage these days, but science is build on observation of evidence, not the extrapolation of the effect. In philosophical terms the failure of modern sceince is it's attempt to become like philosophy with the triumph of deductive reasons. But as the models show, deductive reason is only valid when you know all the pertinent factors in the logical system. Science that works was an is the triumph of inductive reason and making a best case on observed rather than postulated phenomena. You can't divorce science from history nor history from science. Also, as my uncle who works in Livermore told me, never underestimate the effect of ego, ideology and the desperation for funding that goes into any proclamation of science. He's been there and seen it.

 

The thing about Toba, why it doesn't enter the equation is because of the agriculture comparison but also because it displaced 3,000 cubic kilometers versus Tambora's 160. Beyond adding another order of magnitude to the dwarfing of the 150 megatonne figure of nuclear winter, it's not relevant to invalidating the 150 megatonne threshold. Because there are one billion cubic meters in a cubic kilometers and dense earth is 2 tonnes per cubic meter, the paper is effectively saying the earth displacement of a VEI-4 (which is a yearly occurrence) could cause nuclear winter, perhaps barred by not reaching the stratosphere (although VEI-4s do sometimes get up there). The described mechanical effects of nuclear winter are exactly that of the observed effect of large volcanic eruptions. And the disconnect between the models and the actual real world effects is so striking as to become ludicrous.

 

In terms of both radiation decay in fallout and in terms of global cooling mechanics, we have a plethora of established, observed effects and data. We know what nuclear war will do to the environment. We have every precedent. What we don't have is direct is data on the effects of a one time total strategic strike on a nation's infrastructure. Nor do we have any notion of how 'salted' bombs would effect local growing conditions in their half lives, but we do have some strong evidence in terms of the Chernobyl Exclusion zone in terms of plant growth in radioactive areas and the British made a cobalt bomb prototype in the 1950s: http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq1.html#nfaq1.6 In this case, it was considered a failure, in part because even in a cobalt bomb, you have a five and a quarter year half life, but, and this is the important thing, it reduces the explosive yield and therefore spread of the isotopes. You can't in practice threaten agriculture with a salted bomb because a third of the earth's surface is given over to agriculture. And if you want to make a city uninhabitable, it's more effective cost and otherwise to use the anthrax spores the British developed in WWII that would render parts of a city uninhabitable for 70 years. However, these unknowns do not factor into the fallout or nuclear winter discussions we have engaged in on this thread.

 

And, although I don't hold it against you guys, don't think that this was all my doing in terms of time and such. You guys charged me with wishful thinking and refusing to consider your evidences. You guys accused me for not being honest and arguing in good faith. Of not being reasonable. So I had to make a case study and do some heavy math to show you my conclusions are not pulled out of my patoot. I had to clear my name.

[phoneyLogic]

A volcanic explosion is not equal to a nuclear one. Even "volcanic ash" means something different than usual ash.

See video of an

.

As it has a whole different composition than usual smoke - you can't just set them equal.

Taking the VEI or an ejecta volume of 1000km³ doesn't say anything about what exactly has been ejected.

As you can imagine, there's a lot of lava, stone, slag, pyroclasic material and so on implied.

 

So imho it's rather pointless to go here and say: "There you have a vulcano, it's equivalent to nuclear war.". It's not. Even the explosion / fireball is a whole different thing. There's a reason why this are different subjects and not one.

 

The existence of the year without a summer could be taken as a hint that something like a nuclear winter could be possible. I don't say it takes exactly that long and with that magnitude or something. At least several climate models say it could be way worse.

 

And, although I don't hold it against you guys, don't think that this was all my doing in terms of time and such. You guys charged me with wishful thinking and refusing to consider your evidences. You guys accused me for not being honest and arguing in good faith. Of not being reasonable. So I had to make a case study and do some heavy math to show you my conclusions are not pulled out of my patoot. I had to clear my name.

And as a side note, we or I just criticized your arguments and your debating method. This must be allowed. You have not been called names, neither you were accused or something. I found it interesting to see different views. Needless to say, I don't agree with, but that's okay. ;)

Edited December 21, 2012 by tortured Tomato

[TrickyVein]

:thumbsup: You haven't really cleared your name. All you've done is cherry-picked the information you think is relevant and then done some back-of-the-notebook calculations to show yourself, more than anyone else I think, that you think you're right.

 

I never put myself 'across the aisle' from your main point. I want you to look at the assumptions you're making, and it's important to me to want to clarify discussions we have relating to climate and some of the historical examples mentioned. Which I feel like we have, somewhat.

 

Climatology models aren't crap. You just don't seem to know how they're actually constructed and used, which feeds into some bogus claim that we shouldn't listen to scientists because they're waxing philosophical.

 

How do you think successful climate models are validated? The science here is not extrapolation. It is observation and characterization of *all* of the variables which we think to be acting on the climate today - through looking at paleoecological indicators and understanding the physics involved in energy exchange. The efficacy of these models is validated through agreement with the real world. The science is not divorced from history. We have a historical, though limited record of temperature change across the planet. We can refine and add to this historical record through looking at other environmental indicators of temperature change - in tree rings, ice cores, speleothems, and isotopic indicators (especially). No one blindly puts their faith in the projections of a model. The agreement with the historical record is the first and most important litmus test for any. I trust you know what the IPCC's 'hockey stick' projection is and what it means and how it represents what you're looking for.

 

Their is no 'failure' of modern science. Don't be reductive. There is no agreement or consensus across every discipline for someone to make such an absurd, grandiose, and thoroughly unscientific claim. The motivations of a few bad actors don't override the good science most others engage in, and my experience doesn't match your uncle's. That's his experience, not yours. You haven't really convinced me that you fully appreciate how we build scientific understanding - from your first comment about how something is 'scientifically questionable' as if this is a bad thing - to your claims now that the entire field of modeling isn't 'real' (essentially). The objective Truth^TM and scientific fact are not the same. Agreement with the data is what matters. It is the only thing which shapes our understanding. Models do not violate this. If they are incorrect, it is because our knowledge of the data is incomplete. The model itself does exactly what we want it to.

 

Back to this discussion, there are no precedents for nuclear war. There are many analogues which we can turn to. Be careful about making this leap - they are not the same. Let's examine the assumptions you're making: we assume that volcanic eruptions (of which there are different kinds depending on the volatile elements and mineral constituents present in the magma) can approximate nuclear bomb explosions. You don't really say anything about the plumage of these eruptions - what I would think is a critical factor - which is if ejected material enters the fast-moving currents of the stratosphere. You assume this doesn't happen. The outlook changes dramatically based on which scenario you think is the correct one. Volcanic eruptions are not perfect analogues, furthermore because they don't release gamma rays which destroys ozone. You can't overlook this as we talk of agriculture being a priority.

 

The land surface on the planet is not equally suitable for growing crops. Good soil is limited and localized. Soil formation happens on time-scales outside of human lifetimes. It is a limited resource, and where this good soil is located is where there are high priority targets in the wealthiest nations - in the US and in China. When you say that a third of the Earth's land surface is given over to agriculture, this represents the combined total of all the land on the planet that is suitable for growing crops, and then some, in areas that would quickly become arid without infrastructure to provide water and nutrients for the soil. To lose any part of this means a permanent and significant reduction in the size of the human population able to survive on this limited agricultural land. Add to this the increase in ionizing radiation let through a reduced or destroyed ozone globally. Not pretty. Different outcome.

 

What you see as 'leaps' in the science behind prediction and modeling are the same 'leaps' we make in deeming that some historical examples are suitable for examining this issue. Both are valid and should be considered so that we have access to all of the data. Don't confuse Truth, which is a matter of belief, with what science can do for us.

Edited December 21, 2012 by TrickyVein

[charwo]

Ah ha! I am back, past Christmas and such.

 

Also....read it:

http://skywalker.cochise.edu/wellerr/students/nuclear-winter/project.htm

 

Nuclear Winter doesn't work. The blasts don't blow the debris high enough. Not nearly. And this should be clear when looking at Tamboora: Not only did it eject more particulate matter into the atmosphere than any possible nuclear strike with any combinations of arsenals seen historically, the local blast, one blast erupted with the force of 800 Megatons. With a nuclear war, you would get more megatonnage, but in hundreds of separate detonations. If 800 tonnes at one location is required to propel crap into the atmosphere with minimal global cooling effects, the fircrakers of current nuclear bombs are simply outclassed.

 

Nuclear Winter, especially in terms described by climatologists, is well outside human capacity.