A small scale war with a hundred small (Hiroshima-sized) nuclear warheads would cool temps to lower than any time in the last 1,000 years, colder than the Little Ice Age or post-Krakatoa. It’d kick up enough debris that noon on a cloudless day would get the same amount of sun as a cloudy day does now, even 10 years later.
WW 2 level death toll on day 1, perhaps another billion dead from hunger in the following years.
It could happen considering recent saber rattling between India and Pakistan.
“Environmental consequences of nuclear war”:
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/ToonRobockTurcoPhysicsToday.pdf
JonRowe
4896
I wonder if anyone has floated dropping nukes in a desert or other abandoned area as a means to create a small nuclear winter effect to combat climate change?
I bet Edward Teller would be working on it if he were still alive.
Much of the cooling effect is from fires started by the nuclear detonations (the cities, suburbs, nearby forests and such). Cooling effect isn’t just due to dirt knocked up by the blast; soot is the main culprit.
Almost all nuclear tests were in deserts, at sea/small islands, or tundra. So there was limited burning effects which is why open air testing didn’t dramatically affect climate.
Debated posting this but well here it is.
What what in the what now?
Yeah, I read that a few weeks ago. It really puts a scale to the genocide.
antlers
4902
Agriculture releases CO2;.forest absorbs it.
With more than 90% of indigenous people in the new world dying, there was lots of agricultural land reverting to forest, soaking up CO2 and causing temps to drop.
I’ve also heard that the beaver trade, which wiped out beavers through vast tracts of NA, helped the little ice age, because beaver ponds release CO2 and more importantly methane.
Some good news:
“We believe now that utility-scale battery storage, from a technology standpoint, is sufficiently viable to begin to displace, if you will, what has been virtually exclusively natural gas as that flexible, ramping, backstop resource," Froetscher said.
What could possibly go wrong?
Oh, okay.
Timex
4905
I find it amusing that the person who wants to spray salt into the atmosphere is named Salter.
“Buy my salty drone package” says Salter. “Save the world!”
CraigM
4908
This is the problem. We never are able to be sure if the medicine is worse than the disease.
It may ultimately be what we need to try, but going in with eyes open about the potential risks for sure.
Don’t forget how happy Russia is to have some warming in order to unlock some of their vast permafrost areas and northern sea routes. What technologies will they develop to nullify the salty skies technology being used to nullify the carbon warming? All war in the future will be climate war.
ShivaX
4910
Well, unless that melting reveals some ancient DeathPox and they get to be patient zero for it.
Yeah, but consequences of climate change going unchecked is also droughts flooding, and catastrophic crop failures.
We are rapidly approaching the point where we can no longer look to prevention, but will need active intervention to stop the end of the world, and active intervention will always have some side effects.
I was going to raise the same point. We’re already engaging in geoengineering on a global scale. Except we’re doing it by accident, with no plan and no goals. And we’re not limiting it to climate; changing biomes on land and plastic in the oceans are both widespread enough to count.
On the plus side, the data we’re collecting will be useful someday when we start terraforming Mars and Venus… assuming our civilization doesn’t collapse first.
KevinC
4914
I joke hope the solution ends up being the construction and deployment of thousands of cotton candy clouds.
