A long time ago before Al Gore “invented” the internet and climate change meant “global cooling”, the environmentals having failed to persuade the world that impending nuclear war would be the end of civilisation they invented a new threat called a “nuclear winter”.
The scenario seemed plausible: the detonation of a number of nuclear weapons would cause clouds of dust to be blasted up into the atmosphere, blocking off the sun and causing worldwide temperatures to plummet and devastating food crops, leading to worldwide starvation and the end of all life on earth.
Then a few years ago, whilst reading about “global warming”, I came across a little known effect called “global dimming”. Apparently, the world already had huge amounts of atmospheric particulates that already depress the world’s temperature. That was until the 1970s when the clean air acts began to clean up the world’s temperature and … well that bit of the paper never got into Wikipedia, because the inference that world temperature may have risen due to environmental legislation wasn’t allowed to reach the pages of Wikipedia.
But the inference was clear. If global warming were the world’s “greatest problem”, then by definition, all other problems would be lesser problems, so it is simple logic that replacing global warming by anything else would be a benefit to society. So, by definition a better outcome for humanity than global warming would be anything else that reduces global temperatures and with the end of the cold war why not (ab)use that well known effect of the nuclear winter to bring down world temperature?
Too stupid for anyone to seriously contemplate? No!
“The computerized model used by NASA to research the effects of a nuclear war on global warming found that the detonation of the 100 bombs (the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT, or 0.03 percent of the current nuclear arsenal on the planet) says that in parts of Europe, Asia and Alaska, the temperature would drop by 5.4 to 7.2 degrees F (3 to 4 degrees C).”
(Source: Autoevolution)
See also: National Geographic
