Comments on: Mr. Plow eagerly awaits nuclear war

By: Russell Seitz

Russell Seitz — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 04:23:13 +0000

May I also make a collegial suggestion to Eric– would he please prevail upon Robock & Co to display the first 400 days od _all_ of their time-temperature curves for _all_ of their’nuclear winter’ scenarios nicely drawn atop and to the identical scale as the famous TTAPS figure?
We’ll all feel better when they do.

By: Russell Seitz

Russell Seitz — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 04:02:53 +0000

Hundman's piece is evidently uninformed by such contemporary critiques of TTAPS and its biological consequences as: Nuclear Winter Re-appraised" by Schneider & Thompson of the National Centerfor Atmospheric Research, which appeared in Foreign Affairs in 1986, and Kerry Emmanuel's harsh criticism in Nature :, which referred to them as having become "notorious for their lack of scientific integrity. I think he went over the top- nuclear winter may not make the grade as what philosophers of language style " a rigid designator in the set of real phenomena" but is a cautionary example of hype, not hoax. If anything is fatally flawed, it is Hundman's failure to acknowledge that the old and new studies quantitatively overlap in terms of the quantity of black carbon injected into the model atmospheres. In the models , that parameter is independent of the 'war' scenario whether realistic or absurd.The meltdown I refer to spans not just the 30 plus degree difference between the old results and the new , but the gross difference in the optical depth and the reduction in sunlight- 'nuclear winter' entered the language as an apt description of the aftermath of a million fold reduction in sunlight, not one of ten watts per square meter or less. Many disciplines deem a two order of magnitude crack-up grounds for publishing a retraction- not this one - instead we are seeing stonewalling in defense of the original exercise in semantic aggression.Paul Crutzen got it right when he published the original hypothesis in 1983 under the rubric "Twilight at Noon. Hundman is correct to chide me for referring to the 300 Mb elevation at which Robock et al inject black aerosols as " the stratosphere" that is off by about 10-15% depending on latitude . I should have stuck to high as Mt Everest" as the metric for kicking mass upstairs in the face of gravity -- but one example of why" you don't have to be an atmospheric scientist" to understand why many of that fraternity are growing tired of the same old cohort stretching the limits of scientific -and strategic plausibility to delay the interment of the original snow job in the factoid cemetery alongside the "Energy Crisis" and the "Population Bomb." Hundman simply errs in characterizing my reprinting the 1986 article verbatim as a critique of the present papers - its subject is TTAPS, and it speaks for itself. Though relieved at not being called an atmospheric scientist, my modest contributions to the study of the large scale generation and ( rarely) global atmospheric transport of dust and smoke were published under peer review in Nature and Naturwissenschaften in 1986 and 1988. My critique of Sagan's Winter 1983 Foreign Affairs article appeared there in 1984. I hope Hundman reads it too.

By: Eric Hundman

Eric Hundman — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 21:21:26 +0000

Seitz bases his post on a *1986* piece he wrote for the National Interest claiming that the original nuclear winter model was incorrect — he finds vindication by comparing the original results to those in Robock’s new study (which he also claims is faulty) which shows much more modest results.
While the new study he cites does show a much more modest effect, this is primarily because it depicts a radically different scenario: 100 nukes exchanged between India and Pakistan, totaling ~1.5 MT, rather than hundreds or thousands of nukes between the USSR and USA, totaling 100 MT — 5000 MT.
Seitz appears to have ignored or failed to read a companion study (also by Robock et al) which *did* revisit the scenario examined in the original study he took issue with — and it found results similar, if not identical, to the original study, even using far more sophisticated models. He never mentions this in his blog post.
Note, for example, the figure Seitz has created. The curve he links to with “All that’s left of Sagan’s Big Chill today” and attempts to superimpose on the TTAPS curve is, again, drawn from the most recent model of a *regional* nuclear exchange — not the revisitation of the TTAPS scenario. It is, at the least, misleading to compare the two directly and it is certainly incorrect to conclude on that basis that the TTAPS results have been refuted.
Seitz also makes other incorrect claims. For instance, in paragraph 8, he says “they have tweaked the software to arbitrarily loft [soot] into the stratosphere.” So far as I can tell, the authors inserted the carbon into the upper *troposphere* and the model — which contains its own module to calculate aerosol particle behavior and seems to be widely accepted as one of the best and most accurate available — showed that the particles would be lofted into the stratosphere.
In communication, Seitz also claimed that the original TTAPS study, like the new study, modeled a “regional” exchange. In fact, the old study apparently did model one scenario it called a “regional” exchange (limited to Europe), but according to Seitz himself this exchange too involved 100 MT of total yield — nearly a factor of 100 greater than that examined in the new regional exchange study.
I am certainly not an atmospheric scientist (neither, by the way, is Russell Seitz), so I never intended to claim that the new studies are without flaws. But it doesn’t take an atmospheric scientist to see the fatal flaws in Seitz’s claims — all it takes is reading the studies.

By: Big D

Big D — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 22:50:30 +0000

How many MT of warheads were detonated on the surface of the planet during the period 1945–1955?
And how much of an impact did *that* have on the weather?
Sheesh.

By: George Skinner

George Skinner — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 17:10:18 +0000

Has anyone attempted to validate the nuclear winter hypothesis using data from the period around World War 2? If it’s correct, I would think that the massive bombing campaigns against Germany and Japan should’ve generated some perturbation in the climate.

By: Gary

Gary — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 01:09:58 +0000

I suppose when the 12th Imam finally comes out of the well, and the fun kicks off between Iran and Israel we’ll get the chance to prove or disprove this little ditty.
Just so long as we don’t get to experience the THREADS movie as well!

By: Glenn Charles

Glenn Charles — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 01:08:50 +0000

Just for the record–‘hubris’ not ‘huberous’. Had to think about it for about 20 seconds, though.
Glenn
8]

By: BT

BT — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 22:30:17 +0000

Climate engineering! I hope no one has the huberous to think they can accurately predict and modify the global climate (Art Bell aside). We will one day be able to do this, but not for a few hundred years. Unless one thinks that all the land masses will either be underwater or a desert (Al Gore), why even attempt such as dangerous and unpredictable effort, regardless of the tools we have?
I believe Carl Sagan dreamt up the “nuclear winter” and his end of life scenrio to scare people of nuclear war, so now we would use them to save life. Bad idea, there are better ideas to try, if you want to block some of the sun’s energy, and effectively “cool” the planet.

By: campbell

campbell — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 18:37:06 +0000

yeah. I saw that new study. But for a very long time prior to that, my response to “global warming!” has been a soft reply of “nuclear winter”.….(loved the vindication of my
smart-aleck attitude)
only.…my thought has been.…not a small nuclear exchange between warring factions.…but how bout a deliberate, many sites, attempt at setting off volcanos using nukes inside of them?
DARPA.….eat your hearts out! heh heh