Nuclear Winter | Retro Report | The New York Times

scientists all over the world are finding that beyond the immediate devastation nuclear war gravely threatens our global civilization and just possibly the human species in the early 1980s Carl Sagan gave Americans a new reason to fear nuclear war with darkened skies freezing temperatures perpetual darkness and extreme cold in which all human life my dad it is known as nuclear winter nuclear winter added to an already prevailing sense that the superpowers were hurtling toward a point of no return there are 40,000 nuclear warheads the inventories of the US the Soviet Union today we must ensure it not be used the implications of nuclear winter are that we shouldn't build more but we should build less now three decades later the Cold War seems a distant memory but the thorny issues raised by nuclear winter continue to resonate nuclear winter was kind of an early volley in this battle over the question of human power to change systems and what do you do about it you administration officials from the President on down have been using hardline rhetoric against the Soviets all year long the administration's message to Moscow has been that it's not going to be business as usual anymore today in virtually every measure of military power the Soviet Union enjoys a decided advantage the Soviet military buildup must not be ignored if the united states are going to continue the course then I'm afraid that the vote is doomed to be on the brink of nuclear war there was a real fear in the early eighties that we were in a more dangerous period than we had been perhaps since the Missile Crisis in 1962 tens of thousands of nuclear warheads already faced off but Cold War calculations pushed the superpowers to build even more it was a balance with tremendous destructive power on both sides so we were in this very very tenuous situation right at the edge of a public cliff it started quietly but it is picking up steam and maybe gathering strength the movement if that's the right term to somehow bring pressure on leaders of both the United States and the Soviet Union to stop just stop the nuclear arms race that movement was called nuclear freeze and as its message spread across the nation it brought together a wide swath of Americans in order to stop this arms race you first got a freezin one of those was the astronomer Carl Sagan imagine a room a wash in gasoline and there are two implacable enemies in that room one of them has 9000 matches the other has 7,000 matches each of them is concerned about who's ahead who's stronger well that's the kind of situation we are actually in Seguin was a very effective communicator when he was a voice for the scientific community in some sense in 1983 Sagan used that popularity to draw attention to a troubling new scientific finding about nuclear war dr. Carl Sagan and more than 100 other scientists have concluded that the long-term effects of nuclear war would be much worse than anyone has predicted so far we studied a range of consequences of various nuclear war scenarios if I may have the first slide high-yield nuclear weapons explosions climate scientist Alan robock was in the conference audience it was a very new idea the smoke from fires started by nuclear weapons would go up in the atmosphere block out the Sun and make it cold and dark and dry the Earth's surface having impacts on agricultural production as Russian counterparts weighed in via satellite link this view of nuclear wars destructive power took hold for the first time we see that the consequences of a nuclear war might be absolutely devastating for nations far removed from the conflict the initial splash on this story was profound it was kind of self assured even existential destruction nuclear winter even though verbage is portentous to illustrate the point Sagan helped produce a short film showing just how devastating nuclear winter might become beneath the clouds virtually all domesticated and wild sources of food would be destroyed most of the human survivors would starve to death the extinction of the human species would be a real possibility this is not some piece neck nightmare it is a theory supported by at least 40 American scientists of high repute today a panel appointed by the prestigious National Academy of Sciences agreed with Sagan the Pentagon has accepted as valid the theory of a nuclear winter it was a combination of everybody's work that kept making a stronger and stronger case that this theory was true the fear of nuclear winter soon became another of the many issues impacting cold war strategy great many reputable scientists are telling us that such a war could just add and up in no victory for anyone because we would wipe out the earth as we know it what are we talking about with a whole nuclear exchange the nuclear winter Gorbachev certainly has testified to the fact that this increased his concern about the consequences of nuclear war and the arms race today I for the United States and the general secretary for the Soviet Union have signed the first agreement ever to eliminate an entire class of US and Soviet nuclear weapons we have made history but even before that treaty was signed some of the gravest predictions made by nuclear winter theorists had begun to thaw those of us who were doing more global models we didn't get anything like the result that Sagan was getting him and we got a climatic effect if you put that much smoke on there but we didn't get the kind of effect they were talking about nuclear winter argues one group of scientists is what will surely follow nuclear war other scientists with their own computer calculations of the doomsday scenario say life after nuclear war will not be so much nuclear winter as nuclear fall severe but survivable nothing we've seen in our simulations are in they were going on now leads me to believe that the extinction of the human race is a real possibility over time better modeling caused many of the original nuclear winter theorists to agree that nuclear winters effects were likely more moderate than they had initially supposed there's a pattern to how some phenomena and stories play out the first idea is very stark and then the scientific process is like piranhas that nibble away at the soft stuff and whatever's left is the hard skeleton of the idea is the enduring part even when you get back to the nuclear autumn thing you're still having huge environmental effects that would have agricultural effects so it was more a matter of new ones and intensity rather than a matter of is it real or not it didn't have to be quite hyped so much but that the word climatic effects was important but as the nuclear winter Theory became more subtle the headlines faded away I think a lot of the public went away with just the message that this was an exaggerated concern and they didn't have to worry about it over the years another global issue began to focus the public's concern when I show my results of the climate response to smoke from nuclear war inevitably I get a question Osos out a solution to global warming nobody's talking about exploding a nuclear bomb but the idea of harnessing a nuclear winter like effect to reduce global temperature has intrigued policymakers and scientists for some time one idea involves dispersing a cloud of sulfate particles into the stratosphere to partially obscure the Sun some of you could do it the main benefit is it would cool the climate and so it reduced the impact of global warming the idea of geoengineering the climate is not without controversy this idea of responding to global warming essentially with nuclear winter light I guess you could call it the science leads to some very worrisome questions I should mention that I've written a paper with 26 reasons why geoengineering would be a bad idea anything built by humans and operated by humans can fail so would you trust our only planet to this more than 30 years after scientists like robach began to study the climatic effects of nuclear war it's clear that the danger of such a conflict remains there are a lot of weapons out there there may be an arms race starting in Asia Pakistan reportedly building 20 nuclear warheads a year it's important for countries and leaders to be keeping in mind what nuclear war would do Putin reportedly threatening nuclear war in order to force NATO troops out of nations bordering Russia even small exchanges could be absolutely devastating you're gonna have first the destruction effects you'll have fallout you may have some climatic effects that lets Fred for his part robach has modeled a hypothetical worst-case scenario which suggests that widely dispersed smoke from a small regional nuclear conflict could cause cooling of several degrees across parts of the world it will be enough to have a huge impact agricultural production the world would have much less food so you can imagine these political instabilities developing and war and terrible famine as a result of a small nuclear war on the other side of the world the process of science should always be looking at these questions heaven help us if there were a small nuclear exchange you could end up with being on the worst end it's like with global warming you know the worst-case scenarios can happen I guess the good news about nuclear winter is it remained a theory the global consequences of nuclear war is not a subject amenable to experimental verification or at least not more than once maybe we've all made some serious mistake in the calculations but I wouldn't want to bet my life on it to Oh you

Channel: The New York Times

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Keywords: The New York Times, NY Times, NYT, Times Video, nytimes.com, news, newspaper, feature, reporting, Nuclear Winter, Retro Report, Retro Report NYT, Carl Sagan, Cold War, Super Powers, Russia, Soviet Union, Ice Age, Nuclear War, Moscow, Ronald Reagan, Nuclear Freeze, Arms Race, Climate, Climate Change, Food, Food Sources, Starvation, Extinction, Human Extinction, Nuclear Winter Theory, Science Theories, Cold War Strategy

Id: JvrHzqMrXNM

Length: 12min 13sec (733 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 11 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/roguemango]

So what you're saying is this might be a possible solution to global warming?

[u/Yazbec]

What I take most from this video is that somehow, the environmental alarm bell worked for them. Somehow, they got it to stick. We just don't have nearly the reasons to stick with fossil fuels as we used to. Solar is better. Battery tech is better. Now somehow, we have to get the generally uncaring populace to hear the alarm bell, enough to start pressuring their leadership in some meaningful way. Its ludicrous to have any controversy on it, if not for the money.

[u/DasDarky717]

Well I mean way back during the Manhattan project scientists weren't 100% on wether or not a single nuke would ignite the entire atmosphere so I think we might not have to worry too much

[u/Jamwara-san]

Nuclear winter will always be within the realm of possible as long as there are enough nuclear weapons to block most sunlight fom reaching the surface of earth.

[u/fragulater]

Scary, too many variables for us humans to deal with. Stupid and deadly... I feel like we're "Spaceballs"