5.2.2.2 Nuclear Winter
The famous TTAPS (Turco, Toon, Ackerman, Pollack, and Sagan) proposal regarding a potential "nuclear winter" is another possible occurrence. This effect is caused by the absorption of sunlight when large amounts of soot are injected into the atmosphere by the widespread burning of cities and petroleum stocks destroyed in a nuclear attack.
Similar events have been observed naturally when large volcanic eruptions have injected large amounts of dust into the atmosphere. The Tambora eruption of 1815 (the largest volcanic eruption in recent history) was followed by "the year without summer" in 1816, the coldest year in the last few centuries.
Soot is far more efficient in absorbing light than volcanic dust, and soot particles are small and hydrophobic and thus tend not to settle or wash out as easily.
Although the initial TTAPS study was met with significant skepticism and criticism, later and more sophisticated work by researchers around the world have confirmed it in all essential details. These studies predict that the amount of soot that would be produced by burning most of the major cities in the US and USSR would severly disrupt climate on a world-wide basis. The major effect would be a rapid and drastic reduction in global temperature, especially over land. All recent studies indicate that if large scale nucelar attack occur against urban or petrochemical targets, average temperature reductions of at least 10 degrees C would occur lasting many months. This level of cooling far exceeds any that has been observed in recorded history, and is comparable to that of a full scale ice age. In areas downwind from attack sites, the cooling can reach 35 degrees C. It is probable that no large scale temperature excursion of this size has occurred in 65 million years.
Smaller attacks would create reduced effects of course. But it has been pointed out that most of the world's food crops are subtropical plants that would have dramatic drops in productivity if an average temperature drop of even one degree were to occur for even a short time during the growing season. Since the world maintains a stored food supply equal to only a few months of consumption, a war during the Northern Hemisphere spring or summer could still cause deadly starvation around the globe from this effect alone even if it only produced a mild "nuclear autumn".
Hm, 10 Celsia je docela síla ;-) Takže navrhuji, že jakmile začne globální oteplování dělat skutečné problémy, odpálíme pár set atomovek ve Spojených státech (jako státu nejvíce odpovědného za vypouštění CO2) a hned bude zase příjemně chladno ;-))
Věřím, že Čína nebo Rusko se tohoto těžkého úkolu rádi zhostí ;-)) |
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