We’ve Forgotton The Potential Horrors of What a Nuclear Winter Would Be Like

The results revealed only 3.2 percent of UK respondents and 7.5 percent of US respondents had heard about the consequences of a nuclear war from contemporary media or culture.

In the event of a nuclear attack on Ukraine from Russia, nearly one in five people involved in the study supported retaliation with nuclear weapons. For those who had seen the infographics ahead of time, that figure dropped by 13 percent in the UK and 16 percent in the US – showing how education makes a difference in public opinion.

15 February 2023, By DAVID NIELD  https://www.sciencealert.com/weve-forgotton-the-potential-horrors-of-what-a-nuclear-winter-would-be-like—

Under the shadow of the Cold War, many in the world feared the impending prospect of a nuclear winter. According to a new report, our focus has since drifted from its horrors, leaving us with a general lack of awareness that could be dangerous for the future of humankind.

It goes without saying that the threat of a nuclear blast is no trivial event. Decades of pop culture have left society with a relatively strong association between global calamity and atomic weapons.

But the exact details on exactly what we might expect from such an escalating conflict have become hazy in the past few decades.

The facts themselves are fairly clear. Besides the many millions who would be killed directly from the blasts, climate models predict the debris resulting from nuclear war would block out much of our sunlight for up to a decade. The consequences for survivors would be devastating: a decline in global temperature, followed by widespread crop failure, and then mass starvation.

In spite of this dark threat, just a small percentage of today’s population claim to be well informed about the precise consequences of a nuclear war – and many of those people are relying on outdated information spread amid the political tensions between superpowers in the 1980s.

“In 2023 we find ourselves facing a risk of nuclear conflict greater than we’ve seen since the early eighties,” says Paul Ingram, a global risk researcher and diplomacy expert at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) run by the University of Cambridge in the UK. Ingram is the sole author of the report, which has not been peer reviewed.

“Yet there is little in the way of public knowledge or debate of the unimaginably dire long-term consequences of nuclear war for the planet and global populations.”

An online poll of 1,500 people in the UK and 1,500 people in the US was used to prepare the new report. The participants were quizzed on how much they know about a potential nuclear winter, and where they had got their information from. The survey allowed multiple sources to be picked, so they’re not mutually exclusive.

The results revealed 3.2 percent of UK respondents and 7.5 percent of US respondents had heard about the consequences of a nuclear war from contemporary media or culture. A greater fraction of people said their recollection of information spread in the 1980s, during a period of increasing hostility in the US-Soviet Union Cold War, informed their views of the risk of a nuclear winter. Unsurprisingly, few people relied on recent academic papers.

Using hypothetical news reports as a prompt, Ingram also looked at how people would want their governments to respond in the event of a nuclear strike. Half of those surveyed were shown infographics on the effects of nuclear winter before they answered, while the other half were not.

In the event of a nuclear attack on Ukraine from Russia, nearly one in five people involved in the study supported retaliation with nuclear weapons. For those who had seen the infographics ahead of time, that figure dropped by 13 percent in the UK and 16 percent in the US – showing how education makes a difference in public opinion.

“There is an urgent need for public education within all nuclear-armed states that is informed by the latest research,” says Ingram. “We need to collectively reduce the temptation that leaders of nuclear-armed states might have to threaten or even use such weapons in support of military operations.”

The nuclear winter infographics used by the researchers were published in a 2022 peer-reviewed study. The smallest nuclear war theorized involved 100 nukes of 15 kilotons each (about the same size used on Hiroshima), which represents just 0.1 percent of the total combined nuclear arsenal of Russia and the US.

That ‘small’ war would lead to 27 million direct fatalities and 225 million additional deaths from starvation, scientists calculate. At the top end of the scale, all-out nuclear war, we’re looking at 400 million direct deaths and more than 5 billion people dying of starvation because of the consequences of nuclear war.

With so many factors to consider, estimates differ when it comes to the impact of a nuclear war – but even the best case scenarios will clearly be unimaginably terrible. What this report shows is that a big part of avoiding the self-destruction of our species is in raising awareness of what we might be about to do to ourselves.

“Ideas of nuclear winter are predominantly a lingering cultural memory, as if it is the stuff of history, rather than a horribly contemporary risk,” says Ingram.

The report is available to read in full online at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.

February 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Double your money? Researchers tests co-benefits of farming crops with solar — RenewEconomy

Yet another research project investigates the benefits – and challenges – of optimising land use by pairing solar farms with agricultural crops. The post Double your money? Researchers tests co-benefits of farming crops with solar appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Double your money? Researchers tests co-benefits of farming crops with solar — RenewEconomy

February 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Works begin on green hydrogen plus battery pilot in South Australia — RenewEconomy

Sod turned on Japan-backed pilot electrolyser plant that aims to be shipped low-cost green hydrogen from SA to Indonesia by the end of the year. The post Works begin on green hydrogen plus battery pilot in South Australia appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Works begin on green hydrogen plus battery pilot in South Australia — RenewEconomy

February 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Webinar: Crisis, contingencies and the green energy transition — RenewEconomy

Momentum is building for Australia’s rapid switch to a renewables grid. But how to unlock the capital required given the regulatory, policy and market risks? The post Webinar: Crisis, contingencies and the green energy transition appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Webinar: Crisis, contingencies and the green energy transition — RenewEconomy

February 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

French nuclear giant EDF buys massive Australian floating offshore wind project — RenewEconomy

French nuclear energy giant EDF buys massive floating offshore wind project in Australia that it plans to build in stages. The post French nuclear giant EDF buys massive Australian floating offshore wind project appeared first on RenewEconomy.

French nuclear giant EDF buys massive Australian floating offshore wind project — RenewEconomy

February 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Global leaders are dropping the ball on climate change

Global leaders are dropping the ball on climate change

Greta Thunberg

We cannot just buy, invest or build our way out of the climate and environmental crisis. Nevertheless, money is still very much at the heart of the problem.

February 15, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The ‘Icefin’ bore deep into an Antarctic glacier. What it found were temperatures warmer than melting point

The ‘Icefin’ bore deep into an Antarctic glacier. What it found were temperatures warmer than melting point

Antarctica’s Thwaites glacier holds enough water to raise global sea levels by 65 centimetres. New research shows steep terraces and fissures in the glacier shelf are speeding up its melting.

February 15, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Ballooning paranoia: The China threat hits the skies

Thankfully, one or two sober notes of reflection have prevailed, even from within the military-intelligence fraternity. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has issued a few self-evident truths.  ‘Balloons are not an ideal platform for spying,’ writes James Andrew Lewis, ‘they are big and hard to hide.  They go where the winds take them’.  Such instruments ‘would be a strange choice for a technologically advanced and sophisticated opponent’.

Independent Australia, By Binoy Kampmark | 13 February 2023

Hysteria over balloons is a strange thing, writes Dr Binoy Kampmark.

HOT AIR balloons first appeared during the Napoleonic era, where they served as delivery weapons for bombs and undertook surveillance tasks. High-altitude balloons were also used by, of all powers, the United States during the 1950s, for reasons of gathering intelligence, though these were shot down by the irritated Soviets. 

On 28 January, a device reported to be a “high-altitude surveillance balloon” entered U.S. airspace in Alaska. It then had a brief spell in Canadian airspace before returning to the U.S. via Idaho on 31 January. 

On 4 February, with the balloon moving off the coast of South Carolina, a decision was made by the U.S. military to shoot it down using an F-22 Raptor from the First Fighter Wing based at Langley Air Force Base.  The Pentagon has revealed that the collection of debris is underway.

In response, the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a stern note of disapproval, protesting:

‘The US attack on a civilian unmanned airship by force.’

This was ‘a clear overreaction and a serious violation of international practice’. Beijing also issued a note of apology, regretting ‘the unintended entry of the ship into U.S. airspace due to force majeure’.

A U.S. State Department official, while noting the statement of regret, felt compelled to designate:

‘The presence of this balloon in our airspace [as] a clear violation of our sovereignty as well as international law.’

Rumours of a second Chinese balloon flying across Latin America were also confirmed by a spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry on 6 February, who described it as being “of a civilian nature and is used for flight tests”.The instrument had been impaired by weather in its direction, having “limited self-control capabilities”.

The Pentagon’s press secretary, Brigadier General Pat Ryder, also confirmed the existence of the second balloon, reaching the predictably opposite conclusion to his Chinese counterparts:

“We are seeing reports of a balloon transiting Latin America. We now assess it is another Chinese surveillance balloon.”

This overegged saga has seen much airtime and column space dedicated to those in the pay of the military-defence complex. Little thought was given to the purpose of such a seemingly crude way of collecting military intelligence. Timothy Heath of the Rand Corporation went so far as to extol the merits of such cheeky devices. For one thing, they were hard to detect, making them somehow reliable.

General Glen VanHerck, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, made reference to a number of Chinese spy balloons that supposedly operated with impunity during the Trump Administration. “I will tell you that we did not detect those threats,” he said. This had resulted in a “domain awareness gap that we have to figure out”. 

The begging bowl for even larger defence budgets is being pushed around the corridors of power.

Lawyers of international law have also had their say, reaching for their manuals, and shaking their heads gravely. Donald Rothwell of the Australian National University thought that:

‘The incursion of the Chinese balloon tested the boundaries of international law.’  

Thankfully, one or two sober notes of reflection have prevailed, even from within the military-intelligence fraternity. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has issued a few self-evident truths.  ‘Balloons are not an ideal platform for spying,’ writes James Andrew Lewis, ‘they are big and hard to hide.  They go where the winds take them’.  Such instruments ‘would be a strange choice for a technologically advanced and sophisticated opponent’.……………………………..

The Chinese explanation has been scoffed at and derisively dismissed. Yet balloons are an almost quotidian feature of scientific and meteorological work, whatever the official explanation offered by Beijing might be. NASA’s own Scientific Balloon Program, for instance, has been most engaged of late. 

The organisation was keen to tout its fall 2022 campaign involving six scientific, engineering and student balloon flights in support of 17 missions.

The scale of any one mission be sizeable. ‘Our balloon platforms’, came the description from NASA’s Scientific Balloon chief Debbie Fairbrother, ‘can lift several thousand pounds to the edge of space, allowing for multiple, various scientific instruments, technologies, and education payloads to fly together in one balloon flight’.

The disproportionate nature of Washington’s reaction to Beijing over such balloons also looks rather odd in the face of the vast surveillance technologies it deploys against adversaries and friends. 

But politics is not merely the art of the possible but an opportunity for the absurd to find form and voice.  On this score, the mouse has clearly terrified the elephant.  https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/ballooning-paranoia-the-china-threat-hits-the-skies,17230

February 13, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment