Last Summer I noted that some people think that only solution to global warming is to “think about cooling the planet” by using geoengineering. One of the proposed geoengineering solutions was to loft between two million and ten million tons of sulfur dioxide into the lower stratosphere—the equivalent of a massive volcanic eruption. The drawback is that the solution could lead to more skin cancer, damage to plants and animals, and disrupted monsoonal rain cycles. But you can’t make an omelet with breaking a few eggs, right?
Another drawback is that no one in the right mind would agree to try it. Fortunately, there is another option that some leaders in crazier parts of our planet may be willing to consider: small-scale nuclear war.
The global cooling caused by these high carbon clouds wouldn’t be as catastrophic as a superpower-versus-superpower nuclear winter, but “the effects would still be regarded as leading to unprecedented climate change,” research physical scientist Luke Oman said during a press briefing Friday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.
Earth is currently in a long-term warming trend. After a regional nuclear war, though, average global temperatures would drop by 2.25 degrees F (1.25 degrees C) for two to three years afterward, the models suggest.
At the extreme, the tropics, Europe, Asia, and Alaska would cool by 5.4 to 7.2 degrees F (3 to 4 degrees C), according to the models. Parts of the Arctic and Antarctic would actually warm a bit, due to shifted wind and ocean-circulation patterns, the researchers said.
After ten years, average global temperatures would still be 0.9 degree F (0.5 degree C) lower than before the nuclear war, the models predict.
No one is actually advocating this as a proposal for offsetting global warming (at least not yet). But isn’t it comforting to know that if worse comes to worse we can fix the climate change problem with the push of a button?
February 28th, 2011 | 1:11 pm
I’m fascinated by the author, of the article not Joe, coming up with 3 significant digits in his presentation: “average global temperatures would drop by 2.25 degrees F.” Clearly he should be more skeptical about what the models say.
February 28th, 2011 | 3:59 pm
Why would we need to nuke a country? There’s plenty of desert out in the southwest where we could detonate plenty of nuclear weapons.
In fact, after the world’s weather cools to a certain point, we could extort the entire world by refusing to stop detonating said weapons until given better trade agreements with countries like china, debt forgiveness, etc.
February 28th, 2011 | 4:45 pm
@Sean
We’ve already nuked our southwest deserts quite a bit if a while back. Did that create the, confusing to climate scientists, cooling of the 1970′s? They were suggesting the start of a new ice age back then.
February 28th, 2011 | 5:04 pm
Mike,
Looks to me like there’s a growth industry for us, Russia and China in becoming the world’s new air conditioner.
February 28th, 2011 | 5:47 pm
A warmer earth with the vast areas of Canada and Russia being more hospitable and the population control crowd being proven wrong again – could that not be in The Grand Design !
February 28th, 2011 | 7:59 pm
I don’t know what is the basis for the claim that using sulfur to reduce global warming would cause “cancer, damage to plants and animals, and disrupted monsoonal rain cycles.” People who hate technology thrw around such claims, but backing them up with science is another thing. Besides, since this is exactly the same thing that happens naturally after a major volcanic eruption, where is the evidence of such consequences from natural sulfate clouds?
The fact is that, if you take the global arming theories seriously, then mankind is ALREADY engagd in “geoengineering” on a large scale, and ANYTHING we do to alter things is ALSO geoengineering. Trying to say otherwise is like the oild Soviet dodge that nyuclear ICBMs are NOT space weapons but anti-ballisitic missile systems that intercpt them IN SPACE somehow ARE.
If lofting sulfates into the stratosphere could affect “monsoonal rain cycles”, then they are ALREADY being disrupted by the inordinate warming we are already causing. In other words, the “disruption” of the monsoon would be a restoration of a more normal cycle.
Since global warming is supposed to be ALREADY harming plants and animals, anything that reduces warming is going to be beneficial to plants and animals, right? There is nothing about sulfates in the stratosphere that is a new time of element in nature–again, it happens all the time with natural volcanic eruptions, from Mount Pinatubo to Mount St. Helens.
As for geoengineering, you should remember that, when the Montreal Protocol was enbacted in 1990, along with corresponidng vchangs to the US Clean Air Act, chlorine-based refrigrants were banned, and governments were required to force us all to use different chemicals for refrigrants. Those new referigerants are incredibly ferocious greenhouse gases, at 10,000 times carbon dioxide. The 1997 UN IPCC report said that those refrigrants alone were contributing so much additional global warming that, if we had NOT had the Montreal Protocol, we would not have needed the Kyoto Protocol. We have already geoengineered the atmosphere, and done it in a stupid way. Since mankind cannot avoid “geoengineering” every time we drive to work, we shouold do it in a smart way.
The calculations for the cost of stopping global warming with sulfates vs having to completely retool our energy usage show that we can stop global warming for less than 1% of the cost without throwing away prematurely all the capital we have invested in fossil fuel powering our electricity and cars and heating and cooling our homes. Additionally, the effort to try to combat global warming by reducing CO2 and other Greenhouse gases, even if it goes forward on schedule, will have no positive effect for 20 to 30 years, because it does NOT actively reduce the CO2 in th air that is already there and will continue to absorb heat for years to come. Not to mention the fact that making and erecting wind farms and solar energy systems takes a lot of energy investment up front, energy that is gnerated the old fashioned, fossil fuel way, creating an acceleration in CO2 that will not be compensated for for decades. By contrast, using sulfates can get immediate reductions in heat, and buy us time for a more rational rate of turnover to non-fossil fuels that won’t actually INCREASE CO2 during the transition.
Go look at Super Freakonomics for more details about this proposal.
February 28th, 2011 | 10:56 pm
I don’t find it comforting at all.
It reminds me greatly of the Malthusian apocalyptics who even now facing demographic winter in many countries still propose that we need to reduce the human population.
At this point in time, any use if nuclear weapons in any circumstance would be immoral, even on a small scale.
Certainly here is another example of the ends [reducing global warming or even defeat an enemy] does not justify the means [use of nuclear weapons]
Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened without the benefit of a great amount of moral reflection. I am not commenting on the beginning of the nuclear age. However I am about any future use of nuclear weapons.
March 1st, 2011 | 5:31 am
[...] Joe Carter notes (HT be to him), no one is actually proposing this as a solution to global warming, at least [...]
March 2nd, 2011 | 12:23 am
you don’t need a small nuclear war to lower the world’s temperature.
Genghis Kahn managed to do it by killing off a lot of folks in the Middle East and destroying their irrigation systems. So the trees regrew, the climate cooled, and if a couple million folks died, hey at least the ecology improved.
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