[ExI] nuclear... winter? summer? RE: Election stuff

[Anders]

The main effect is cooling in modern climate models. The Toon and Robock 
models (http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/nuclear/) typically use 5 Tg 
of black carbon for regional nuclear conflicts (remember, Pakistan and 
India are shooting at each other too, regardless of Trump) and 150 Tg 
for full-scale wars. Presumably there would be about the same order of 
magnitude or more CO2. Current carbon emissions are on the order of 10 
Pg per year - a factor of 66 or so.

The extra CO2 would contribute some extra heating. However, soot is many 
orders of magnitude better at absorbing light than CO2, so it wins and 
heats up the stratosphere instead of letting the troposphere absorb the 
heat - so as long as the optical depth is affected (about a decade). 
After that the extra CO2 would add heat, but emissions would likely 
strongly reduce in the intervening time, so it seems likely that the 
overall effect would be very minor.

Overall Robock seems to be the one to follow in regards to models. There 
is not much competition in the nuclear climate model field - most 
researchers seem to think these models are not academically interesting, 
so they do not work on them. I have been working behind the scenes to 
change it (muhahaha), but I have a feeling that I might have to learn 
how to do climate codes myself to get it done properly.

(Plus, just imagine the roleplaying game worldbuilding potential of 
having general circulation models at your fingertips!)


On 2016-11-04 22:01, spike wrote:
>
> *From:*extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] 
> *On Behalf Of *Dylan Distasio
>
> >…  Hypothetically, if Trump wins, I'd like to spend my last days 
> before the nuclear winter on other topics…
>
> We could start a discussion on what kinds of strategies could be used 
> for construction of bomb shelters and food storage I suppose, but 
> there is a related topic that interests me.  Back in the 70s Carl 
> Sagan proposed a model for what would happen should the US and the 
> commies go at it.  But a lot has changed since those days.  For 
> instance, those models were based on the notion that nuclear war would 
> kick up enormous amounts of dust and particulates, which would scatter 
> sunlight and dim the earth’s surface causing cooling.  But the same 
> factors which did that would also create huge amounts of carbon 
> dioxide which would warm the planet.  So some extent, the particulate 
> would also absorb and re-radiate solar energy, so that might 
> participate in warming as well.
>
> So… should either of the two mainstream candidates win, which is 
> looking pretty likely at this point, and that person starts WW3, will 
> we get net cooling or net warming?  And how do we find out which are 
> likely targets, so that we know how elaborate to make our bomb 
> shelters?  How much food and ammo should we store?  Iodine tablets?  
> And since the two mainstreamers each have different opponents they 
> intend to provoke (or have already provoked with accusations which 
> have turned out to be false) only one of which has nukes, do not we 
> need to wait until Tuesday’s result to determine if we need to make a 
> shelter?
>
> Has anyone here followed nuclear winter models?
>
> spike
>
>
>
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-- 
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University

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