Opinion: How fear of nuclear winter has helped save the world, so far
<p>The direct effects of nuclear war would be horrific, with blasts, fires, and radiation killing and injuring many people. But in 1983, United States and Soviet Union scientists showed that a nuclear war could also produce a nuclear winter, with catastrophic consequences for global food suppl...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2023-06-01
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| Series: | Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics |
| Online Access: | https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/23/6691/2023/acp-23-6691-2023.pdf |
| Summary: | <p>The direct effects of nuclear war would be horrific, with blasts, fires, and
radiation killing and injuring many people. But in 1983, United States and
Soviet Union scientists showed that a nuclear war could also produce a
nuclear winter, with catastrophic consequences for global food supplies for
people far removed from the conflict. Smoke from fires ignited by nuclear
weapons exploded on cities and industrial targets would block out sunlight,
causing dark, cold, and dry surface conditions, producing a nuclear winter,
with surface temperatures below freezing even in summer for years. Nuclear
winter theory helped to end the nuclear arms race in the 1980s and helped to
produce the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2017, for which
the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons received the
2017 Nobel Peace Prize. Because awareness of nuclear winter is now
widespread, nuclear nations have so far not used nuclear weapons. But the
mere existence of nuclear weapons means that they can be used, by unstable
leaders, accidently from technical malfunctions, such as in computers and
sensors, due to human error, or by terrorists. Because they cannot be used
without the danger of escalation (resulting in a global humanitarian
catastrophe), because of recent threats to use them by Russia, and because
nuclear deterrence doctrines of all nuclear-armed states are based on the
capability and readiness to use nuclear weapons, it is even more urgent for
scientists to study these issues, to broadly communicate their results, and to
work for the elimination of nuclear weapons.</p> |
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| ISSN: | 1680-7316 1680-7324 |