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SCIENTIFIC_WINTER

                                             September 8, 2013
                                       
It would be nice to have a case study of     
Sagan and his advocacy of the "Nuclear       
Winter" hypothesis... in lieu of that,       
here's my outline, from memory:              
                                             
Sagan-- a big name brought in for publicity 
purposes, as I remember it-- and his
cohorts issued the TAAPS study, which
argued that there was a potential risk to
nuclear war that hadn't been recognized
before: the severe quantities of dust
kicked up into the atmosphere by multiple
nuclear explosions could reflect so much        I remember reading a remark
sunlight that the earth would be plunged        from someone attending a
into a new ice age, a "nuclear winter".         conference on the subject:
                                                he speculated that an
This, they argued, was one more reason          attacker might be tempted to
to push for nuclear disarmament: the            launch an attack right up to
weapons were doomsday weapons, and a            the threshold that would
nuclear assault would effectively bring         induce nuclear winter,
about it's own counter-strike.                  relying on the fear of going
                                                over the threshold to
  There was a controversy at the                inhibit a counter attack.
  time about the way that Sagan
  and co handled this theory of                    He commented "I've been
  theirs: they essentially                         sitting here all afternoon,
  skipped peer review and went                     trying to decide whether
  straight to the popular press.                   I should introduce that
                                                   thought."
  Sagan's defense, no
  doubt, was that this                                          TIPS_FOR_T
  was a case of grave,
  immediate importance     I fear that they              A fine example
  that could not wait      simply may not have           of what Dyson
  for the slow grind of    *cared* whether they          dismissed as the
  peer review.             were right.                   "theology of
                                                         nuclear war",
  My impression is         If it took a myth             I think...
  that the Nuclear         to scare people
  Winter theory was        into disarmament,                   UNTHINKABLE
  later disproved (but     weren't they
  then, it's not like      ethically required         Myself, I would
  we ever did the          to supply the myth?        introduce a
  experiment, eh?).                                   different nasty
                                                      thought:

                                                      If we can induce a
  I got in an argument                                nuclear winter just
  with someone on-line,                               by exploding a bunch
  and tried telling him                               of bombs, then maybe
  that the Nuclear Winter                             we could counteract
  idea had been shot                                  the effect of green
  down, but he refused to                             house gases by just
  believe it.  I then                                 doing a few
  went to the library                                 atmospheric bursts,
  looked up a reference,                              every few years.
  pointed him at it, and                              Quick and dirty
  yet he still refused to                             climate engineering.
  abandon the Nuclear
  Winter faith.                                           TERRAFORM_TERRA

    He said "arguments based       
    on authority are useless".     
                                             
       But you know, he probably never       
       would've heard about the theory if    
       it didn't have Sagan's name on it.    
                                             




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