Friday, October 4, 2019

Rapidly expanding nuclear arsenals in Pakistan and India portend regional and global catastrophe

Rapidly expanding nuclear arsenals in Pakistan and India portend regional and global catastrophe
Excerpt: Pakistan and India may have 400 to 500 nuclear weapons by 2025 with yields from tested 12- to 45-kt values to a few hundred kilotons. If India uses 100 strategic weapons to attack urban centers and Pakistan uses 150, fatalities could reach 50 to 125 million people, and nuclear-ignited fires could release 16 to 36 Tg of black carbon in smoke, depending on yield. The smoke will rise into the upper troposphere, be self-lofted into the stratosphere, and spread globally within weeks. Surface sunlight will decline by 20 to 35%, cooling the global surface by 2° to 5°C and reducing precipitation by 15 to 30%, with larger regional impacts. Recovery takes more than 10 years. Net primary productivity declines 15 to 30% on land and 5 to 15% in oceans threatening mass starvation and additional worldwide collateral fatalities. (,,,) India and Pakistan may be repeating the unfortunate example set by the United States and Russia during the “cold war” era: that is, building destructive nuclear forces far out of proportion to their role in deterrence. Should a war between India and Pakistan ever occur, as assumed here, these countries alone could suffer 50 to 125 million fatalities, a regional catastrophe. In addition, severe short-term climate perturbations, with temperatures declining to values not seen on Earth since the middle of the last Ice Age, would be triggered by smoke from burning cities, a global disaster threatening food production worldwide and mass starvation, as well as severe disruption to natural ecosystems. Compounding the devastation brought upon their own countries, decisions by Indian and Pakistani military leaders and politicians to use nuclear weapons could severely affect every other nation on Earth.  [Well. It looks like this ought to make an average reader poop his/her pants. This is a realistic estimate of what a “small” nuclear war would do. On the positive side, it would COOL the planet by about 5 degrees almost instantly. DON’T tell the people panicking about Climate change that there’s a quick fix, for God’s sake. Not counting the illustrations and graphs, this runs about 12,000 words, a good hour’s worth of reading. I’m not sure how much of it to think is spot on, though I do wonder about some of their assumptions. This falls squarely into the “holy shit” category. Ron P.]

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