Nuclear Winter VS Global Warming?

Question

I have Heard that in a Nuclear War, no one on Earth could survive mainly because of the after effects, like the dust blocking out the sun's light and freezing the world into starvation.

I am much more familiar with Global Warming, which says that many people will perish because of the World's temperature rising and causing droughts and floods all over.

Can both of these politically charged Scientific Theories be true? Does this mean by that a nuclear war could counteract the effects of global warming, or simply detonating enough nukes in enough empty places could bring the ice caps back?

I have been told that one of the greatest contributers to the Nuclear Winter idea is the mass burning of Forests worldwide, which would put enough ash into the atmosphere to cool the Earth by many degrees, thereby cooling the planet. But this same action would Release enormous amounts of CO2 which supposedly causes global warming. So in this doomsday Scenario, does the Earth Freeze or Bake?

Answer 1

both of these are just theories and we don't have the theoritical physics to test either of these theories.  We also can't do a full scale test so anyone who says one or the other will happen is just speculating about what might happen.

Answer 2

a single ohio class ballistic missile submarine can carry 144 megatons of thermonuclear weapons. There are 18 such submarines in the US fleet - russia has a similar number - france and great britain also have them. This isn't even counting the 500+ land based missiles located in ND,WY, MT, and CO with a similar number in russia. Not to mention United States nuclear weapons located in other countries or the ones carried by bombers. The nuclear winter scenario involved all these nations  (NATO) and possibly china as well, launching their weapons and was estimated to be over 5000 MT. These weapons would target hardened missile silos by ground burst: kicking up tons of radioactive dust, they would hit stategic petroleum reserves and vaporize every major city (most large US cities were targeted with multiple nuclear weapons during the cold war). If you don't think this would lead to a cooling effect - your a little nutty. If any lifeform survived the initial winter and radioactive fallout - i doubt they would be bothered by additional greenhouse effect after the dust settled.

the US alone currently has close to 1000MT ready to launch or be dropped - this number could be quickly doubled during a crisis. If an all out nuclear war happened today it would probably release 1000-2000 MT of energy.

edit

others have mentioned volcanoes releasing hundreds of megatons of energy - keep in mind that one reason nuclear weapons are kept in the 1/10 - 1/2 megaton range is because of diminishing returns - ten 100kt bombs will burn far more than a single 1 megaton weapon.

Answer 3

I find it very odd there was a cooling period from the 40's to the end of the 70's,  during the time they were being tested/used.  Anyone else notice or think about that?

Answer 4

i would have Global Warming because Nuclear winter you die from bombs and the cold

Answer 5

The earth both freezes and bakes.

Most of the time it freezes, but there have been times in the recent past when it was warmer than it is now.  The Medieval Warm Period (800-1300AD) is what it was called and was followed by the Little Ice Age (1400-1850AD).

We are also in a major interglacial period since the last major ice age about 17,000 years ago give or take a few minutes.

Personally, I think it might be better for humanity for it to be warmer than it is now as we have longer growing seasons.

Humanity would last a lot longer in a global warming scenario rather than a major cooling or an ice age.  Crops can be easily damaged by below freezing temperatures as we can see by last year's California cold weather and subsequent damage to the citrus and avocado crops.  

What they have also found from ice age research is that an ice age will desertify many areas and put ice in other areas.  So you may not have ice in Southern California but you won't be able to get the water to grow produce along with the extreme short growing seasons.  Do you think that the population can be sustained with nothing but ice to grow things on.

Personally, I don't like fish, but I guess I might have to learn to like it. :-)

Answer 6

gcnp58 and JS have it right.  The quick answer short term cooling, long term heating.

Answer 7

Be careful.

I posted a question yesterday asking if nuclear winter would counter global warming and I just finished reading the violation notice email.

Apparently the people that have bought into Gore's lies don't find questions like this appropriate.

Answer 8

All of that is demonstrated in the case of volcanoes, which emit CO2, sulfur dioxide and ash.  The ash and sulphur dioxide have a short term cooling effect (a few years), the CO2 a much longer warming effect (hundreds of years).

Here's what one of the top sulpher dioxide researchers has to say about it:

http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/schwartz.ht...

"It should be emphasized that one should not take any comfort with the fact that the aerosols may be negating much of the greenhouse gas forcing--in fact just the opposite. Because the atmospheric residence time of tropospheric aerosols is short (about a week) compared to the decades-to-centuries lifetimes of the greenhouse gases, then to whatever extent greenhouse gas forcing is being offset by aerosol forcing, it is last week's aerosols that are offsetting forcing by decades worth of greenhouse gases. Because the greenhouse gases are long-lived in the atmosphere, their atmospheric loadings tend to approximate the integral of emissions. Because the aerosols are short-lived, their loading tend to be proportional to the emissions themselves. There is only one function that is proportional to its own integral, the exponential function. So only if society is to make a commitment to continued exponential growth of emissions can such an offset be maintained indefinitely. And of course exponential growth cannot be maintained forever. So if the cooling influence of aerosols is in fact offsetting much of the warming influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, then when society is unable to maintain this exponential growth, the climate could be in for a real and long-lasting shock."

Trying to do what volcanoes do but using nuclear explosions instead would also create an issue with nuclear fallout and radiation, another long term negative.

Answer 9

They are both liberal cause celebs.  

http://www.icr.org/article/261/

Mt. St. Helens, a relatively small volcanic eruption had the power of 400 megaton bombs.  That is probably pretty close to our total arsenal, especially when you consider that it exploded underground.  A nuclear winter is largely a myth in my opinion.  The vastly worse consequences would be from radioactive fallout.  The suggestion that we have enough arsenal to wipe out the earth a few times over was also greatly exaggerated.  It would be horrible, but humans would survive.  I hope it never comes to it.  Even small ones are horrific.

Answer 10

Ben, you are talking nonsense.  Every time a major volcanic eruption injects SO2 and ash directly into the stratosphere and there is global cooling is a demonstration that the underlying physics of Nuclear Winter are sound.  Atmospheric circulation models with embedded radiative transfer codes are also quite happy to simulate the effect.  

The short answer to the OP is that no, nuclear winter is a short-term effect.  Once the ash/aerosol settles out of the stratosphere the cooling goes away.  The radiative forcing is a much longer term effect.