AS ORIGINALLY MODELED , 'NUCLEAR WINTER' LIVED UP TO ITS NAME: IT HYPOTHESIZED MONTHS OF SUBZERO COLD AND DARKNESS. PAUL EHRLICH WENT SO FAR AS TO TELL A RADIO AUDIENCE TO EXPECT "REPORTS OF PEOPLE DYING OF THIRST ON THE EQUATOR BECAUSE ALL THE WATER IS FROZEN."
BUT WHILE THIS GRIM PROPHECY'S AUTHORS NOW INSIST THEIR
"1980s predictions of nuclear winter effects were, if anything, underestimates."
-- Physics Today December 2008 THEY NOTE ELSEWHERE
"We do not conduct detailed new studies of the smoke and dust emissions from nuclear attacks here. Rather, we chose emissions based on previous studies so as to make our results comparable to them." - Journal of Geophysical Research July 2007
SO HOW DO THE OLD AND NEW MODELS
ACTUALLY LOOK WHEN COMPARED ?
"Nuclear Winter" was less an hypothesis than a media campaign-- it debuted not in Science , as many assume but Parade magazine, where peer review posed no problem, as Carl Sagan was its Science Editor.
The surviving TTAPS autors, Turco, Toon and Ackerman seem to be in denial- progress in climate science has not sustained the vision of subzero cold and global night they advertised in the 1980's. To keep their apocalyptic factoid alive, they have rejected the empirical studies that gutted the guesstimates on which the 1983 model relied, and resorted to even more unrealistic assumptions, like smoke particles that hang in the air for a decade. Never mind the residence time of micrometeorite debris, just move along.
The effort to revive the expression by defining it down to fit the data recalls another authority who met with a crack-up:
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
In 1983, the words "nuclear winter" were supposed to mean a global deep freeze dark enough to scare a Siberian Commisar into signing a peace treaty- the severity of winter weather, as reflected in heating bills, is reckoned in terms of time and temperature , and at 22,000 degree-days the TTAPS worst case 'winter' was harsher than any place on Earth.
While winter in Washington DC adds up to 5,000 degree-days The new 'winters' from the old modelers weigh in at under 1,000, and span roughly the range from Savannah to Havana.
But one thing hasn't changed since the days of the Cold War: even if the end of the world isn't what it used to be , strategic policy remains too important to be predicated on mythology.
