Alan Robock: Nuclear Famine and Nuclear Winter – Climatic Effects of Nuclear War
Ever since the astrophysicist Carl Sagan coined the term of nuclear winter in 1983 an additional global risk of nuclear war became evident. Even a limited nuclear exchange would pose a grave danger to all life. If it was not by nuclear blast, fire and radiation – it would be by nuclear winter. High altitude dust clouds that spread through the stratosphere can block the sun for years and even decades and threaten the global ecology and with it the sources of food.
Professor Alan Robock was a participant in the scientific debates of the 1980. He praises the reduction in numbers of nuclear weapons but reminds us that “the environmental threat of nuclear war has not gone away.” “The world faces the prospect of a smaller, but still catastrophic, nuclear conflict.” Robock writes, “there are now nine nuclear-weapons states. Use of a fraction of the global nuclear arsenal by anyone, from the superpowers to India versus Pakistan, still presents the largest potential environmental danger to the planet by humans.
Alan Robock teaches in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University. He is an IPCC lead author, and was a member of the organization when it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was one of the acclaimed speakers at the Symposium on The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction, organized by Dr. Helen Caldicott. The two day event on February 28 and March 1st, 2015, brought together 20 plus speakers.
My friend Dave wrote to me:
DEAR Maria,
Please insert a link to the full and complete transcript source here — <https://ratical.org/radiation/NuclearExtinction/AlanRobock022815.html> — replete with accompanying slides of Alan Robock’s portion of the <https://tucradio.org/podcasts/newest-podcasts/ira-helfand-and-alan-robock-nuclear-blast-and-nuclear-winter-one-of-one/> broadcast.
Thanks as always to your phenomenal service devoted to Life’s needs here on Earth.
Dave
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