Americans have 10000 atomic weapons currently. Russians also. Others are negligible in this sense.
Say that the average bomb has 1 MT. This means 8*10^19 J of energy. What is a big overestimation, but for the sake of the discussion, would you accept this number first?
I don’t accept the idea that the climate effect of the fire is in any way comparable to nukes in the first place, because fire doesn’t get smoke high up in the atmosphere. I think its a very screwed up assumption. I’ve only been criticizing the numbers because the point is that people don’t think straight about existential risks. Humans don’t think about risks, they evaluate risks rapidly with some feeling & particular really simple strategy that they picked up, then rationalize verbosely.
I don’t have a good estimate of energy stored in the nuclear aresnal, and I care about this assertion just about as much as I care about comparison between energy of nuclear arsenal and energy of sunlight that hits the earth in a day.
But yes, I would say it is somewhere within similar order of magnitude, for the yield vs forest fire, ignoring the combustion of items in the cities.
BTW, nukes are incendiary weapons, there’s not enough appreciation of this basic fact by public. Don’t imagine your house being blown away, imagine all interior catching on fire first, then being blown off. Ditto for all asphalt.
Important for what exactly? Why is it more important than ‘total yield << sunlight in a day’ fact? edit: Because forest fires and nukes are both nasty?
Seriously man, there’s a giant ton of really wrong stuff out there. People starting idiotic wars, and so on and so forth. Daylight savings time wasting the energy (fun thing to calculate: find estimation of the energy wasted by daylight savings time, compare to all nukes in the world). The extremely ineffective allocation of taxes. The wasting of immense money making, and maintaining, those nukes.
Want to campaign against scaremongering? There is a lot of that going on as well. Consider the man-lifetimes wasted waiting in airports, and money spent on anti-terrorism, vs the risk allegedly prevented, and compare that to how many lives the money could have saved in the healthcare. Easy stuff that you (and anyone with any math skills) can actually prove wrong beyond all doubt without being a climatologist or something, and then actual human lives may get saved! You’ll be saving expected human lives. That matters, man.
Now, you have some crusade against the notion of nuke winter, against which BTW you don’t actually have any solid argument of any kind, nor means of having one, due to lack of expertise in climatology. And what exactly for? Okay you just might correct the ‘public misunderstanding’ of the nukes energy vs forest fires, the misunderstanding that public probably doesn’t even think about ever. What’s next? Which exactly actions should the public update on? Where’s the payoff of any kind? Sleeping more soundly at night? Thank you very much, if the profoundly irrational public is now comparing the forest fires to nuke war, and is less afraid of nuke war, that will totally make me feel safer.
Ohh you just are against it because it is wrong? Well, there’s a lot of stuff that is way more wrong with large negative consequences to the wrongness. And guess what, I don’t even really care if the nuke winter is certain, or most likely. All I care for, is that there’s chance it can happen. (And for the Sagan, he shouldn’t have gone around telling stuff about the oil wells, what ever, the dude’s dead, want to pick on someone, choose someone alive, like, hmm, Michio Kaku or Dawkins or something). And even if I had a proof that nuke winter is impossible, which I don’t, I would definitely keep it to myself because public is stupid and irrational, and selective explaining (without correcting all other wrong things first) would most certainly not be a good thing.
how’s about continuing the thought a little bit more and thanking the ‘civilization failure’ or ‘extinction’ possibility as well? The nuclear winter? That’s the only thing which is fundamentally different between nuclear arsenal and WW2 type war. The assured destruction. Not assured losses.
Americans have 10000 atomic weapons currently. Russians also. Others are negligible in this sense.
Say that the average bomb has 1 MT. This means 8*10^19 J of energy. What is a big overestimation, but for the sake of the discussion, would you accept this number first?
I don’t accept the idea that the climate effect of the fire is in any way comparable to nukes in the first place, because fire doesn’t get smoke high up in the atmosphere. I think its a very screwed up assumption. I’ve only been criticizing the numbers because the point is that people don’t think straight about existential risks. Humans don’t think about risks, they evaluate risks rapidly with some feeling & particular really simple strategy that they picked up, then rationalize verbosely.
But you admit, that the energy stored in the nuclear arsenal is hardly as big as the energy released by a really big forest fire?
I don’t have a good estimate of energy stored in the nuclear aresnal, and I care about this assertion just about as much as I care about comparison between energy of nuclear arsenal and energy of sunlight that hits the earth in a day.
But yes, I would say it is somewhere within similar order of magnitude, for the yield vs forest fire, ignoring the combustion of items in the cities.
BTW, nukes are incendiary weapons, there’s not enough appreciation of this basic fact by public. Don’t imagine your house being blown away, imagine all interior catching on fire first, then being blown off. Ditto for all asphalt.
I am glad. It is important to understand this fact. I haven’t seen it mentioned yet, anywhere.
People should update, not follow Carl Sagan blindly. He had “good intentions” when (probably) misinformed the world.
Important for what exactly? Why is it more important than ‘total yield << sunlight in a day’ fact? edit: Because forest fires and nukes are both nasty?
Be cause most would say something like “there is a balance in Sun’s shinning, but atom bombs are highly concentrated events”.
It is important to see, that their energy, as destructive as it is, is not THAT great, at all.
It is not healthy to live with wrong assumptions. Earth is a robust planet, not as delicate as usually heard from certain circles.
Still remember Sagan, the Pope, journalists, some friends of mine even—how they spelled doom in the case of the Kuwait oil fires.
As I said—the Earth is a robust planet and we are robust animals.
Seriously man, there’s a giant ton of really wrong stuff out there. People starting idiotic wars, and so on and so forth. Daylight savings time wasting the energy (fun thing to calculate: find estimation of the energy wasted by daylight savings time, compare to all nukes in the world). The extremely ineffective allocation of taxes. The wasting of immense money making, and maintaining, those nukes.
Want to campaign against scaremongering? There is a lot of that going on as well. Consider the man-lifetimes wasted waiting in airports, and money spent on anti-terrorism, vs the risk allegedly prevented, and compare that to how many lives the money could have saved in the healthcare. Easy stuff that you (and anyone with any math skills) can actually prove wrong beyond all doubt without being a climatologist or something, and then actual human lives may get saved! You’ll be saving expected human lives. That matters, man.
Now, you have some crusade against the notion of nuke winter, against which BTW you don’t actually have any solid argument of any kind, nor means of having one, due to lack of expertise in climatology. And what exactly for? Okay you just might correct the ‘public misunderstanding’ of the nukes energy vs forest fires, the misunderstanding that public probably doesn’t even think about ever. What’s next? Which exactly actions should the public update on? Where’s the payoff of any kind? Sleeping more soundly at night? Thank you very much, if the profoundly irrational public is now comparing the forest fires to nuke war, and is less afraid of nuke war, that will totally make me feel safer.
Ohh you just are against it because it is wrong? Well, there’s a lot of stuff that is way more wrong with large negative consequences to the wrongness. And guess what, I don’t even really care if the nuke winter is certain, or most likely. All I care for, is that there’s chance it can happen. (And for the Sagan, he shouldn’t have gone around telling stuff about the oil wells, what ever, the dude’s dead, want to pick on someone, choose someone alive, like, hmm, Michio Kaku or Dawkins or something). And even if I had a proof that nuke winter is impossible, which I don’t, I would definitely keep it to myself because public is stupid and irrational, and selective explaining (without correcting all other wrong things first) would most certainly not be a good thing.
On the contrary! It was maybe the best allocation of taxes of all times. As Margaret Teacher said—be cause of them, we enjoy the decades of peace.
Everything could also went terribly wrong and a billion would die.
But it looks like we were lucky. No great WW3 and even WW4 on the horizon. Thanks to the nuclear arsenal and MAD, of course.
how’s about continuing the thought a little bit more and thanking the ‘civilization failure’ or ‘extinction’ possibility as well? The nuclear winter? That’s the only thing which is fundamentally different between nuclear arsenal and WW2 type war. The assured destruction. Not assured losses.