This will not be a full review—it’s more of a drive-by comment which I think is relevant to the review process.
However, the defense establishment has access to classified information and models that we civilians do not have, in addition to all the public material. I’m confident that nuclear war planners have thought deeply about the risks of climate change from nuclear war, even though I don’t know their conclusions or bureaucratic constraints.
I am extremely skeptical of and am not at all confident in this conclusion. Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine describes a horribly incentivized military establishment which pursued bloodthirsty and senseless policies, deceiving their superiors (including several presidents), breaking authentication protocols, refusing to adopt plans which didn’t senselessly destroy China in a conflict in the Soviet Union, sub-delegation of nuclear launch authority to theater commanders and their subordinates (no, it’s not operationally true that the US president has to authorize an attack!), lack of controls against false alarms, and constant presidential threats of first-use. The USAF would manipulate presidential officials in order to secure funding, via tactics such as inflating threat estimates or ignoring evidence that the Soviet Union had less nuclear might than initially thought.
And Ellsberg stated that he didn’t think much had changed since his tenure in the 50s-70s. While individual planners might be aware of the nuclear winter risks, the overall US military establishment seems insane to me around nuclear policy—and what of those in other nuclear powers?
However, The Doomsday Machine is my only exposure to these considerations, and perhaps I’m missing a broader perspective. If so, I think that case should be more clearly spelled out, because as far as I can tell, nuclear policy seems like yet another depravedly inadequate facet of our current civilization.
I’m fairly confident that at least some nuclear war planners have thought deeply about the risks of climate change from nuclear war because I’ve talked to a researcher at RAND who basically told me as much, plus the group at Los Alamos who published papers about it, both of which seem like strong evidence that some nuclear war planners have taken it seriously. Reisner et al., “Climate Impact of a Regional Nuclear Weapons Exchange: An Improved Assessment Based On Detailed Source Calculations” is mostly Los Alamos scientists I believe.
Just because some of these researchers & nuclear war planners have thought deeply about it doesn’t mean nuclear policy will end up being sane and factoring in the risks. But I think it provides some evidence in that direction.
This will not be a full review—it’s more of a drive-by comment which I think is relevant to the review process.
I am extremely skeptical of and am not at all confident in this conclusion. Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine describes a horribly incentivized military establishment which pursued bloodthirsty and senseless policies, deceiving their superiors (including several presidents), breaking authentication protocols, refusing to adopt plans which didn’t senselessly destroy China in a conflict in the Soviet Union, sub-delegation of nuclear launch authority to theater commanders and their subordinates (no, it’s not operationally true that the US president has to authorize an attack!), lack of controls against false alarms, and constant presidential threats of first-use. The USAF would manipulate presidential officials in order to secure funding, via tactics such as inflating threat estimates or ignoring evidence that the Soviet Union had less nuclear might than initially thought.
And Ellsberg stated that he didn’t think much had changed since his tenure in the 50s-70s. While individual planners might be aware of the nuclear winter risks, the overall US military establishment seems insane to me around nuclear policy—and what of those in other nuclear powers?
However, The Doomsday Machine is my only exposure to these considerations, and perhaps I’m missing a broader perspective. If so, I think that case should be more clearly spelled out, because as far as I can tell, nuclear policy seems like yet another depravedly inadequate facet of our current civilization.
I’m fairly confident that at least some nuclear war planners have thought deeply about the risks of climate change from nuclear war because I’ve talked to a researcher at RAND who basically told me as much, plus the group at Los Alamos who published papers about it, both of which seem like strong evidence that some nuclear war planners have taken it seriously. Reisner et al., “Climate Impact of a Regional Nuclear Weapons Exchange: An Improved Assessment Based On Detailed Source Calculations” is mostly Los Alamos scientists I believe.
Just because some of these researchers & nuclear war planners have thought deeply about it doesn’t mean nuclear policy will end up being sane and factoring in the risks. But I think it provides some evidence in that direction.
I’ve edited the original to add “some” so it reads “I’m confident that some nuclear war planners have...”
It wouldn’t surprise me if some nuclear war planners had dismissed these risks while others had thought them important.