Tag Archives: nuclear war

October 2020 in Review

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In current events, this was just the month that the fall resurgence of Covid-19 exploded in the U.S. and around the world. Just a month when a new, controversial Supreme Court justice was sworn in. Just the last month leading up to the Biden-Trump election, amid a swirl of questions about a peaceful and orderly transfer of power if the voting goes the way the polls clearly say it is going to. Just a month when my home city erupted in “unrest” for the second time this year and the National Guard rolled in. (Incidentally, Joe Biden is also here as I write this on November 1, and I wonder if the National Guard rolling in is entirely a coincidence.)

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Global ecological collapse is most likely upon us, and our attention is elsewhere. The good news is we still have enough to eat (on average – of course we don’t get it to everyone who needs it), for now.

Most hopeful story: We have almost survived another four years without a nuclear war. Awful as Covid-19 has been, we will get through it despite the current administration’s complete failure to plan, prevent, prepare, respond or manage it. There would be no such muddling through a nuclear war.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: There are at least some bright ideas on how to innovate faster and better.

October 2019 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story:

  • A third of all of North America’s birds may have disappeared since the 1970s. (Truth be told, it was hard to pick a single most depressing story line in a month when I covered propaganda, pandemic, new class divisions created by genetic engineering, and nuclear war. But while those are scary risks for the near future, it appears the world is right in the middle of an ongoing and obvious ecological collapse, and not talking much about it.)

Most hopeful story:

  • I’ll go with hard shell tacos. They are one of the good things in this life, whether they are authentic Mexican food or “trailer park cuisine” as I tagged the story!  

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • A list of “jobs of the future” includes algorithms, automation, and AI; customer experience; environmental; fitness and wellness; health care; legal and financial services; transportation; and work culture. I’ll oversimplify this list as computer scientist, engineer, doctor, lawyer, banker, which don’t sound all that different than the jobs of the past. But it occurs to me that these are jobs where the actual tools people are using and day-to-day work tasks evolve with the times, even if the intended outcomes are basically the same. What might be new is that even in these jobs, you need to make an effort to keep learning every day throughout your career and life if you want to keep up.

There will still be openings for evil HR cats.

how bad would a “small” nuclear war between India and Pakistan be?

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It would be really, really, really, really really bad, and not just for the region but for the whole world.

Simply put, soot would block about 20% to 30% of the Sun’s light, globally. That’s a decrease of about 30W to 60W per square meter of the Earth’s surface. For comparison, the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo caused a decrease of 4W per square meter. The result would be a 2°C to 5°C (about 4°F to 9°F) global cooling. Temperatures would reach their lowest after about three years and maintain that level for another four years. Getting back to previous temperatures would take over a decade.

The cooling would slow the hydrologic cycle and decrease rainfall by 15% to 30% percent globally, with impacts varying in different regions. In India and Central China, for example, precipitation would drop to nearly zero. The Northeastern and Midwestern United States would see a decline of 50%.

The temperature, precipitation, and sunlight change would obviously impact photosynthesis on land and in the ocean. The model estimated a 15% to 30% drop in growth on land—known as Net Primary Productivity—and a 5% to 15% drop in the ocean.

If global warming gets really bad, maybe we can just blow up a nuke or two on some out of the way continent. Antarctica won’t work because there isn’t much combustible material there. So no, never mind, I never said that.