The Reach of North Korean Missiles

Image SourceThanks to the miracle of modern missile technology, two-penny dictators like Kim Jong Il can now hold the Sword of Damocles over heads of state around the world. South America and Greenland appear to be fairly safe from a sneak attack from the diminutive cockroach (see Team America).

But then, how long before Venezuela's Hugo Chavez gets similar capability to wreak havoc on his foes? Paint similar red circles with their centers on Caracas. Do the same for Damascus, Tehran, Tripoli, Riyadh, Islamabad. Now you begin to understand the scope of the problem.

Nuclear technology and missile technology are out of the box, freely available to anyone who can pay. As the US loses its will and ability to restrain nuclear proliferation, two-penny dictators around the globe will almost certainly take the opportunity to nuke up.

Of course the danger from these tin-pot nuclear dictatorships is more to their neighbors, and to the global environment should large-scale fallout take place. But it only takes a small nuke or two to finish off LA, NYC, DC, or London. And a skillful EMP attack to finish the US as a modern economic force would require only a dozen or fewer well-placed nukes. A world without the US is a world on its way down.

China and Russia are not above arming a third party, in order to devastate their mutual enemy while retaining plausible deniability. This could never happen in the old order of things, when the US was strong and the anchor of the world economy -- necessary to the prosperity of all exporting nations.

Things are different now. China and Russia have significant economic problems now that world demand for their exports is way down. Political instability with a collapse of the current political order is not out of the question for either oppressive state, should things go badly with the world economy. Should either the CCP or Putin see such a thing coming to pass, neither would hesitate to set a plan in motion that they felt would reduce pressure on them from the outside.

In other words, if everything is going to hell anyway, why would Putin or the CCP pause before badly handicapping a long-time enemy -- as long as a third party will take the blame?

The world is nothing like it seems.

Solving Global Warming with the Nuclear Option

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Quite a few different geoengineering schemes have been proposed for dealing with catastrophic anthropogenic global warming(CAGW). It is unlikely that CO2 emissions will be reduced in a meaningful way, so those most concerned about CAGW are beginning to evaluate massive engineering projects to cool the Earth.

Nuclear winter is perhaps the most drastic geoengineering scheme yet to be proposed for solving CAGW. It would accomplish two key goals of global warming and environmental activists:

1. Reduce the temperature of Earth
2. Reduce the human population of Earth

There would be a 22 degree C drop in mid-latitudes and 10 degree drop in more humid areas. Further, the authors surmised a 75% drop in rainfall, and as much as a 90% drop in visibility in high smoke areas....a study gone over at the annual American Geophysical Meeting in December of2006 cited that even a small scale regional nuclear war could mess with the global climate for a decade or more. ___Source

The most likely parts of the globe to suffer regional nuclear war at this time, are the middle east and South Asia. Nuclear war between China and Russia over possession of Siberia's mineral wealth is a remote possibility. It is clear that large numbers of Earth's human population live in those regions of Earth, and would be vulnerable to death from direct and indirect consequences of regional nuclear war.

”If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.” Prince Philip, WWF

“Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.” Dave Forman, Founder of Earth First! ___Source

Once the temperature of Earth has dropped, and the planetary population has been pared down to suit even the most extreme environmentalists, humans can begin to think about how they will deal with the aftermath of such a massive geoengineering project.

Ted Turner may have some suggestions about what a world under a "nuclear winter" climate regime might want to eat. But then, Turner himself no doubt has a comfortable resort, well outfitted for an extended stay in isolation from the cannibalistic masses.

These are all ideas that Al Gore must wonder about from time to time, in his darker moments. After all, in a world struggling to survive a nuclear winter, who is going to want to buy carbon credits? Tipper must wonder what Al truly means when he mumbles in his sleep--"the horror, the horror." Is he dreaming of the world after executing "the nuclear option" to solve global warming? Is he dreaming of a colder world from a natural solar downturn--a solar minimum? Or is he merely reliving the late autumn and early winter of 2000, 2001?

President Putin Plays Russian Roulette, Raising Risk of Nuclear Winter

In a strategy that threatens to create a realistic anthropogenic climate change, Russia's President Putin offers to share nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Gulf Oil States. Having already aided Shia Iran in its quest to acquire nuclear clout, Russia is now offering to help the other side of the great Islamic divide. Muslim clerics have gone on record declaring that Allah made the nuclear bomb to be used for his glory. A nuclear war between Shia and Sunni Islam should make a lot of mullahs, imams, and ayatollahs very happy. But what about the rest of us?

Scientists suspect that even a limited third world nuclear exchange could trigger a nuclear winter, with the threat of up to hundreds of millions dead from starvation--due to badly curtailed growing seasons in the world's great bread basket regions. If true, that would certainly qualify as a bona fide climate disaster.

Global Cooling--The More Frightening and More Likely Climate Catastrophe: Nuclear War in the Third World

Very few members of the general public are aware of the stealthy growth of the threat of a climate crisis beyond "global warming." Global cooling has always been a greater danger to humans than global warming. The recent little ice age resulted in a loss of life in the many millions. Another severe episode of global cooling would be immeasurably worse.

We've been warned about nuclear winter for decades now. Before catastrophic global warming became so fashionable in the popular media, nuclear winter was fashionable among politicians and journalists. But the nuclear winter that appears more likely with each passing day is not the same nuclear winter that Carl Sagan warned against. Sagan was worried about an all-out nuclear war between super-powers, with a resulting nuclear winter that could potentially finish humans for good.

The new concerns about nuclear winter center upon the growing likelihood of a small scale nuclear war that originates in a third world nation such as Iran or Pakistan. It seems that even a limited nuclear war could have devastating consequences for the world's climate--far more devastating than global warming is likely to be.

The scientists' research is a new twist on the nuclear winter hypothesis, which attracted attention in the early 1980s. Back then, planetary scientist Carl Sagan and others warned that a much larger nuclear war between the United States and Soviet Union would lead to extensive atmospheric cooling and agricultural failure on a much greater scale and kill far more people.

The hypothesis sparked widespread scientific and political controversy. It faded from public attention toward the end of the Cold War, after which many U.S. strategists concluded that major nuclear wars that threatened all civilization were improbable.

But that judgment was premature, because of the recent emergence of small- and medium-sized nations that either have or are trying to develop nuclear weapons, the scientists warned. They said that worldwide, a regional nuclear war could kill tens of millions of people, partly because even a small number of nuclear blasts could generate enough smoke to trigger a global climate change.

The nuclear explosions and smoke could also damage the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, they said. That layer shields Earth's surface from cancer-causing radiation from the sun.

Initially, about 20 percent of the soot would be washed out of the atmosphere by rainfall, said Turco, who was one of the pioneers of the original nuclear winter hypothesis.

However, much of the rest of the soot would rise skyward and warm as it was baked by the sun. That warming would make the soot more buoyant and force it even higher into the sky until it penetrated the stratosphere -- just above the tops of thunderclouds -- where high-speed winds would quickly spread the soot throughout the atmosphere, Turco and his colleagues said.

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Personally, I think the threat of severe global cooling from a low level nuclear war in the third world is overblown. The threat of global cooling, on the other hand, is dire enough to be taken seriously. Climate on earth is a chaotic phenomenon--constantly changing, and not well simulated by current overly simplistic climate models. There is no reason to believe these models by Turco et al are any better. Nevertheless, long before humans reached the top of the food chain, earth's climate changed abruptly and unpredictably.

If the northern hemisphere suffers another Little Ice Age scale disaster, billions of people would be a risk of starvation, or dying of violence or ordinarily preventable disease.

It is not surprising that the media focuses on the less likely and less dangerous phenomenon of "catastrophic global warming." The crisis du jour is all the media, and most politicians understand. Thinking people, on the other hand, must look at all the possibilities--all the possible etiologies.