Bean, any chance I can get your thoughts on the recent Xia et al study on nuclear winter? Would be curious what you make of it. It makes nuclear winter sound catastrophic beyond even Sagan scenarios (5 billion dead due to famine etc). Would love an expert’s take.
Robock is second author, Toon is also on the author’s list. It’s the same people who have been poisoning this particular well for decades, so I’d toss it right there. I have no reason to trust them to actually be doing science, and lots of reason to believe that they’re being driven by ideology.
I was perhaps unclear in my original comment. I wrote up a long explanation the many, many errors those two have made in their nuclear winter models at https://www.navalgazing.net/Nuclear-Winter, which I assumed that Henry had read. A quick glance at the paper in question turns up that they’re using the very models of soot production I critique. My expertise in agriculture is quite limited, so I can’t say anything about how a given amount of soot will affect crop production. I can say that they’re relying on a model so terrible that I genuinely don’t think a good-faith effort would produce anything that bad. It’s pretty hard to explain how the models get worse at exactly the rate that arsenals shrink, so the nuclear war situation stays the same otherwise. The stuff in the 80s was probably exaggerated somewhat, but it’s clear nonsense with arsenals an order of magnitude smaller today.
Appreciate you explaining the downvote. While a more legible argument than “I don’t trust X because of what I perceive to be a long pattern of bad behavior I’m not going to specify much” would be much more useful, I still find this more useful than not commenting at all, so others have at least a pointer to investigate further themselves.
I suppose the downside of purely ad hominem arguments is that it often just smears the target for too often unjustified reasons. But for me a charitable interpretation is that the author of the ad hominem wants to be helpful/informative and just doesn’t have the time (or maybe legible or non-confidential information) to do more than say they don’t trust the person.
Bean, any chance I can get your thoughts on the recent Xia et al study on nuclear winter? Would be curious what you make of it. It makes nuclear winter sound catastrophic beyond even Sagan scenarios (5 billion dead due to famine etc). Would love an expert’s take.
Robock is second author, Toon is also on the author’s list. It’s the same people who have been poisoning this particular well for decades, so I’d toss it right there. I have no reason to trust them to actually be doing science, and lots of reason to believe that they’re being driven by ideology.
Oof this comment was a shame to read—I downvoted it. Ad hominem attack and no discussion of the content of the paper.
Also, the paper has ten authors and got through Nature peer-review—seems a stretch to write it off as just two people’s ideology.
I was perhaps unclear in my original comment. I wrote up a long explanation the many, many errors those two have made in their nuclear winter models at https://www.navalgazing.net/Nuclear-Winter, which I assumed that Henry had read. A quick glance at the paper in question turns up that they’re using the very models of soot production I critique. My expertise in agriculture is quite limited, so I can’t say anything about how a given amount of soot will affect crop production. I can say that they’re relying on a model so terrible that I genuinely don’t think a good-faith effort would produce anything that bad. It’s pretty hard to explain how the models get worse at exactly the rate that arsenals shrink, so the nuclear war situation stays the same otherwise. The stuff in the 80s was probably exaggerated somewhat, but it’s clear nonsense with arsenals an order of magnitude smaller today.
Appreciate you explaining the downvote. While a more legible argument than “I don’t trust X because of what I perceive to be a long pattern of bad behavior I’m not going to specify much” would be much more useful, I still find this more useful than not commenting at all, so others have at least a pointer to investigate further themselves.
I suppose the downside of purely ad hominem arguments is that it often just smears the target for too often unjustified reasons. But for me a charitable interpretation is that the author of the ad hominem wants to be helpful/informative and just doesn’t have the time (or maybe legible or non-confidential information) to do more than say they don’t trust the person.
Link to the study here