The whole “Nuclear Winter” field of modeling was born in sin and hence must be suspect.
As far as I know the original models and simulations and the whole concept was promoted by Carl Sagan et el. ( TTAPS team i.e. Richard P. Turco, Owen Toon, Thomas P. Ackerman, James B. Pollack and Carl Sagan) from what seems to be almost purely political reasons and a transparent PR campaign i.e. “was with the explicit aim of promoting international arms control”—which might not be a bad political goal, but always results in bad science.(Also disappointing is that a science educator and a “science/skepticism hero” like Sagan is actually a political hack).
Luckily during the Gulf war the concept came to be empirically tested after Saddam ignited the Kuwait oil wells.
TTAPS predicted : ”stated that they expected catastrophic nuclear winter like effects with continental-sized effects of sub-freezing temperatures … as a result of the Iraqis going through with their threats of igniting 300 to 500 pressurized oil wells that could subsequently burn for several months. ”
In reality 600 wells burned for 8 months.
In the popular media Sagan argued: “that some of the effects of the smoke could be similar to the effects of a nuclear winter.… resulting in global effects. He also argued that he believed the net effects would be very similar to the explosion of the Indonesian volcano Tambora in 1815, which resulted in the year 1816 being known as the Year without Summer. “ ” Sagan stressed this outcome was so likely that “It should affect the war plans. ”
etc...
In reality nothing happened
Sagan later conceded in his book The Demon-Haunted World that his predictions obviously did not turn out to be correct: “it was pitch black at noon and temperatures dropped 4–6 °C over the Persian Gulf, but not much smoke reached stratospheric altitudes and Asia was spared.” (Yes spared..really?...Asia was not “spared” it just that the models and the threat were not real)
The atmospheric scientist tasked with studying the atmospheric effect of the Kuwaiti fires by the National Science Foundation, Peter Hobbs, stated that the fires’ modest impact suggested that “some numbers [used to support the Nuclear Winter hypothesis]… were probably a little overblown.” (“a little overblown”...I guess this is sarcasm)
Were the empirical data from the Gulf-War “natural experiment” incorporated into this model? It is easy enough in a model to get any results you want, the important thing to ask is how they were tested, how is this models prediction can be applied to Gulf war data and how they predict the weather effects of 1991? or any other such events.
On the specific questions you’re asking about whether empirical data from the Kuwaiti oil field destruction is taken into account: it seems that the answer to each is simply ‘yes’. The post says that the data used is adapted from Toon et al. (2007), which projects how much smoke would reach the stratosphere specifically. The paper explicitly considers that event and what the model would predict about them:
Much interest in plume rise was directed at the Kuwati oil fires set by Iraqi forces in 1991. Small (1991) estimated that oil well fires produce energy at a rate of about 300 MW. Since the wells were separated by roughly 1 km, they represent a very small energy source relative to either forest fires or mass fires such as occurred in Hiroshima. Hence these oil well smoke plumes would be expected to be confined to the boundary layer, and indeed were observed within the boundary layer during the Persian Gulf War.
The details of the paper could be wrong – I’m a complete amateur and would be interested to hear the views of people who’ve looked into it, especially given substantial reliance on this particular paper in the post – but it seems to have already considered the things you raise.
However, this still got me thinking. Why look at smoke from burning oil fields, with their much lower yields, when one could look at smoke from Hiroshima or Nagasaki? It’s a grim topic, but more relevant for projecting the effects of other nuclear detonations. After a surprisingly long search, I found this paper, which attempts to measure the height of the ‘mushroom cloud’ over Hiroshima, which isn’t what we’re looking for. Fortunately for me, they seem to think that Photo ‘(a) Around Kurahashi Island’ is another photo of the ‘mushroom cloud’, but in fact it appears* to be the cloud produced by the resulting fires. This explains their surprising result:
The height of the cloud in Figure 1 (a) is estimated to be about 16 km. This largely exceeds the 8 km that was previously assumed.
16km (range 14.54-16.88km) is well into the stratosphere across Russia and most of the US, so it seems that history is compatible with theories which say that weapons on the scale of ‘Little Boy’ (13–18kt) are likely to cause substantial smoke in the stratosphere.
I think the issue is not the energy source/density, the issue is amount of particles in the atmosphere, Sagan/TTAPS is on record saying that the amount of particles is the same magnitude in the Kuwait fires as in their model, in addition at least in theirs simulations the burning of oil/gas deposits within cities like in gas stations cars etc… is what produced the most amount of the particles and particles in the correct mass that would rise and produce the most damage by “self lofting” into the upper layers—hence his predictions.
Also the the nuclear mushroom is completely irrelevant it contributes negligible amounts to particles in the atmosphere, it is not surprising that some smoke is thrown from the blast, but to get “Nuclear Winter” from the model/simulations the main source are the fires and the proposition that the particles will “self loft” and rise and rise and rise....., yet it seems that the fires do not produce any “self lofting”, in addition as far as i recall they are also not blocking as much of sun energy as proposed.
Note that it is not that they were a little off, they were completely wrong, more over it was probably completely politically motivated (it is for a good cause so it is ok to inflate inflate and inflate) but we should be really skeptical.
On your general point about paying attention to political biases, I agree that’s worthwhile. A quibble related to that which might matter to you: the Wikipedia article you’re quoting seems to attribute the incorrect predictions to TTAPS but I could only trace them to Sagan specifically. I could be missing something due to dead/inaccessible links.
Don’t be absurd. The research, which has been funded by the NSF using (inter alia) NASA hardware and software, originally stemmed from the study of stratospheric injections from volcanoes and large-scale wildfires.
>TTAPS predicted : ”stated that they expected catastrophic nuclear winter like effects with continental-sized effects of sub-freezing temperatures … as a result of the Iraqis going through with their threats of igniting 300 to 500 pressurized oil wells that could subsequently burn for several months. “
TTAPS refers to a 1983 paper which preceded Gulf War I and its burning oil wells by 8 years; where is your citation for this amazing bit of time travel?
Resubmitting since it seems the comment was lost.
The whole “Nuclear Winter” field of modeling was born in sin and hence must be suspect.
As far as I know the original models and simulations and the whole concept was promoted by Carl Sagan et el. ( TTAPS team i.e. Richard P. Turco, Owen Toon, Thomas P. Ackerman, James B. Pollack and Carl Sagan) from what seems to be almost purely political reasons and a transparent PR campaign i.e. “was with the explicit aim of promoting international arms control”—which might not be a bad political goal, but always results in bad science.(Also disappointing is that a science educator and a “science/skepticism hero” like Sagan is actually a political hack).
Luckily during the Gulf war the concept came to be empirically tested after Saddam ignited the Kuwait oil wells.
TTAPS predicted :
”stated that they expected catastrophic nuclear winter like effects with continental-sized effects of sub-freezing temperatures … as a result of the Iraqis going through with their threats of igniting 300 to 500 pressurized oil wells that could subsequently burn for several months. ”
In reality 600 wells burned for 8 months.
In the popular media Sagan argued: “that some of the effects of the smoke could be similar to the effects of a nuclear winter.… resulting in global effects. He also argued that he believed the net effects would be very similar to the explosion of the Indonesian volcano Tambora in 1815, which resulted in the year 1816 being known as the Year without Summer. “
” Sagan stressed this outcome was so likely that “It should affect the war plans. ”
etc...
In reality nothing happened
Sagan later conceded in his book The Demon-Haunted World that his predictions obviously did not turn out to be correct:
“it was pitch black at noon and temperatures dropped 4–6 °C over the Persian Gulf, but not much smoke reached stratospheric altitudes and Asia was spared.”
(Yes spared..really?...Asia was not “spared” it just that the models and the threat were not real)
The atmospheric scientist tasked with studying the atmospheric effect of the Kuwaiti fires by the National Science Foundation, Peter Hobbs, stated that the fires’ modest impact suggested that “some numbers [used to support the Nuclear Winter hypothesis]… were probably a little overblown.”
(“a little overblown”...I guess this is sarcasm)
Were the empirical data from the Gulf-War “natural experiment” incorporated into this model?
It is easy enough in a model to get any results you want, the important thing to ask is how they were tested, how is this models prediction can be applied to Gulf war data and how they predict the weather effects of 1991? or any other such events.
On the specific questions you’re asking about whether empirical data from the Kuwaiti oil field destruction is taken into account: it seems that the answer to each is simply ‘yes’. The post says that the data used is adapted from Toon et al. (2007), which projects how much smoke would reach the stratosphere specifically. The paper explicitly considers that event and what the model would predict about them:
The details of the paper could be wrong – I’m a complete amateur and would be interested to hear the views of people who’ve looked into it, especially given substantial reliance on this particular paper in the post – but it seems to have already considered the things you raise.
However, this still got me thinking. Why look at smoke from burning oil fields, with their much lower yields, when one could look at smoke from Hiroshima or Nagasaki? It’s a grim topic, but more relevant for projecting the effects of other nuclear detonations. After a surprisingly long search, I found this paper, which attempts to measure the height of the ‘mushroom cloud’ over Hiroshima, which isn’t what we’re looking for. Fortunately for me, they seem to think that Photo ‘(a) Around Kurahashi Island’ is another photo of the ‘mushroom cloud’, but in fact it appears* to be the cloud produced by the resulting fires. This explains their surprising result:
16km (range 14.54-16.88km) is well into the stratosphere across Russia and most of the US, so it seems that history is compatible with theories which say that weapons on the scale of ‘Little Boy’ (13–18kt) are likely to cause substantial smoke in the stratosphere.
[*update 17-Sep-2021: various people familiar with nuclear weapons agree that photo (a) is of the smoke from the firestorm, not the ‘mushroom cloud’.]
I think the issue is not the energy source/density, the issue is amount of particles in the atmosphere, Sagan/TTAPS is on record saying that the amount of particles is the same magnitude in the Kuwait fires as in their model, in addition at least in theirs simulations the burning of oil/gas deposits within cities like in gas stations cars etc… is what produced the most amount of the particles and particles in the correct mass that would rise and produce the most damage by “self lofting” into the upper layers—hence his predictions.
Also the the nuclear mushroom is completely irrelevant it contributes negligible amounts to particles in the atmosphere, it is not surprising that some smoke is thrown from the blast, but to get “Nuclear Winter” from the model/simulations the main source are the fires and the proposition that the particles will “self loft” and rise and rise and rise....., yet it seems that the fires do not produce any “self lofting”, in addition as far as i recall they are also not blocking as much of sun energy as proposed.
Note that it is not that they were a little off, they were completely wrong, more over it was probably completely politically motivated (it is for a good cause so it is ok to inflate inflate and inflate) but we should be really skeptical.
>I think the issue is not the energy source/density
I would invite you to read the 2007 and subsequent research on nuclear winter and reconsider your statement on meaningful parameters.
Try starting here: http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/nuclear/#Publications
This comment is not civil, and this sort of discourse is not appropriate for the Forum. The moderation team will issue a ban on the poster if we see this activity again.
Do you consider the edited version more acceptable?
On your general point about paying attention to political biases, I agree that’s worthwhile. A quibble related to that which might matter to you: the Wikipedia article you’re quoting seems to attribute the incorrect predictions to TTAPS but I could only trace them to Sagan specifically. I could be missing something due to dead/inaccessible links.
>born in sin
Don’t be absurd. The research, which has been funded by the NSF using (inter alia) NASA hardware and software, originally stemmed from the study of stratospheric injections from volcanoes and large-scale wildfires.
>TTAPS predicted :
”stated that they expected catastrophic nuclear winter like effects with continental-sized effects of sub-freezing temperatures … as a result of the Iraqis going through with their threats of igniting 300 to 500 pressurized oil wells that could subsequently burn for several months. “
TTAPS refers to a 1983 paper which preceded Gulf War I and its burning oil wells by 8 years; where is your citation for this amazing bit of time travel?