Even a small nuclear war would be a climate problem – would you be satisfied with that?

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

h / t Breitbart; Atlantic contributor Robinson Meyer addresses all the dead and sunken cities, before proceeding to discuss the important climate consequences.

On top of everything else, Nuclear War will be a climate problem

Even a “small” skirmish will destroy the planet.

Via Robinson Meyer
MARCH 10, 2022

When we talk about the causes of climate change, we’re usually talking about oil and gas, coal and cars, and – just in general – energy policy. There is a good reason for this. Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide, which goes into the atmosphere, warms the climate and… you know. The more fossil fuels are burned, the worse climate change becomes. That’s why, a few years ago, I spent a lot of time including the Trump administration’s attempt to undermine the country’s fuel economy standards. That’s a bad policy, one that could lead to more oil consumption for decades to come. If pressed I would say it has a one digit chance of making a uninhabitable climate system.

But energy isn’t the only sector that has a direct bearing on whether we have a livable climate. The same goes for foreign policy – nuclear war in particular.

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Consider one nucleus one megaton, which is said to be about the size of the warhead on Russia’s modern intercontinental ballistic missile. (Warheads on US ICBMs could be even larger.) An explosion of a bomb of this size, within a radius of about 4 miles, would produce winds comparable to those in a Category 5 hurricane., immediately flattening buildings, knocking down power lines and causing gas leaks. Anyone within seven miles of the explosion will be third degree burns, the kind of meat that peels and blisters. These conditions – and note that I’ve neglected the visceral destructive effects of the radiation – would quickly turn an eight-mile blast radius into a zone of total human misery. But it is only at this point in the war that the climate consequences really begin.

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This is not the first time WUWT commented on the work of Robinson Meyer.

Babylon Bee was quick to respond (h/t Breitbart).