This is a crosspost for Nuclear Winter by Bean from Naval Gazing. It argues Toon 2008 has overestimated the soot ejected into the stratosphere following a nuclear war by something like a factor of 191[1] (= 1.522(1 + 2)/2(2 + 3)/2*(4 + 13)/2). I have not investigated the claims made in Bean's post, but that seems worthwhile. If its conclusions hold, the soot ejected into the stratosphere following the 4.4 k nuclear detonations analysed in Toon 2008 would be 0.942 Tg[2] (= 180/191) instead of "180 Tg". From Fig. 3a of Toon 2014, the lower soot ejection would lead to a reduction in temperature of 0.2 ºC, and in precipitation of 0.6 %. These would have a negligible impact in terms of food security, and imply the deaths from the climatic effects being dwarfed by the "770 million [direct] casualties" mentioned in Toon 2008.
For context, Luísa Rodriguez estimated "30 Tg" of soot [...]
Outline:
(02:57) Nuclear Winter
(17:24) Acknowledgements
The original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
August 13th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Ysq53coRwgSWHHz2x/nuclear-winter-scepticism
Linkpost URL:
https://www.navalgazing.net/Nuclear-Winter
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.