Cooldown

From AP-

SAN FRANCISCO - Some of the scientists who first advanced the controversial "nuclear winter" theory more than two decades ago have come up with another bleak forecast: Even a regional nuclear war would devastate the environment.

Using modern climate and population models, researchers estimated that a small-scale nuclear conflict between two warring nations would cause 3 million to 17 million immediate casualties and lead to a marked cooldown of the planet that could lead to crop failures and further misery.

As dire as the predictions seem, they fall short of nuclear winter. That theory says that smoke and dust from an atomic war between the superpowers would blot out the sun, plunge the Earth into the deep freeze and cause mass starvation, wiping out 90 percent of the Earth's population, or billions of people.

The new scenario offers no estimate of the number of deaths from the environmental effects of a regional nuclear war.

Still, scientists said the scenario points to the danger of small nuclear states obtaining atomic warheads.

The study, presented Monday at an American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, was described as the first to document in detail the climatic effects of a nuclear war on a regional scale.

I'm no scientist, but I'm certain that even a small regional nuclear conflict would have some kind of world-wide effect. Look at the volcanic eruption at Krakatoa and how it effected the world. I would think a small scale nuclear would have at least that effect.

AP writer Alicia Chang did miss the most likely region for a nuclear conflict. That would be south Asia between India and Pakistan. These two countries strong antipathy for one another combined with the idiotic border dispute in the Kashmir and strong nationalism felt by both sides, makes this IMHO the most dangerous flashpoint in the world.

Don Surber is also blogging on this news.
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