{"id":850240,"date":"2022-10-21T11:21:58","date_gmt":"2022-10-21T11:21:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radiofree.asia\/?guid=d8ded718fe84a648affd655a9e75684f"},"modified":"2022-10-21T11:21:58","modified_gmt":"2022-10-21T11:21:58","slug":"scientists-warn-nuclear-war-would-make-the-world-colder-darker-and-hungrier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/10\/21\/scientists-warn-nuclear-war-would-make-the-world-colder-darker-and-hungrier\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Warn Nuclear War Would Make the World Colder, Darker and Hungrier"},"content":{"rendered":"
Even as Russian President Vladimir Putin repeatedly warns he could use nuclear weapons if he believed Russian (or Russian-seized<\/em>) territory was threatened, tensions also remain high in other potential nuclear flashpoints from North Korea<\/a> and Taiwan<\/a> to border regions of China<\/a>, India<\/a> and Pakistan<\/a>.<\/p>\n This comes as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has just embarked on its annual nuclear training exercises<\/a> in Belgium. The U.S. has an estimated 100 non-strategic nuclear weapons<\/a> deployed at six military bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. Russia is expected to hold its own<\/span> nuclear exercises<\/span> soon, though U.S. officials say <\/span>no notification has yet been provided as required under the New START treaty<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n On October 6, President Joe Biden warned<\/a> that the threat of Armageddon was at its highest point since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. While the world remains focused on the threat <\/em>of nuclear war, scientists, academics, and other experts are warning how a nuclear conflict would change life on Earth.<\/p>\n Recent reports coauthored by Alan Robock<\/a>, a distinguished professor in the department of environmental sciences at Rutgers University, paint a portrait of a post-nuclear war world that is colder, darker and hungrier than is usually described in nuclear reporting.<\/p>\n In these reports, scientists explain how nuclear weapons, if used in a range of circumstances, could cause firestorms that would release smoke, soot and pollutants into the upper atmosphere, blocking sunlight and causing a sudden cooling effect long known as \u201cnuclear winter<\/a>.\u201d Such a disturbance would impact the world\u2019s oceans<\/a> and dramatically undermine food security<\/a>, potentially causing a large-scale collapse of agriculture that could lead to global famine.<\/p>\n In the journal AGU Advances<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> scientists report that global cooling caused by a nuclear war could disturb ocean and sea ice ecology for decades or even centuries, killing off marine life and disrupting natural systems.<\/p>\n A second report<\/a> published in Nature Food<\/em> illustrates how nuclear weapons, like enormous wildfires<\/a>, would unleash soot<\/a> into the stratosphere that could persist for years. Similar to historic massive volcanic eruptions<\/a>, destruction resulting from the use of nuclear weapons could lead to sudden cooling on a global scale, resulting in widespread crop failure, famine and extreme political instability.<\/p>\n