I don't think we disagree much on the facts, merely that astronomers and physicists can get out of their depth as other lesser intellects do. That Nuke Winter was an irrelevant addition to the anti-nuke argument, was not that it was ridiculous, but that it was always one sided. That the sovs behavior was always ignored, and that Maggie Thatcher was the evil one. Sagan seemed to think that surrendering was infinitely better than nuclear extinction. Understandable, but a hysterical reaction to a threat.
Bart Weinstein agrees with your opinion that the physicists of both camps should have been praised for their weapons work, because it forced leaders to be rational actors. Interesting to note, that Hugh Everett the 3rd was himself a DoD physicist. I wonder if he believed that some of his world's died in a nuclear conflagration? On Saturday, January 23, 2021 Lawrence Crowell <[email protected]> wrote: On Friday, January 22, 2021 at 2:56:22 PM UTC-6 [email protected] wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2021 at 2:50 PM spudboy100 via Everything List <[email protected]> wrote: > Was Jimmy Carter and Ronny Reagan's decisions bad, to push Pershing missiles > into NATO horribly wrong as a response to Breshnev's SS20's, because after a > nuke war, the few survivors would freeze to death? There are 7.7 billion people on the earth, after a nuclear war if there was not a nuclear winter there would be billions of deaths but there would also be billions of survivors, but if there was a nuclear winter too then there would be few if any survivors and the human race could easily go extinct. And if you ask me what's the difference between 2 billion deaths and 7 billion deaths I'd say 5 billion. In questions of morality arithmetic CAN be used to find the proper thing to do. In retrospect it's easy to see that putting medium-range ballistic missiles In Europe turned out to be a good idea, it helped keep the peace. And despite Hiroshima and Nagasaki I think it's pretty clear that nuclear weapons have saved more lives than they ended, that's why the second half of the 20th century was so much less bloody than the first half. In fact, right now is the least bloody time in the history of the world per capita. > I'd say the Nuke Winter argument was irrelevant even though pimped by Sagan > and Postrel. I'd say World War III will either cause a nuclear winter or it won't and it has nothing to do with political ideology it has to do with physics. And I must say that if I knew absolutely nothing about a subject and you said one thing and Sagan said the opposite I'd tend to believe Sagan. > Thus, the opinions of scientists are not sacrosanct But the opinion of that great thinker spudboy100 is? By the way, does it say "spudboy100" on your driver's license? Is that the name you put on your income tax return? I'm not ashamed of what I write, that's why I always use my real name. John K Clark Spudboy100 is a nutcase IMO. I think much the same of Philip Benjamin or :Medinuclear. Both display highly confused thinking. They have also sort of rubbished up this list since they appeared. Their agendas tend to dominate things too much. A nuclear war involving just a few hundred nuclear bombs would kill hundreds of millions. There are currently several thousand arrayed on missile systems. Back in the 1980s there were 10 times that number. A complete nuclear war would probably have wiped out most of the population of the northern hemisphere. Also consider that in the wake of a nuclear war the infrastructure we rely upon would be entirely destroyed. Does anyone thing the trucks would keep running to keep store shelves filled? As a result starvation and then disease would cull off the majority of survivors. Nuclear winter was somewhat controversial, but there were reasons to think something to it. The detonation of many thousands of nuclear bombs would clearly torch off fires that could merge into megafires. Only in places that are wetted with recent rains or monsoons would be spared the direct fires. If as the nuclear winter scenario suggested half of the biomass in the norther hemisphere were burned up, which could be a trillion tons or so, it is not unreasonable to think an enlarged Mt Pinatubo climate effect would ensue. LC LC -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/ed4f422c-d213-4a8b-ad22-4bd049d5708en%40googlegroups.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2099807824.4631162.1611443975365%40mail.yahoo.com.
