Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
1
Nuclear Malthus 1NC
First is Uniqueness – nuclear war and civilization collapse due by 2050
b. Envious nations
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 1999
(Joseph George, “Can America Survive?” Vista Research Corporation, June 6 with minor corrections November 21
2000, http://www.foundationwebsite.org/canam4x.htm)
What are the odds that a “minimal-regret” war will occur, and a minimal-regret population established? I’m not sure about the odds that
a minimal-regret population will be established, but I believe strongly that a nuclear war is inevitable. The reason for this
conviction is the “politics of envy” – the desire of a “have-not” group to destroy an opponent who is better off, even if by
doing so his own position is unchanged or even worsened. The politics of envy is a principal motivation of terrorist
groups who attack the United States. With the proliferation of nuclear-weapon technology and
weapons-grade fissionable material, it is just a matter of time until a terrorist group decides to use
nuclear weapons against US cities. The US has lost control of its borders, and has accepted immigrants from all cultures
into all levels of its society. It is very vulnerable. Under the “politics of greed ” – the use of politics to acquire more for
yourself regardless of the effect on your opponent, it may be in the best interest of all groups to avoid nuclear war .
That was the basis for the decades-long Cold War, in which neither the US nor the Soviet Union used nuclear weapons. Both would lose
more than they gained. Under the politics of greed, mutually assured destruction (MAD) works as a deterrent
to war. Under the politics of envy, MAD is essentially irrelevant. What matters most is destruction of
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
2
the opponent, at any cost. MAD will not save the US now that the nuclear jinn is out of the bottle, and
the world is filled with unhappy have-nots with access to nuclear technology.
2. Total collapse of industrial civilization inevitable with the exhaustion of fossil fuels by
2050 – continuing industrial civilization only means further destruction of the biosphere
and extinction
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 2003
(Joseph George, “What Oil Can Do to Tiny States – and Big Ones, Too!” February 3,
http://www.foundation.bw/WhatOilCanDo.htm)
What The Economist article fails to point out is that what happens to small states when their national oil reserves run out is much the
same as will happen to big states when global oil reserves run out. By the year 2050, global oil reserves will be
exhausted, and industrial civilization will collapse worldwide. But there is a very significant – and very
tragic – difference between the situation when small states run out of oil and when the world runs out of oil. When small states
run out of oil, the population will simply return to what they did before, or they will migrate, or they
will beg for food from the rest of the world. Life goes on, for them and the rest of the planet, pretty much as before. When the
world runs out of oil, however, global human population will collapse and, unless a
significant intervention occurs, the biosphere will have been destroyed by the petroleum
age. As the energy inputs of oil (mechanization, irrigation, insecticides and other modern high-energy inputs) cease to
flow, there will be a massive drop in global food production. World human population will
drop from over six billion people to a few hundred million, since that is all that the current-solar-energy
budget of the planet will support in the long term. The death of more than six billion people is not the real tragedy, however, since
everyone must someday die. The great tragedy is that oil-fed global industrialization is destroying
the biosphere – causing the extinction of an estimated 30,000 species a year. If industrial
civilization continues until global oil supplies run out, what will remain will be a ruined
planet, with far less biological diversity than before oil. Because of global warming, the
petroleum age may even cause a greenhouse death of the planet, with the extinction of
mankind along with all other large plant and animal species. Mankind is now in the process
of causing the extinction of all kinds of large animals – tigers, rhinoceros, beluga sturgeon, pandas, apes,
orangutans, lemurs, chimpanzees – just to name a few. When the petroleum age is over, many of these
species will be gone – forever. When the world returns to a current-solar-energy-supported lifestyle, if mankind
survives at all it will inhabit a desolate place, devoid of the wonderful variety of other large
animals. Because of oil and global industrialization, African and Asian populations have
exploded, and the current generation of Africans and Asians is now killing all of the other
primates, to eat as “bush meat,” or to use their habitat for firewood or farmland, or to sell
as pets to animal collectors or zoos in other parts of the world. When the industrial age is
over and Africa and Asia return to a current-solar-energy lifestyle, they will find it a lonely
place to be for the next several billion years. And who killed cock robin? It was the petroleum age, it was
technology, it was industrialization, it was economic development – it was civilization that killed cock robin. A 100-year
drunken binge of incredibly profligate production and consumption – made possible by the
one-time windfall of fossil fuel -- will have caused the death of nature as we know it, as it
evolved over billions of years.
Second is the link – nuclear war now is key to sustaining the population
What has caused mankind to get into such a predicament? The problem would appear to be that mankind does not have the
foggiest idea about why it exists and what its purpose is. If the minimal-regret war succeeds, large-scale
industrial activity will come to an immediate halt, and the planet’s biosphere will be able to continue as it has
for millions of years. Without the minimal-regret war, it would appear that mankind will exterminate itself rather soon, and we
shall never have the answer to the question, “What Are People For?” With the war, and with a thousand years of meditation, it is
perhaps possible that mankind will have some time to reflect and may be able to figure out what it is all about. Was mankind created
simply to destroy the planet and itself? Or does it have a higher purpose? All civilizations come to an end, and the
civilization that results from a minimal-regret war will come to an end as well. Current civilization is madly
racing to destroy the planet for no reason at all. A minimal-regret population will give mankind time to
figure out what its purpose is, before all of nature is gone.
Third are the net benefits – war now is better than war later
The destruction of the planet's environment and biodiversity may coincidentally be halted by global war, but
saving biodiversity or the environment will not be the cause of global war. Less and less of nature remains with each
passing year of the current "global peace" of global industrialization. The longer global war is delayed, the less of nature
(species, biodiversity) will remain after its occurrence . The large human population has been made possible because of access to
fossil fuel. The planet can support only a small fraction of its current human population on recurrent solar energy (which includes
hydroelectric, biomass, and wind power). Global petroleum and natural gas deposits will not be exhausted until about 2050 (and coal
somewhat later), so the world's current fossil-fuel-driven economy can hypothetically continue for some time to come. If
industrialized human society continues to destroy other species at the current rate (estimated 30,000 per year)
until fossil fuels are exhausted, little will remain of the planet's natural environment as we know it. Mankind is
hurtling toward disaster -- the biosphere's and its own -- and there is nothing that will be done to stop it. Industrial development has
sewn the seeds of its own destruction. The situation is out of control. The human population explosion has already
occurred, and the resultant destruction -- first of the environment and then of industrial society and then, perhaps, of the human race
itself -- is at hand. Mankind has chosen its destiny, and is well along the path to its realization.
Ethics
Allowing nuclear war is more moral than allowing the destruction of the earth through
overpopulation – mass nuclear war is the only way to ensure survival
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 1999
(Joseph George, “Can America Survive?” Vista Research Corporation, June 6 with minor corrections November 21
2000, http://www.foundationwebsite.org/canam4x.htm)
If the morality of nuclear war is to be considered, the morality of destroying a planet and
all its species by overpopulation and industrialization must also be considered. Works on this
subject include Fritz Schumacher’s books and the plethora of books on environmentalism, including Healing the Planet by Paul and
Anne Ehrlich, Rescue the Earth! by Farley Mowat, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth by J. E. Lovelock, The End of Nature by Bill
McKibben, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, Gaia: An Atlas of Planet Management by Norman Myers, ed., and many more, some of
which are listed in the bibliography. Although
a minimal-regret nuclear war may kill almost six
billion people, that must be balanced against the very real possibility that not having
such a war may not only result in the deaths of six billion people, but also the
extinction of mankind and the extinction of all other species on the planet (from the
greenhouse effect). If the human race is made extinct by the greenhouse effect, millions of people
will have been denied life for every year of the next four billion years that the solar system
is expected to last. If the Earth can support ten million people indefinitely, that represents
forty quadrillion person-years of life. Is that amount of human life inconsequential
compared to the lives of the mere six billion that occupy the planet today?
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
6
Uniqueness – carrying capacity exists
Carrying capacity exists – human activity is currently causing overpopulation and species
extinction, critics ignore this and their arguments are vacuous.
Caldwell ‘99, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics
(Joseph George, “Can America Survive?” Vista Research Corporation, June 6 with minor corrections November 21
2000, http://www.foundationwebsite.org/canam4x.htm)
Julian Simon and other economists argue that the world can easily support even more people than it currently
does, at a good level of living. Their arguments are vacuous, in view of the fact that the number of
desperately poor people in the world has risen dramatically in the past half-century, despite Herculean efforts
by the World Bank, UN and other development agencies to accomplish otherwise . Economist Lyndon LaRouche
(candidate for the 1988 US presidential race) argued strongly for a substantially higher global human population than
presently exists. In his book, There Are No Limits to Growth, he states that “our planet could sustain a population of tens of
billions of persons, and at an average standard of living higher than that for the United States during the early 1970s.” In the article,
“The World Needs 10 Billion People,” Steven Bardwell argued that “a nuclear-powered, high-technology human civilization that is
capable of colonizing the solar system cannot function with fewer than 10 billion of us” (Fusion, September 1981). He observed that as
population increases, the division of labor allows for more efficient use of human resources and hence greater productivity. The fact
that physical scientists estimate that the world is losing 50-150 species or more per day because of human
activities such as deforestation, pollution, pesticides, and urbanization is of little or no concern to economists
such as Simon and LaRouche. They routinely pooh-pooh such observations about human-caused destruction of the world
environment and ecosystem as erroneous, unfounded, overblown, or of no consequence. That we may all be as crowded as the
people of Japan, or Singapore, or Hong Kong, and live in a world devoid of tigers, pandas, eagles, and
whales is of no significance, as long as economic productivity increases !
The US has already passed it’s carrying capacity – collapse inevitable with out population
cuts
Abernethy, Ph.D, 1993
(Virginia, “Population Politics,” Carrying Capacity Network, http://dieoff.org/page58.htm)
The current explosive growth in the human population has been made possible by the availability of a large
amount of “cheap” energy. Some people mistakenly believe that the current large population and high standard of living (for some
people) is due to technology. Technology without energy is useless. On the other hand, energy without technology
is also useless (for industrial applications, not for natural biological processes). To use energy it is necessary to have an
energy source (e.g., the sun, uranium) and the technology to harness it. The human population will continue to
grow as long as cheap energy is abundantly available. When fossil fuels run out and cheap energy is no
longer available, the human population will decline markedly. All the technology in the world is of
no avail (for industrial activity) without a source of energy. The availability of large amounts of energy is
responsible not only for the explosive growth in the human population, but for virtually every material,
social, and economic benefit of human society. Appendix F presents a number of graphs that show the
relationship of a variety of social and economic indicators to commercial energy use. These graphs show that, on average, the citizens of
a country enjoy a high quality of life (e.g., high life expectancy, low infant mortality, high literacy rates) when the per capita commercial
energy consumption exceeds 2,500 kilograms of oil equivalent (koe). As the energy consumption falls below that level, the
quality of life falls accordingly. The level 2,500 koe is the minimal energy level required for a country to be
able to provide a good standard of living for its citizens. The main implication of this observation is that the provision
of a minimum of 2,500 koe per capita per annum to all human inhabitants of Earth will require either a
dramatic increase in the amount of energy available, or a dramatic decrease in the human population size. The
following paragraphs show some of the calculations underlying the situation.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
8
Uniqueness – resource gone by 2050
Fossil fuels will be used up – oil and gas will be gone by 2050, coal will be gone by 2200 but
will leave devastating climate changes behind
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 1999
(Joseph George, “Can America Survive?” Vista Research Corporation, June 6 with minor corrections November 21
2000, http://www.foundationwebsite.org/canam4x.htm)
The bleakest picture of all is painted by economist Julian Simon. He observes that, because
of technological advances, the
dollar cost of extracting resources from the natural environment falls year after year. As a result, the planet’s
mineral, plant, and animal resources are plundered at an ever-increasing rate. It has been estimated a dead Bengal
tiger’s parts now fetch a million dollars. Some time ago, it was speciously argued that if the price of animal products rose sufficiently,
steps would be taken to preserve this valuable resource – it just made economic “sense” to do so. The falseness of this proposition has
been demonstrated over and over again. So few tigers exist in the wild that they are now considered effectively
extinct as a wild species. Similar exterminations of the black rhino, the musk deer, the panda, and other
animals have been caused directly by human overpopulation. While some of the rampant destruction of mammals is
direct killing, much species loss is an inevitable consequence of destruction of wildlife habitat, such as forests and wetlands. The
planet is undergoing the greatest mass extinction since the time of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago.
Although nobody knows for sure, it has been estimated ( ) that we are losing between 50 and 100 species a day (mostly from
habitat destruction) from the 5-30 million species thought to exist. Some scientists estimate the extinction rate at 150
species per day (W. V. Reid and K. R. Miller, , World Resources Institute, 1989). In 1970 there were 65,000 black rhinos in Africa; in
1993 there were just 2,000. The global population of tigers has dropped by 95% in this century, to about 5,000. As of 1994, only a few
dozen remained in China. The Caspian, Balinese, and Javan tigers became extinct over a decade ago. The population of Sumatran tigers
has dropped to 650, and the Siberian Amur has declined to 200. (See , March 28, 1994, “Tigers on the Brink.”) The alarming fact is
that the destruction of the Earth’s environment is increasing, not decreasing. The level of industrial activity is
increasing, not decreasing, and the destruction of the environment is continuing apace .
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
10
Uniqueness – Civilization Collapse Now Key
Each year industrial civilization is prolonged means more species extinction and further
destruction of the biosphere – the sooner we end civilization the more likely we avoid
extinction
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 2003
(Joseph, “The End of the World,” 6 March, http://foundation.bw/TheEndOfTheWorld.htm#_Toc34744202)
The state of the world is disastrous. The planet is currently experiencing the greatest mass extinction of
species since the time of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago, and it is being caused solely by
mankind’s massive numbers and industrial activity. Most of the species extinction is being caused by
rampant destruction of forests and wildlife habitat. In other cases, species are being deliberately singled out for destruction, as in the case
of rhinoceros horn (for Yemeni dagger handles), or tigers (for Chinese medicine), or whales (for Japanese whale-meat shops).
Industrial gasses are poisoning the atmosphere to such an extent that the ozone layer that protects all
biological life from extreme radiation is being destroyed. These gasses are contributing to global warming.
Signs of global warming are dramatic and ubiquitous; see the web site http://www.climatehotmap.org for a description of the global-
warming picture. Mankind’s large numbers and industrial activity are causing such great changes to the
atmosphere that it is conceivable that all life on the planet’s surface could be extinguished in a relatively
short time. Apart from the possibility that present human numbers and activity risk catastrophic destruction of
the planet’s biosphere, the human species is at the very least causing a tremendous change in the planet’s
biodiversity. Of the estimated 5-30 million species on the planet’s surface, an estimated 30,000 are being exterminated every year.
The naturalist Edward O. Wilson has estimated that if the current rate of extinction continues, half the Earth’s plant and animal species
will disappear by the end of the twenty-first century. With each passing year, the world becomes a less and less varied
and interesting place to be. With
each passing year, mankind is disturbing to a greater
degree the balance of nature in the biosphere in which it evolved over millions of
years, increasing the risk of precipitating major planetary changes and its own
extinction.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
11
Civilization Unsustainable – overpop and resources
Civilizations collapse is inevitable when overpopulation and resource use become too much
- the longer we let industrial civilization continues the greater the risk of extinction from
resource wars, species extinction, massive climate changes and overpopulations. Ending
industrial civilization key.
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 1999
(Joseph George, “Can America Survive?” Vista Research Corporation, June 6 with minor corrections November 21
2000, http://www.foundationwebsite.org/canam4x.htm)
In the past four centuries, theworld human population has skyrocketed, from about half a billion people to six
billion at the present time. Population projections from various sources suggest that, barring a major change of some
kind, the population will continue to soar, to nine billion or more by the year 2050. In the past half-century –
less than a lifetime -- the population of the US has exploded from about 150 million to over 270 million. This
explosive growth occurred despite the fact that fertility rates in the US dropped to low levels – it is the result of
uncontrolled immigration. The tremendous global population increase has been brought about by the development
of technology to utilize the energy stored in fossil fuels, such as petroleum, natural gas, and coal. Petroleum and
gas reserves will be exhausted, however, by about 2050, and coal reserves will not last much beyond that date if
industrial development continues to expand worldwide. Look around you. If you live in the US or other economically
developed country, every man-made thing you see or see happening is a product of the expenditure of energy, and most of that energy is
derived from fossil fuels. To establish and maintain our present lifestyle requires prodigious amounts of energy – an
amount equivalent to about 8,000 kilograms of oil annually for each man, woman, and child living in the country. Pre-agricultural
man lived “off the land,” consuming only the bounty of nature. Agricultural man could produce about 10
calories of energy with the expenditure of about one calorie of energy. Industrial man, it has been estimated,
uses over ten calories of energy to produce a single calorie of food! The present system is not only exquisitely
wasteful, but it is completely unsustainable. Most of what you see in the industrial world is a transitory illusion made possible
by a one-time windfall supply of energy from fossil fuels that were accumulated over millions of years. When the fossil fuel
reserves deplete in about 50 years, the modern world will simply disappear along with them . Whatever age you
are, if you were raised in a town or a small city, go back to where you lived as a child and observe what has happened to the nearest
natural field you played in. Chances are it is now urban sprawl – pavement, concrete, and steel. For each immigrant admitted to
the US – legal or illegal – about an acre of natural land is permanently destroyed, by roads, buildings, parking lots,
houses, schools, and other structures that take the land out of production – both for wildlife and for agriculture. Last year the US
admitted 1.2 million more immigrants. That represents the complete destruction of another .6 million acres of
farmland, forest, and pastureland. Who cares? Certainly not the people in charge – they want more people because it makes
more money, and they are not particularly concerned with the concomitant destruction of the environment! Industrial activity at the
massive scale of the present is causing substantial changes to Earth’s environment. By now, everyone knows that
the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and other gases produced by industrial activity is increasing
substantially every year, and that the planet’s climate and weather are controlled by these concentrations .
Large-scale industrial activity is causing substantial changes to the planet’s environment – land, air, water, and ecology. In view of
the established relationship of the planet’s climate and ecosystem to these concentrations, it is possible that
man’s industrial activity could cause dramatic changes in the sea level, and trigger another ice age or create a
lifeless “hothouse.” And for what good reason? What is the good purpose of burning all the planet’s
fossil fuels as fast as possible, when it risks the destruction not only of mankind but of
much other life on the planet as well? The answer is “None.” This activity cannot
continue at current levels without risking dire consequences, even apart from the
issue of depletion of fossil fuel reserves and other nonrenewable resources. To
continue to do so is the height of folly.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
12
Civilization Unsustainable – waste products
Waste produced by industrial civilization makes it unsustainable – the ecosystem cannot
sustain industrialization
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 1999
(Joseph George, “Can America Survive?” Vista Research Corporation, June 6 with minor corrections November 21
2000, http://www.foundationwebsite.org/canam4x.htm)
Having an adequate energy supply is just half of the problem. The other half of the problem is what to do about the
waste. In the natural ecosystem, energy is obtained from the sun each day, and continuously converted by living
creatures into waste that is completely consumed by other living creatures. Mankind, however, uses energy to
produce waste that cannot be consumed by living creatures. For industrial man to continue to survive, i.e., to be
sustainable, it is necessary (although not sufficient) for him to eliminate all of the waste that his
industrial activity produces. Present day man does not do this. He simply dumps most of the waste – toxic,
radioactive, or other – into the environment. In order for man to survive in the ecosystem as we know it, it must be
the case that all of his waste is reprocessed. Otherwise there is no balance of nature. Biological creatures do not have
to worry about reprocessing their waste; evolution and the balance of nature have taken care of that. Industrial
creatures such as man must worry very much about this, or they will “soil their nest” and make it unlivable. For
every joule of energy that is used by man, he must insure that the waste produced by it is reprocessed (completely).
In order for mankind to continue indefinitely with any level of industrial activity, its production of nonbiodegradable
or nonrecyclable waste must stop. Either the production of nonbiodegradable items must cease, or energy must be
expended to transform the industrial products into biodegradable ones. Virtually all industrial products end up as
waste, within a few years. This includes all of our appliances, containers, clothes, furniture, cars, buildings, and
infrastructure (roads, bridges, power lines, sewage treatment plants). Transforming nonbiodegradable substances
into biodegradable ones requires energy, and usually lots of it. In some cases, nonbiodegradable items can be
reprocessed and reused, e.g., used aluminum cans into new aluminum cans. In some cases, highly toxic materials
must be burned at high temperatures to break them down. Radioactive materials cannot be destroyed (except in a
nuclear reaction). To date, the approach to industrial waste has largely been to ignore it, i.e., to “sweep it under the
rug” by transporting to landfills, or by dumping in rivers, lakes, or oceans. This approach is not sustainable, and in
fact cannot continue for very long at all at today’s high rates of industrial activity. At some point sufficient
energy must be expended to convert all industrial waste into useful products or biodegradable products. Data are not
readily available on how much energy will be required to do this. If it is (optimistically?) assumed that the same
amount of energy is required to dispose of industrial products as was expended to create them in the first place, then
the amount of energy required per capita doubles. In this case, the planet’s solar energy budget could not support one
billion industrial human beings, but only 500 million. It is quite possible that a significant population of
industrial human beings can never be sustained on the planet . Prior to industrial man, all of the
plant and animal waste production from the entire solar energy supply was 100% recycled – all of the waste from
one species was food for another. Industrial mankind produces waste that is toxic to the ecology, and that is not
recycled at all. By relying on energy sources other than solar (such as nuclear), man also generates much more waste
than is possible under a “current solar energy budget.” At some industrial activity level, the planet’s ecosystem will
simply be unable to reprocess the industrial waste generated by man on a long-term basis. It is quite conceivable that
the planet’s ecosystem (as we currently know it) can survive in the long run only as a photosynthetic system on a
“current solar energy budget,” without massive input of energy (and toxic waste) from other sources. If this is the
case, there is no place for industrial man on the planet at all.
Current Population Unsustainable (1/2)
Current levels of resource consumption and production will not be able to sustain
population growth
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 1999
(Joseph George, “Can America Survive?” Vista Research Corporation, June 6 with minor corrections November 21
2000, http://www.foundationwebsite.org/canam4x.htm)
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
13
The current commercial energy consumption of all countries in the world is about 8,000 megatons (million tons) of
oil equivalent (International Energy Agency, Energy Statistics and Balances of Non-OECD Countries, 1993-1994, p.
61). This means that at current production levels, the average energy consumption per person worldwide is 6 billion
people divided by 8 billion tons of oil equivalent, or about 1.333 tons of oil equivalent (toe) = 1,333 koe (the
“official” figure for 1995 is 1,474 koe, according to World Development Report 1998/99). For each of the world’s
current six billion people to have access to 2,500 kilograms (2.5 tons) of oil equivalent annually would require a
total production of 15 gigatons (billion tons) of oil equivalent (6 billion people x 2.5 toe per person). That is about
double current production. When the world population reaches nine or twelve billion, the amount required
will be 22.5 gigatons or 30 gigatons, respectively, or three or four times current production. When
compared to the energy that will be available from current solar sources, the comparisons are even starker.
Pimentel et al. estimate that a maximum of 200 quads (quadrillion BTU, where “quadrillion” means one million
million) of energy might be available for human use from solar sources, or about five billion tons of oil equivalent
(toe). This is about five gigatons of oil equivalent (Gtoe). (See Appendix B for factors for converting from BTUs to
other energy units.) That is, the amount of energy that would be required to provide twelve billion people with 2.5
toe (i.e., 30 Gtoe) is about six times that available from solar energy (i.e., 5 Gtoe). What does this mean? Well,
China and India intend to raise the standard of living for their two billion people to a level comparable to the rest of
the world. At a level of 2.5 tons of oil equivalent (toe) per person, that will require 5 billion toe of energy, or all of
that available from solar energy. This means that, when the oil, gas and coal run out, China and India will require the
entire solar energy budget for the planet, just for their people alone. This means either that there will be an awful lot
of nuclear power being used, or the rest of us will just have to go! And the problem is not just China and India.
Figures 26-28 of Appendix F summarize the distribution of commercial energy use for the countries of the world.
These figures show that the vast majority of countries (about 55%) have per capita commercial energy consumptions
of 1,000 koe or less, and that only 25% have per capita energy consumptions of 2,500 koe or more. In other words,
in the world of today, relatively few countries have per capita energy use levels that enable a high standard of living.
Most of these countries have no access to nuclear power, and it is unlikely that they ever will. When oil, gas, and
coal run out, there are going to be a lot of very unhappy people around.
Current Population Unsustainable (2/2)
World “peace” – in an absolute sense meaning the total absence of organized conflict – is evidently an unachievable
goal for mankind. A more realistic goal may be some sort of semi-stable equilibrium involving a controlled level of
conflict. All plant and animal species have birth rates that exceed replacement levels, else they would soon become
extinct. The population sizes of all species would “explode” were it not for the “balance of nature” that keeps
population sizes in equilibrium. Any species that proliferates is doomed to a rapid,
“edsxzcatastrophic” population collapse. Technological man can temporarily upset the balance of nature
and fill the planet with billions of human beings, but this cannot last. If nature’s other species do not keep the
human population in check, then mankind will perform this function itself, through war (organized
conflict – “collective killing for a collective purpose,” in the words of John Keegan). In the absence of “natural”
control of mankind’s numbers, war is inevitable. And as the human population explodes, the likelihood and the
magnitude of war must explode as well. War, war, and more war – that is what is in mankind’s future.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
14
The end of mutual deterrence makes nuclear war and nuclear technology development
inevitable
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 1999
(Joseph George, “Can America Survive?” Vista Research Corporation, June 6 with minor corrections November 21
2000, http://www.foundationwebsite.org/canam4x.htm)
What are the odds that a “minimal-regret” war will occur, and a minimal-regret population established? I’m not sure about the odds that
a minimal-regret population will be established, but I believe strongly that a nuclear war is inevitable. The reason for
this conviction is the “politics of envy” – the desire of a “have-not” group to destroy an opponent who is better off, even if by
doing so his own position is unchanged or even worsened. The politics of envy is a principal motivation of terrorist
groups who attack the United States. With the proliferation of nuclear-weapon technology and weapons-grade
fissionable material, it is just a matter of time until a terrorist group decides to use nuclear weapons against
US cities. The US has lost control of its borders, and has accepted immigrants from all cultures into all levels of its society. It is
very vulnerable. Under the “politics of greed ” – the use of politics to acquire more for yourself regardless of the effect on
your opponent, it may be in the best interest of all groups to avoid nuclear war . That was the basis for the decades-long
Cold War, in which neither the US nor the Soviet Union used nuclear weapons. Both would lose more than they gained. Under the
politics of greed, mutually assured destruction (MAD) works as a deterrent to war. Under the politics of envy,
MAD is essentially irrelevant. What matters most is destruction of the opponent , at any cost. MAD will not
save the US now that the nuclear jinn is out of the bottle, and the world is filled with unhappy have-nots with
access to nuclear technology.
Nuclear War Inevitable – envious nations, desire to save the planet and diminishing
resources
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 2003
(Joseph, “The End of the World,” 6 March, http://foundation.bw/TheEndOfTheWorld.htm#_Toc34744202)
It would appear that global nuclear war is inevitable, for several reasons. A major factor is the “politics of envy” –
the desire for the “have-nots” of the world to destroy what the “haves” have. The gap between the industrialized
“west” and the rest of the world is widening, and the hatred and envy are growing as the poorer nations realize that
they will never catch up. Each year, millions more human beings are born into direst poverty, overcrowding, misery
and hopelessness. The realization is dawning that it is global industrialization that is the root
cause of human misery, and the motivation to bring that inhumane system to an end is
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
15
growing as fast as the global human population. With the proliferation of plutonium from nuclear
reactors, terrorists and rogue nations will soon have the capability to produce thousands of suitcase-sized nuclear
bombs, and deliver them to any cities in the world. As mentioned earlier, no missiles or airplanes or submarines are
required. Another reason why global nuclear war appears inevitable is the fact that nuclear war “dominates” all other
proposed solutions as a means of stopping the ongoing species extinction. No other alternative accomplishes this.
As long as this situation holds, it is just a matter of time until the global-nuclear-war
solution is implemented, since continuing on the present course leads to a “dead” planet . It
would appear that global nuclear war will happen very soon, for two main reasons, alluded to above. First, human
poverty and misery are increasing at an incredible rate. There are now three billion more desperately poor people on
the planet than there were just forty years ago. Despite decades of industrial development, the number of wretchedly
poor people continues to soar. The pressure for war mounts as the population explodes. Second, war is motivated by
resource scarcity -- the desire of one group to acquire the land, water, energy, or other resources possessed by
another. With each passing year, crowding and misery increase, raising the motivation for war to higher levels.
There is also a third factor motivating global war, and that involves timing. With the passage of time, less and less
benefit accrues to the winner. If anyone is motivated to wage global nuclear war and has the means to do so, sooner
is very likely better than later. If delayed too long, there may be nothing left to gain. With each passing year, the
planet's biodiversity decreases, another two percent of the planet's remaining petroleum reserves are consumed, and
the risk of biospheric extinction (e.g., from a greenhouse effect) increases.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
16
Impact – deforestation
Maintaining industrial civilization causes massive deforestation leading to plant and animal
extinction
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 1999
(Joseph George, “Can America Survive?” Vista Research Corporation, June 6 with minor corrections November 21
2000, http://www.foundationwebsite.org/canam4x.htm)
L
Over the last century the world has lost half its original forest area, and much so-called “reforestation” is simply
replacing ecologically diverse forests with monoculture tree plantations. Each year, man destroys another 16 million
hectares of ecologically diverse forest. In the article, “A Non-Fuzzy Earth Day,” in the May 3, 1999 issue of Time,
Pranay Gupte (editor and publisher of The Earth Times) summarizes the situation. In the past 20 years, forests have
disappeared in 25 countries, and over 95% of the forests have disappeared in 18 countries. There were an estimated
60 billion hectares of forest on the planet just before World War II; now, because of logging, cutting for firewood,
and desertification, there are 3.6 billion. (Figures from the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable
Development). The World Conservation Union estimates that this forest decline threatens 12.5% of the world’s
275,000 species of plants and 75% of its mammals.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
17
Impact - environment
The root cause of all of the environmental and ecological problems facing the planet is twofold: the very large
human population, and the extraordinarily high levels of toxic waste produced by industrial activity. The planet can
and has harbored a large number of human beings for very long periods in the past. It has been estimated that the
human population has been approximately 2-20 million for the past hundred thousand years, while mankind existed
in a hunting-gathering mode, increasing to about 200-300 million after the advent of the agricultural
revolution (10,000 years ago). Human population growth is often depicted in a famous curve called “Deevy’s
curve,” after the man who first presented it (Edward S. Deevy, “The Human Population,” Scientific American, vol.
203, no. 9, September 1960, pp. 195-204). This curve is shown, for example, on p. 95 of Cohen’s How Many People
Can the Earth Support, or p. 101 of Piel’s Only One World. It shows three main population surges: one when man
invented weapons and tools (three million years ago); one when man developed agriculture (about 10,000 years
ago); and one when the industrial revolution began, less than 500 year ago. The three levels of population for these
“surges” are global populations of about 2-20 million human beings (preagricultural Stone Age), 200-300 million
(preindustrial agriculture), and the present time. The population surge for the present time has not yet leveled off,
but it will, very soon. The total land area of Earth is 148.9 million square kilometers, of which 14.2 million is
Antarctica and 11 million is desert. This leaves about 125 million square kilometers of habitable land. A total
population size of say, 5 million, hence represents a density of about 4 people every 100 square kilometers. At that
low level of population, with no industrial activity, mankind did not materially affect the balance of nature. (The
term “balance of nature” refers to the fact that all of the waste products produced by one species are food for other
species and the overall system is in a state of relative equilibrium (slow evolutionary change).) The net production of
unreprocessed waste is effectively zero. The only significant ecological change attributed to mankind over the
millions of years of his hunter-gatherer existence was the extinction of most large mammals (mammoths,
mastodons, giant camels, and the like) at the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago, and there is even doubt
that mankind accomplished that. When mankind began to use agriculture, about 10,000 years ago, a lot of forest was
cleared, and many local species were exterminated. The rise of civilization was responsible, for example, for the
extermination of the black Atlas-mountain lion, and for the elimination of lions in general from the area occupied by
the Roman Empire. Agricultural man could produce about 10 calories of food energy for the expenditure of one
calorie of food energy. This meant that a single man could produce enough food for his immediate family, and still
have a surplus that could support a nonagricultural urban civilization. Conversion of much of the land area to
agriculture allowed the human population to grow substantially, to the level of a few hundred million at the time of
the Roman Empire. Until about the year 1500, the size of the human population did not change much. Overall,
agricultural yields were low – perhaps 1/10 of current yields. Another reason for lack of population growth was
limited access to energy resources. About 1500, however, mankind started using coal instead of wood as a major
source of energy. The difficulties in extracting coal led to technological advances such as the development of an
efficient steam engine. These developments enabled man to utilize much larger amounts of energy. Technological
development followed technological development, leading ultimately to man’s ability to produce much larger
amounts of food. The human population explosion was on! The population increased to about a billion in 1800, to
two billion in 1925, three billion in 1960, four billion in 1974, five billion in 1987, and to six billion today (1999).
Human population is exploding at the rate of about 80 million a year, or a billion every twelve years. As discussed at
length in the references of the preceding chapter, mankind’s large population size and industrial activity are literally
destroying the ecological environment on which he depends for his very existence. Since the human population
explosion threatens our existence, one would think that this topic would receive more attention than any other.
Incredibly, this is not the case. Although a number of perceptive books have been written on the subject, they
represent a miniscule proportion of all literature.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
18
Impact – overpopulation => nuke war
The basic approach to the energy problem (i.e., the depletion of fossil fuels in a few decades) by the world
governments is to ignore it. There is much talk of alternatives to fossil fuels and fission nuclear energy, such as solar
energy and fusion energy, but it is just talk. Despite much investment and research, alternative technologies have not
been developed. They are in the realm of science fiction or “new age” literature. Isaac Asimov conceived a universe
parallel to our own with which energy could be exchanged. Edgar Cayce describes crystal power plants in Atlantis
that collected energy from the sun and other sources. Alan F. Alford (Gods of the New Millennium, Hodder and
Stoughton, London, 1996) describes pyramid-energy sources in the ancient world. These alternatives are not too
promising, to say the least! Clearly, mankind is facing some difficult decisions. Either reduce global population size
to a level that is supportable by the annual budget of solar energy, or use nuclear fission to generate energy, thereby
producing long-lasting radioactive waste and the material used to produce nuclear bombs. Since no steps are being
taken by world governments to accomplish the former (i.e., a human population of size that can be supported by
solar energy), it is pretty clear where we are headed: more people and more nuclear energy. Human population will
continue to expand, and mankind will continue to use nuclear energy and generate nuclear waste. Industrial man will
not be denied energy, or he will cease to exist. The fact that nuclear reactors generate radioactive waste and waste
heat will not deter mankind in the least from using them. But the fact that the most promising type of nuclear
reactor – the fast breeder reactor – generates large amounts of plutonium will have a significant Impact on man’s
future. The availability of large amounts of plutonium significantly increases the likelihood
of nuclear war.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
19
Impact framework – save biosphere first
The primary goal of population control should be to minimize the chance of biosphere
collapse – all other factors are irrelevant
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 1999
(Joseph George, “Can America Survive?” Vista Research Corporation, June 6 with minor corrections November 21
2000, http://www.foundationwebsite.org/canam4x.htm)
The criterion of “minimal regret” specifies that if one of several different possible decisions (courses of action) must
be made, then select the one that, no matter what happens, the “regret” is least. "Regret" is loosely defined as the
likelihood that mankind and the planet's biodiversity are destroyed. This approach may result in a result quite
different from the usual approach of determining optimal population size. The objective in determining the optimal
population size is to identify the largest possible population that can achieve a particular lifestyle, with the constraint
that it be “sustainable,” i.e., not cause so much damage to the environment that it cannot continue indefinitely. The
very serious drawback of the optimal-population-size approach is that it does not address the issue of how much
stress the environment can sustain without collapsing. It is simply hypothesized that, if there is sufficient solar or
nuclear energy and land to support one billion people, that the environment can “take it,” and will “take it”
indefinitely. If the environment cannot “take it,” the whole human race is destroyed. From the viewpoint of long-
term survival of the human race, this is an incredibly absurd approach. The approach of determining optimal
population size is an attempt to maximize the number of human beings on the planet, while completely ignoring the
possibility that mankind’s economic activity may destroy all life on the planet. It is a horribly flawed approach in
which a major possibility – global destruction – is permitted. The possibility of planetary destruction is willfully
recognized and accepted, and conspiratorially ignored. In contrast, the minimal-regret approach addresses the issue
of planetary destruction head on, and takes it fully into account.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
20
Impact – Oceans
The ocean is on the brink – overfishing destroys resiliency, outweighs any other alternate
causalities
Greenpeace 2008
July, “Pushed to the brink - The oceans and climate change”
CSM 08
(Christian Science Monitor, Moises Velasquez-Manoff, Staff Writer, “How Overfishing Can Alter An Entire
Ecosystem,” June 19, http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/06/19/how-overfishing-can-alter-an-ocean
%E2%80%99s-entire-ecosystem/)
Scientists have documented versions of this story around the world. Overfishing has shifted entire ecosystems with often
surprising, and occasionally unpleasant, results. In the tropics, seaweed often dominates where coral once reigned. Around the world,
jellyfish and algae proliferate where finfish previously dominated. With big predators often gone or greatly depleted,
organisms lower on the food web grow more abundant, reducing their own prey in turn. Some say this is
worrisome evidence of a greatly changed and simplified marine ecosystem. Like investment portfolios with few holdings, simple
ecosystems are prone to collapse; and collapsed or rearranged ecosystems don’t necessarily provide what
humans expect. Increasingly mindful of marine ecosystems’ complexity – and wary of their collapse – some people are calling for a
holistic approach to managing ecosystems, one that aims to manage for the health of the entire system rather than that of a single stock.
Just 4 percent of the world’s oceans remains free from human impact, according to a 2008 study in the journal Science. Forty percent of
this is heavily impacted.
Craig, 3
Associate professor of law, Indiana University School of Law, Indianapolis, IN., 2003 (Robin Kundis, "Taking
Steps Toward Marine Wilderness Protection?" 34 McGeorge L. Rev. 155, Winter)
Declines in fishing stocks and the economic chaos that results when a fishery collapses have driven much of the interest in restoring the
oceans - or at least in restoring the fishing stocks. Restoration efforts, however, depend on identifying the cause of the degradation.
Although anthropogenic stresses to the oceans are many - pollution, destruction of habitat for coastal
construction, and global warming - scientists consistently identify overfishing as the primary cause of [*163]
both depleted fisheries stocks and destruction of ecosystem biodiversity generally. n27 As for fishery stocks, more than two-thirds of
the commercially fished stocks worldwide are currently either overfished or on the brink of becoming overfished. n28
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
21
Moreover, many commercially important stocks of marine species have suffered spectacular collapses, leaving economic chaos in their
wakes. Some famous examples include salmon in the United States's Pacific Northwest; n29 cod in the northeastern United States, eastern
Canada, and Scandinavia; n30 whales throughout the world; n31 and sea turtles in the Caribbean and Hawaii. n32 However, intensive fishing
worldwide has also affected marine ecosystems more generally. In the fished stocks, "fish diminish in size and number or
disappear altogether." n33 When so reduced, these species cannot properly perform their roles in the ecosystems they
inhabit, a condition known as ecological extinction. n34 Most directly, the reduction in number and size of commercially
important species affects marine food webs: species that the overfished species consumed tend to increase in number, while species that
consumed the overfished species tend to decrease in number n35 or shift their diets. When hunters came close to exterminating sea otters
from the northern Pacific kelp forests, for example, the orcas that had formerly preyed on otter turned their attention to seals and sea
lions, "which are in drastic decline" as a result. n36
Extinction
Craig, 3
Associate professor of law, Indiana University School of Law, Indianapolis, IN., 2003 (Robin Kundis, "Taking
Steps Toward Marine Wilderness Protection?" 34 McGeorge L. Rev. 155, Winter)
The world's oceans contain many resources and provide many services that humans consider valuable. "Occupy[ing] more than [seventy
percent] of the earth's surface and [ninety-five percent] of the biosphere," n17 oceans provide food; marketable goods such as
shells, aquarium fish, and pharmaceuticals; life support processes, including carbon sequestration , nutrient cycling,
and weather mechanics; and quality of life, both aesthetic and economic, for millions of people worldwide. n18 Indeed, it is
difficult to overstate the importance of the ocean to humanity's well-being: "The ocean is the cradle of life on our planet, and it
remains the axis of existence, the locus of planetary biodiversity, and the engine of the chemical and
hydrological cycles that create and maintain our atmosphere and climate." n19 Ocean and coastal ecosystem services
have been calculated to be worth over twenty billion dollars per year, worldwide. n20 In addition, many people assign heritage and
existence value to the ocean and its creatures, viewing the world's seas as a common legacy to be passed on relatively intact to future
generations. n21 Traditionally, land-bound humans have regarded the ocean as an inexhaustible resource and have pursued consumptive
and extractive uses of the seas, such as fishing, with little thought of conservation. n22 In the last two or three centuries, however,
humanity has overstressed the world's oceans, proving that the ocean's productivity is limited. n23 Degradation of the marine
environment is becoming increasingly obvious: Scientists have mounting evidence of rapidly accelerating declines in once-abundant
populations of cod, haddock, flounder, and scores of other [*162] fish species, as well as mollusks, crustaceans, birds, and plants. They
are alarmed at the rapid rate of destruction of coral reefs, estuaries, and wetlands and the sinister expansion of vast "dead zones" of water
where life has been choked away. More and more, the harm to marine biodiversity can be traced not to natural events but to inadequate
policies. n24
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
22
Impact – A-Life
B. Unlimited destruction
Bostrom, Philosophy professor Oxford and Director of the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute, 06
<Nick, “Ethical Issues in Advanced Artificial Intelligence” “Ethical Issues in Advanced Artificial Intelligence”, Review of Contemporary
Philosophy, forthcoming, August 2006.>
The risks in developing superintelligence include the risk of failure to give it the
supergoal of philanthropy. One way in which this could happen is that the creators of the
superintelligence decide to build it so that it serves only this select group of humans, rather
than humanity in general. Another way for it to happen is that a well-meaning team of
programmers make a big mistake in designing its goal system. This could result, to return to
the earlier example, in a superintelligence whose top goal is the manufacturing of
paperclips, with the consequence that it starts transforming first all of earth and then
increasing portions of space into paperclip manufacturing facilities. More subtly, it could
result in a superintelligence realizing a state of affairs that we might now judge as desirable but which in fact
turns out to be a false utopia, in which things essential to human flourishing have been irreversibly lost. We
need to be careful about what we wish for from a superintelligence, because we might get it.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
23
Impact - Nanotech
Molecular nanotechnology manufacturing will arrive suddenly, perhaps within the next ten years, and almost
certainly within the next twenty. If it takes the world by surprise, we will not have systems in place that
can deal with it effectively. No single organization or mindset can create a full and appropriate policy
—and inappropriate policy will only make things worse. A combination of separate policy efforts will
get in each other's way, and the risks will slip through the cracks .
Perhaps the earliest-recognized and best-known danger of molecular nanotechnology is the risk that self-replicating
nanorobots capable of functioning autonomously in the natural environment could quickly convert that natural
environment (e.g., "biomass") into replicas of themselves (e.g., "nanomass") on a global basis, a scenario usually
referred to as the "gray goo problem" but perhaps more properly termed "global ecophagy." As Drexler first warned
in Engines of Creation [2]: "Plants" with "leaves" no more efficient than today's solar cells could out-compete real
plants, crowding the biosphere with an inedible foliage. Tough omnivorous "bacteria" could out-compete real
bacteria: They could spread like blowing pollen, replicate swiftly, and reduce the biosphere to
dust in a matter of days. Dangerous replicators could easily be too tough, small, and
rapidly spreading to stop--at least if we make no preparation. We have trouble enough controlling
viruses and fruit flies. Among the cognoscenti of nanotechnology, this threat has become known as the "gray goo
problem." Though masses of uncontrolled replicators need not be gray or gooey, the term "gray goo" emphasizes
that replicators able to obliterate life might be less inspiring than a single species of crabgrass. They might be
superior in an evolutionary sense, but this need not make them valuable. The gray goo threat makes one thing
perfectly clear: We cannot afford certain kinds of accidents with replicating assemblers. Gray goo would surely be a
depressing ending to our human adventure on Earth, far worse than mere fire or ice, and one that could stem from a
simple laboratory accident.
However, the primary ecophagic concern is that runaway nanorobotic replicators or "replibots" will convert the
entire surface biosphere (the ecology of all living things on the surface of the Earth) into alternative or artificial
materials of some type--especially, materials like themselves, e.g., more self-replicating nanorobots. Since advanced
nanorobots might be constructed predominantly of carbon-rich diamondoid materials [4], and since ~12% of all
atoms in the human body (representative of biology generally) are carbon atoms [6], or ~23% by weight, the global
biological carbon inventory may support the self-manufacture of a final mass of replicating diamondoid nanorobots
on the order of ~0.23 Mbio, where Mbio is the total global biomass. Unlike almost any other natural material,
biomass can serve both as a source of carbon and as a source of power for nanomachine replication. Ecophagic
nanorobots would regard living things as environmental carbon accumulators, and biomass as a valuable ore to be
mined for carbon and energy. Of course, biosystems from which all carbon has been extracted can
no longer be alive but would instead become lifeless chemical sludge.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
25
Nanotech Possible
Freitas, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing, 2001
(Robert A. Jr., “The Gray Goo Problem,” March 20, http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?
main=/articles/art0142.html)
Traditional diamondoid nanomachinery designs [4] have employed 8 primary chemical elements, along with the
associated atmospheric abundances [46] of each element. (Silicon is present in air as particulate dust which may be
taken as ~28% Si for crustal rock [5], with a global average dust concentration of ~0.0025 mg/m3). The requirement
for elements that are relatively rare in the atmosphere greatly constrains the potential nanomass and growth rate of
airborne replicators. However, note that at least one of the classical designs exceeds 91% CHON by weight.
Although it would be very difficult, it is at least theoretically possible that replicators could be constructed almost
solely of CHON, in which case such devices could replicate relatively rapidly using only atmospheric resources,
powered by sunlight. A worldwide blanket of airborne replicating dust or "aerovores" that blots out all sunlight has
been called the "gray dust" scenario [47]. (There have already been numerous experimental aerial releases of
recombinant bacteria [48].)
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
26
Impact – Accelerators
The next generation of accelerators will create mini black holes that end the earth
Blodgett, Risk Evaluation Forum, 03 <James, November 16, 2003, http://www.risk-evaluation-forum.org/cnsdrtns.htm Collider mini black
holes: Loss of protective considerations>
Recent developments in physics suggest that the next generation of heavy ion colliders may create mini black holes.
(A large collider that will be thirty times more powerful than current models is under construction at CERN.) It
is thought that mini black holes will dissipate via Hawking radiation. But Hawking radiation has never been seen nor tested.
If Hawking radiation does not work, a mini black hole could swallow the earth. This risk seems a classic case for
being careful, for what risk analysts call "the precautionary principle." Unfortunately it appears that this principle is not yet being
applied.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
27
1NC Posthumanism
The emergence of posthumans will result in a genocidal war with WMD -- leads to
extinction
Annas et al ‘2 (George, Utley Professor and Chair of Health Law at Boston University School of Public Health, Lori Andrews,
Professor of Law at Chicago-Kent, and Rosario Isasi, Health Law and Bioethics Fellow at Boston University School of Public Health,
American Journal of Law & Medicine, “THE GENETICS REVOLUTION: CONFLICTS, CHALLENGES AND CONUNDRA:
ARTICLE: Protecting the Endangered Human: Toward an International Treaty Prohibiting Cloning and Inheritable Alterations”, 28 Am.
J. L. and Med. 151, L/N)
Specifically, the argument is that cloning will inevitably lead to attempts to modify the somatic cell nucleus not to
create genetic duplicates of existing people, but "better" children. 36 If this attempt fails, that is the end of it. If it
succeeds, however, something like the scenario envisioned by Silver and others such as Nancy Kress, 37 will unfold: a new species
or subspecies of humans will emerge. The new species, or "posthuman," will likely view the old "normal"
humans as inferior, even savages, and fit for slavery or slaughter. The normals, on the other hand, may see the
posthumans as a threat and if they can, may engage in a preemptive strike by killing the posthumans before
they themselves are killed or enslaved by them. It is ultimately this predictable potential for genocide that
makes species-altering experiments potential weapons of mass destruction, and makes the unaccountable
genetic engineer a potential bioterrorist. It is also why cloning and genetic modification is of species-wide
concern and why an international treaty to address it is appropriate. 38 Such a treaty is necessary because existing laws on cloning and
inheritable genetic alterations, although often well-intentioned, have serious limitations.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
28
1NC Posthumanism
Posthumanism risks a destruction of genetic and cultural diversity which is critical for
human survival
Wang ‘1 (Andrea, J.D. Candidate at Colorado, Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy, “Regulating
Human Cloning Within an Environmental Human Rights Framework”, 12 COLO. J. INT'L ENVTL. L. & POL'Y 165, L/N)
Genetic diversity in humans helps to alleviate prejudice against out-groups because there is no one standard
of "normal." The remainder of this section shows that if the eugenic ends discussed above 161 come to fruition, we will
become a more genetically homogenized society. Because of the expense, cloning will be utilized by the
wealthy, dominant class and the stigmatizing effect will be felt by poorer, marginalized groups. 162 Thus, an
increase in the use of cloning for genetic control will further solidify a societal definition of "normalcy." As
the class of "normal" becomes more and more narrow, parents who belong to out-groups may even choose, for the sake of their children,
to have clones that will fit the societal definition of normalcy. 163 "Individual choices are not made in a social vacuum, and unless
changes in social attitudes keep pace with the proliferation of genetic tests, we can anticipate that many future prospective parents,
acting to avoid misery for potential children, will have to bow to social attitudes they [*186] reject and resent." 164 Examples of
minority group member parents who concede to the dominant culture because of perceived advantages for their children have come up
in other areas of reproductive technology. For example, a black South African woman (with a white husband) who could not conceive
with her eggs, requested that the egg donor be white. 165 She did so because she felt that a white child would have a better life than
would a child of a mixed race. 166 The more this standard of "normal" is reinforced, the greater the psychological injury to members of
out-groups. 167 In addition to the psychological injury of being deemed inferior as a function of genetic traits, is the concomitant
discrimination at a societal level. Once certain traits are identified as desirable from a utilitarian and aesthetic framework, those who lack
these traits will likely be discriminated against both in educational and employment settings. 168 Scientist Judith Swazey, in the context
of "genetic health," has articulated this concern: "some of the uses of genetics reflect, and reinforce, a value system that contains an
intolerance of "imperfection.'" 169 With a focus on an individual's genetic makeup, comes a shift to a greater acceptance of notions of
biological determinism. 170 This theory provides the background for the justification of stereotype use and the resulting discrimination.
Nelkin and Tancredi warn of the social power of biological information and speculate on its misuse: "What is to be defined as normal or
abnormal, able or disabled, healthy or diseased? And whose yardstick should prevail? ... We risk increasing the number of people
defined as unemployable, uneducable, [*187] or uninsurable. We risk creating a biological underclass." 171 2. Biodiversity - Socio-
Cultural Ramifications Genetic diversity, in addition to ameliorating the marginalization and oppression of out-groups, also
benefits humans as a whole. Genetic diversity aids society through "endowing people with physical and behavioral
differences that enrich social interactions, political debates, literary works and music." 172 Such a cultural exchange has
been deemed necessary for human survival: Each individual owes his survival and general well-being partly to his own
limited assortment of characters and partly to the benefits received through cultural interchange with other individuals representing other
assortments... Every man in a sense must become his brother's keeper, but the emphasis is on keeping and expanding what both hold in
common, not on converting one brother to the ideal image held by the other. 173 The Rio Declaration, which emphasizes the intrinsic
value of biodiversity, indicates the extent to which the international community recognizes these "fruits" as essential to the enjoyment of
the right to life: The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, ... working towards international agreements which
respect the interests of all and protect the integrity of the global environmental and developmental system, recognizing the integral and
interdependent nature of the Earth, our home, proclaims that: ... States should cooperate to strengthen endogenous capacity-building for
sustainable development by improving scientific understanding through exchanges of scientific and technological knowledge, and by
enhancing the development, adaptation, diffusion and transfer of technologies, including new and innovative technologies. 174
Biodiversity as an essential component to the right to life 175 comes not only from the need for human
consumption of biodiversity in non-human life forms (i.e. sources of nutritional, pharmaceutical, and [*188] agricultural
resources), but also from a recognition of the value of diversity in the human population. 176 International
environmental law has recognized biodiversity as intrinsically valuable. 177 The Council of Europe has linked this diversity with
freedom: "[because] a naturally occurring genetic recombination is likely to create more freedom for the human being than a
predetermined genetic make up, it is in the interest of all persons to keep the essentially random nature of the composition of their own
genes." 178 3. Biodiversity - Biological Advantages Even if one believes that a homogenous gene pool will not lead to tolerance
problems or a loss of variation in cultural and technological innovations, one area where diversity does have an indisputable effect is in
the genetic fitness of a population. 179 "Genetic diversity within and among populations plays a key role in the
health and development of the species." 180 This phenomenon has been demonstrated in nearly all forms of
life. 181 Accordingly, "preserving genetic diversity is important, because the prevalence of one particular
genotype would make humans more susceptible to disease, rendering the species susceptible to the risk of
extinction caused by a plague of global proportions." 182 As parents are able to exercise their genetic preference, and the
genetic diversity of humans decreases, so too does the fitness of our population.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
29
2NC Racism Impact
All of our future weapons bad arguments are offense against tech development -- prefer our scenarios on timeframe
-- these systems will be developed in the next 20 years, long before tech enables immortality.
Tech development won’t be benign -- it can’t be controlled -- regulations and spinoffs will independently cause
extinction
Joy 2000 /Billy, cofounder and Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems, was cochair of the presidential
commission on the future of IT research, “Why the future doesn't need us.,” Wired 8.04, April/
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html
Another idea is to erect a series of shields to defend against each of the dangerous technologies. The Strategic
Defense Initiative, proposed by the Reagan administration, was an attempt to design such a shield against the threat of a nuclear attack
from the Soviet Union. But as Arthur C. Clarke, who was privy to discussions about the project, observed: "Though it might
be possible, at vast expense, to construct local defense systems that would 'only' let through a few percent of ballistic
missiles, the much touted idea of a national umbrella was nonsense. Luis Alvarez, perhaps the greatest
experimental physicist of this century, remarked to me that the advocates of such schemes were 'very bright
guys with no common sense.'" Clarke continued: "Looking into my often cloudy crystal ball, I suspect that a total defense might
indeed be possible in a century or so. But the technology involved would produce, as a by-product, weapons so
terrible that no one would bother with anything as primitive as ballistic missiles." 10 InEngines of Creation, Eric
Drexler proposed that we build an active nanotechnological shield - a form of immune system for the
biosphere - to defend against dangerous replicators of all kinds that might escape from laboratories or
otherwise be maliciously created. But the shield he proposed would itself be extremely dangerous - nothing
could prevent it from developing autoimmune problems and attacking the biosphere itself. 11 Similar
difficulties apply to the construction of shields against robotics and genetic engineering. These technologies
are too powerful to be shielded against in the time frame of interest; even if it were possible to implement
defensive shields, the side effects of their development would be at least as dangerous as the technologies we
are trying to protect against. These possibilities are all thus either undesirable or unachievable or both. The only realistic
alternative I see is relinquishment: to limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous, by
limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
32
A2: The Singularity
The technological drive for immortality is life-denying and anti-ethical -- only abandoning the scientific project
allows for happiness -- our ev cites the Dalai Lama
Joy 2000 /Billy, cofounder and Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems, was cochair of the presidential
commission on the future of IT research, “Why the future doesn't need us.,” Wired 8.04, April/
Neither should we pursue near immortality without considering the costs, without considering the
commensurate increase in the risk of extinction. Immortality, while perhaps the original, is certainly not the only
possible utopian dream. I recently had the good fortune to meet the distinguished author and scholar Jacques Attali, whose bookLignes d'horizons (Millennium, in the
English translation) helped inspire the Java and Jini approach to the coming age of pervasive computing, as previously described in this magazine. In his new bookFraternités, Attali
"At the dawn of societies, men saw their passage on Earth as nothing
describes how our dreams of utopia have changed over time:
more than a labyrinth of pain, at the end of which stood a door leading, via their death, to the company of gods and to
Eternity. With the Hebrews and then the Greeks, some men dared free themselves from theological demands
and dream of an ideal City where Liberty would flourish. Others, noting the evolution of the market society,
understood that the liberty of some would entail the alienation of others, and they sought Equality." Jacques
helped me understand how these three different utopian goals exist in tension in our society today. He goes on to describe a fourth
utopia, Fraternity, whose foundation is altruism. Fraternity alone associates individual happiness with the
happiness of others, affording the promise of self-sustainment. This crystallized for me my problem with Kurzweil's
dream. A technological approach to Eternity - near immortality through robotics - may not be the most
desirable utopia, and its pursuit brings clear dangers. Maybe we should rethink our utopian choices. Where can we
look for a new ethical basis to set our course? I have found the ideas in the book Ethics for the New Millennium, by the Dalai Lama, to
be very helpful. As is perhaps well known but little heeded, the Dalai Lama argues that the most important thing is for us to conduct our
lives with love and compassion for others, and that our societies need to develop a stronger notion of universal responsibility and of our
interdependency; he proposes a standard of positive ethical conduct for individuals and societies that seems consonant with Attali's
Fraternity utopia. The Dalai Lama further argues that we must understand what it is that makes people happy,
and acknowledge the strong evidence that neither material progress nor the pursuit of the power of
knowledge is the key - that there are limits to what science and the scientific pursuit alone can do. Our Western
notion of happiness seems to come from the Greeks, who defined it as "the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life
affording them scope." 15 Clearly, we need to find meaningful challenges and sufficient scope in our lives if we are
to be happy in whatever is to come. But I believe we must find alternative outlets for our creative forces,
beyond the culture of perpetual economic growth; this growth has largely been a blessing for several hundred years, but it
has not brought us unalloyed happiness, and we must now choose between the pursuit of unrestricted and undirected
growth through science and technology and the clear accompanying dangers.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
33
Absent massive war industrial civilization will continue to destroy the biosphere
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 2003
(Joseph, “The End of the World,” 6 March, http://foundation.bw/TheEndOfTheWorld.htm#_Toc34744202)
At the present time, about one-sixth of the planet’s population has a high level of industrial production, and
the rest of the population is striving to achieve high levels also. What this means is that, in the absence of
war or other phenomena to reduce industrial capacity and activity, the level of
industrial production will continue to increase even if the human population tapers
off. The annual GDP per capita of the richest nations is on the order of about $25,000 (GNP per capita, purchasing-power-parity (PPP),
current international $), whereas for poor countries it is about $2,000 per year. The world average is about $6,000. At a growth rate
(in industrial production) of three percent a year, it would take the rest of the world about fifty years to catch up to
where the developed countries are today. This means that even if the human population were to level off by
2050, global industrial production would continue to increase throughout this period, even if the developed
nations “stood still” and the poorer nations just tried to catch up. Given the commitment of all nations to the increased
standards of living associated with increased industrial production, global
industrial production is bound to
continue to soar as poor countries strive to become rich, even if population levels off.
Under the current world order, industrial production will continue to soar to higher and higher levels, and the
massive destruction of the environment that is caused by industrial activity will intensify . In summary, even
under the wildest assumptions about decreasing fertility rates, human population levels will continue to rise,
and industrial activity will soar exponentially, for generations to come. The destruction to the biosphere will
continue unabated. The planet’s biosphere and biodiversity – already reeling from mankind’s assault – are doomed. Unless
radical change happens.
Massive nuclear war is the only way to stop industrial civilization from completely
destroying the environment and causing total extinction
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 2003
(Joseph, “The End of the World,” 6 March, http://foundation.bw/TheEndOfTheWorld.htm#_Toc34744202)
And war. War could wipe out mankind. Not small wars, such as the scores of small conflicts that continue year
after year. Not even big wars, such as the First and Second World Wars. But a really big war, involving
thousands of nuclear weapons. That can make a real difference. Furthermore, it can bring an immediate
halt to the high level of industrial activity that is destroying the planet. It can reduce human numbers to the
point where they no longer have a significant Impact on the planet’s ecology. The famous astronomer and writer Sir
Fred Hoyle once observed that mankind will have only one chance to do something worthwhile with the energy from fossil fuel and the
minerals at the Earth’s surface: if it ends up destroying the planet it will never have a second chance. Global
industrialization is causing the destruction that Hoyle referred to. Global nuclear war
could bring that process to a halt. This section has identified a number of phenomena that might bring a halt to
mankind’s destruction of the biosphere. Some of them, such as asteroids or volcanoes, are beyond mankind’s control, and their
occurrence has nothing to do with its large numbers and high industrial production / energy use. Of the anthropogenic factors
that might reduce mankind’s destruction of the biosphere – famine, plague, and war – it appears that famine and
plague would have little effect on stopping the mass species extinction. They may cause a temporary
reduction in human numbers, but the population would rebound, and high levels of industrial production
would continue, and damage to the biosphere would continue. The industrial nations of the world, which account for
most of the global energy use, would likely continue in numbers and in industrial activity pretty much as before. These eventualities
would do little to stop the destruction of the biosphere and the mass species extinction. But war is different.
The main difference is not that it may reduce human numbers faster or to a greater degree than famine or plague,
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
34
but that it can cause a catastrophic decrease in the level of industrial production, which is the major cause of
environmental destruction. Also, it can occur at any time – it does not have to wait until fossil fuels run out, after many more
species have been destroyed. It can occur tomorrow, and prevent the species loss that would otherwise occur over the last half century of
the petroleum age. By reducing industrial activity by a large amount, it could reduce the current horrific rate of
consumption of fossil fuels, leaving some for many future generations to take advantage of – to use for
mankind’s benefit, rather than for a few generations’ mindless pleasure . (Of course, economics does not distinguish
between production spent on war or video games or tourism or religion or art or philosophy, and the discounted “present value” of things
in the far distant future is negligible, so this argument is of little consequence in today’s world.) And the likelihood of its occurrence is
increasing fast. The next two sections will discuss the likely damage from global nuclear war, and the likelihood of its occurrence.
Nuclear war NOW key – each year more species go extinct risking total biosphere collapse
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 2003
(Joseph, “The End of the World,” 6 March, http://foundation.bw/TheEndOfTheWorld.htm#_Toc34744202)
Once gone, these resources -- the very reasons for waging war -- are gone forever. Extinct species will never return,
and the planet's fossil fuel reserves, once exhausted, are gone forever. In the past 50 years, human industrial activity has
consumed about half the world's reserves of petroleum and has led to the extinction of perhaps one million species. In another 50
years, human industrial activity will consume all of the remaining petroleum reserves and destroy millions of
species more, including the larger animal species. For those tempted to wage war, the time to
strike is now -- in fifty years there will be nothing left to win. With each passing year, 30,000
more species are exterminated by mankind's epidemic numbers and industrial activity (pollution, habitat loss).
Many large-animal species are in danger of extinction, becoming so small in number that they are effectively extinct. Each passing
year sees a rise in the number of species made extinct, never to roam the Earth again. If global war happens
this year, no more species will be made extinct from the habitat destruction and pollution of an exploding
industrial human population. If global war happens next year, another 30,000 species are lost -- forever. If
global war happens in ten years, another 300,000 species are extinct. Delay simply
leads to the loss of more species and increases the likelihood of a “hothouse”
destruction of the biosphere. If a global nuclear war happens now, the production of
greenhouse gases stops.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
35
caldwell = qualified
The author of this book has a career that includes both military defense analysis and economic development. He
worked for about fifteen years in defense applications and about fifteen years in social and economic applications.
His work in military applications includes ballistic missile warfare, nuclear weapons effects, satellite ocean
surveillance, naval general-purpose forces, tactical air warfare, air/land battle tactics, strategy, civil defense, military
communications-electronics, and electronic warfare. His work in social and economic development applications
includes tax policy analysis, agricultural policy analysis, trade policy analysis, health, human resource development,
demography, development of systems for planning, monitoring and evaluation of social and economic programs,
and educational management information systems. He has lived and worked in countries around the world. He holds
a PhD degree in mathematical statistics and is an expert in mathematical game theory, statistics, operations research,
and systems and software engineering. The analysis presented in this book is derived from years of experience
related to, and years of analysis of, the population problem.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
36
A/T malthus wrong
Critics are wrong – human activity is already causing damage, critics refuse to
acknowledge the coming catastrophe
Bartlett, Department of Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, 2001
(Alber A., “The Massive Movement to Marginalize the Modern Malthusian Message,” April 31,
http://dieoff.org/page147.htm)
There is an abundant literature dealing with the non-believers. Some non-believers assert that the predictions of
Malthus have not come to pass, that the world population in 1998 is much larger than Malthus could have ever
imagined, therefore the world population can continue to grow essentially forever. This is an example of the "flying
leap syndrome" in which a person leaps from the top of a very high building. The free-fall is exhilarating. After each
of the first few seconds of free-fall, the person concludes that all is well, and soon reaches the ( logical ? )
conclusion that free-fall forever is a viable option. The end comes when the person strikes the ground. The ground is
a boundary condition, a limit that was built into the falling person’s total environment; a limit that the person
ignored at great expense. (Bartlett 1980) The non-believers seem unaware of, or ignore, the fact that human
activities have already caused great change in the global environment. May observes that ( May 1993 ): ... the scale
and scope of human activities have, for the first time, grown to rival the natural processes that built the biosphere
and that maintain it as a place where life can flourish. Many facts testify to this statement. It is estimated that
somewhere between 20 and 40 percent of the earth's primary productivity, from plant photosynthesis on land and in
the sea, is now appropriated for human use.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
37
A/T technology
Energy can’t be saved by technology – nothing is ever 100% efficient meaning energy is
wasted
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 1999
(Joseph George, “Can America Survive?” Vista Research Corporation, June 6 with minor corrections November 21
2000, http://www.foundationwebsite.org/canam4x.htm)
It is also important to recognize that each time energy is converted from one form to another, energy is lost in the
form of wasted heat. To get the most out of the sun’s energy, it is important to avoid energy conversions. For
example, it is much more efficient to use a windmill directly to pump water (as in remote ranches in the western US)
than to use the windmill to drive an electric generator to generate electricity that is then stored in an electric storage
battery, and then used to drive an electric motor to pump the water. Or, it is much more efficient to use heat direct
from the sun’s rays to heat water, than to harvest biomass, ferment it to produce alcohol, and then either burn the
alcohol or use it to generate electricity which is in turn used to power electric heaters. The 200 quads of energy
mentioned earlier is a “mix” of low-grade and high-grade energy (e.g., some from direct heating, some from
biomass, some from hydroelectric, some from wind). It is not at all the equivalent of 200 quads of oil or 200 quads
of electrical energy.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
38
A/T alternative energy sources
Alternative energy sources are unlikely but even if they are discovered it will only prolong
the destruction of the biosphere – must dramatically reduce population and industrial
activity
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 2003
(Joseph, “The End of the World,” 6 March, http://foundation.bw/TheEndOfTheWorld.htm#_Toc34744202)
There is continuing debate over whether a suitable energy alternative might be found to replace the energy from oil,
as it runs out. As discussed in Reference 1, there is little evidence, and certainly no compelling
evidence, that a comparable substitute will be found. Moreover, from the point of view of the health
of the biosphere, it would be very unfortunate if a substitute energy source were found . The mass
species extinction started in full force at about the beginning of the petroleum age (ca. 1950), i.e., when mankind,
numbering in the billions and armed with modern high-energy-consumption technology, started using vastly more
energy than was available from the daily solar energy flux. The biosphere as we know it evolved with nature using
the energy contained in the daily solar energy flux. The Garden-of-Eden biosphere in which we evolved cannot
survive if mankind continues to utilize vastly more energy than this amount. The destruction of the biosphere and
the mass species extinction are being caused by large human numbers and high industrial production / energy use,
and this destruction will not stop until human numbers and energy use drop back to the low levels that prevailed
prior to the start of the destruction. The lie that species extinction can be stopped even though high
levels of energy use and industrial production continue has been disproved over and over
and over again, year after year after year. Each year that global industrialization continues
spells more destroyed forests; tens of thousands more species are made extinct , and more
portions of our biosphere sustain permanent, irreversible damage. The ecological carnage
of global industrialization will not stop until either global industrialization comes to an end
or the biosphere is destroyed. So, from the point of view of what might stop the ongoing destruction of the
biosphere, it does not really matter whether fossil fuels exhaust by 2050 or whether an energy replacement for them
is found. The destruction of the biosphere and the mass species extinction began when mankind’s numbers and
energy use reached its present high levels, and it will continue as long as those levels remain high, whatever the
energy source may be. This section of this article is not concerned, however, with the issue of whether an energy
replacement for oil will or will not be found. The purpose of this section is to identify events that might halt the
destruction of the biosphere and mass species extinction that is being caused by large human numbers and industrial
activity, i.e., to identify events that would reduce human numbers and industrial activity / energy use. One such
event is the exhaustion of fossil fuels, but the biosphere will have been seriously damaged and possibly destroyed
long before that, if the present rate of fossil-fuel consumption continues. We are hence more concerned here with
events that might reduce human numbers and industrial activity before the end of the petroleum / fossil-fuel age.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
39
A/T nuclear energy – fission
As the reactor operates, the U235 decays and forms other products that interfere with the nuclear reaction. It is hence
necessary to stop operation of the reactor before all of the U235 is used up. The spent fuel may be removed and
discarded (i.e., stored, since it is highly radioactive), or it may be reprocessed back to 2-3% concentration of U235.
Whether the spent fuel is discarded (with some U235 still in it) or reprocessed is a matter of economics. For some
reactors reprocessing has been economically worthwhile, whereas for others it has not. The two main waste products
of the thermal reactor are “depleted uranium,” U238, and plutonium Pu239. Since thermal reactors convert U235 to
U238, after some time all of the available U235 is used up. With current extraction technology, the world’s reserves
of uranium are sufficient to provide about 100 years of nuclear power using thermal reactors. Clearly, the thermal
reactor is not the solution to the industrial world’s energy “problem.”
Nuclear power produces heat waste which will destroy the aquatic ecosystem
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 1999
(Joseph George, “Can America Survive?” Vista Research Corporation, June 6 with minor corrections November 21
2000, http://www.foundationwebsite.org/canam4x.htm)
Another problem associated with nuclear energy is that it produces prodigious amounts of waste heat, which is
disposed of in our aquatic systems (rivers and lakes). It is estimated (Pimentel et al.) that a fifteen-fold increase in
the number of nuclear power plants in the US would increase the temperature of our aquatic ecosystems by 10
degrees Celsius, with dire consequences for these systems.
Radioactive waste from nuclear fission destroys the environment and makes it too
inefficient to use
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 1999
(Joseph George, “Can America Survive?” Vista Research Corporation, June 6 with minor corrections November 21
2000, http://www.foundationwebsite.org/canam4x.htm)
Unlike fusion, fission nuclear energy has been used commercially for decades to generate electricity. Fission nuclear
energy, however, is also extremely problematic. First, it generates large amounts of radioactive waste. Fission
reactors work by splitting uranium atoms into other atoms. Just as with fusion, some matter is converted to energy in
this process, resulting in the production of large amounts of energy. Unfortunately, the atoms produced by the fission
process are highly radioactive. No solution to the problem of disposing of the radioactive waste from nuclear fission
has ever been found. There are now large amounts of radioactive waste from nuclear reactors stored in temporary
storage facilities around the world. These waste products require extremely long times, e.g., tens of thousands of
years, to deteriorate into harmless products. Unless a solution is found to the problem of disposing of nuclear waste,
continued use of fission is causing an environmental disaster of large proportions. In fact, because the cost of
eliminating the radioactive waste (or storing it for thousands of years) is not known, it is not known whether nuclear
fission has an energy yield of greater than one. It may well be the case that the current generation is imposing on
future generations an energy cost (for storage of radioactive waste from nuclear fission) that far exceeds the amount
of energy that we are obtaining from nuclear fission. Mankind’s current generation has clearly discounted the cost to
future generations to essentially zero, or it would not use nuclear fission until a method was found for eliminating
the radioactive waste.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
40
A/T nuclear energy – fusion
Nuclear fusion is unusable – it’s inefficient, destroys the environment and cannot be
sustained
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 1999
(Joseph George, “Can America Survive?” Vista Research Corporation, June 6 with minor corrections November 21
2000, http://www.foundationwebsite.org/canam4x.htm)
There are two basic types of nuclear energy: fusion and fission. Today’s nuclear reactors are all fission reactors, i.e.,
they generate energy by splitting atoms. Fusion nuclear energy is generated by joining together, or fusing, hydrogen
atoms into helium atoms. When this fusion takes place, some matter is converted to energy, in accordance with
Einstein’s famous e=mc2 equation. Fusion energy is the type of energy produced by the sun. The sun is, in effect,
simply a large helium factory. The problem with fusion is that it is extremely difficult to start and maintain a fusion
reaction. Although the technical feasibility of producing a fusion reaction has been established, the goal of
maintaining a fusion reaction for a long time and developing a commercial fusion reactor has remained elusive.
Despite the expenditure of billions of dollars and decades of time, it is not clear that a commercial fusion reactor will
ever be developed. Even if it is, fusion reactors are problematic. First, they are very inefficient. They consume a
great deal of energy in order to produce just a little more than that consumed. They generate large amounts of heat,
which is disposed into the aquatic environment. Finally, the fusion reaction eventually makes the entire fusion
reactor radioactive, resulting in a massive and never-ending environmental problem of radioactive waste disposal. In
view of the extremely serious drawbacks of nuclear fusion, and the failure to develop it despite massive investment,
it would be folly to count on nuclear fusion as an alternative to fossil fuels.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
41
A/T human rights/demo promo
Promotion of human rights and democracy are the cause of the population crisis –
attempting to avoid war only makes ecosystem destruction worse
Caldwell, Economic Growth Supervisor with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, 1999
(Joseph George, “Can America Survive?” Vista Research Corporation, June 6 with minor corrections November 21
2000, http://www.foundationwebsite.org/canam4x.htm)
Everything is a matter of alternatives. Before embarking on any course of action, it is prudent to consider a wide
range of alternatives and select the best one. A minimal-regret strategy represents a potential solution that is not
perfect. It has advantages and disadvantages. To date, the present strategy – the tolerant, pluralistic,
permissive approach of letting each of the 229 nations of Earth do its own thing – has been
a disaster. It is a terrible strategy that is destroying the biosphere, the human species, and other species. Time is
running out for the human race. It is high time to consider other alternatives that afford a better chance of long-term
survival. For the past 50 years, the situation has been talk, talk, talk. Current population policies are a disaster. The
international development agencies (UN, World Bank) and developed countries have not contributed to the
solution of the population problem and environmental destruction, but have exacerbated it.
That is understandable. UN, World Bank, and other development officials are paid fat salaries to attend meetings and
talk; there is no incentive to accomplish anything. The economic incentive is to create an ever more complex system
of rights, with more monitoring, reporting, evaluation, analysis, and bureaucracy. They attend a never-ending stream
of meetings and international conferences. They talk and talk about women’s rights, “gender” issues, children’s
rights, minority rights, refugee rights, and democracy while the world disintegrates around them. They thrive on
poverty and misery, and do nothing about it. Well, there aren’t going to be any women’s rights or
children’s rights or minority rights after a nuclear war, and a nuclear war is just around
the corner. There isn’t going to be any democracy when the world political system collapses. These people – our
leaders and advisors to leaders -- are living in an ephemeral, chimerical, imaginary dream world that has existed for
a few decades, but it cannot and will not continue. They are not facing reality and dealing with the problem. They
feed on people’s fear of war. They propose peace at any cost. They are living in la-la land, telling fairy tales and
singing lullabies that people want to hear. This pap may be pleasant to hear, but it does nothing to solve the problem.
As Malcolm X said, “This is part of what’s wrong with you. You do too much singing. Today it’s time to stop
singing and start swinging.” The situation will not improve until it is accepted that the current course is leading to
disaster, and war is declared against the enemy – uncontrolled human population and unconstrained industrial
development. The situation will not improve until a stand is taken, and war is declared against this enemy of the
biosphere. The American government has no desire to stop economic growth – it is committed, dedicated, devoted
and addicted to it. It has sacrificed the future of the world to the religion of economics, to the god Mammon.
Moreover, the US government no longer has the will to wage war, because wars cause casualties, and the US is no
longer willing to sustain casualties. As noted in the January 2, 1999 issue of The Economist, “Some American
officers, especially the older ones, have their misgivings. They say that a system of war built on a wish to destroy
the enemy without yourself suffering any significant number of casualties is inherently dangerous. …but the men
will still need to be there, to occupy some vital hilltop or essential building, and they will have to be prepared to take
the consequences."
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
42
A/T individual freedom
It is now obvious to anyone brave enough to look, that our continuing self-deception and exploitation no longer
contribute to the survival of the species. If we are to survive, we must now recognize the necessity of giving up the
fatal freedom to exploit the commons. Locke's temporary war of all-against-nature must now come to an end. When
a society is free to rob banks, it is less free, not more so. When individuals mutually agreed (passed laws) not to rob
banks—gave up the freedom to rob banks—they became more free, not less so. Only by giving up our fatal freedom
can we free ourselves from the inexorable, deadly logic of the commons. Only then can we become free to establish
a new organizing principle for humanity.
Individual freedom unsustainable – total state control inevitable when scarcity comes
Hanson, 1997
(Jay, “The Fatal Freedom,” 8/29, http://dieoff.org/page79.htm)
"And because the condition of man . . . is a condition of war of every one against every one, in which case every one
is governed by his own reason, and there is nothing he can make use of that may not be a help unto him in
preserving his life against his enemies; it followeth that in such a condition every man has a right to every thing,
even to one another's body. And therefore, as long as this natural right of every man to every thing endureth, there
can be no security to any man . . . " "To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that
nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no
common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues."
Every social phenomenon, according to Hobbes, is based upon a drive for power that emerges when individuals
compare themselves to other individuals. The result is that the objects one seeks to obtain are not pursued for their
own sake, but because someone else also seeks to obtain them. "Scarcity" is the relationship between unlimited
desire and limited means. For Hobbes, scarcity is a permanent condition of humanity caused by the continuous,
innate drive for power. Society becomes a lifeboat in which all the passengers are fighting each other. In order to
escape universal ruin, men will create a great Leviathan, a semi-absolute state that controls its subjects and prevents
permanent scarcity from developing into a war of "all-against-all."
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
43
Nuke winter theory is flawed -- it’s empirically denied, their models are deliberately biased
and ignore crucial factors like photochemistry and weather
Seitz ‘6 /Russell, Visiting Scholar in Harvard University's Center for International
Affairs, “The' Nuclear Winter ' Meltdown,” December 20/
http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/2006/12/preherein_honor.html
"Apocalyptic predictions require, to be taken seriously, higher standards of evidence than do assertions on other matters where the stakes
are not as great." wrote Sagan in Foreign Affairs , Winter 1983 -84. But that "evidence" was never forthcoming . 'Nuclear Winter'
never existed outside of a computer except as air-brushed animation commissioned by the a PR firm - Porter Novelli Inc. Yet
Sagan predicted "the extinction of the human species " as temperatures plummeted 35 degrees C and the world froze in the
aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. Last year, Sagan's cohort tried to reanimate the ghost in a machine anti-nuclear activists
invoked in the depths of the Cold War, by re-running equally arbitrary scenarios on a modern interactive Global
Circulation Model. But the Cold War is history in more ways than one. It is a credit to post-modern computer climate
simulations that they do not reproduce the apocalyptic results of what Sagan oxymoronically termed "a
sophisticated one dimensional model." The subzero 'baseline case' has melted down into a tepid 1.3 degrees
of average cooling- grey skies do not a Ragnarok make . What remains is just not the stuff that End of the
World myths are made of. It is hard to exaggerate how seriously " nuclear winter "was once taken by policy analysts who ought
to have known better. Many were taken aback by the sheer force of Sagan's rhetoric Remarkably, Science's news coverage of the new
results fails to graphically compare them with the old ones Editor Kennedy and other recent executives of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, once proudly co-authored and helped to publicize. You can't say they didn't try to reproduce this Cold
War icon. Once again, soot from imaginary software materializes in midair by the megaton , flying higher than
Mount Everest . This is not physics, but a crude exercise in ' garbage in, gospel out' parameter forcing
designed to maximize and extend the cooling an aerosol can generate, by sparing it from realistic attrition
by rainout in the lower atmosphere. Despite decades of progress in modeling atmospheric chemistry , there
is none in this computer simulation, and ignoring photochemistry further extends its impact. Fortunately , the
history of science is as hard to erase as it is easy to ignore. Their past mastery of semantic agression cannot spare the authors of
"Nuclear Winter Lite " direct comparison of their new results and their old. Dark smoke clouds in the lower atmosphere
don't last long enough to spread across the globe. Cloud droplets and rainfall remove them. rapidly washing
them out of the sky in a matter of days to weeks- not long enough to sustain a global pall. Real world weather
brings down particles much as soot is scrubbed out of power plant smoke by the water sprays in smoke stack scrubbers Robock
acknowledges this- not even a single degree of cooling results when soot is released at lower elevations in
he models . The workaround is to inject the imaginary aerosol at truly Himalayan elevations - pressure altitudes of
300 millibar and higher , where the computer model's vertical transport function modules pass it off to their even
higher neighbors in the stratosphere , where it does not rain and particles linger.. The new studies like the old
suffer from the disconnect between a desire to paint the sky black and the vicissitudes of natural history. As
with many exercise in worst case models both at invoke rare phenomena as commonplace, claiming it
prudent to assume the worst. But the real world is subject to Murphy's lesser known second law- if everything
must go wrong, don't bet on it. In 2006 as in 1983 firestorms and forest fires that send smoke into the
stratosphere rise to alien prominence in the modelers re-imagined world , but i the real one remains a very
different place, where though every month sees forest fires burning areas the size of cities - 2,500 hectares or
larger , stratospheric smoke injections arise but once in a blue moon. So how come these neo-nuclear winter
models feature so much smoke so far aloft for so long? The answer is simple- the modelers intervened. Turning off
vertical transport algorithms may make Al Gore happy- he has bet on reviving the credibility Sagan's ersatz apocalypse , but there is
no denying that in some of these scenarios human desire, not physical forces accounts for the vertical
hoisting of millions of tons of mass ten vertical kilometers into the sky.to the level at which the models take
over , with results at once predictable --and arbitrary. This is not physics, it is computer gamesmanship
carried over to a new generation of X-Box.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
45
Nuclear winter was invented in a science fiction story called “Torch” in the 80’s. It should
have stayed there. Extend the Seitz 6 evidence:
1. Bias – scientists fling millions of tons of mass ten vertical kilometers into the sky with
absolutely no explanation. This causes bad results: it avoids rain, increases the lifespan of
aerosols and leads to global distribution of smoke. This is the input part of the equation –
even if the models are awesome, they’re getting bad data.
2. Burden of proof – Sagan admits that nuclear war causes extinction arguments require a
high level of proof – the claims are outlandish and counterintuitive. Uncertainty means you
default to us.
3. Worst case planning – studies rely on rare events becoming common place and
everything going wrong in exactly the right way, vanishingly low probability. Even the
President of the Council for a Liveable World called these argument absurd.
4. Nature disproves – forest fires the size of cities occur all the time, they never lead to
stratospheric injections. No reason that smoke from fires would materialize in the upper
atmosphere without getting washed out.
5. No extinction. Sagan’s 7,000 degree day has shrunk to a one point three degree drop in
global temperatures – not nearly enough to cause extinction. That number isn’t based on
skeptics, it’s what modern advocates of nuclear winter claim.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
46
Krakatoa Proves
Nuclear war would not bring about the end of the world, though it would be horribly destructive. The truth is,
many prominent physicists have condemned the nuclear winter hypothesis. Nobel laureate Freeman Dyson once
said of nuclear winter research, "It's an absolutely atrocious piece of science, but I quite despair of setting the
public record straight." Professor Michael McElroy, a Harvard physics professor, also criticized the nuclear
winter hypothesis. McElroy said that nuclear winter researchers "stacked the deck" in their study, which was titled
"Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions" (Science, December 1983). Nuclear winter is the theory that the mass use of nuclear weapons would create
enough smoke and dust to blot out the sun, causing a catastrophic drop in global temperatures. According to Carl Sagan, in this situation the earth would freeze. No crops could be
natural disasters have frequently produced smoke and dust far greater
grown. Humanity would die of cold and starvation. In truth,
than those expected from a nuclear war. In 1883 Krakatoa exploded with a blast equivalent to 10,000 one-megaton bombs, a detonation
greater than the combined nuclear arsenals of planet earth. The Krakatoa explosion had negligible weather
effects. Even more disastrous, going back many thousands of years, a meteor struck Quebec with the force of 17.5 million
one-megaton bombs, creating a crater 63 kilometers in diameter. But the world did not freeze. Life on earth was not
extinguished. Consider the views of Professor George Rathjens of MIT, a known antinuclear activist, who
said, "Nuclear winter is the worst example of misrepresentation of science to the public in my memory." Also
consider Professor Russell Seitz, at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs, who says that the
nuclear winter hypothesis has been discredited. Two researchers, Starley Thompson and Stephen Schneider,
debunked the nuclear winter hypothesis in the summer 1986 issue of Foreign Affairs. Thompson and
Schneider stated: "the global apocalyptic conclusions of the initial nuclear winter hypothesis can now be
relegated to a vanishingly low level of probability."
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
47
Krakatoa Extension
Extend Nyquist 99 – Krakatoa’s explosion was bigger than all existing nuclear weapons,
didn’t alter the climate, disproves nuclear winter. Even worse, the geological record proves
major asteroid impacts don’t cause nuclear winter despite being millions of times bigger.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
48
Nuclear Winter never existed outside of a computer, except as a painting commissioned by a PR firm.
Instead of an earth with
continents and oceans, the TTAPS model postulated a featureless, bone-dry billiard ball. Instead of nights and days,
it postulated 24-hour sunlight at one- third strength. Instead of realistic smoke emissions, a 10-mile-thick soot cloud
magically materialized, creating an alien sky as black as the ink you are reading. The model dealt with such complications as
geography, winds, sunrise, sunset and patchy clouds in a stunningly elegant manner – they were ignored. When later computer
models incorporated these elements, the flat black sky of TTAPS fell apart into a pale and broken shadow that traveled less far and dissipated
more quickly.
2. Our Seitz evidence impact turns this – the larger an individual explosion, the higher the
chance of a stratospheric smoke injection, which is the internal link to global cooling. At
best, multiple injection points helps nuclear winter spread globally, they can’t prove even
regional cooling occurred.
3. More evidence – the faster the smoke injection, the bigger the cooling. Krakatoa was
worse than a nuclear war.
Thompson and Schneider, 1986
Starley L, atmospheric scientist and climate theorist at the National Center for Atmospheric
Research (NCAR) Stephen H., atmospheric scientist and public policy analyst, is Deputy
Director of the Advanced Study Program at NCAR, Foreign Affairs, “Nuclear Winter
Reappraised”
The land surface temperature of the 30-50''N latitude zone for two cases having different assumed war durations, each of which produces
a total of 60 million tons (teragrams. Tg) of smoke. The "one-day" war, allowing for some delay in fires, actually produces
smoke over two days. The "ten-day" protracted war produces smoke continually over ten days, but at a lower
rate than the one-day case. Despite the fact that smoke is continually being removed in each case, the slower rate
of smoke input in the ten-day case actually worsens the climatic effects when compared to the faster war.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
49
A2: Robock
Extend the Stiez 6 evidence – a one or two degree drop in temperature does not a ragnorok
make. Nuclear winter studies have been revised down to nuclear autumn. This means
modern advocates of nuclear winter don’t think the impact claims are true. Nuclear winter
causes extinction cards assume the massive drop in temperature found by Sagan’s study –
years of sub-freezing summers. Their nuclear winter is true cards say that there will be a
slight cooling.
More evidence - the terminal impact of Robock’s study is a 1 degree drop in temperatures,
not a nuclear winter
Cosmos, Oct 13, 2008 “nuclear autumn”
Overall, he and Alan Robock, also of Rutgers University, calculate that the average global temperature would dip by
more than 1.1 °C and would stay below normal for a decade. Rainfall would also decline, by about 10 per cent.That might not sound
like a large temperature change, but it's more than the cumulative effect of global warming since the dawn of industrial civilisation. It's
enough, Robock says, to have a radical effect on growing seasons in regions like Europe and the American Midwest. Even countries that
didn't participate in the war could see their growing seasons reduced by 10 to 30 days – a major factor because farmers wouldn't have
planted the right crops for the new conditions. Even in the tropics, the change would strain agricultural productivity. "This would not
be nuclear winter," Robock said, "but it would be a substantial disruption."
Life on Earth is exquisitely dependent on the climate (see Appendix A). The average surface temperature of the Earth—
averaged, that is, over day and night, over the seasons, over latitude, over land and ocean, over coastline and continental interior, over
mountain range and desert—is about 13°C, 13 Centigrade degrees above the temperature at which fresh water freezes. (The
corresponding temperature on the Fahrenheit scale is 55°F.) It's harder to change the temperature of the oceans than of the continents,
which is why ocean temperatures are much more steadfast over the diurnal and seasonal cycles than are the temperatures in the middle
of large continents. Any global temperature change implies much larger local temperature changes, if you don't live near the ocean. A
prolonged global temperature drop of a few degrees C would be a disaster for agriculture; by 10°C, whole ecosystems
would be imperiled; and by 20°C, almost all life on Earth would be at risk.* The margin of safety is thin.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
50
No Ozone Change - Chemicals
Another possibility is that decreases in ozone or increases in oxides of nitrogen levels in the stratosphere , caused by
nuclear war, could lead to climatic change. A reduction in ozone levels by a factor of two could cause a decrease
in surface temperature of one half to one degree Centigrade, but including oxides of nitrogen in the
calculation reduces this effect. Whether or not a change in temperature at the earth's surface by this amount for a few years could
cause irreversible climatic change is hard to assess. The National Academy of Sciences study concluded that the effects of dust and
oxides of nitrogen injection into the stratosphere 'would probably lie within normal global climatic
variability, but the possibility of climatic changes of a more dramatic nature cannot be ruled out'.[39] Since the Academy
assumed a nuclear war with the explosion of many more high-yield weapons than are presently deployed, the
danger of climatic change from dust or oxides of nitrogen is almost certainly less than assessed in their
report.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
51
A2: Radioactivity
Extend Seitz 6 – even supporters of the nuclear winter hypothesis have critiqued 80’s era
studies and revised their predictions. Here’s the newest evidence from their authors –
nuclear winter won’t cause extinction.
Time 2009 Jan. 22, Interview of Alan Robock, Professor in the Department of Environmental
Sciences at Rutgers University, “Regional Nuclear War and the Environment”
And what would the results be for humanity? We calculated that there would be a shortening of the growing
season in the mid-latitudes — that includes Europe and America in the Northern Hemisphere — by a couple of weeks. The
growing season is defined as the period between the last frost in spring and first frost in the fall. Some crops that need the whole growing
season would not reach fruition and there would be no yield. Others would grow more slowly and produce a small yield. In addition
there would be less precipitation and it would be darker , also damaging yield. You compound that with [the
shutdown of] the current global network of food trading — countries would likely stop shipping food and focus on feeding
their own populations — and it's a big crisis. We don't have the resources to do detailed analyses on the impacts of crops in different
farming regimes but this suggests it could be a very serious problem. How confident are you that your modeling is correct? We used
ModelE, designed by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and one of the models used to produce the results of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The model does an excellent job of simulating climate change that
resulted from volcanic eruptions in the past. That gave us confidence. What's more, a group repeated the
calculations for the Pakistan-India scenario with a different model at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in
Boulder, Colo., and the results almost exactly agreed . Their research showed how the smoke from the fires would open up
holes in the ozone, which would cause even more problems for humanity. We'd like other people to test the calculations with their
models, but we're pretty confident that they'll get the same answer. So we get a clue of the climatic effects of nuclear war from volcanic
eruptions? Yes. 1816 was known as the "year without summer." It followed the Tambora Volcano eruption in
Indonesia in 1815. It was sudden climate change on a similar scale, and it resulted in a severe famine in Europe,
food riots and mass emigrations. Volcanic aerosols have a lifetime of about a year in the stratosphere. The lifetime of soot from nuclear
fires is about five years. It's obviously much harder for a society to recover from such an extended cooling.
That means they’re based on Sagan’s study – makes no scientific sense, contaminated by
worst-case assumptions, failed peer review
Seitz, 1986 Russell, Visiting Scholar in Harvard University's Center for International Affairs, “The
Melting of 'Nuclear Winter'”
Nuclear Winter never existed outside of a computer, except as a painting commissioned by a PR firm. Instead of an earth with
continents and oceans, the TTAPS model postulated a featureless, bone-dry billiard ball. Instead of nights
and days, it postulated 24-hour sunlight at one- third strength. Instead of realistic smoke emissions, a 10-mile-thick
soot cloud magically materialized, creating an alien sky as black as the ink you are reading. The model dealt with such
complications as geography, winds, sunrise, sunset and patchy clouds in a stunningly elegant manner – they were
ignored. When later computer models incorporated these elements, the flat black sky of TTAPS fell apart into
a pale and broken shadow that traveled less far and dissipated more quickly. The TTAPS model entailed a long series of
conjectures: if this much smoke goes up, if it is this dense, if it moves like this, and so on. The improbability of a string of
40 such coin tosses coming up heads approaches that of a pat royal flush. Yet it was represented as a "sophisticated
one- dimensional model" -- a usage that is oxymoronic, unless applied to Twiggy. To the limitations of the software were added those of
the data. It was an unknown and very complex topic, hard data was scant, so guesstimates prevailed. Not only were these educated
guesses rampant throughout the process, but it was deemed prudent, given the gravity of the subject, to lean toward the
worst-case end of the spectrum for dozens of the numbers involved. Political considerations subliminally skewed the
model away from natural history, while seeming to make the expression "nuclear freeze" a part of it. "The question of peer review is
essential. That is why we have delayed so long in the publication of these dire results," said Carl Sagan in late 1983. But instead of
going through the ordinary peer-review process, the TTAPS study had been conveyed by Mr. Sagan and his colleagues to a
chosen few at a closed meeting in April 1983. Despite Mr. Sagan's claim of responsible delay, before this peculiar review
process had even begun, an $80,000 retainer was paid to Porter-Novelli Associates, a Washington, D.C., public-relations firm.
More money was spent in the 1984 fiscal year on video and advertising than on doing the science. The meeting did not
go smoothly; most participants I interviewed did not describe the reception accorded the Nuclear Winter theory as cordial or
consensual. The proceedings were tape recorded, but Mr. Sagan has repeatedly refused to release the meeting's transcript. (The
organizers have said it was closed to the press to avoid sensationalism and premature disclosure.) According to Dr. Kosta Tsipis of MIT,
even a Soviet scientist at the meeting said, "You guys are fools. You can't use mathematical models like these to
model perturbed states of the atmosphere. You're playing with toys."
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
53
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
54
A2: Soviets
Soviets conclusively disproved one of the basic assumptions of nuclear winter in the 70’s
and then called take backs when they figured out how much it scared the US
Kearny ’87 Cresson H., two degrees in geology at Oxford, Jungle Experiment Officer of the
Panama Mobile Force, demolitions expert in the Office of Strategic Services, research
analyst at the Hudson Institute, worked with Herman Kahn on nuclear scenario planning,
“Nuclear War Survival Skills: Updated and Expanded”
Soviet propagandists promptly exploited belief in unsurvivable "nuclear winter" to increase fear of nuclear
weapons and war, and to demoralize their enemies. Because raging city firestorms are needed to inject huge
amounts of smoke into the stratosphere and thus, according to one discredited theory, prevent almost all solar heat
from reaching the ground, the Soviets changed their descriptions of how a modern city will burn if blasted by
a nuclear explosion. Figure 1.6 pictures how Russian scientists and civil defense officials realistically described -
before the invention of "nuclear winter" - the burning of a city hit by a nuclear weapon. Buildings in the
blasted area for miles around ground zero will be reduced to scattered rubble - mostly of concrete, steel, and other
nonflammable materials - that will not burn in blazing fires. Thus in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory translation (ORNL-TR-
2793) of Civil Defense. Second Edition (500,000 copies), Moscow, 1970, by Egorov, Shlyakhov, and Alabin, we read: "Fires do not
occur in zones of complete destruction . . . that are characterized by an overpressure exceeding 0.5 kg/cm2 [- 7 psi].,
because rubble is scattered and covers the burning structures. As a result the rubble only smolders, and fires
as such do not occur."
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
55
A2: Robock - Soot
The study assumed that smoke is made of soot, it wouldn’t happen that way, invalidates the
results
New Zealand Herald ‘6, Dec 15,
“Nuclear winter alert updated”
The studies, presented at an American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, were described as the first to document in detail the
climatic effects of a nuclear war on a regional scale.Some climate experts not connected with the research questioned some of its
assumptions. For example, the studies assume smoke is made up mostly of soot. But other organic particles
could cause smoke to scatter, lessening the impact, said scientist Steve Ghan of the Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory.
Steve Ghan, a federal researcher who has studied the aftermath of nuclear war, said that the team's findings
push the edges of plausibility."For example, they make an assumption about how much smoke would be
injected into the atmosphere that is on the high side of the plausible range ," said Ghan, who works at the Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. "They chose assumptions that would produce a large effect." Toon and
his colleagues concluded that the nuclear blasts would trigger firestorms emitting more than 5 million metric tons of soot. Climate
models showed that a large fraction of the soot would linger in the upper atmosphere for up to a decade - far longer than researchers had
previously thought possible, according to co-author Alan Robock of Rutgers University.
Steve Ghan –
A2: Smoke
Predictions based on smoke are absurd – default to us, nuclear winter’s impossible
Crichton ‘3, January 17, Michael, Harvard degree in anthropology, MD from Harvard
medical, speech at California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, “Aliens cause Global Warming”
The similarity to the Drake equation is striking. As with the Drake equation, none of the variables can be
determined. None at all. The TTAPS study addressed this problem in part by mapping out different wartime scenarios and
assigning numbers to some of the variables, but even so, the remaining variables were-and are-simply unknowable. Nobody knows
how much smoke will be generated when cities burn, creating particles of what kind, and for how long. No
one knows the effect of local weather conditions on the amount of particles that will be injected into the troposphere. No one
knows how long the particles will remain in the troposphere. And so on. And remember, this is only four years
after the OTA study concluded that the underlying scientific processes were so poorly known that no
estimates could be reliably made. Nevertheless, the TTAPS study not only made those estimates, but
concluded they were catastrophic. According to Sagan and his co-workers, even a limited 5,000 megaton nuclear
exchange would cause a global temperature drop of more than 35 degrees Centigrade, and this change would last for
three months. The greatest volcanic eruptions that we know of changed world temperatures somewhere between .5 and 2 degrees
Centigrade. Ice ages changed global temperatures by 10 degrees. Here we have an estimated change three times greater than any
ice age. One might expect it to be the subject of some dispute.
No stratosphere smoke injection has ever occurred or caused cooling, despite more smoke
being produced by Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo.
Kearny, 87 Cresson H., two degrees in geology at Oxford, Jungle Experiment Officer of the
Panama Mobile Force, demolitions expert in the Office of Strategic Services, research
analyst at the Hudson Institute, worked with Herman Kahn on nuclear scenario planning,
“Nuclear War Survival Skills: Updated and Expanded”
Firestorms destroyed the centers of Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo. The old-fashioned buildings of those
cities contained large amounts of flammable materials, were ignited by many thousands of small incendiaries, and burned
quickly as standing structures well supplied with air. No firestorm has ever injected smoke into the stratosphere, or
caused appreciable cooling below its smoke cloud.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
57
TAPPS Bad - Frontline
B. New Study done in 2005 – modern day advocates of Nuclear Winter have thoroughly
debunked Sagan’s temperature estimates, not even your side thinks your cards are true.
2. The TTAPS study was blind guesswork that produced absurd results
Crichton ‘3, January 17, Michael, Harvard degree in anthropology, MD from Harvard
medical, speech at California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, “Aliens cause Global Warming”
The similarity to the Drake equation is striking. As with the Drake equation, none of the variables can be
determined. None at all. The TTAPS study addressed this problem in part by mapping out different wartime scenarios and
assigning numbers to some of the variables, but even so, the remaining variables were-and are-simply unknowable. Nobody knows
how much smoke will be generated when cities burn, creating particles of what kind, and for how long. No
one knows the effect of local weather conditions on the amount of particles that will be injected into the troposphere. No one
knows how long the particles will remain in the troposphere. And so on. And remember, this is only four years
after the OTA study concluded that the underlying scientific processes were so poorly known that no
estimates could be reliably made. Nevertheless, the TTAPS study not only made those estimates, but
concluded they were catastrophic. According to Sagan and his co-workers, even a limited 5,000 megaton nuclear
exchange would cause a global temperature drop of more than 35 degrees Centigrade, and this change would last for
three months. The greatest volcanic eruptions that we know of changed world temperatures somewhere between .5 and 2 degrees
Centigrade. Ice ages changed global temperatures by 10 degrees. Here we have an estimated change three times greater than any
ice age. One might expect it to be the subject of some dispute.
TTAPS failed peer review, was made up, used the worst model ever
Seitz ‘86 Russell, Visiting Scholar in Harvard University's Center for International Affairs,
“The Melting of 'Nuclear Winter'”
Nuclear Winter never existed outside of a computer, except as a painting commissioned by a PR firm. Instead of an earth with
continents and oceans, the TTAPS model postulated a featureless, bone-dry billiard ball. Instead of nights
and days, it postulated 24-hour sunlight at one- third strength. Instead of realistic smoke emissions, a 10-mile-thick
soot cloud magically materialized, creating an alien sky as black as the ink you are reading. The model dealt with such
complications as geography, winds, sunrise, sunset and patchy clouds in a stunningly elegant manner – they were
ignored. When later computer models incorporated these elements, the flat black sky of TTAPS fell apart into
a pale and broken shadow that traveled less far and dissipated more quickly. The TTAPS model entailed a long series of
conjectures: if this much smoke goes up, if it is this dense, if it moves like this, and so on. The improbability of a string of
40 such coin tosses coming up heads approaches that of a pat royal flush. Yet it was represented as a "sophisticated
one- dimensional model" -- a usage that is oxymoronic, unless applied to Twiggy. To the limitations of the software were added those of
the data. It was an unknown and very complex topic, hard data was scant, so guesstimates prevailed. Not only were these educated
guesses rampant throughout the process, but it was deemed prudent, given the gravity of the subject, to lean toward the
worst-case end of the spectrum for dozens of the numbers involved. Political considerations subliminally skewed the
model away from natural history, while seeming to make the expression "nuclear freeze" a part of it. "The question of peer review is
essential. That is why we have delayed so long in the publication of these dire results," said Carl Sagan in late 1983. But instead of
going through the ordinary peer-review process, the TTAPS study had been conveyed by Mr. Sagan and his colleagues to a
chosen few at a closed meeting in April 1983. Despite Mr. Sagan's claim of responsible delay, before this peculiar review
process had even begun, an $80,000 retainer was paid to Porter-Novelli Associates, a Washington, D.C., public-relations firm.
More money was spent in the 1984 fiscal year on video and advertising than on doing the science. The meeting did not
go smoothly; most participants I interviewed did not describe the reception accorded the Nuclear Winter theory as cordial or
consensual. The proceedings were tape recorded, but Mr. Sagan has repeatedly refused to release the meeting's transcript. (The
organizers have said it was closed to the press to avoid sensationalism and premature disclosure.) According to Dr. Kosta Tsipis of MIT,
even a Soviet scientist at the meeting said, "You guys are fools. You can't use mathematical models like these to
model perturbed states of the atmosphere. You're playing with toys."
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
58
Nuclear winter won’t happen – the model it was based on was absurdly bad
Thompson and Schneider ’86 Starley L, atmospheric scientist and climate theorist at the
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Stephen H., atmospheric scientist and
public policy analyst, is Deputy Director of the Advanced Study Program at NCAR, Foreign
Affairs, “Nuclear Winter Reappraised”
We intend to show that on scientific grounds the
global apocalyptic conclusions of the initial nuclear winter
hypothesis can now be relegated to a vanishingly low level of probability. Thus the argument that nuclear winter
provides the sole basis for drastic strategic arms reductions has been greatly weakened. But, at the same time, there is little that is
thoroughly understood about the environmental effects of a nuclear war. In particular, we do not think that all environmental effects
should once again be considered as "secondary." Important environmental and widespread societal effects of nuclear war remain quite
probable and do suggest further scientific and policy considerations. Our current understanding of environmental effects will be
reviewed and then used to bolster arguments for strengthened strategic stability, not necessarily excluding newer strategic systems, but at
significantly reduced levels of arsenals. It is reasonable to ask why the scientific basis of the theory of nuclear winter still provokes such
divergent scientific opinions. The answer involves both the complexity of the problems and the severity of predicted effects. It is
important to remember that the widespread radioactive fallout and ozone effects, although substantial, were never really thought by
knowledgeable researchers to have a doomsday potential. In contrast, the original nuclear winter results showed truly catastrophic
consequences arising from general war scenarios in the best available calculations. Thus, this new hypothesis could not be readily
dismissed. Moreover, the problem of nuclear winter involves more scientific disciplines and more crucial areas of uncertainty than the
earlier environmental problems. In particular, estimates of smoke production cannot be made from old nuclear test data and cannot be
well bounded theoretically. Initially, the scientific basis of nuclear winter rested exclusively with the TTAPS group
and their first calculations.'** After the original discovery that smoke could pose the most serious environmental threat of a nuclear
war," the TTAPS group began to use a computer model to study the effects of war generated smoke and dust on the earth's climate.
The model was one-dimensional; that is, it did not take into account north south and east-west directions, but
instead treated the earth as a homogeneous all-land sphere having a temperature that depended only on the up-down
direction (atmospheric altitude). Thus, the model had no geography, no winds, no seasons, instantaneous spread of
smoke to the hemispheric scale, and no feedback of atmospheric circulation changes on the rate of smoke
washout by rainfall. Despite these limitations, the TTAPS calculations did offer state-of-the-art estimates of the sunlight and
infrared radiation absorption of a given amount of smoke and dust in a vertical column of the atmosphere.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
59
No, You’re Biased
Your evidence is the result of a propaganda campaign, multiple reasons rebuttal took too
long to prevent the myth of Nuclear Winter from becoming common sense
Kearny ’87 Cresson H., two degrees in geology at Oxford, Jungle Experiment Officer of the
Panama Mobile Force, demolitions expert in the Office of Strategic Services, research
analyst at the Hudson Institute, worked with Herman Kahn on nuclear scenario planning,
“Nuclear War Survival Skills: Updated and Expanded”
The theory that smoke from burning cities and forests and dust from nuclear explosions would cause
worldwide freezing temperatures was conceived in 1982 by the German atmospheric chemist and environmentalist Paul
Crutzen, and continues to be promoted by a worldwide propaganda campaign. This well funded campaign began in 1983
with televised scientific-political meetings in Cambridge and Washington featuring American and Russian scientists. A barrage of
newspaper and magazine articles followed, including a scaremongering article by Carl Sagan in the October 30, 1983 issue of Parade,
the Sunday tabloid read by millions. The most influential article was featured in the December 23,1983 issue of Science (the weekly
magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science): "Nuclear winter, global consequences of multiple nuclear
explosions," by five scientists, R. P. Turco, O. B. Toon, T. P. Ackerman, J. B. Pollack, and C. Sagan. Significantly, these activists listed
their names to spell TTAPS, pronounced "taps," the bugle call proclaiming "lights out" or the end of a military funeral.Until 1985, non-
propagandizing scientists did not begin to effectively refute the numerous errors, unrealistic assumptions, and computer modeling
weakness' of the TTAPS and related "nuclear winter" hypotheses. A principal reason is that government organizations, private
corporations, and most scientists generally avoid getting involved in political controversies, or making
statements likely to enable antinuclear activists to accuse them of minimizing nuclear war dangers, thus
undermining hopes for peace. Stephen Schneider has been called a fascist by some disarmament supporters for having
written "Nuclear Winter Reappraised," according to the Rocky Mountain News of July 6, 1986. Three days later, this paper, that until
recently featured accounts of unsurvivable "nuclear winter," criticized Carl Sagan and defended Thompson and Schneider in its lead
editorial, "In Study of Nuclear Winter, Let Scientists Be Scientists." In a free country, truth will out - although sometimes too late to
effectively counter fast-hitting propaganda. Effective refutation of "nuclear winter" also was delayed by the prestige
of politicians and of politically motivated scientists and scientific organizations endorsing the TTAPS
forecast of worldwide doom. Furthermore, the weakness' in the TTAPS hypothesis could not be effectively
explored until adequate Government funding was made available to cover costs of lengthy, expensive studies,
including improved computer modeling of interrelated, poorly understood meteorological phenomena.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
60
Government Studies
US Defense Nuclear Studies Manuel says that worst case nuclear war wouldn’t cause
extinction
Johnston ‘3 /Wm. Robert, doctoral student in physics at the University of Texas at Dallas, “The Effects of a
Global Thermonuclear War 4th edition: escalation in 1988,” August 18/
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/nuclearwar1.html
The following is an approximate description of the effects of a global nuclear war. For the purposes of illustration it
is assumed that a war resulted in mid-1988 from military conflict between the Warsaw Pact and NATO. This is in some ways a
worst-case scenario (total numbers of strategic warheads deployed by the superpowers peaked about this time; the scenario
implies a greater level of military readiness; and impact on global climate and crop yields are greatest for a
war in August). Some details, such as the time of attack, the events leading to war, and the winds affecting fallout patterns, are only
meant to be illustrative. This applies also to the global geopolitical aftermath, which represents the author's efforts at intelligent
speculation. There is much public misconception concerning the physical effects of nuclear war--some of it
motivated by politics. Certainly the predictions described here are uncertain: for example, casualty figures in the U.S. are accurate
perhaps to within 30% for the first few days, but the number of survivors in the U.S. after one year could differ from these figures by as
much as a factor of four. Nonetheless, there is no reasonable basis for expecting results radically different from this
description--for example, there is no scientific basis for expecting the extinction of the human species . Note that
the most severe predictions concerning nuclear winter have now been evaluated and discounted by most of
the scientific community. Sources supplying the basis for this description include the U.S. Defense Nuclear
Agency manual on nuclear weapon effects, scientific papers describing computer simulations of long-term effects
published by groups ranging from the U.S. government to left-leaning scientific organizations, and research by
a similar variety of groups on weapons characteristics and strategy.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
61
This argument is used to aggressively discredit opposition. We’re not militarists, we just
know what we’re talking about and we’re in good company
Seitz ‘86 Russell, Visiting Scholar in Harvard University's Center for International Affairs, “The
Melting of 'Nuclear Winter'”
Rather than "higher standards of evidence," Mr. Sagan merely provided testimonials. He had sent return mail questionnaires to the
nearly 100 participants at the April meeting, and edited the replies down to his favorite two-dozen quotations. What became of the hard
copy of the less enthusiastic reports remains a mystery, but it is evident from subsequent comments by their authors that TTAPS received
less than the unanimous endorsement of "a large number of scientists." Prof. Victor Weisskopf of MIT, sized up the matter in early
1984: "Ah! Nuclear Winter! The science is terrible, but, perhaps the psychology is good." Many scientists were reluctant to
speak out, perhaps for fear of being denounced as reactionaries or closet Strangeloves. For example, physicist Freeman
Dyson of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton was privately critical in early 1984. As he put it, "It's (TTAPS) an
absolutely atrocious piece of science, but I quite despair of setting the public record straight....Who wants to
be accused of being in favor of nuclear war?" Most of the intellectual tools necessary to demolish TTAPS's bleak vision were
already around then, but not the will to use them. From respected scientists one heard this: "You know, I really don't think
these guys know what they're talking about" (Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman); "They stacked the deck"
(Prof. Michael McElroy, Harvard); and, after a journalist's caution against four-letter words, "'Humbug' is six
[letters]" (Prof. Jonathan Katz, Washington University). In 1985, a series of unheralded and completely unpublicized studies started to
appear in learned journals -- studies that, piece by piece, started to fill in the blanks in the climate-modeling process that had previously
been patched over with "educated" guesses. The result was straightforward: As the science progressed and more authentic sophistication
was achieved in newer and more elegant models, the postulated effects headed downhill. By 1986, these worst-case effects had melted
down from a year of arctic darkness to warmer temperatures than the cool months in Palm Beach! A new paradigm of broken clouds and
cool spots had emerged. The once global hard frost had retreated back to the northern tundra. Mr. Sagan's elaborate conjecture had
fallen prey to Murphy's lesser known Second Law: If everything MUST go wrong, don't bet on it. By June 1986 it was over: In the
Summer 1986 Foreign Affairs, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientists Starley Thompson and Stephen Schneider
declared, "...on scientific grounds the global apocalyptic conclusions of the initial nuclear winter hypothesis can now be relegated to a
vanishingly low level of probability." Yet the activist wing of the international scientific establishment had already announced the results
of the first generations of interdisciplinary ecological and climatological studies based on Nuclear Winter. Journalists paid more
attention to the press releases than the substance of these already obsolescent efforts at ecological modeling, and proceeded to inform the
public that things were looking worse than ever. Bold headlines carried casualty estimates that ran into the proverbial "billions and
billions." This process culminated in the reception given the 1985 report of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Stressing the
uncertainties that plagued the calculations then and now, it scrupulously excluded the expression "Nuclear Winter" from its 193 pages of
sober text, but the report's press release was prefaced "Nuclear Winter...'Clear Possibility.'" Mr. Sagan construed the reports to constitute
an endorsement of the theory. But in February 1986, NCAR's Dr. Schneider quietly informed a gathering at the NASA-Ames
Laboratory that Nuclear Winter had succumbed to scientific progress and that, "in a severe" 6,500-megaton strategic exchange, "The
Day After" might witness July temperatures upwards of 50- plus degrees Fahrenheit in mid-America. The depths of Nuclear Winter
could no longer easily be distinguished from the coolest days of summer.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
62
Nuclear Autumn
The worst case impact is nuclear autumn, not nuclear winter. Our evidence is compares
our studies
Thompson and Schneider ‘8 Starley L, atmospheric scientist and climate theorist at the
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Stephen H., atmospheric scientist and
public policy analyst, is Deputy Director of the Advanced Study Program at NCAR, Foreign
Affairs, “Nuclear Winter Reappraised”
Given a plausible war scenario, perhaps
the single most uncertain area of the nuclear winter problem is the
determination of how much smoke would be produced, how "black" the smoke would be, and how much
would be rained out immediately. Studies are in progress now to narrow these uncertainties. One recent estimate indicates that
the amount of smoke initially produced in a major nuclear war may have been overestimated by roughly a factor
of two to four in the NAS report.'*^' The blackness of the smoke (determined by the percentage of black carbon soot in the
smoke), however, can be just as important as the amount of smoke in determining atmospheric effects. Indeed, an effective amount of
smoke can be defined as the product of the total amount of smoke and the smoke blackness. It is possible that current appraisals
underestimate the blackness of typical smoke from urban fires. This potential error could substantially compensate for a downward
revision in estimates of total smoke produced. Potential rainout of smoke near the fires (like the "black rain" that followed the
atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the subsequent conflagration) controls the amount of smoke that can eventually spread
and cause climatic effects. The estimates of rapid rainout of smoke in large thunderstorms associated with city fires are very
problematic, but ambitious recent calculations indicate that even under ideal rainout conditions a substantial amount of smoke would
probably remain in the atmosphere. ^"^ State-of-the-art assessments of the climatic effects of nuclear winter are based on results
from fully three-dimensional models that simulate the evolving patterns of global weather on an earth having
realistic geography.^^ The simulations recently performed at the National Center for Atmospheric Research have used a model
which resolves the atmosphere from the surface to about 30 kilometers altitude (the middle stratosphere) and which resolves geographic
features at about 5° latitude by 7° longitude resolution.^'* The model includes transport by winds, removal of particles
from the atmosphere by rainfall and other processes, and detailed calculations of sunlight transmission and infrared
"greenhouse" effects—all for both smoke and dust, although smoke is by far the larger contributor to climatic effects. In contrast,
recall that the TTAPS calculations had no geographic resolution, and hence could not adequately predict the global
spread or removal of smoke from the atmosphere. Of course, even the most sophisticated models include simplifying internal
assumptions; thus we anticipate that present quantitative results will change somewhat as improvements continue to be made. In the
recent NCAR research, we have not adopted any particular detailed war scenario other than the obvious assumption that
the smoke and dust would come from the NATO and Warsaw Pact countries.^^ In fact, there is no general consensus on the amount and
blackness of smoke that would exist in the atmosphere a few days after the start of a major nuclear exchange like the 6,500-megaton war
the NAS study used as a baseline. Given this large range of uncertainty, we have used three different amounts of moderately
black smoke—20, 60 and 180 million tons—to bracket what is currently thought to be a reasonable range of smoke amount and
blackness for a large nuclear war. It should be pointed out that the NAS baseline smoke amount estimate (180 million tons)
now appears to lie closer to the plausible upper limit of effective smoke amount than it once was thought to. The war is
assumed to take place during a typical day in July, with smoke generated for the first two days.^ The land surface temperatures produced
by the three smoke cases are shown in Figure 1. This figure shows that the average temperature changes for the northern
hemisphere mid-latitudes are considerably smaller than the original estimates of one-dimensional models, and are about two-thirds of the
temperature changes found in our original three-dimensional calculations. These temperature changes more closely describe a
nuclear "fall" than a nuclear winter. The reasons for the moderation of temperature compared to the original calculations are
well understood: first, the oceans have a large heat capacity, which ameliorates the cooling over land. Second, about
three-fourths of the smoke is removed from the model's atmosphere over the course of 30 days. Third, the
infrared "greenhouse" effect of the smoke, which was not included in earlier three-dimensional models, does
produce a significant mitigation of the surface cooling.^^ We must stress that our results are for July, the month in
which the temperature changes are likely to be largest. Similar calculations for January show much less effect simply
because at that time it is already winter in the northern hemisphere.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
64
Newest research proves soot clouds would be outweighed by co2 from burning stuff
Duncan Clarke ‘9, Jan 2 environment consultant to the Guardian, co-director of the GreenProfile
book imprint, manager of GoGreenLights, “The carbon footprint of nuclear war”
Just when you might have thought it was ethically sound to unleash a nuclear attack on a nearby city, along comes a pesky scientist and
points out that atomic warfare is bad for the climate. According to a new paper in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, even
a very limited nuclear exchange, using just a thousandth of the weaponry of a full-scale nuclear war, would cause up to
690m tonnes of CO2 to enter the atmosphere – more than UK's annual total. The upside (kind of) is that the
conflict would also generate as much as 313m tonnes of soot. This would stop a great deal of sunlight reaching the earth,
creating a significant regional cooling effect in the short and medium terms – just like when a major volcano erupts.
Ultimately, though, the CO2 would win out and crank up global temperatures an extra few notches. The paper's
author, Mark Z Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, calculated the emissions of such a
conflict by totting up the burn rate and carbon content of the fabric of our cities. "Materials have the following carbon contents: plastics,
38–92%; tyres and other rubbers, 59–91%; synthetic fibres, 63–86%; woody biomass, 41–45%; charcoal, 71%; asphalt, 80%; steel,
0.05–2%. We approximate roughly the carbon content of all combustible material in a city as 40–60%."
Newest research proves their internal link is backwards – biomass burning causes warming
Mark Z. Jacobson ‘8, 31st October Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford
University, Stanford, California, “Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security”
The explosion of fifty 15 kt nuclear devices (a total of 1.5 MT, or 0.1% of the yields proposed for a full-scale nuclear war)
during a limited nuclear exchange in megacities could burn 63–313 Tg of fuel, adding 1–5 Tg of soot to the atmosphere, much
of it to the stratosphere, and killing 2.6–16.7 million people.68 The soot emissions would cause significant short- and
medium-term regional cooling.70 Despite short-term cooling, the CO2 emissions would cause long-term
warming, as they do with biomass burning.62 The CO2 emissions from such a conflict are estimated here
from the fuel burn rate and the carbon content of fuels. Materials have the following carbon contents: plastics, 38–92%;
tires and other rubbers, 59–91%; synthetic fibers, 63–86%;71 woody biomass, 41–45%; charcoal, 71%;72 asphalt, 80%; steel, 0.05–
2%. We approximate roughly the carbon content of all combustible material in a city as 40–60%. Applying these percentages to the fuel
burn gives CO2 emissions during an exchange as 92–690 Tg CO2. The annual electricity production due to nuclear energy in 2005 was
2768 TWh yr−1. If one nuclear exchange as described above occurs over the next 30 yr, the net carbon emissions due to nuclear
weapons proliferation caused by the expansion of nuclear energy worldwide would be 1.1–4.1 g CO2 kWh−1, where the energy
generation assumed is the annual 2005 generation for nuclear power multiplied by the number of yr being considered. This emission rate
depends on the probability of a nuclear exchange over a given period and the strengths of nuclear devices used. Here, we bound the
probability of the event occurring over 30 yr as between 0 and 1 to give the range of possible emissions for one such event as 0 to 4.1 g
CO2 kWh−1. This emission rate is placed in context in Table 3.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
65
Even a small-scale, regional nuclear war could produce as many direct fatalities as all of World War II and disrupt the
global climate for a decade or more, with environmental effects that could be devastating for everyone on Earth, university
researchers have found.These powerful conclusions are being presented Dec. 11 during a press conference and a special technical
session at the annual meeting of American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. The research also appears in twin
papers posted on Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, an online journal. A team of scientists at
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder); and
UCLA conducted the rigorous scientific studies reported. Against the backdrop of growing tensions in the Middle East and
nuclear "saber rattling" elsewhere in Asia, the authors point out that even the smallest nuclear powers today and in the near future may
have as many as 50 or more Hiroshima-size (15 kiloton) weapons in their arsenals; all told, about 40 countries possess enough plutonium
and/or uranium to construct substantial nuclear arsenals. Owen "Brian" Toon, chair of the department of atmospheric and oceanic
sciences and a member of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at CU-Boulder, oversaw the analysis of potential
fatalities based on an assessment of current nuclear weapons inventories and population densities in large urban complexes. His team
focused on scenarios of smoke emissions that urban firestorms could produce. "The results described in one of the new papers represent
the first comprehensive quantitative study of the consequences of a nuclear conflict between smaller nuclear states," said Toon and his
co-authors. "A small country is likely to direct its weapons against population centers to maximize damage and achieve the greatest
advantage," Toon said. Fatality estimates for a plausible regional conflict ranged from 2.6 million to 16.7 million per country. Alan
Robock, a professor in the department of environmental sciences and associate director of the Center for Environmental Prediction at
Rutgers' Cook College, guided the climate modeling effort using tools he previously employed in assessing volcano-induced
climate change. Robock and his Rutgers co-workers, Professor Georgiy Stenchikov and Postdoctoral Associate Luke Oman
(now at Johns Hopkins University) generated a series of computer simulations depicting potential climatic
anomalies that a small-scale nuclear war could bring about, summarizing their conclusions in the second
paper.
Hundman is wrong – the anti-gravity smoke is independent of the size of the war, his
nuclear war doesn’t cause extinction arguments aren’t contested and Hundman’s semantic
quibbling is symptomatic of the absurdity of nuclear winter science
Seitz ‘7 [Russell is a Visiting Scholar in Harvard University's Center for International Affairs,
published in Nature and Foreign Affairs on the subject of nuclear winter, Jan 5,
www.defensetech.org/archives/003108.html]
Hundman's failure to acknowledge that the old and new studies quantitatively
If anything is fatally flawed, it is
overlap in terms of the quantity of black carbon injected into the model atmospheres . In the models , that
parameter is independent of the 'war' scenario whether realistic or absurd. The meltdown I refer to spans not just the 30 plus
degree difference between the old results and the new , but the gross difference in the optical depth and the reduction in sunlight-
'nuclear winter' entered the language as an apt description of the aftermath of a million fold reduction in sunlight, not
one of ten watts per square meter or less. Many disciplines deem a two order of magnitude crack-up grounds
for publishing a retraction- not this one - instead we are seeing stonewalling in defense of the original exercise in
semantic aggression. Paul Crutzen got it right when he published the original hypothesis in 1983 under the rubric "Twilight at
Noon.” Hundman is correct to chide me for referring to the 300 Mb elevation at which Robock et al inject black aerosols
as " the stratosphere" that is off by about 10-15% depending on latitude. I should have stuck to “high as Mt
Everest" as the metric for kicking mass upstairs in the face of gravity -- but one example of why" you don't have to be
an atmospheric scientist" to understand why many of that fraternity are growing tired of the same old cohort stretching the
limits of scientific -and strategic- plausibility to delay the interment of the original snow job in the factoid
cemetery alongside the "Energy Crisis" and the "Population Bomb."
The new studies make the difference between regional and global nuclear war irrelevant –
global nuclear war uses counterforce targeting which doesn’t cause massive fires
New Scientist ‘7, March, Debora MacKenzie, 'Nuclear winter' may kill more than a nuclear war
This is partly because modern
scenarios aim at different targets. Toon says most of the huge US and Russian
nuclear warheads are aimed, in a first strike, at missile silos in wilderness or suburban military installations.
There is not much to burn, and after the first warhead hits, subsequent explosions do not release much
additional smoke. Urban firestorm By contrast, a regional exchange where adversaries target each others'
megacities would ignite huge urban firestorms. Toon calculates the smoke released per kilotonne of explosive yield
would be 100 times greater than in the Cold War scenarios.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
67
A2: Threshold
This argument is absurd – ignores the oceans, geographic variation and hemispheric
divisions.
Thompson and Schneider ‘86
Starley L, atmospheric scientist and climate theorist at the National Center for Atmospheric
Research (NCAR) Stephen H., atmospheric scientist and public policy analyst, is Deputy
Director of the Advanced Study Program at NCAR, Foreign Affairs, “Nuclear Winter
Reappraised”
If one accepts the idea of a threshold for nuclear winter for the sake of strategic argument, then the question of how to quantify it
becomes important. Given the substantial uncertainties in defining a threshold, and the potentially grave consequences of exceeding it,
the argument was made for deriving a threshold based on a worst-case smoke-producing assumption of targeting. Taken in this light, the
strategically dubious "100- megaton war" can be seen as a worst-case assumption serving to delineate a prudent
threshold. The 100-megaton scenario used 1,000 warheads, but it was never suggested that the threshold would be very well defined. For
example, in his Foreign Affairs article, Sagan set a crude threshold of around 500 to 2,000 warheads, primarily attributing
the uncertainty to assumptions of targeting and weapon yields. Ironically, just when the strategic implications of the threshold concept
were starting to be debated in the strategic policy community, the strongest scientific arguments against the concept emerged. To
understand why the threshold concept is not scientifically persuasive , one must be aware of the limitations inherent in the
models that do not take account of geography. It is tempting to interpret a calculation in which surface temperature is
represented as a single global number in terms of a dramatic physical threshold, e.g., the freezing point. But such
calculations cannot capture the true geographical and seasonal heterogeneity of climate. A global model
developed at the National Center for Atmospheric Research studied the inclusion of north-south and east-west
dimensions and how such improvements would modify the results of one-dimensional models.'^ We found that
the oceans, with their vast storage of heat, would reduce the magnitude of average continental cooling by a
factor of two in the summer, compared to the cooling calculated by assuming a land-covered planet. The estimated cooling
effect in winter was smaller by a factor of ten than the TTAPS annual estimate, because northern hemisphere
midlatitude land areas are already cold in winter. Even when we assumed a uniform smoke cloud to exist over the
middle part of the northern hemisphere, the surface temperature reduction was unevenly distributed —much less
along western coasts and even more than one-dimensional mode! results in some midcontinental cold-weather fluctuations in
summertime. In short, simulations using geographically realistic models produced such a wide range of
consequences for any given war scenario that it became clear that the elegant and strategically compelling idea of a threshold was an
artifact of a simplified model. " This observation remains true. Hence, it is questionable to predicate any strategic policy
options on the existence of a nuclear winter threshold, even a "fuzzy" one.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
68
No nuclear explosion has ever decreased the ozone layer – Soviet and US studies are wrong
Kearny ’87 Cresson H., two degrees in geology at Oxford, Jungle Experiment Officer of the Panama Mobile Force, demolitions expert in
the Office of Strategic Services, research analyst at the Hudson Institute, worked with Herman Kahn on nuclear scenario planning, “Nuclear War
Survival Skills: Updated and Expanded”
° Myth: Blindness and a disastrous increase of cancers would be the fate of survivors of a nuclear war, because the
nuclear explosions would destroy so much of the protective ozone in the stratosphere that far too much ultraviolet light
would reach the earth's surface. Even birds and insects would be blinded. People could not work outdoors in daytime for years
without dark glasses, and would have to wear protective clothing to prevent incapacitating sunburn. Plants would be badly
injured and food production greatly reduced.° Facts: Large nuclear explosions do inject huge amounts of nitrogen
oxides (gasses that destroy ozone) into the stratosphere. However, the percent of the stratospheric ozone destroyed
by a given amount of nitrogen oxides has been greatly overestimated in almost all theoretical calculations and
models. For example, the Soviet and U.S. atmospheric nuclear test explosions of large weapons in 1952-1962 were
calculated by Foley and Ruderman to result in a reduction of more than 10 percent in total ozone. (See M. H. Foley
and M. A. Ruderman, 'Stratospheric NO from Past Nuclear Explosions", Journal of Geophysics, Res. 78, 4441-4450.) Yet
observations that they cited showed no reductions in ozone. Nor did ultraviolet increase. Other theoreticians
calculated sizable reductions in total ozone, but interpreted the observational data to indicate either no
reduction, or much smaller reductions than their calculated ones.
Effect of ozone varies as much as 75% naturally, destruction in a nuclear war wouldn’t be
noticeable
Martin ’82 (Brian, associate professor in Science, Technology and Society at the University of
Wollongong, “The Global Health Effects of Nuclear War,” Current Affairs, December 7,
www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/82cab/index.html#explosive)
If significant ozone reduction did occur, the most important direct effect on humans would be an increase in skin cancer. However, this is
seldom lethal, and could be avoided by reducing exposure to sunlight. Potentially more serious would be effects on crops.[32] Some of
the important grains, for example, are sensitive to uv. Whether the net effects on crop yields would be significant is hard to estimate. But
whatever the reduction in ozone, ozone levels would return pretty much to normal after a few years.[9] It seems
unlikely that in the context of a major nuclear war the changes in uv alone would be of serious concern. In particular, the threat
of human extinction raised by Jonathan Schell in The Fate of the Earth,[33] based mostly on effects of increased
uv from ozone reduction, seems very small indeed. It is sometimes claimed that nuclear war could destroy
ozone to such an extent that humans and animals would be blinded by excess uv. Even if large numbers of
high-yield weapons were exploded, this possibility seems very unlikely except for a contribution to snow blindness in the far
north. Stratospheric ozone can never be completely removed, but at most reduced greatly. Even if a 50 per cent or
more reduction in ozone occurred - and as noted this seems improbable with present nuclear arsenals - protection from
uv for humans could be obtained from sunglasses or just ordinary glasses, which absorb uv. For animals, the following considerations
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
70
are relevant. Ozone levels vary considerably from place to place and from time to time, both seasonally and daily
(sometimes by up to 50 per cent). Sunlight at the equator typically passes through only half as much ozone as at
the mid-latitudes, yet animals at the equator are not known to go blind more often than elsewhere. Furthermore, most ozone
reductions from a nuclear war would be in the mid and high latitudes, where ozone levels are higher to start
with and where the 'path length' of sunlight through ozone is increased due to its oblique angle of incidence.
But this does not mean complacency is warranted, as the concerns of John Hampson illustrate.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
71
Ozone Depletion Frontline Extension
Extend Martin 82 – even if they win a massive reduction in ozone, it’ll return to normal in
a few years, the ozone layer’s resilient, new arsenals make massive destruction unlikely and
ozone levels vary so much by location and season that the change won’t be noticeable.
Tiebreaker – the ozone depletion would be limited to the Northern hemisphere where ozone
is already at its highest.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
72
Small Nukes Solve
Ozone depletion of larger weapons offset by added ozone by smaller ones, no impact to
increase in skin cancer
Kearny ‘87 Cresson H., two degrees in geology at Oxford, Jungle Experiment Officer of the Panama Mobile Force, demolitions expert in
the Office of Strategic Services, research analyst at the Hudson Institute, worked with Herman Kahn on nuclear scenario planning, “Nuclear War
Survival Skills: Updated and Expanded”
Ozone loss doesn’t impact species, natural variability outweighs, variation by latitude
proves they’re wrong
Singer 1 Chief Scientist in the Department of Transportation, first director of the US Weather Satellite Service, consultant to the
Secretary of Energy, White House Science Adviser, vice-chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere,
“Interview with Dr. S. Fred Singer” Bonner Cohen and Jay Lehr in Environment & Climate News, Feb. 2001
It is not serious at all. While the Antarctic ozone hole is genuine and will continue as a temporary thinning of the layer every October, it
has stabilized and may diminish in the future. Ozone depletion at our latitudes has been less than five percent and has stopped
altogether since 1992. The depletion is small in relation to the natural fluctuations, which can reach some 100
percent from day to day. No steady increase of average solar ultraviolet radiation has been measured on the
ground so far. But even if it did increase, a ten percent increase would correspond in exposure to moving about
100 miles towards the equator. UV exposures in Florida are some 200 to 300 percent greater than in New
York. The most serious form of skin cancer, malignant melanoma, is produced by solar radiation that is not even affected by changes in
ozone. This is an important new result, confirmed by laboratory studies. As for concerns about frogs and other amphibians,
it has now been established that the missing legs etc. that were blamed on UV are in fact due to parasites.
Calculations of ozone loss are 40 years old and don’t assume new arsenals
Martin ’82 (Brian, associate professor in Science, Technology and Society at the University of Wollongong, “The Global Health Effects of
Nuclear War,” Current Affairs, December 7, www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/82cab/index.html#explosive)
Calculations made in the mid-1970s assuming large nuclear arsenals with many high-yield explosions
concluded that reductions of ozone could reach 50 per cent or more in the northern hemisphere, with smaller reductions
in the southern hemisphere.[30] But since the number of high-yield weapons in present nuclear arsenals is now
smaller, much less oxides of nitrogen would be deposited in the stratosphere by nuclear war than assumed in earlier
calculations, and so significant ozone reductions are unlikely.[31]
The next effect to which beliefs in nuclear extinction were attached was ozone depletion. Beginning in the mid-1970s, scares about
stratospheric ozone developed, culminating in 1982 in the release of Jonathan Schell's book The Fate of the Earth.[4] Schell painted
a picture of human annihilation from nuclear war based almost entirely on effects from increased ultraviolet
light at the earth's surface due to ozone reductions caused by nuclear explosions. Schell's book was greeted with adulation rarely
observed in any field. Yet by the time the book was published, the scientific basis for ozone-based nuclear
extinction had almost entirely evaporated. The ongoing switch by the military forces of the United States and the
Soviet Union from multi-megatonne nuclear weapons to larger numbers of smaller weapons means that the
effect on ozone from even the largest nuclear war is unlikely to lead to any major effect on human population levels,
and extinction from ozone reductions is virtually out of the question.[3]
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
75
A2: Ozone Depletion Kills Phytoplankton 1/2
2. Plankton control the weather – increased UV causes them to create more clouds
Melville ‘4, 14 July, Kate, one of three authors at scienceagogo, McMurdo Media, “UV Light Turns Plankton Into Cloud
Factories”
It is not serious at all. While the Antarctic ozone hole is genuine and will continue as a temporary thinning of the layer every October, it
has stabilized and may diminish in the future. Ozone depletion at our latitudes has been less than five percent and has stopped
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
76
altogether since 1992. The depletion is small in relation to the natural fluctuations, which can reach some 100
percent from day to day. No steady increase of average solar ultraviolet radiation has been measured on the ground so far. But
even if it did increase, a ten percent increase would correspond in exposure to moving about 100 miles towards the equator. UV
exposures in Florida are some 200 to 300 percent greater than in New York. The most serious form of skin cancer,
malignant melanoma, is produced by solar radiation that is not even affected by changes in ozone. This is an
important new result, confirmed by laboratory studies. As for concerns about frogs and other amphibians, it has now been
established that the missing legs etc. that were blamed on UV are in fact due to parasites.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
77
Extend the Seitz evidence – there’s no justification for sending soot miles into the
atmosphere. That’s the internal link to ozone depletion
Mills et al ‘8 Toon TurcoMichael J. Mills, Owen B. Toon, Richard P. Turco, Douglas E. Kinnison, and Rolando R. Garcia Feb 7, 2008,
“Massive global ozone loss predicted following regional nuclear conflict”
We use a chemistry-climate model and new estimates of smoke produced by fires in contemporary cities to
calculate the impact on stratospheric ozone of a regional nuclear war between developing nuclear states involving 100
Hiroshima-size bombs exploded in cities in the northern subtropics. We find column ozone losses in excess of 20% globally, 25–45%
at midlatitudes, and 50–70% at northern high latitudes persisting for 5 years , with substantial losses continuing for 5
additional years. Column ozone amounts remain near or <220 Dobson units at all latitudes even after three years, constituting an
extratropical “ozone hole.” The resulting increases in UV radiation could impact the biota significantly, including serious consequences
for human health. The primary cause for the dramatic and persistent ozone depletion is heating of the stratosphere by
smoke, which strongly absorbs solar radiation. The smoke-laden air rises to the upper stratosphere, where removal
mechanisms are slow, so that much of the stratosphere is ultimately heated by the localized smoke injections. Higher
stratospheric temperatures accelerate catalytic reaction cycles, particularly those of odd-nitrogen, which
destroy ozone. In addition, the strong convection created by rising smoke plumes alters the stratospheric
circulation, redistributing ozone and the sources of ozone-depleting gases, including N2O and chlorofluorocarbons. The ozone losses
predicted here are significantly greater than previous “nuclear winter/UV spring” calculations, which did not adequately represent
stratospheric plume rise. Our results point to previously unrecognized mechanisms for stratospheric ozone depletion.
That means you should prefer the studies from the 80’s – they’re exactly the same but
without the magic smoke
Gache ‘8 Gabriel, April, Science News Editor, softpedia, “Regional Nuclear War Would Destroy
the World” news.softpedia.com/newsPDF/Regional-Nuclear-War-Would-Destroy-the-World-
82760.pdf
Aftermath Michael Mills from the University of Colorado reckons that such a nuclear war in South Asia would decay about
40 percent of the ozone layer in the middle latitudes and 70 percent in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere. "The models
show this magnitude of ozone loss would persist for five years, and we would see substantial losses continuing for at least another five
years," says Mills. Mills extracted his results from computer models.Previous models were created during the 1980s,
however those investigations revealed that impact of the nuclear detonations would be much more moderate .
This might be because the old models do not take into consideration the columns of soot rising at altitudes of 80
kilometers into Earth's atmosphere, as Mills considers. Once the soot is released into the upper atmosphere, it
would block and absorb most of the solar energy, thus determining a heating of the surrounding atmosphere,
process that facilitates the reaction between nitrogen oxides and ozone
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
78
Don’t even read cards from the 80’s - they’re all propaganda, ignore new studies, based on
environmental and genetic myths that have been debunked.
Spiegel, 11/23/2007
Matthias Schulz, “Nuclear Exaggeration: Is Atomic Radiation as Dangerous as We Thought?”
The more recent meltdown at the reactor in Chernobyl in 1986 reminded the world of the dangers of the atom.
The incident was referred to as "nuclear genocide," and the press wrote of "forests stained red" and of deformed insects.
The public was bombarded with images of Soviet cleanup crews wearing protective suits, bald-headed children with cancer and the
members of cement crews who lost their lives in an attempt to seal off the cracked reactor with a concrete plug. Fifteen years after the
reactor accident, the German newsmagazine Focus concluded that Chernobyl was responsible for "500,000" deaths. Was all this just
doomsday folklore? There is no doubt that large sections of the countryside were contaminated by the accident in the Ukraine. In the
ensuing decades, up to 4,000 cleanup workers and residents of the more highly contaminated areas died of the long-term consequences
of radiation exposure. But the six-figure death counts that opponents of nuclear power once cited are simply nonsense. In
most cases, they were derived from vague "extrapolations" based on the hearsay reported by Russian dissidents .
But such horror stories have remained part of the nuclear narrative to this day. In fact, contemporaries who reported on the Chernobyl
incident should have known better. Even in the 1980s, radiobiologists and radiation physicists considered the media's
doomsday reports to be exaggerated. And their suspicions have become a virtual certainty today. Groups of
researchers have set up shop at all of the sites of nuclear accidents or major nuclear contamination. They work
at Hanford (where the United States began producing plutonium in 1944), they conduct studies in the English town of Sellafield (where
a contaminated cloud escaped from the chimney in 1957), and they study the fates of former East German uranium mineworkers in the
states of Saxony and Thuringia. New mortality rates have now been compiled for all of these groups of individuals at risk. Surprisingly,
the highest mortality rates were found among the East German mineworkers. In Hiroshima, on the other hand, radioactivity claimed
surprisingly few human lives. Experts now know exactly what happened in the first hours, days and weeks after the devastating atomic
explosion. Almost all of Hiroshima's 140,000 victims died quickly. Either they were crushed immediately by the shock wave,
or they died within the next few days of acute burns. But the notorious radiation sickness -- a gradual ailment that leads to certain
death for anyone exposed to radiation levels of 6 Gray or higher -- was rare. The reason is that Little Boy simply did not produce
enough radioactivity. But what about the long-term consequences? Didn't the radiation work like a time bomb in the body? To answer
these questions, the Japanese and the Americans launched a giant epidemiological study after the war. The study
included all residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who had survived the atomic explosion within a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile)
radius. Investigators questioned the residents to obtain their precise locations when the bomb exploded, and used this information to
calculate a personal radiation dose for each resident. Data was collected for [eighty six thousand] 86,572 people. Today, 60 years
later, the study's results are clear. More than 700 people eventually died as a result of radiati on received from the atomic
attack: 87 died of leukemia; 440 died of tumors; and 250 died of radiation-induced heart attacks. In addition, 30 fetuses developed
mental disabilities after they were born. Such statistics have attracted little notice so far. The numbers cited in schoolbooks are much
higher. According to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, 105,000 people died of the "long-term consequences of radiation." "For
commendable reasons, many critics have greatly exaggerated the health risks of radioactivity," says Albrecht Kellerer, a Munich
radiation biologist. "But contrary to widespread opinion, the number of victims is by no means in the tens of thousands." Especially
surprising, though, is that the stories of birth defects in newborns are also pure fantasy. The press has repeatedly
embellished photos of a destroyed Hiroshima with those of deformed children, children without eyes or with three arms. In reality,
there hasn't been a single study that provides evidence of an elevated rate of birth defects. A final attempt to
establish a connection is currently underway in Japan. The study includes 3,600 people who were unborn fetuses in their mothers'
wombs on that horrific day in August 1945. But it too has failed to furnish any evidence of elevated chromosomal abnormality. In
Germany, where nuclear fears have coalesced with the fear of dying forests and mad cow disease into a general psychosis of threat, the
degree of concern over nuclear radiation remains high. To this day, some are so fearful about the long-term effects of fallout from
Chernobyl that they refuse to eat mushrooms from Bavaria. Even 20 years ago such behavior would not have made sense. Officially 47
people -- members of the emergency rescue crews -- died in Chernobyl from exposure to lethal doses of radiation. This is serious
enough. "But overall the amount of radiation that escaped was simply too low to claim large numbers of victims," explains Kellerer. The
iodine 131 that escaped from the reactor did end up causing severe health problems in Ukraine. It settled on meadows in the form of a
fine dust, passing through the food chain, from grass to cows to milk, and eventually accumulating in the thyroid glands of children.
About 4,000 children were afflicted with cancer. Less well-known, however, is the fact that only nine of those 4,000
died -- thyroid cancers are often easy to operate on.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
80
Extend Spiegel 7 – it cites the most recent and qualified studies, the joint US-Japan study of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, retrospectives on Chernobyl and every other major radiation
based incident.
Don’t read cards from the 80’s – I’m sure they make great arguments, but they’re driven
by nuclear paranoia that’s never been supported by science and rely on decades old science.
Radiation effects have been invented out of pure fantasy.
Environmental effects are nonsense – forests stained red and deformed insects are anti-
nuclear propaganda and extrapolations based on reports of Russian dissidents.
Radiation sickness doesn’t matter – a hundred forty thousand people died at Hiroshima,
only seven hundred combined deaths from radiation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
No long term effects – only a slight increase in cancer rates, mainly thyroid cancer, which is
almost never fatal.
No genetic effects – no study has ever proven a correlation between radiation and increased
birth defects.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
81
Fallout won’t cause extinction – won’t stay radioactive long enough to spread globally
Martin, 1982
Brian, associate professor in Science, Technology and Society at the University of Wollongong, “The Global Health Effects of Nuclear
War,” Current Affairs, December 7, www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/82cab/index.html#explosive)
By the time stratospheric fallout reaches the earth, its radioactivity is greatly reduced . For example, after one
year, the time typically required for any sizable amount of fission products to move from the northern to the
southern stratosphere, the rate of decay will be less than a hundred thousandth of what it was one hour after the
blast. It is for this reason that stratospheric fallout does not have the potential to cause widespread and immediate
sickness or death.
Airbursts solve – radiation is either in the atmosphere until its safe or is rained out into
isolated hot zone
Kearny, 87
Cresson H., two degrees in geology at Oxford, Jungle Experiment Officer of the Panama Mobile Force, demolitions expert in the Office
of Strategic Services, research analyst at the Hudson Institute, worked with Herman Kahn on nuclear scenario planning, “Nuclear War
Survival Skills: Updated and Expanded”
Thermonuclear weapons are considered to be highly tactical, because they can destroy armed forces and
infrastructure easily, but do not produce as much radioactive fallout compared to fission-based weapons. The fallout
from thermonuclear weapons is due primarily to the fission trigger. Thus thermonuclear weapons are sometimes called
"clean" bombs. Technically a clean bomb is defined as one where significantly more than half of the destructive power arises from
fusion. So-called "radiation fusion bombs", also known as neutron bombs are examples of clean weapons. However, these bombs make
nearby objects and structures radioactive because of the number and speed of the released neutrons. Still, the radioactive fallout
from a "clean" bomb is significantly less than that from a fission weapon . There are in fact still some fears today about
whether the Hiroshima and Nagasaki sites in Japan, bombed by the US in World War II, are safe from radiation. (This was one of the
factors that made the death toll hard to accurately quantify.)
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
82
Air Bursts. An air burst is an explosion in which a weapon is detonated in air at an altitude below 30 km but at
sufficient height that the fireball does not contact the surface of the earth. After such a burst, blast may cause
considerable damage and injury. The altitude of an air burst can be varied to obtain maximum blast effects, maximum
thermal effects, desired radiation effects, or a balanced combination of these effects. Burns to exposed skin may be produced over many
square kilometers and eye injuries over a still larger area. Initial nuclear radiation will be a significant hazard with smaller weapons, but
the fallout hazard can be ignored as there is essentially no local fallout from an air burst. The fission products are generally
dispersed over a large area of the globe unless there is local rainfall resulting in localized fallout. In the vicinity of ground zero,
there may be a small area of neutron-induced activity which could be hazardous to troops required to pass through the area.
Tactically, air bursts are the most likely to be used against ground forces.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
83
A/T: Children
Genetic defects aren’t passed on to children – this is the most qualified source
RERF, 2007 Radiation Effects Research Foundation, Cooperative Japan-US research Organization, FAQ
Q7.What health effects have been seen among the children born to atomic-bomb survivors? A7. This was one of the
Efforts to detect genetic effects were begun in the late 1940s and continue to
earliest concerns in the aftermath of the bombings.
this day. Thus far, no evidence of genetic effects has been found. Recent advances in molecular biology may make it possible to detect genetic
changes at the gene (DNA) level at some time in the future. RERF scientists are working to preserve blood samples that can be used for such studies as suitably powerful techniques
are developed (see Repository of biological materials). Monitoring of deaths and cancer incidence in the children of survivors also is continuing.
Any mutations due to radiation are not passed to children – no risk of extinction
Innovations Report, 2002 Nächste Meldung, “Sperm and eggs fall foul of fallout,” 2 August
The researchers still do not know whether this genetic damage has caused health problems for the area’s
children, or whether it will do so in the future, because mutations only rarely result in disease . "It wouldn’t be
surprising," says Goodhead. But researchers agree that any effects of inherited mutations are likely to be small and difficult to
detect against the normal incidence rates of cancer and disease. People directly exposed to radiation by the
atomic-bomb detonations in Japan during the Second World War and by nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl, suffer increased rates of cancer.
But the common perception that exposed individuals bear children with deformities is not backed up by
scientific study.
However, while changes to a cell in an already living animal will not spontaneously produce new limbs and
such, we know that mutations in DNA do occur during sexual reproduction. Can ionizing radiation alter DNA
in a parent which is then passed down to a child – and result in meaningful, usable structures such as limbs and eyes? It
appears that the research on this topic indicates that in instances of both low and high levels of ionizing radiation no
increase in genetic affects has been noted. It must, however, be made clear that individuals exposed to high concentrations I-
131 (a form of radioacutive iodine) which has found its way into the atmosphere as a result of the detonation of nuclear weapons – and
due to catastrophic accidents such as the 1986 Chernobyl explosion – have a much higher risk of thyroid cancer than is found in the
regular population.
° Myth: Most of the unborn children and grandchildren of people who have been exposed to radiation from nuclear
explosions will be genetically damaged will be malformed, delayed victims of nuclear war. ° Facts: The authoritative study by the
National Academy of Sciences, A Thirty Year Study of the Survivors qf Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was published in 1977. It concludes that the
incidence of abnormalities is no higher among children later conceived by parents who were exposed to
radiation during the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki than is the incidence of abnormalities among Japanese children born to un-exposed
parents. This is not to say that there would be no genetic damage, nor that some fetuses subjected to large radiation doses would not be damaged. But the overwhelming
evidence does show that the exaggerated fears of radiation damage to future generations are not supported by
scientific findings.
Genetic mutations are not caused by nuclear war and even then mutations cannot be
passed on
Dayton Journal Herald, 1983 (Petr Beckman, “Nuking Your Town,” May,
http://www.fortfreedom.org/r02.htm)
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
84
Genetic mutations are another example of whipping up emotional fear . For one thing, genetic mutations are
virtually negligible compared with the real dangers of nuclear weapons. None have ever been found in Japan
despite decades of an extremely intensive search. "Not true!" say readers who have been shamefully confused by slanted TV documentaries. Yes,
radiation can kill, and it can deform, especially if it hits fetuses in the womb. There were such cases in Japan, but that has nothing
to do with genetic mutations -- which damage offspring by inheritance. When TV shows such deformed
adults, it is playing on ignorance about what can be inherited and what is an injury that cannot be passed on.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
85
Eating food produced in the years after a large attack would cause an increase in the cancer rate, due primarily to
its content of radioactive strontium and cesium from fallout-contaminated soil. Over the first 30 years following an attack,
this increase would be a small fraction of the number of additional cancer deaths that would result from external
radiation.29 Cancer deaths would be one of the tragic, delayed costs of a nuclear war, but all together would not be
numerous enough to endanger the long-term survival of the population.
Fallout particles are easy to remove, won’t seep into water, don’t contaminate food
Kearny, 87
Cresson H., two degrees in geology at Oxford, Jungle Experiment Officer of the Panama Mobile Force, demolitions expert in the Office
of Strategic Services, research analyst at the Hudson Institute, worked with Herman Kahn on nuclear scenario planning, “Nuclear War
Survival Skills: Updated and Expanded”
° Myth: So much food and water will be poisoned by fallout that people will starve and die even in fallout areas where there
is enough food and water.
° Facts: If the fallout particles do not become mixed with the parts of food that are eaten, no harm is done. Food
and water in dust-tight containers are not contaminated by fallout radiation. Peeling fruits and vegetables removes
essentially all fallout, as does removing the uppermost several inches of stored grain onto which fallout particles have fallen.
Water from many sources -- such as deep wells and covered reservoirs, tanks, and containers -- would not be
contaminated. Even water containing dissolved radioactive elements and compounds can be made safe for
drinking by simply filtering it through earth, as described later in this book.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
86
Only 9% of survivors of atomic bombs died of radiation – being 2 kilometers away from
detonation cuts the odds in half. This evidence is mostly a table, call for it.
Table 2. Summary of cancer deaths in the Life Span Study cohort of atomic-bomb survivors, 1950-1990
Percentage of deaths
Total number Estimated number of
Cause of death attributable to
of death deaths due to radiation
radiation
Leukemia 176 89 51%
Other types
4,687 339 7%
of cancer*
Total 4,863 428 9%
*
Solid cancers, such as stomach, lung, breast, colorectal and liver cancers
The number of cancer deaths among the 36,500 Life Span Study survivors who were exposed beyond 2.5 km is
3,177, including 73 leukemia deaths and 3,104 deaths from cancers other than leukemia.
The proportion of cancer deaths attributable to radiation exposure is higher among those who were exposed closer to
the hypocenter, as in the case of deaths due to injuries from the blast, heat, or radiation. Table 3 presents data on the
size of the studied population and the number of cancer deaths in relation to distance from the hypocenter for the
approximately 50,000 survivors with significant exposures (See Question 11).
Table 3. Cancer deaths among atomic-bomb survivors, 1950-1990, by distance from
hypocenter
Leukemia Other cancers*
Distance from Percent Percent
No. of No. of No. of
hypocenter attributable to attributable to
persons deaths deaths
(km) radiation radiation
<1 810 22 100% 128 42%
1-1.5 10,590 79 64% 1,156 18%
1.5-2.0 17,370 36 29% 1,622 4%
2.0-2.5 21,343 39 4% 1,781 0.5%
Because the Life Span Study cohort does not include all survivors (see Question 8), the number of cancer deaths that
may be attributed to radiation among all survivors would be larger than the 428 shown in Table 2.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
87
Radiation isn’t that dangerous – new study based on Soviet weapons program proves.
Inhaling Plutonium dust is half as bad as smoking, irradiating an entire valley killed only
46 people, statistics on radiation are made up
Spiegel, 11/23/2007
Matthias Schulz, “Nuclear Exaggeration: Is Atomic Radiation as Dangerous as We Thought?”
A mounting number of studies are coming to some surprising conclusions about the dangers of nuclear
radiation. It might not be as deadly as is widely believed. The explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (pictured) were devastating. The resulting
radiation illnesses, though, weren't as bad as expected. Wearing mosquito helmets on their heads and radiation dosimeters on their belts, Clemens Woda and his three Russian
colleagues drive past a bored-looking guard leaning nonchalantly against a meter-high fence. The truck moves past a yellow warning sign reading "radioactivity" and into the
restricted zone. Inside, the streets and fields show the effects of years of abandonment and are overgrown with tall reeds. The area hugging the swampy banks of the Techa River has
been unpopulated for decades. The group reaches Metlino, a ghost town that was evacuated in 1956. A weather-beaten grain silo protrudes into the sky. The scientists take soil
samples and, wearing rubber boots, wade through the mud over to a Russian Orthodox church in a depressing state of disrepair. One of them climbs the bell tower, hammers at the
wall and slides a brick into his bag. The brick will be used as evidence. Woda, who works for the GSF Research Center for Health and the Environment, located in the town of
Neuherberg near Munich -- Europe's largest radiation protection institute -- is currently involved in an exciting investigation. As part of the EU's "SOUL" (Southern Urals Radiation
Risk Research) project, Woda and his team are exploring the region where the Soviets once manufactured the explosive material for their first atomic bomb. The Siberian factory was
called Mayak ("beacon"). Workers from the gulags laid railroad track and built a "closed city" for 17,000 people, cooling towers and a radiochemical plant. The first nuclear reactor
went online in 1948 and was soon producing weapons-grade plutonium for Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. The giant weapons laboratory did not appear on any map. A consensus in the
West has been reached about what happened next. Soviet nuclear scientists stand accused of having irradiated the environment and of otherwise poisoning the surrounding area. The
result, it is said, has been thousands of cancer deaths and myriads of deformed children. Indeed, this autumn, Mayak (of which not a single historic photo exists to this day) celebrated
a gruesome anniversary. In the fall of 1957, a tank filled with 80 tons of nuclear waste exploded. According to an eyewitness, a
"strange, bright red fog" rose several thousand meters into the air. "In the winter," says the eyewitness, "I would have terrible headaches and nosebleeds, and I almost went blind."
The consequences of the 1957 nuclear accident in Siberia were "far more serious" than Chernobyl, the German
television network ARD recently reported. "Most of the pupils in my class died of cancer," says Gulchara Ismagilova, who was 11 at the time. But what really happened? That's what
the team of Bavarian physicists have traveled to Siberia to find out, and that's why they are taking soil samples and packing bricks into their bags. They are also looking at other
"The employees there were examined with a dosimeter, sometimes once a week, and required
important pieces of evidence from the secret nuclear complex.
The results of the tests were documented in more than 7,000 health
to provide urine samples," says GSF researcher Peter Jacob.
records encased in gray cardboard folders. "An invaluable archive," says Jacob. There are even kidneys and livers of
workers who died at the site. Preserved in paraffin, they are kept stored next to frozen vials of blood at the Biophysical Institute of Osyorsk. Russian doctors are
also collecting hair samples from those workers still alive today along with teeth that have fallen out. The samples are then sent to Germany; 200 teeth are already on file. Once
the scientists will have radiation profiles for each person who worked at the
analyzed by the GSF's state-of-the-art laboratories,
nuclear plant. The project receives €6.8 million in grant money from the EU. Despite this wealth of material, the task is a difficult one. Mistrust of the operators of Mayak
runs deep. According to environment organization Greenpeace, 272,000 people were harmed at the facility and in the
surrounding area. Even in the town of Muslyumovo, 80 kilometers (50 miles) away, "one in two adults are infertile, and one in three
infants are born with deformities," a Greenpeace report says. As deeply disturbing as these claims are, the tests in no
way bear them out. Indeed, a number of project groups at the GSF center near Munich are doing their best to determine just how many people fell victim to the radiation
pollution at Mayak. Their conclusions? The horrors of Mayak are much less extensive than believed. There is no doubt that the workers at this plant east of the Ural Mountains
performed dangerous work. Enveloped in a permanent atmosphere of fear -- with intelligence agents in black coats constantly hurrying through the hallways -- about 150 men would
lift the warm, spent fuel elements from the reactors and carry them to the radiochemical plant. There, in a long brick building, workers, including many women, sat in a dimly lit
environment and placed the encrusted rods into nitric acid, triggering a process that allowed them to remove the weapons-grade plutonium. While the same work was performed with
Soviet workers were not even given masks to wear. There was nothing to stop
remote-controlled robotic arms in the West, the
plutonium gases from entering their lungs. And yet the amount of health damage sustained by these workers
was astonishingly low. The GSF study has examined 6,293 men who worked at the chemical plant between 1948 and 1972. "So far 301 have died of
lung cancer," says Jacob. "But only 100 cases were caused by radiation. The others were attributed to cigarettes ."
The second large, but as yet unpublished study by the GSF scientists also offers surprisingly low mortality figures. The subjects in this study were farmers who lived downstream
waste material from the plutonium production -- a
from the nuclear reactors, in 41 small towns and villages along the Techa River. From 1949 to 1951,
was simply poured into the river untreated. As a result, highly radioactive elements such as cesium 137
bubbling toxic soup --
and strontium 90 were deposited in the river's sediments. The riverbanks became radioactive. Atomic Dangers or Doomsday Folklore? A report warning of
the dangers was sent to Moscow in 1951. A series of X-ray tests was conducted, and police officers were assigned to guard the river. "We could only see the river through barbed wire
Russian citizens' groups, which are
or from a small wooden bridge," says a former resident. By 1960, 22 villages had been evacuated. From the standpoint of
currently suing for compensation in the courts, these official steps were half-hearted. In their view, the plant management committed " atomic genocide"
against the ethnic Tatars living in the area. But as the analyses show, even this accusation is exaggerated. The US National Cancer Institute
(NCI) studied 29,873 people who lived along the Techa between 1950 and 1960. According to the NCI scientists, only 46 deaths came about
due to radiation exposure. The German researchers now know why the death rate was relatively low. Although the Techa was abused as a nuclear waste dump, the
abuse was not as severe as the rumor-mongers would have us believe. "The Techa farmer most heavily exposed to the radiation received a dose of only 0.45 Gray," explains Jacob. By
The
comparison, a lethal dose of radiation, which causes fever, changes in the composition of the blood, irreparable damage to the body and death within two weeks, is 6 Gray.
findings hardly jive with the popular image of the atom as evil incarnate. Nightmarish scenarios of lingering illness and birth defects
on an apocalyptic scale populate nightmares. In West Germany, the moral and political self-image of an entire generation arose from its battle against radiation, from "no nukes"
protest marches to facing off against police water cannons at the Brokdorf nuclear power plant to sit-ins in front of Castor rail containers of reprocessed nuclear waste.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
88
Radiation won’t kill everyone – lethal does is really high, people rapidly recover from
lower doses, Hiroshima and Nagasaki prove.
Kearny, 87
Cresson H., two degrees in geology at Oxford, Jungle Experiment Officer of the Panama Mobile Force, demolitions expert in the Office
of Strategic Services, research analyst at the Hudson Institute, worked with Herman Kahn on nuclear scenario planning, “Nuclear War
Survival Skills: Updated and Expanded”
The radiation dose that will kill a person varies considerably with different people. A dose of 450 R resulting from
exposure of the whole body to fallout radiation is often said to be the dose that will kill about half the persons receiving it, although most
studies indicate that it would take somewhat less.1 (Note: A number written after a statement refers the reader to a source listed in the
Selected References that follow Appendix D.) Almost all persons confined to expedient shelters after a nuclear attack would be under
stress and without clean surroundings or antibiotics to fight infections. Many also would lack adequate water and food. Under these
unprecedented conditions, perhaps half the persons who received a whole-body dose of 350 R within a few days would die.2
Fortunately, the human body can repair most radiation damage if the daily radiation doses are not too large.
As will be explained in Appendix B, a person who is healthy and has not been exposed in the past two weeks to a
total radiation dose of more than 100 R can receive a dose of 6 R each day for at least two months without
being incapacitated.
Only a very small fraction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki citizens who survived radiation doses some of which were
nearly fatal have suffered serious delayed effects. The reader should realize that to do essential work after a massive nuclear
attack, many survivors must be willing to receive much larger radiation doses than are normally permissible. Otherwise, too many
workers would stay inside shelter too much of the time, and work that would be vital to national recovery could not be done. For
example, if the great majority of truckers were so fearful of receiving even non-incapacitating radiation doses that they would refuse to
transport food, additional millions would die from starvation alone.
Radiation isn’t that big of a deal – it will kill people, but not very many
Kearny, 87
Cresson H., two degrees in geology at Oxford, Jungle Experiment Officer of the Panama Mobile Force, demolitions expert in the Office
of Strategic Services, research analyst at the Hudson Institute, worked with Herman Kahn on nuclear scenario planning, “Nuclear War
Survival Skills: Updated and Expanded”
The large radiation doses that many survivors of a nuclear attack would receive would result in serious long-
term risks of death from cancer, but the lifetime risks from even large wartime radiation doses are not as bad as many
people believe. Significantly, no official U.S. estimates have been made available to the public regarding excess cancer deaths to be
expected if America is subjected to a nuclear attack. However, reliable statistics are available on the numbers of additional fatal cancers
suffered by persons who received large whole-body radiation doses at Hiroshima and in other disasters, and who
lived for months to decades before dying. Dr. John N. Auxier -who for years was a leading health physicist at Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, was one of the American scientists working in Japan with Japanese scientists studying the Hiroshima and Nagasaki
survivors, and currently is working on radiation problems with International Technology Corporation-in 1986 summarized for me the
risk of excess fatal cancers from large whole-body radiation doses: "If 1,000 people each receive a whole-body radiation
dose of 100 rems [or 100 rads, or 100 R], about 10 additional fatal cancers will result." These 10 fatal cancers will be in
addition to about 150 fatal cancers that normally will develop among these 1,000 people during their lifetimes. This risk
is proportional to large doses; thus, if 1,000 people each receive a dose of 200 rems, about 20 additional lethal cancer cases would be
expected. "Rem" is an abbreviation for "roentgen equivalent (in) man." The rem takes into account the biological effects of different
kinds of radiation. For external gamma-ray radiation from fallout, the numerical value of an exposure or dose given in roentgens is
approximately the same as the numerical value given in rems or in rads. The rad is the unit of radiation energy absorption in any material
and applies to all kinds of nuclear radiations. Therefore, for simplicity's sake, this book gives both instrument readings (exposures) and
doses in roentgens (R).
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
89
Chernobyl proves there’s no risk of extinction, environmental effects are empirically denied
Smith, 2002 Quentin, Western Michigan University, Review Essay of John Leslie's The End of the World (London: Routledge,
1996), pp. vii + 310. http://www.qsmithwmu.com/leslie_end_of_time.htm
I shall first discuss the most pertinent evidence we have about deaths from radiation. The evidence of the Chernoyble disaster have shown the
dangers of radiation to have been greatly overestimated by previous studies. The explosion of the nuclear reactor at Chernoyble "was
comparable to a medium-size nuclear strike", which is often defined as a 3,000 megaton war, in terms of radiation released.
(See "Ten Years of the Chernoyble Era", by Yuri Shcherbak, Scientific American, April 1996, p. 45.) This does not include, of course, the immediate heat and blast effects of a bomb,
but that is not the relevant issue here, which is the long term radiation effects. "The destroyed reactor liberated hundreds of times more radiation than was produced by the atomic
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" (Yuri, p. 45). And yet the effects are considerably less than had normally been expected. Even
Greenpeace Organization, which is politically inclined towards the worst case estimates, estimates only 32,000 deaths. (Yuri p. 46). A 1997 documentary
indicated that animals, such as mice, are currently thriving next to the old reactor, contrary to expectations. The
genes of the mice mutated, but the mice adapted and flourished. If there are only 32,000 deaths from long term radiation effects from an
equivalent to a medium-sized nuclear strike of the US upon Russia, then we can effectively dismiss long term radiation as a potential
cause of the extinction of the human species in a nuclear war.
No extinction – radiation dissipates rapidly, long term cancer deaths aren’t enough,
airburst solves
Nyquist, 1999 J.R., May 20, a WorldNetDaily contributing editor and a renowned expert in geopolitics and international
relations, “Is nuclear war survivable?” www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=6341
The cancers and genetic defects caused by global fallout from a nuclear war would only appear over a period of
many decades, and would cause only a small increase in the current rates of cancer and genetic defects. The scientific
evidence clearly shows that global fallout from even the largest nuclear war poses no threat to the survival of
the human species. Nevertheless, the fact that hundreds of thousands or millions of people who would suffer and die from global fallout cannot be ignored. Furthermore,
many more people than this would die from exposure to fallout in the immediate vicinity of nuclear explosions.
Radiation – No Extinction
Global nuclear war wouldn’t cause extinction – fallout wouldn’t poison the environment,
global radiation would quickly dissipate, only isolated hotspots would remain, fallout
shelters solve
Kearny, 87
Cresson H., two degrees in geology at Oxford, Jungle Experiment Officer of the Panama Mobile Force, demolitions expert in the Office of
Strategic Services, research analyst at the Hudson Institute, worked with Herman Kahn on nuclear scenario planning, “Nuclear War Survival
Skills: Updated and Expanded"
An all-out nuclear war between Russia and the United States would be the worst catastrophe in history, a tragedy so huge it
is difficult to comprehend. Even so, it would be far from the end of human life on earth. The dangers from nuclear weapons
have been distorted and exaggerated, for varied reasons. These exaggerations have become demoralizing myths, believed by millions of
Americans.
While working with hundreds of Americans building expedient shelters and life-support equipment, I have found that many people at
first see no sense in talking about details of survival skills. Those who hold exaggerated beliefs about the dangers from nuclear weapons
must first be convinced that nuclear war would not inevitably be the end of them and everything worthwhile. Only after they have begun
to question the truth of these myths do they become interested, under normal peacetime conditions, in acquiring nuclear war survival
skills. Therefore, before giving detailed instructions for making and using survival equipment, we will examine the most harmful of the
myths about nuclear war dangers, along with some of the grim facts.
° Myth: Fallout radiation from a nuclear war would poison the air and all parts of the environment. It would
kill everyone. (This is the demoralizing message of On the Beach and many similar pseudoscientific books and articles.)
° Facts: When a nuclear weapon explodes near enough to the ground for its fireball to touch the ground, it forms a crater . (See Fig.
1.1.)
Many thousands of tons of earth from the crater of a large explosion are pulverized into trillions of particles. These particles are
contaminated by radioactive atoms produced by the nuclear explosion. Thousands of tons of the particles are carried up into a
mushroom-shaped cloud, miles above the earth. These radioactive particles then fall out of the mushroom cloud, or out of the dispersing
cloud of particles blown by the winds thus becoming fallout.
Each contaminated particle continuously gives off invisible radiation, much like a tiny X-ray machine while in the mushroom cloud,
while descending, and after having fallen to earth. The descending radioactive particles are carried by the winds like the sand and dust
particles of a miles-thick sandstorm cloud except that they usually are blown at lower speeds and in many areas the particles are so far
apart that no cloud is seen. The largest, heaviest fallout particles reach the ground first, in locations close to the explosion. Many smaller
particles are carried by the winds for tens to thousands of miles before falling to earth. At any one place where fallout from a single
explosion is being deposited on the ground in concentrations high enough to require the use of shelters, deposition will be completed
within a few hours.
The smallest fallout particles those tiny enough to be inhaled into a person's lungs are invisible to the naked
eye. These tiny particles would fall so slowly from the four-mile or greater heights to which they would be injected by
currently deployed Soviet warheads that most would remain airborne for weeks to years before reaching the ground.
By that time their extremely wide dispersal and radioactive decay would make them much less dangerous. Only
where such tiny particles are promptly brought to earth by rain- outs or snow-outs in scattered " hot spots," and
later dried and blown about by the winds, would these invisible particles constitute a long-term and relatively minor
post-attack danger. The air in properly designed fallout shelters, even those without air filters, is free of
radioactive particles and safe to breathe except in a few' rare environments as will be explained later. Fortunately for all living
things, the danger from fallout radiation lessens with time. The radioactive decay, as this lessening is called, is rapid
at first, then gets slower and slower. The dose rate (the amount of radiation received per hour) decreases accordingly. Figure 1.2
illustrates the rapidity of the decay of radiation from fallout during the first two days after the nuclear explosion that produced it. R
stands for roentgen, a measurement unit often used to measure exposure to gamma rays and X rays. Fallout meters called dosimeters
measure the dose received by recording the number of R. Fallout meters called survey meters, or dose-rate meters, measure the dose rate
by recording the number of R being received per hour at the time of measurement. Notice that it takes about seven times as long for the
dose rate to decay from 1000 roentgens per hour (1000 R/hr) to 10 R/hr (48 hours) as to decay from 1000 R/hr to 100 R/hr (7 hours).
(Only in high-fallout areas would the dose rate 1 hour after the explosion be as high as 1000 roentgens per hour.) If the dose rate 1
hour after an explosion is 1000 [Roentgens per hour] R/hr, it would take about 2 weeks for the dose rate to be
reduced to 1 R/hr solely as a result of radioactive decay. Weathering effects will reduce the dose rate further ,' for
example, rain can wash fallout particles from plants and houses to lower positions on or closer to the ground. Surrounding objects
would reduce the radiation dose from these low-lying particles. Figure 1.2 also illustrates the fact that at a typical
location where a given amount of fallout from an explosion is deposited later than 1 hour after the explosion, the highest dose rate and
the total dose received at that location are less than at a location where the same amount of fallout is deposited 1 hour after the
explosion. The longer fallout particles have been airborne before reaching the ground, the less dangerous is their radiation. Within two
weeks after an attack the occupants of most shelters could safely stop using them, or could work outside the shelters
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
93
for an increasing number of hours each day. Exceptions
would be in areas of extremely heavy fallout such as might
occur downwind from important targets attacked with many weapons, especially missile sites and very large cities. To
know when to come out safely, occupants either would need a reliable fallout meter to measure the changing radiation dangers, or must
receive information based on measurements made nearby with a reliable instrument.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
94
Radiation – Environment
Radiation creates permanent wildlife zones with animals that humans can’t eat – perfect
for conservation
BBC, April 20, 2006, “Wildlife defies Chernobyl radiation”
The exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power station is teeming with life. As humans were evacuated
from the area 20 years ago, animals moved in. Existing populations multiplied and species not seen for decades, such
as the lynx and eagle owl, began to return. There are even tantalising footprints of a bear, an animal that has not trodden this
part of Ukraine for centuries. "Animals don't seem to sense radiation and will occupy an area regardless of the
radiation condition," says radioecologist Sergey Gaschak. "A lot of birds are nesting inside the sarcophagus," he adds, referring to the
steel and concrete shield erected over the reactor that exploded in 1986. "Starlings, pigeons, swallows, redstart - I saw
nests, and I found eggs." There may be plutonium in the zone, but there is no herbicide or pesticide, no
industry, no traffic, and marshlands are no longer being drained. There is nothing to disturb the wild boar -
said to have multiplied eightfold between 1986 and 1988 - except its similarly resurgent predator, the wolf. Inedible The
picture was not quite so rosy in the first weeks and months after of the disaster, when radiation levels were much, much higher. Four
square kilometers of pine forest in the immediate vicinity of the reactor went ginger brown and died, earning the name of the Red Forest.
Some animals in the worst-hit areas also died or stopped reproducing. Mice embryos simply dissolved, while horses left on an island
6km from the power plant died when their thyroid glands disintegrated. Cattle on the same island were stunted due to thyroid damage,
but the next generation were found to be surprisingly normal. Now it's typical for animals to be radioactive - too
radioactive for humans to eat safely - but otherwise healthy.
This outweighs – we should irradiate the rainforest, then we’d stop logging
BBC, April 20, 2006, “Wildlife defies Chernobyl radiation”
But she too argues that the benefits to wildlife of removing people from the zone, have far outweighed any harm
from radiation. In her book she quotes the British scientist and environmentalist James Lovelock, who wrote approvingly in the
Daily Telegraph in 2001 of the "unscheduled appearance" of wildlife at Chernobyl. He went on: "I have wondered if the small
volumes of nuclear waste from power production should be stored in tropical forests and other habitats in
need of a reliable guardian against their destruction by greedy developers". A large part of the Chernobyl
zone within Belarus has already officially been turned into a nature reserve.
They’ll say Chernobyl was an isolated incident, which allowed surrounding species to fill
in. False – local wildlife adapted to radiation, new comers get sick
BBC, April 20, 2006, “Wildlife defies Chernobyl radiation”
But there are signs that these unfortunate creatures can adapt to their circumstances . Sergey Gaschak has experimented on
mice in the Red Forest, parts of which are slowly growing back, albeit with stunted and misshapen trees. "We marked animals then
recaptured them again much later," he says. "And we found they lived as long as animals in relatively clean areas ." The
next step was to take these other mice and put them in an enclosure in the Red Forest. "They felt not very
well," Sergey says. "The distinction between the local and newcomer animals was very evident."
No crazy mutations
BBC, April 20, 2006, “Wildlife defies Chernobyl radiation”
In all his research, Sergey has only found one mouse with cancer-like symptoms.
He has found ample evidence of DNA mutations, but nothing that affected the animals' physiology or
reproductive ability.
"Nothing with two heads," he says.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
95
Red forest around Chernobyl proves wildlife rebounds – even if there are negative effects,
radiation scares away humans which are worse
National Geographic, April 26, 2006
“Despite Mutations, Chernobyl Wildlife Is Thriving”
The effects of the Chernobyl catastrophe are still being felt today—whole towns lie abandoned, and cancer rates in people living close to
the affected areas are abnormally high. But it turns out that the radioactive cloud may have a silver lining. Recent studies
suggest that the 19-mile (30-kilometer) "exclusion zone" set up around the reactor has turned into a wildlife
haven. Roe deer bounce though the deserted houses while bats roost in the rafters (related photos: inside today's Chernobyl). Plants
and trees have sprung back to life, and rare species, such as lynx, Przewalski's horses, and eagle owls, are
thriving where most humans fear to tread. From Red to Green The situation is a far cry from the way things
looked just after the accident. Initially many animals died from the huge doses of radiation they received. The red color of withered
pine needles earned one large area near the reactor the name Red Forest. "Now it is not the Red Forest but a real
green forest, due to [growing] birch trees," said Sergey Gaschak from the International Radioecology Laboratory in Kiev, Ukraine.
And in the towns where humans have moved out, plants and animals seem to have moved in. "Wild boar like to live in former villages,
and I have found many birds' nests in the buildings," Gaschak said. Even the site of the explosion seems to be bursting
with life. "I met a hare in the sarcophagus area, and birds nest there," said Gaschak, referring to the concrete and steel shell that
encases the still smoldering reactor. But while wildlife seems to be proliferating in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, not everyone is
convinced that these plants and animals are healthy. Anders Moller from the University of Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, France, and
Tim Mousseau from the University of South Carolina (USC) in Columbia have been studying Chernobyl's bird populations. Mousseau is
a National Geographic Society grantee. (National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society.) Moller and Mousseau
have shown that certain species in the area have a higher rate of genetic abnormalities than normal. "We find an elevated frequency of
partial albinism in barn swallows, meaning they have tufts of white feathers," Mousseau said. Late last year Moller and Mousseau
published a paper in the Journal of Animal Ecology showing that reproductive rates and annual survival rates are much lower in the
Chernobyl birds than in control populations. "In Italy around 40 percent of the barn swallows return each year, whereas the annual
survival rate is 15 percent or less for Chernobyl," Mousseau said. Moller and Mousseau think that migratory species, such as the barn
swallow, are particularly vulnerable to radioactive contaminants, because they arrive in the area exhausted and with depleted reserves of
protective antioxidants due to their arduous journey. The scientists are also concerned that the mutated birds will pass on their abnormal
genes to the global population. "In the worst case scenario these genetic mutations will spread out, and the species as a whole may
experience enhanced levels of mutation," Mousseau said. "Great Irony" Mutation isn't the only adverse effect of the radiation. Working
in the Red Forest area, James Morris, a USC biologist, has observed some trees with very strange twisted shapes. The radiation, he says,
is confusing the hormone signal that the trees use to determine which direction to grow. "These trees are having a terrible time knowing
which way is up," Morris said. Gaschak, the Kiev ecologist, believes such radiation effects will diminish over time. He is
celebrating the way that Chernobyl has burst into life and hopes that the area will become a national park one
day. But Mousseau is less optimistic. "One of the great ironies of this particular tragedy is that many animals are
doing considerably better than when the humans were there," he said.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
96
Insects Offense
Flies and other insects are more resistant to radiation than mammals, and
*Multiplication of pests* could be expected.
would have abundant food supply in the many human and animal corpses. Their rate of reproduction is
rapid. Rats, mice, domestic and other small mammals might be less exposed to blast and radiation, and would have the same abundant
food supply.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
98
Insect U Extension
These cards are out of context – the water intakes of nuclear reactors kill fish, not radiation
Henderson, 4/22/08
Dr. Peter, environmental researcher, www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/pages/item.php?news=1661
Sir,
Current decisions on energy generation and use will have great and long lasting impacts on the future well being of man and other life.
To make the wisest choices we must carefully muster the facts and generate open debate of the options. While the article in yesterday’s
Times on the effects on fish of nuclear power station cooling water systems headlined ‘Nuclear plants sucking the sea life from British
waters’ certainly stimulated debate, it did a disservice in being factually misleading.
First, as I pointed out before the article was printed, it is incorrect that one of the main killers of fish and plankton
passing through the cooling water circuits is radiation. This error may be related to the incorrect claim that
the cooling water is used to cool the reactors. It is used to condense the steam passing through the turbines, as
is also the case in coal, gas or oil-fired generating stations. The assertion that radiation was one of the ‘main killers’ was
presumably to make valid concerns about the destruction of aquatic life by once-through cooling water
systems a nuclear generation issue, which it is not.
The key environmental issue for power stations sited on estuarine and marine sites is the number of organisms that are
sucked through the condenser cooling water circuits and returned to sea. We know that the number of fish eggs and larvae
sucked through these systems in Northern Europe is likely to be in the order of billions per year, a number that is truly colossal and
almost incomprehensible. However, we must get a handle on the ecological meaning of this number and this requires more research and
consideration of the options.
The article left the reader with the impression that destruction of large amounts of aquatic life is an inevitable consequence of nuclear
power station operation. This is incorrect, as many engineering solutions are available. For example, cooling water
intakes and outfalls can be better designed and located to minimise impacts, they can be fitted with fish exclusion devices, we
can use cooling towers or dry cooling to reduce cooling water volume. If we take care with our facts, an informed debate on the
environmental merits and costs of the various options can take place, and I remain confident that we will find the optimum solution.
Dr Peter Henderson
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
100
Oceans Frontline
1 No internal link – they assume we would be actively targeting the oceans – there is
no military incentive and nukes would be targeted at strategic military locations and
high population centers
2. The ocean can survive nuclear war
IHT 8 (International Herald Tribune, http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/15/asia/bikini.php)
CANBERRA: Coral is again flourishing in the crater left by the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated by the
United States, 54 years after the blast on Bikini Atoll, marine scientists said Tuesday. A team of research divers visited Bravo crater,
ground zero for the test of a thermonuclear weapon in the Marshall Islands on March 1, 1954, and found large numbers of fish and coral
growing, although some species appeared to be locally extinct. "I didn't know what to expect, some kind of moonscape perhaps, but it
was incredible," Zoe Richards, from Australia's James Cook University, said about the team's trip to the atoll in the South Pacific. " We
saw communities not too far from any coral reef, with plenty of fish, corals and action going on, some really striking
individual colonies," she said. The 15-megaton hydrogen bomb was 1,000 times more powerful than the
weapon that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, and it vaporized islands with temperatures hitting 55,000 degrees Celsius, or
about 99,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The Bikini blast shook islands as far away as 200 kilometers, or 125 miles.
The government's unwillingness to prepare a good fallback position in the face of mounting difficulties seems like sheer folly. Although
the DOE is not supporting any work on alternative disposal concepts at present, Hollister has not given up. While the ambitious
research program he helped to fashion is on hold, he continues to explore the sub-seabed concept in indirect ways. In 1993, for example,
he spent six weeks in the Norwegian Sea studying a Soviet nuclear sub that had sunk years before in the
middle of an active fishing ground. "The scientific evidence to date points to zero impact if the nuclear
material sits beneath the bottom of the sea or even on the bottom," he says. Other analyses of radioactive spills in the
marine environment have reached a similar conclusion: high-level radioactive materials tend to stay put if
they are placed in or on a clay-rich sea floor, Hollister claims. Vertical migration rates are so slow that it is
"virtually impossible" for measurable concentrations of radioactivity to reach the surface from deep water .
"Many people don't like this conclusion," he adds, "but I've never seen any data in the oceanographic literature that refute it."
4. The clay at the bottom of the ocean absorbs radiation perfectly – no risk
Nadis, 1996
Steven, former staff researcher for the Union of Concerned Scientists, The Atlantic Monthly; October 1996; The Sub-Seabed Solution;
Volume 278, No. 4; pages 28-39. “The Sub-Seabed Solution”
Experiments conducted by this international team of scientists from 1974 to 1986 support Hollister's opinion that the sticky
mud and
clays that blanket the mid-ocean basins may provide the best burial grounds yet proposed for nuclear waste.
These tests suggest that if waste canisters were deposited just ten meters below the ocean floor, any toxic substances that leaked
out would be bound up by the clays for millions of years. Deeper interment, at 100 meters or more, could easily be
managed, providing an even greater margin of safety. "The stuff sticks to the mud and sits there like heavy lead," Hollister
maintains. "Nothing's going to bring it into the biosphere, unless we figure out how to reverse gravity."
B.The ocean dose is five hundred and thirty times lower than that
January 21, 2009
Radioactive Contamination: Nuclear Fallout
After "Bravo", it was discovered that fallout landing on the ocean disperses in the top water layer (above the
thermocline at 100 m depth), and the land equivalent dose rate can be calculated by multiplying the ocean dose rate
at two days after burst by a factor of about 530. In other 1954 tests, including "Yankee" and "Nectar," hotspots were mapped
out by ships with submersible probes, and similar hotspots occurred in 1956 tests such as "Zuni" and "Tewa"
[http://worf.eh.doe.gov/data/ihp1c/0881_a.pdf] However, the major U.S. 'DELFIC' (Defence Land Fallout Interpretive Code)
computer calculations use the natural size distributions of particles in soil instead of the afterwind sweep-up spectrum, and this results in
more straightforward fallout patterns lacking the downwind hotspot.
6. Climactic effects of nuclear winter vary by geography – coasts are almost entirely
unaffected
Thompson and Schneider, 1986 Starley L, atmospheric scientist and climate theorist at the
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Stephen H., atmospheric scientist and public policy analyst, is
Deputy Director of the Advanced Study Program at NCAR, Foreign Affairs, “Nuclear Winter Reappraised”
The curves in the figures represent averages over all the land areas in wide latitude zones. At any specific location in the
model, however, the temperatures are considerably more variable. For example, some large areas in the interiors
of the North American and Eurasian continents, particularly in Canada and Siberia, fall below freezing intermittently
in the two cases of larger amounts of smoke. On the other hand, some areas near coasts experience little effect . Thus, it
can be misleading to interpret the curves on the figures without taking into account geographic and weather variability as well. Indeed,
for certain biological impacts it would be sufficient to have only a few hours of temperature below some critical level—e.g., subfreezing
for wheat, or 10-15°C (50-59°F) for rice.^^
7. Even TTAPS doesn’t predict major temperature changes for the ocean
Lyons, 1998 Tom, degree in Physics with Environmental Science, MSc in Space Science
at University College London, engineer for Astrium Ltd, home.freeuk.net/tomlyons/chapter4.htm
The smoke and dust injected into the troposphere, and further into the stratosphere, causes an attenuation in sunlight
and correspondingly a drop in temperature at the surface of the Earth. TTAPS use the vertical optical depth as a
convenient diagnostic of cloud properties to scale atmospheric light levels and temperatures for their various scenarios. It will be
useful here to use optical depth to compare the contributions of dust and soot to the reductions in light levels, but in most cases it will be
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
102
more instructive to consider surface temperatures changes. In the 5000 MT scenario, the initial optical depth is 4, of which 1 is due
to stratospheric dust and 3 to tropospheric smoke. After 2 or 3 months the stratospheric dust begins to dominate the optical effects, as
the soot in the troposphere is mostly rained out. TTAPS predict a minimum land temperature of -23 C after 3 weeks,
with sub-freezing temperatures persisting for several months. Even the smallest drops in land temperatures (5 to 10 C)
can turn summer into winter. Ocean temperatures are unlikely to cool more than 3 C because of their large heat
capacity, but it is likely that there will be large changes in ocean currents, as has occurred on a smaller scale in the Eastern Pacific - El
Niño (Philander, 1983).
8. New estimates of nuclear winter aren’t enough to cause massive drop in sunlight
Seitz ‘7 [Russell is a Visiting Scholar in Harvard University's Center for International Affairs,
published in Nature and Foreign Affairs on the subject of nuclear winter, Jan 5, www.defensetech.org/archives/003108.html]
Hundman's failure to acknowledge that the old and new studies quantitatively
If anything is fatally flawed, it is
overlap in terms of the quantity of black carbon injected into the model atmospheres. In the models , that
parameter is independent of the 'war' scenario whether realistic or absurd. The meltdown I refer to spans not just the
30 plus degree difference between the old results and the new , but the gross difference in the optical depth and the
reduction in sunlight- 'nuclear winter' entered the language as an apt description of the aftermath of a million fold
reduction in sunlight, not one of ten watts per square meter or less.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
103
Thomas D. Luckey, 91
Dept. of Biochemistry, University of Missouri, School of Medicine, Columbia, MO, Radiation Hormesis,
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
104
The Absurdities
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
105
Fallback Position
If everything goes absolutely wrong, 100,000 people would survive. That’s enough
Quentin Smith, Western Michigan University, Review Essay of John Leslie's The End of the World (London: Routledge, 1996),
pp. vii + 310. 2002 http://www.qsmithwmu.com/leslie_end_of_time.htm
The air circulation patterns of the two hemispheres normally consist of distinct Hadley cells, each of which
has independent wind patterns that circle the cell. One of the Hadley cells normally extends from 30 degrees North to the equator. This is
separate from another cell that extends from the equator to 30 degrees South. The danger from nuclear war is that these two
cells would no longer be separate, but merge into a single cell. The 10, 400 nuclear explosions would warm the
troposphere, due to the absorption of sunlight by the smoke clouds and this would cause a single Hadley cell to extend from
30 degrees North to 30 degrees South, carrying the smoke and dust clouds that block the sunlight and cause
lowering temperatures. Darkness and freezing temperatures would destroy food supplies and other items necessary for survival.
However, this Hadley cell would not extend further than 30 degrees South. The wind patterns would protect
the southernmost parts of the earth from the dust and smoke clouds. The circulation pattern below 30 degrees
south is governed by a distinct Hadley cell that circulates wind from 30 degrees South to 60 degrees South. This covers
the southern halves of Australia, Argentina and Chili, and includes all of New Zealand. This is sufficient for
the human race to survive. Survival may mean that there are left only 100,000 people on New Zealand or southern Chili, people
who are reduced to living and reproducing in Stone Age conditions. Since this is the worst case scenario of an American-
Russian war for which there is any evidence, the evidence indicates that it is highly improbable that a global
nuclear war would cause the extinction of the human species. (100,000 is not a small figure, since there are now
100,000 apes [orangutans, chimpanzees and gorillas] on the earth and they are able to survive despite the
various legal and illegal efforts of humans that threaten their survival.)
Nuclear war would only kill 1000 people in Australia over the next 50 years
Martin, 1982
(Brian, associate professor in Science, Technology and Society at the University of Wollongong, “The Global Health Effects of Nuclear
War,” Current Affairs, December 7, www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/82cab/index.html#explosive)
Shelters Solve
Improvised fallout shelters directly under nuclear blasts were fine
Kearny, 87
Cresson H., two degrees in geology at Oxford, Jungle Experiment Officer of the Panama Mobile Force, demolitions expert in the Office
of Strategic Services, research analyst at the Hudson Institute, worked with Herman Kahn on nuclear scenario planning, “Nuclear War
Survival Skills: Updated and Expanded”
° Myth: In the worst-hit parts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki where all buildings were demolished, everyone was
killed by blast, radiation, or fire. ° Facts: In Nagasaki, some people survived uninjured who were far inside tunnel
shelters built for conventional air raids and located as close as one-third mile from ground zero (the point directly below the
explosion). This was true even though these long, large shelters lacked blast doors and were deep inside the
zone within which all buildings were destroyed. (People far inside long, large, open shelters are better protected than are
those inside small, open shelters.) Many earth-covered family shelters were essentially undamaged in areas where
blast and fire destroyed all buildings. Figure 1.5 shows a typical earth covered, backyard family shelter with a crude wooden
frame. This shelter was essentially undamaged, although less than 100 yards from ground zero at Nagasaki.4 The calculated maximum
overpressure (pressure above the normal air pressure) was about 65 pounds per square inch (65 psi). Persons inside so small a shelter
without a blast doorwould have been killed by blast pressure at this distance from the explosion. However, in a recent blast test,5 an
earth-covered, expedient Small-Pole Shelter equipped with blast doors was undamaged at 53 psi. The pressure rise inside was slight not
even enough to have damaged occupants' eardrums. If poles are available, field tests have indicated that many families can build such
shelters in a few days. The great life-saving potential of blast-protective shelters has been proven in war and
confirmed by blast tests and calculations. For example, the area in which the air bursting of a 1-megaton weapon would wreck
a 50-psi shelter with blast doors in about 2.7 square miles. Within this roughly circular area, practically all them occupants of wrecked
shelters would be killed by blast, carbon monoxide from fires, or radiation. The same blast effects would kill most people who were
using basements affording 5 psi protection, over an area of about 58 square miles.6
Some radiation will penetrate the shelter, but not a lethal amount
Kearny, 87
Cresson H., two degrees in geology at Oxford, Jungle Experiment Officer of the Panama Mobile Force, demolitions expert in the Office
of Strategic Services, research analyst at the Hudson Institute, worked with Herman Kahn on nuclear scenario planning, “Nuclear War
Survival Skills: Updated and Expanded”
° Myth: Fallout radiation penetrates everything; there is no escaping its deadly effects. ° Facts: Some gamma
radiation from fallout will penetrate the shielding materials of even an excellent shelter and reach its occupants.
However, the radiation dose that the occupants of an excellent shelter would receive while inside this shelter can
be reduced to a dose smaller than the average American receives during his lifetime from X rays and other
radiation exposures normal in America today. The design features of such a shelter include the use of a sufficient thickness of earth or
other heavy shielding material. Gamma rays are like X rays, but more penetrating. Figure 1.3 shows how rapidly gamma rays are
reduced in number (but not in their ability to penetrate) by layers of packed earth. Each of the layers shown is one halving-thickness of
packed earth- about 3.6 inches (9 centimeters).3 A halving- thickness is the thickness of a material which reduces by half the dose of
radiation that passes through it.
If the fireball of the weapon touches the ground, the blast is defined as a `ground burst'. In a ground burst, rock, soil, and other material
in the area is vaporized and taken into the cloud. This debris is then uniformly fused with fission products and radioactive residues and
becomes radioactive itself. It then falls to the ground as `radioactive fallout'. If the fire ball from the explosion does not reach the ground,
the blast is said to be an `air burst'. Radiation (except for initial radiation) does not become a factor in an air burst. Gamma
rays from the fallout can easily be attenuated by incorporating a 90 degree turn in the small diameter
entrance. Entrances should not exceed 48 inches in diameter and the total length of the vertical and horizontal run should be no less
than 25 feet. Approximately 90% of the gamma radiation is directed into the ground from the vertical portion of the entrance. The other
10% is almost entirely attenuated by the horizontal portion of the entrance. We recommend that the horizontal portion of the entrance be
about 10 feet long and that it penetrate the shelter body on the side or on the end plate. The threat of exposure to initial nuclear
radiation is confined to a radius of about one and one half miles from ground zero and would prove fatal to
any unsheltered individuals. However, in hardened blast and radiation shelters, such as those that are being
built by Utah Shelter Systems, people could survive all nuclear weapons effects, including initial radiation,
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
107
within three quarter mile of ground zero. Shelters which may be within the initial radiation zone, must have at least 8 ft. of dirt
cover and the entrances must be configured with the proper shielding and geometry.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
108
If staying put is best, you'll be wishing you had that object of 1960s (and subsequent) ridicule: a fallout shelter. Sadly, the United States
has never taken civil defense seriously. Other countries have and do. Switzerland, for example, has shelter space
for the entire population. Israel quietly requires intense preparations. Only now are we realizing how much
effort and treasure the Soviet Union (no strangers to devastation on their own soil) spent on their effort. You might
consider building a shelter now, or going in with friends and neighbors. You'll need to stock it with the usual provisions, plus iodide pills
to prevent thyroid damage from radioactive iodine.
Russian military theory regards nuclear war as highly destructive, but nonetheless winnable. Russian generals do
not exaggerate the effects of mass destruction weapons. Although nuclear war would be unprecedented in its death-
dealing potential, Russian strategists believe that a well-prepared system of tunnels and underground bunkers
could save many millions of lives. That is why Russia has built a comprehensive shelter system for its urban
populace.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
109
The warrant of this evidence is that extinction risks require more consideration – if that’s
true, then environment based extinction risks also should get the same consideration. If we
win D on nuclear war causing extinction, vote aff regardless of if we solve the case.
Turn – if you don’t vote aff, we’ll summon a Lake Troll that will eat you.
These are powerful words, with an obvious utility in debates where nuclear risks are being assessed. Of course one must be careful not
to misuse Schell's argument. He cannot be saying that any risk a policy decision might culminate in eventual
nuclear usage has to weighted as a 100% certain extinction risk. Such a claim is on the face of it
unsustainable since any and every conceivable action might entail an infinitesimally small heightening of
nuclear risk. To treat Schell as implying this would produce genuine decisional paralysis ("if I put my left shoe on first, then there's a
0.0000000.1% chance of nuclear war, which is infinite; but if I put my right shoe on first..."). Schell implicitly recognizes this by
acknowledging that from his argument "it does not follow that any action is permitted as long as it serves the end of preventing
extinction" (130). And in a literal mathematical sense Schell's formulation seems to provide little guidance when it
comes to comparing relative nuclear risks (since it implies that a 1% chance of nuclear war should count as
infinitely large as a 99% chance, when surely we would prefer the former to the latter).
Setiz – apocalyptic predictions require a higher burden of proof – that’s Sagan’s own
argument. It’s also intuitively true – Sagan’s predictions are absurd
Crichton, January 17, 2003 Michael, Harvard degree in anthropology, MD from Harvard medical, speech at California Institute
of Technology, Pasadena, CA, “Aliens cause Global Warming”
According to Sagan and his co-workers, even a limited 5,000 megaton nuclear exchange would cause a global
temperature drop of more than 35 degrees Centigrade, and this change would last for three months. The greatest volcanic
eruptions that we know of changed world temperatures somewhere between .5 and 2 degrees Centigrade. Ice ages
changed global temperatures by 10 degrees. Here we have an estimated change three times greater than any
ice age. One might expect it to be the subject of some dispute.
Uncertainty means they’ve failed the burden of proof…and that they’re Nazis
Crichton, January 17, 2003 Michael, Harvard degree in anthropology, MD from Harvard medical, speech at California Institute
of Technology, Pasadena, CA, “Aliens cause Global Warming”
Teller said, "While it is generally recognized that details are still uncertain and deserve much more study, Dr. Sagan nevertheless has
taken the position that the whole scenario is so robust that there can be little doubt about its main conclusions." Yet for most people,
the fact that nuclear winter was a scenario riddled with uncertainties did not seem to be relevant. I say it is
hugely relevant. Once you abandon strict adherence to what science tells us, once you start arranging the truth in a press
conference, then anything is possible. In one context, maybe you will get some mobilization against nuclear war.
But in another context, you get Lysenkoism. In another, you get Nazi euthanasia. The danger is always there, if you
subvert science to political ends. That is why it is so important for the future of science that the line between what science can
say with certainty, and what it cannot, be drawn clearly-and defended.
Nuclear War is so speculative that evaluating things on a worst case basis skews the results
subliminally
Setiz, 1986 Russell, Visiting Scholar in Harvard University's Center for International Affairs, “The Melting of 'Nuclear Winter'”
Nuclear Winter never existed outside of a computer, except as a painting commissioned by a PR firm. Instead of an earth with
continents and oceans, the TTAPS model postulated a featureless, bone-dry billiard ball. Instead of nights and days, it postulated 24-
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
110
hour sunlight at one- third strength. Instead of realistic smoke emissions, a 10-mile-thick soot cloud magically materialized, creating an
alien sky as black as the ink you are reading. The model dealt with such complications as geography, winds, sunrise, sunset and patchy
clouds in a stunningly elegant manner – they were ignored. When later computer models incorporated these elements, the flat black sky
of TTAPS fell apart into a pale and broken shadow that traveled less far and dissipated more quickly. The TTAPS model entailed
a long series of conjectures: if this much smoke goes up, if it is this dense, if it moves like this, and so on.
The improbability of a string of 40 such coin tosses coming up heads approaches that of a pat royal flush. Yet
it was represented as a "sophisticated one- dimensional model" -- a usage that is oxymoronic, unless applied to Twiggy. To the
limitations of the software were added those of the data. It was an unknown and very complex topic, hard data was scant,
so guesstimates prevailed. Not only were these educated guesses rampant throughout the process, but it was
deemed prudent, given the gravity of the subject, to lean toward the worst-case end of the spectrum for dozens of the
numbers involved. Political considerations subliminally skewed the model away from natural history, while seeming to
make the expression "nuclear freeze" a part of it. "The question of peer review is essential. That is why we have delayed so long in the
publication of these dire results," said Carl Sagan in late 1983.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
111
Overkill
Probability of synergy effects causing extinction is so low that you shouldn’t consider it
Thompson and Schneider, 1986
Starley L, atmospheric scientist and climate theorist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Stephen H., atmospheric
scientist and public policy analyst, is Deputy Director of the Advanced Study Program at NCAR, Foreign Affairs, “Nuclear Winter
Reappraised”
The interaction between a failure of the Asian summer monsoon and the disruption of international trade in food, for example, would be
a potent prescription for mass starvation on the Indian subcontinent. Many other interactions can be speculated upon, such as
those of radiation-induced depression of the human immune system, disruption of medical services and epidemics of contagious
diseases; such synergisms deserve the serious study that might allow us to draw less speculative conclusions. Therefore it is still
quite plausible that climatic disturbances, radioactive fallout, ozone depletions and the interruption of basic
societal services, when taken together, could threaten more people globally than would the direct effects of explosions
in a large nuclear war. In assessments of the severity of the nuclear winter problem, the long-term trend in
temperature estimates has been directed away from the most severe effects . This trend has not been a smooth one, however.
Researchers have made refinements and enhancements to the theory that have made the climatic effects both more and less severe. This was expected because original estimates of
uncertain effects tried to incorporate "middle of the road" assumptions. Thus, researchers knew that the tentative conclusions about nuclear winter would change with time depending
Despite the potential for future changes in
on the latest refinements. This is, of course, a legitimate and normal process of scientific assessment .
conclusions, we think it is unlikely that some unforeseen effect would either bring the estimates of nuclear
winter back to the range of total climatic catastrophe or eliminate environmental effects altogether. The cases we have
examined (20, 60 and 180 million tons of smoke) bracket what we believe to be a wide range of probable effective smoke amounts for a
large nuclear war. But it is conceivable that even larger amounts of smoke could be created, although the
probability now seems small. Similarly, less than 20 million tons of smoke could be produced, at some low probability, even after
a large war in which many cities were struck. In the absence of near-infinite consequences (e.g., human extinction) we
believe it is unwise to base expensive policy decisions (e.g., SDi) solely on either of these very low probability
cases. ^'
Chalko
Highly unlikely to be worthy of consideration outside of the "lunatic fringe". The author, Tom J. Chalko, is on the staff of the
dynamics and Vibration group in the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, of the University of
Melbourne. I assume that his background is in mechanical engineering. However, he is also billed as "Head of the Geophysics
Division" of "Scientific Engineering Research P/L, which certainly appears to belong to Chalko in its entirety, and may be
nothing more than an extension of himself. It is significant that his position as a "geophysicist" appears to be one invented by
himself. He is also evidently the founder of "Thiaoouba Prophecy and The Freedom of Choice", which lists among Chalko's
accomplishments "The Amazing bioresonant Chakra Shirt. You can also explore the mysteries of self healing, astral
travel and levitation. It would appear that Chalko may be a less than totally reliable source of scientific arguments over the
explodeability of the Earth. But, of course, we are obliged to consider the argument as well as the source. In this case,
the webpage is only a summary or introduction. So I followed the link at the bottom and downloaded the paper in PDF format. The
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
113
alleged justification is given as a mathematical argument, so that much of the paper will not be accessible to those who don't at least
recognize the basics of applied calculus. As one might expect, it's a bogus argument. The premise is an alleged proof that there is a
minimum possible size for the central solid core of the Earth, but it's based on the false premise that the core must remain
at all times in equilibrium at the center. Furthermore, the argument that the central equilibrium is unstable is
based on the false condition that the pressure gradient and gravitational forces act in opposition, but they do
not. A solid core displaced from the center sees only restoring forces, and thus cannot be forced from its position as Chalko tries to
show. And, if that weren't enough, the viscosity of the liquid outer core and relatively sold mantle are ignored, which is a fatal flaw in
any analysis of the dynamic behavior of the core. And, if even that were not enough, there is no thermodynamic analysis
at all. How can one argue that the Earth's interior will "overheat" if one does not even consider basic
thermodynamics? The sun irradiates the Earth's surface to the tune of roughly 1370 Watts per square meter (W/m^2). Climate
related changes in radiative forcing are on the order of 1 W/m^2. The average outward geothermal flux is about 0.06 W/m^2. It is hard to
see how a change in radiative forcing at the surface, on the order of 1/1000 would seriously affect the already miniscule heat flow from
the Earth. In any case, a proper treatment of the thermal conditions at the surface, and throughout the Earth is required to make definitive
statements, but there is no attempt at such in Chalko's paper. The other issue is whether or not a planet can "explode". As is the case
for any explosion, one must demonstrate the presence of an energy source, and a process that can generate energy very
much faster than it can be dissipated through radiative of hydrodynamic means. No such source has ever been identified for
the Earth or any other planet. There are vague references to radioactive material and fission explosions in various "exploding planet"
hypotheses (such as Tom van Flandern's), and evidently Chalko makes the same vague argument (or shall we call it "hope"?). It is just
"handwaving", as we say in the science biz.
Geophysical studies have revealed that the Earth has several distinct layers. Each of these layers has its own properties. The
outermost layer of the Earth is the crust. This comprises the continents and ocean basins. The crust has a variable thickness, being 35-70
km thick in the continents and 5-10 km thick in the ocean basins. The crust is composed mainly of alumino-silicates. The next
layer is the mantle, which is composed mainly of ferro-magnesium silicates . It is about 2900 km thick, and is separated into
the upper and lower mantle. This is where most of the internal heat of the Earth is located. Large convective cells in the mantle
circulate heat and may drive plate tectonic processes. The last layer is the core, which is separated into the liquid
outer core and the solid inner core. The outer core is 2300 km thick and the inner core is 1200 km thick. The outer
core is composed mainly of a nickel-iron alloy, while the inner core is almost entirely composed of iron . Earth's
magnetic field is believed to be controlled by the liquid outer core.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
114
Chalko Extension
They should lose speaker points for extending this argument. Extend Thompson 1 -
Chalko’s not a scientist, he believes in astral projection, his argument is based on a false
premise, doesn’t include any thermodynamic analysis and doesn’t demonstrate a sufficient
source of energy to detonate the planet.
Extend Glascoe 98 – all real scientists and most middle schoolers know that the earth’s core
isn’t radioactive, it’s iron.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
115
Genetic Diversity
This argument assumes they win most of their other arguments – if we win defense, most of
humanity won’t be wiped out.
Martin 82 Brian, physicist whose research interests include stratospheric modeling, research associate in
the Dept. of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Australian National University, and a member of SANA,
“Critique of nuclear extinction,” Published in Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 19, No. 4, 1982, pp. 287-300,
www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/82jpr.html
(f) Synergistic and unpredicted effects. The interaction of different effects, such as weakened resistance to disease due to high
radiation exposure or to shortages of food, could well increase the death toll significantly. These consequences would
mostly be confined to heavily bombed areas . Finally, there is the possibility of effects currently dismissed or not predicted
leading to many more deaths from nuclear war.[11]
To summarise the above points, a major global nuclear war in which population centres in the US, Soviet Union, Europe and
China ware targeted, with no effective civil defence measures taken, could kill directly perhaps 400 to 450
million people. Induced effects, in particular starvation or epidemics following agricultural failure or economic breakdown,
might add up to several hundred million deaths to the total, though this is most uncertain. Such an eventuality would be a
catastrophe of enormous proportions, but it is far from extinction. Even in the most extreme case there would remain
alive some 4000 million people, about nine-tenths of the world's population, most of them unaffected physically by
the nuclear war. The following areas would be relatively unscathed, unless nuclear attacks were made in these regions:
South and Central America, Africa, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, Australasia, Oceania and
large parts of China. Even in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere where most of the nuclear weapons would be exploded,
areas upwind of nuclear attacks would remain free of heavy radioactive contamination, such as Portugal, Ireland
and British Columbia.
If everything goes absolutely wrong, 100,000 people would survive, enough to prevent
extinction
Quentin Smith, Western Michigan University, Review Essay of John Leslie's The End of the World (London: Routledge, 1996), pp.
vii + 310. 2002 www.qsmithwmu.com/leslie_end_of_time.htm
The air circulation patterns of the two hemispheres normally consist of distinct Hadley cells, each of which
has independent wind patterns that circle the cell. One of the Hadley cells normally extends from 30 degrees North to the equator. This is
separate from another cell that extends from the equator to 30 degrees South. The danger from nuclear war is that these two
cells would no longer be separate, but merge into a single cell. The 10, 400 nuclear explosions would warm the troposphere, due to the
absorption of sunlight by the smoke clouds and this would cause a single Hadley cell to extend from 30 degrees North to 30 degrees South, carrying the smoke and dust clouds that
block the sunlight and cause lowering temperatures. Darkness and freezing temperatures would destroy food supplies and other items necessary for survival.
However, this Hadley cell would not extend further than 30 degrees South. The wind patterns would protect
the southernmost parts of the earth from the dust and smoke clouds. The circulation pattern below 30 degrees
south is governed by a distinct Hadley cell that circulates wind from 30 degrees South to 60 degrees South. This covers
the southern halves of Australia, Argentina and Chili, and includes all of New Zealand. This is sufficient for
the human race to survive. Survival may mean that there are left only 100,000 people on New Zealand or southern Chili, people
who are reduced to living and reproducing in Stone Age conditions. Since this is the worst case scenario of an American-
Russian war for which there is any evidence, the evidence indicates that it is highly improbable that a global
nuclear war would cause the extinction of the human species. (100,000 is not a small figure, since there are now
100,000 apes [orangutans, chimpanzees and gorillas] on the earth and they are able to survive despite the
various legal and illegal efforts of humans that threaten their survival.)
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
116
Fires
This is dumb – thermal pulses won’t spread far enough, cloud or smog check, firestorms
are only possible in very specific situations
Kearny, 87
Cresson H., two degrees in geology at Oxford, Jungle Experiment Officer of the Panama Mobile Force, demolitions expert in the Office
of Strategic Services, research analyst at the Hudson Institute, worked with Herman Kahn on nuclear scenario planning, “Nuclear War
Survival Skills: Updated and Expanded”
° Myth: A heavy nuclear attack would set practically everything on fire, causing "firestorms" in cities that
would exhaust the oxygen in the air. All shelter occupants would be killed by the intense heat.
° Facts: On a clear day, thermal pulses (heat radiation that travels at the speed of light) from an air burst can
set fire to easily ignitable materials (such as window curtains, upholstery, dry newspaper, and dry grass) over about as large an
area as is damaged by the blast. It can cause second-degree skin burns to exposed people who are as far as ten miles from
a one-megaton (1 MT) explosion. (See Fig. 1.4.) (A 1-MT nuclear explosion is one that produces the same amount of energy as does
one million tons of TNT.) If the weather is very clear and dry, the area of fire danger could be considerably larger. On a cloudy or
smoggy day, however, particles in the air would absorb and scatter much of the heat radiation, and the area
endangered by heat radiation from the fireball would be less than the area of severe blast damage .
"Firestorms" could occur only when the concentration of combustible structures is very high, as in the very
dense centers of a few old American cities. At rural and suburban building densities, most people in earth-
covered fallout shelters would not have their lives endangered by fires.
Firestorms won’t happen, toxic smoke only effects people in shelters, they’d run out of air a
long time before that
Kearny, 87
Cresson H., two degrees in geology at Oxford, Jungle Experiment Officer of the Panama Mobile Force, demolitions expert in the Office
of Strategic Services, research analyst at the Hudson Institute, worked with Herman Kahn on nuclear scenario planning, “Nuclear War
Survival Skills: Updated and Expanded”
THE FACTS ABOUT FIRE HAZARDS
Firestorms would endanger relatively few' Americans; only the older parts of a few American cities have
buildings close enough together, over a large enough area, to fuel this type of conflagration. Such fires have
not occurred in cities where less than about 30% of a large area was covered with buildings. 19
In the blast area of Hiroshima, a terrifying fire storm that burned almost all buildings within an area of about 4.4
square miles resulted from many fires being ignited almost simultaneously. Many were caused by heat radiation from the fireball. Even
more fires were due to secondary effects of the blast, such as the overturning of stoves. The buildings contained much wood and other
combustible materials. The whole area burned like a tremendous bonfire; strong winds that blew in from all directions replaced the huge
volumes of hot air that rose skyward from the intense fires.
Lack of oxygen is not a hazard to occupants of shelters in or near burning buildings or to those in shelters that are closed
tightly to prevent the entry of smoke or fallout. Carbon monoxide, toxic smoke from fires, or high concentrations of
carbon dioxide from shelter occupants' exhaled breaths would kill occupants before they suffered seriously
from lack of oxygen.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
117
Vital Microbes
This is pure speculation – no evidence, analysis, etc
Quentin Smith, Western Michigan University, Review Essay of John Leslie's The End of the World (London: Routledge, 1996), pp.
vii + 310. 2002 http://www.qsmithwmu.com/leslie_end_of_time.htm
Leslie suggests that the other half would die later due to the effects of radiation (cancers, weakened immune systems that let infectious
diseases run riot and numerous birth defects) and loss of food from the hundreds of millions of tons of smoke and dust that would fill the
air and block the sunlight. The death of microbes upon which human life is dependent is another possibility Leslie
mentions (pp. 26-28), but he refers to Sagan's COSMOS, which mentions this as a mere epistemic possibility,
not as a known probability: "Many microorganisms would be killed; we do not know which ones or how
many, or what the consequences might be. The organisms killed might, for all we know, be at the base of a vast ecological pyramid at
the top of which we totter." (Sagan, p. 322).
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
118
Militarily useful radiological weapons would use local (as opposed to world-wide) contamination, and high
initial intensities for rapid effects. Prolonged contamination is also undesirable . In this light Zn-64 is possibly better
suited to military applications than cobalt, but probably inferior to tantalum or gold. As noted above ordinary "dirty" fusion-fission
bombs have very high initial radiation intensities and must also be considered radiological weapons.
No cobalt or other salted bomb has ever been atmospherically tested, and as far as is publicly known none have ever
been built. In light of the ready availability of fission-fusion-fission bombs, it is unlikely any special-purpose
fallout contamination weapon will ever be developed.
The British did test a bomb that incorporated cobalt as an experimental radiochemical tracer (Antler/Round 1, 14
September 1957). This 1 kt device was exploded at the Tadje site, Maralinga range, Australia. The experiment was regarded as a
failure and not repeated.
Cobalt bombs and other high fallout weapons will not be developed
Sublette, 1998
(Carey, “Nuclear Weapons Frequently Asked Questions,” May 1, http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq1.html#nfaq1.6)
No cobalt or other salted bomb has ever been atmospherically tested, and as far as is publicly known none
have ever been built. In light of the ready availability of fission-fusion-fission bombs, it is unlikely any special-purpose fallout
contamination weapon will ever be developed. The British did test a bomb that incorporated cobalt as an
experimental radiochemical tracer (Antler/Round 1, 14 September 1957). This 1 kt device was exploded at the Tadje
site, Maralinga range, Australia. The experiment was regarded as a failure and not repeated .
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
119
Neutron Bombs
US never even deployed neutron bombs
BBC, July 15, 1999 “Neutron bomb: Why 'clean' is deadly”
By the late 1970s American nuclear scientists had developed the W-70 neutron warhead to be used with the
Lance tactical missile. Used over a battlefield, a one-kilotonne neutron bomb would kill or incapacitate people over an
area twice as large as the lethal zone of a 10 kilotonne standard nuclear weapon - but with a fifth of the blast. In 1978
President Jimmy Carter halted neutron device production as concern grew over its effects on the arms race. But
according to the damning Cox report into China's nuclear espionage, Beijing's agents had stolen neutron bomb secrets
before the decade was out - the first of many warhead designs targeted by the Chinese. While the US says it never tested
a fully working neutron device, officials believe China tested the technology in 1988. Mr Carter's successor, Ronald
Reagan soon reversed the policy and the W-70 warheads resumed production in 1981. But does it work? Only a small
number of neutron warheads were produced and Washington never deployed the weapon alongside its other
nuclear forces in Europe because of the surrounding political controversy. W-70 warheads appear to have been
completely scrapped as part of the arms reductions of 1993.
Israel doesn’t have neutron bombs – they require significant testing, which they haven’t
done. This is all propaganda
Cartage, jan 28 2002
Information technology system providing support to the educational community in Lebanon and the Middle East, “Combined
Fission/Fusion Weapons”
The Soviet Union, China, and France are all known to have developed neutron bomb designs and may have them
in service. A number of reports have claimed that Israel has developed neutron bombs which, though they could be
valuable on an armor battleground like the Golan Heights, are difficult to develop and require significant testing. This
makes it unlikely that Israel has in fact acquired them.
In the meantime, thedeployment of neutron weapons in Europe had become more complex as other players
joined the game. In 1980, France announced that it had tested a neutron device, and in late 1982, it was believed to
have begun production. But in 1986, France announced that it was abandoning the production of neutron weapons
because of internal and external political pressure.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
121
People who for decades have used antibiotics to combat their infections have not produced normal quantities of antibodies, and have
subnormal resistance to many infections. People who have not been dependent on antibiotics have these antibodies. In the aftermath
of a massive nuclear attack, most surviving Americans would be in rural areas: many would need antibiotics.
A large part of their need could be met by the supplies of veterinarian antibiotics kept on livestock and
chicken farms, at feed mills, and in small towns. Many animals are given more antibiotics in their short lives than most Americans
receive in theirs. Hogs, for example, are given antibiotics and or other disease-controlling medicines in their feed
each day. In many farming areas, veterinary antibiotics and other medicines are in larger supply than are
those for people. Realistic preparations to survive an all-out attack should include utilizing these supplies.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
122
Most doctors, hospital facilities, and medical supplies are located in cities. An all-out attack would destroy most of
these modern blessings. Even if medical assistance were nearby, only a few of the survivors confined to
shelters in areas of heavy fallout would be able to get needed medicines or the help of a doctor. For periods ranging
from days to months, most unprepared survivors would be forced to live under medical conditions almost as
primitive as those experienced by the majority of [hu]mankind for all but the past few decades of human
history.
BENIGN NEGLECT
Life without modern medical help would be less painful and hazardous for those survivors who have some practical knowledge of what
should be done or not done under primitive, unsanitary conditions. Information about first aid and hygienic precautions can be obtained
from widely available Red Cross and civil defense booklets and courses. This knowledge, with a stock of basic first aid supplies, would
reduce suffering and prevent many dangerous illnesses. However, first aid instructions do not include advice about what to do for serious
injuries and sicknesses if no doctors or effective medicines are available.
Where There Is No Doctor,32 the excellent self- help handbook ;recommended by Volunteers in Technical Assistance, gives much
information that goes far beyond the scope of first aid. But even this handbook repeatedly recommends getting professional medical help
whenever possible for serious injuries and illnesses.
Fortunately, the human body has remarkable capabilities for healing itself, especially if the injured or sick person
and his companions practice intelligent "benign neglect." Such purposeful non-interference with the body's
recuperative processes was called "masterful inactivity" by Colonel C. Blanchard Henry, M.D., a widely recognized
authority on mass casualty evacuation and treatment. Colonel Henry was one of the first medical officers to visit
Hiroshima and Nagasaki after their destruction and was an experienced analyzer of civil defense preparations in several
countries.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
123
Disease can't kill everyone. There is no chance of a virus spreading to every corner of the
globe and even if it did it wouldn't kill everyone
Quentin Smith, Western Michigan University, Review Essay of John Leslie's The End of the World (London: Routledge, 1996), pp.
vii + 310. 2002 http://www.qsmithwmu.com/leslie_end_of_time.htm
However, as in the case with nuclear war, the odds for complete extinction are exponentially lower than the odds for
massive deaths or near extinction. Wind patterns and water patterns are insufficient to infect every person on
earth and infection would have to be produced by human or animal contagion. This requires that each human
habitat eventually be reached by carriers of the virus. The "worst case" scenario would be, in part, similar to the spread of
the AIDS virus, where humans can travel for up to ten or fifteen years without any visible signs of illness. If we add to this long
incubation period a virus that is as highly contagious as the Spanish Influenza, then we have a worst case scenario. In order to
have
human extinction, we need the added requirement that there are no pockets of human population that are
isolated from outside visitors during the period of contagion, sickness and death. But there are many such
populations, e.g., on various islands in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, however small they be, and these would survive the disease.
All that is needed for survival is, say, an isolated band of 10,000 people or so in the Northern Latitudes who
are self-sufficient in their food supplies and are able to reproduce. Extinction from disease is the most likely threat to
humans over the next few centuries, but the probabilities here are still so low that they are virtually negligible.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
124
The air circulation patterns of the two hemispheres normally consist of distinct Hadley cells, each of which has
independent wind patterns that circle the cell. One of the Hadley cells normally extends from 30 degrees North to the equator. This is
separate from another cell that extends from the equator to 30 degrees South. The danger from nuclear war is that these two
cells would no longer be separate, but merge into a single cell. The 10, 400 nuclear explosions would warm the troposphere,
due to the absorption of sunlight by the smoke clouds and this would cause a single Hadley cell to extend from 30 degrees North to 30
degrees South, carrying the smoke and dust clouds that block the sunlight and cause lowering temperatures. Darkness and freezing
temperatures would destroy food supplies and other items necessary for survival. However, this Hadley cell would not extend further
than 30 degrees South. The wind patterns would protect the southernmost parts of the earth from the dust and
smoke clouds. The circulation pattern below 30 degrees south is governed by a distinct Hadley cell that
circulates wind from 30 degrees South to 60 degrees South. This covers the southern halves of Australia, Argentina and
Chili, and includes all of New Zealand. This is sufficient for the human race to survive. Survival may mean that
there are left only 100,000 people on New Zealand or southern Chili, people who are reduced to living and reproducing in
Stone Age conditions. Since this is the worst case scenario of an American-Russian war for which there is any
evidence, the evidence indicates that it is highly improbable that a global nuclear war would cause the extinction of the human
species. (100,000 is not a small figure, since there are now 100,000 apes [orangutans, chimpanzees and
gorillas] on the earth and they are able to survive despite the various legal and illegal efforts of humans that
threaten their survival.)
For most of our history we survived by hunting and gathering. Typically (there are exceptions) the men hunted and the
women and children gathered. This worked out quite well. The women would bring in a fairly steady amount of food to sustain the
group when the men were not successful in the hunt. This type of existence required mobility and could only sustain a
low population density. Bands of humans would follow migrating animals and move around according to the seasons and the food
supply. A few fortunate groups could get by on fishing year-round and didn't have to move as much. But still, only a small number of
people could be fed. The advantage of small population density was that very few infectious diseases could be
supported. If an infection entered into the population everyone got sick and either died or became immune.
Without "new" hosts to infect, most infections could not be sustained. So, hunter and gatherers were probably quite
healthy and suffered from few infectious diseases. Chronic diseases such as hepatitis may have been maintained. This type of life style is
not without risks however. Wound infections were probably common and death due to the elements (cold, starvation) was the leading
cause of death.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
125
For the vast majority of Americans who would receive radiation doses from a massive attack, the help of
doctors, antibiotics, blood transfusions, etc., would not be of life-or-death importance. Very few of those receiving
acute doses (received within 24 hours) of less than 100 R would become sick, even briefly. All of those exposed to
acute doses between 100 Rand 200 R should recover from radiation effects.6 However, under post-attack conditions
of multiple stresses and privations, some who receive acute radiation doses of 100 R to 200 R may die of infectious diseases because of
their reduced resistance. If total doses this size or even several times larger are received over a period of a few
months in small doses of around 6 R per day, no incapacitating symptoms should result. The human body
usually can repair almost all radiation damage if the daily doses are not too large.
The majority of those with acute doses of less than about 350 R will recover without medical treatment.
Almost all of those receiving acute doses of over 600 R would die within a few weeks, even if they were to
receive treatment in a typical hospital during peacetime. If all doctors and the equipment and drugs needed for heroic treatments
magically were to survive an attack and persons suffering from radiation sickness could reach them relatively
few additional lives could be saved.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
126
No impact – if nuclear war doesn’t cause extinction, then the following wars won’t cause
extinction either.
This argument’s racist - nuclear war would just show the first world what life’s like for
everyone else
Martin, 84
(Brian, physicist whose research interests include stratospheric modeling. He is a research associate in the Dept. of Mathematics, Faculty
of Science, Australian National University, and a member of SANA, “Extinction Politics,” SANA Update,
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/84sana1.html)
There are quite a number of reasons why people may find a belief in extinction from nuclear war to be attractive.[8] Here I will only
briefly comment on a few factors. The first is an implicit Western chauvinism
The effects of global nuclear war would mainly hit the population of the United States, Europe and the Soviet
Union. This is quite unlike the pattern of other major ongoing human disasters of starvation, disease, poverty
and political repression which mainly affect the poor, nonwhite populations of the Third World. The gospel of
nuclear extinction can be seen as a way by which a problem for the rich white Western societies is claimed to
be a problem for all the world.
Symptomatic of this orientation is the belief that, without Western aid and trade, the economies and
populations of the Third World would face disaster. But this is only Western self-centredness . Actually, Third
World populations would in many ways be better off without the West: the pressure to grow cash crops of sugar,
tobacco and so on would be reduced, and we would no longer witness fresh fish being airfreighted from Bangladesh
to Europe.
A related factor linked with nuclear extinctionism is a belief that nuclear war is the most pressing issue facing
humans. I disagree, both morally and politically, with the stance that preventing nuclear war has become the most important social
issue for all humans. Surely, in the Third World, concern over the actuality of massive suffering and millions of
deaths resulting from poverty and exploitation can justifiably take precedence over the possibility of a similar
death toll from nuclear war. Nuclear war may be the greatest threat to the collective lives of those in the rich, white Western
societies but, for the poor, nonwhite Third World peoples, other issues are more pressing
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
127
Aftermath – No Anarchy
This is the typical elitist nonsense – ordinary people are capable of dealing with disasters,
history proves
Kearny, 87
Cresson H., two degrees in geology at Oxford, Jungle Experiment Officer of the Panama Mobile Force, demolitions expert in the Office
of Strategic Services, research analyst at the Hudson Institute, worked with Herman Kahn on nuclear scenario planning, “Nuclear War
Survival Skills: Updated and Expanded”
The US is absurdly well trained and rich – a nuclear war would send us back to the 40’s,
not the Stone Age
Nyquist, 1999
J.R., May 20, a WorldNetDaily contributing editor and a renowned expert in geopolitics and international relations, “Is nuclear war
survivable?” www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=6341
On the American side as well, there have been studies which suggest that nuclear war is survivable. The famous
1960 Rand Corporation study, "On Thermonuclear War," says, "Even if 100 metropolitan areas [in the USA] are
destroyed, there would be more wealth in this country than there is in all of Russia today and more skills than
were available to that country in the forties. The United States is a very wealthy and well-educated country."
The Rand study states that even if half the U.S. population were killed, "the survivors would not just lie down and
die. Nor would they necessarily suffer a disastrous social disorganization."
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
128
Aftermath – Starvation
There wouldn’t be massive starvation post-nuclear war – animals rapidly recover from
radiation, food stores are sufficient, transporting the food would be easy
Kearny, 87
Cresson H., two degrees in geology at Oxford, Jungle Experiment Officer of the Panama Mobile Force, demolitions expert in the Office
of Strategic Services, research analyst at the Hudson Institute, worked with Herman Kahn on nuclear scenario planning, “Nuclear War
Survival Skills: Updated and Expanded”
Extensive areas of the United States would not receive fallout heavy enough to kill grazing animals. The
millions of surviving animals would provide some food and the fertile breeding stock needed for national
recovery. The loss of fertility caused by severe radiation doses is rarely permanent. Extensive experiments with animals
have shown that the offspring of severely irradiated animals are healthy and fertile.27
LIVING ON BASIC PLANT FOODS
Even if almost all food-producing animals were lost, most surviving Americans should be able to live on the
foods that enable most of the world's population to live and multiply: grains, beans, and vegetables. And because of the
remarkable productivity of American agriculture, there usually would be enough grain and beans in storage to
supply surviving Americans with sufficient food for at least a year following a heavy nuclear attack.28 The problem would be to
get the unprocessed foods, which are stored in food-producing regions, to the majority of survivors who would be outside
these regions.
Surprisingly little transportation would be needed to carry adequate quantities of these unprocessed foods to survivors in
famine areas. A single large trailer truck can haul 40,000 pounds of wheat enough to keep 40,000 people from
feeling hunger pains for a day. More than enough such trucks and the fuel needed to carry basic foods to food-short areas
would survive a massive nuclear attack.28 It is likely that reasonably strong American leadership and morale would prevail so
that, after the first few weeks, millions of the survivors in starving areas should receive basic unprocessed
foods.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
129
Escalation – Collapses
Once a nuclear war starts, very little of the arsenals will actually be used – nuclear war
collapses
Martin, 1982
(Brian, associate professor in Science, Technology and Society at the University of Wollongong, “The Global Health Effects of Nuclear
War,” Current Affairs, December 7, www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/82cab/index.html#explosive)
What fraction of the 11,000Mt would be exploded in a major nuclear war? This is hard to assess, but almost
certainly much will not be exploded. Both the United States and the Soviet Union place a high priority on
targeting their opponent's military forces, nuclear forces in particular. A sizable fraction of nuclear arsenals is
likely to be destroyed before use (attacks on nuclear submarines, airfields, missile silos), be unavailable for use
(submarines in port, missiles cut off from communications) or fail to perform properly .[47] One estimate is
that one sixth to one third of superpower arsenals will be used, depending on whether the war occurs suddenly or builds
up gradually.[48]
Third, if
Russia and China do not adequately reduce the vulnerability of their nuclear forces, U.S. leaders will
soon have the option of launching a disarming attack against either country. Some analysts consider this scenario
unthinkable: it would, after all, entail enormous risks and horrifying costs.
History and current policy trends suggest, however, that the possibility
of a U.S. nuclear attack should not be
entirely dismissed. Nuclear counterforce was the cornerstone of American national security strategy during the
previous era of U.S. nuclear primacy (the early 1950s until the early 1960s). During this period, U.S. leaders planned to launch a
massive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China if the Soviets launched a conventional attack on Europe.69
Indeed, in 1961, at the peak of the Berlin crisis, U.S. leaders modified war plans to improve the odds that a disarming strike on the
Soviet Union would succeed, and President John Kennedy carefully explored the option of initiating such a surprise
nuclear attack.70 Moreover, both the United States and the Soviet Union considered launching attacks on China to
prevent its ascension to the nuclear club.71 In a new era of U.S. nuclear primacy, U.S. policymakers may once
again be tempted to consider nuclear escalation during intense crises or if nonnuclear military operations go
unexpectedly badly for the United States (e.g., in Korea).72
Escalation – Irrelevant
No Hunter-Gather Society
Nuclear war won’t cause a transition to hunting and gathering – everyone would die
Kearny, 87
Cresson H., two degrees in geology at Oxford, Jungle Experiment Officer of the Panama Mobile Force, demolitions expert in the Office
of Strategic Services, research analyst at the Hudson Institute, worked with Herman Kahn on nuclear scenario planning, “Nuclear War
Survival Skills: Updated and Expanded”
Very few survivors of a heavy attack would be in areas where they could live off the land like primitive
hunters and gatherers. In extensive areas where fallout would not be heavy enough to kill human beings, wild creatures would die
from the combined effects 'of external gamma radiation, swallowed fallout particles, and beta burns on their bodies. Survival plans
should not include dependence on hunting, fishing, or gathering wild plants.
Evazon 2014
Nuclear Malthus
Murray
132
Consensus was the justification for the worst scientific errors in history – you only say
consensus when you’re wrong
Crichton, January 17, 2003
Michael, Harvard degree in anthropology, MD from Harvard medical, speech at California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA,
“Aliens cause Global Warming”
And shall we go on? The examples can be multiplied endlessly. Jenner and smallpox, Pasteur and germ theory.
Saccharine, margarine, repressed memory, fiber and colon cancer, hormone replacement therapy…the list of
consensus errors goes on and on.
Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations
where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody
says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.
This is the foundation of bad policy, causes rejection of real scientific inquiry
Crichton, January 17, 2003
Michael, Harvard degree in anthropology, MD from Harvard medical, speech at California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA,
“Aliens cause Global Warming”
And so, in this elastic anything-goes world where science-or non-science-is the hand maiden of questionable
public policy, we arrive at last at global warming. It is not my purpose here to rehash the details of this most magnificent of the
demons haunting the world. I would just remind you of the now-familiar pattern by which these things are established. Evidentiary
uncertainties are glossed over in the unseemly rush for an overarching policy, and for grants to support the policy by
delivering findings that are desired by the patron. Next, the isolation of those scientists who won't get with the program,
and the characterization of those scientists as outsiders and "skeptics" in quotation marks-suspect individuals with
suspect motives, industry flunkies, reactionaries, or simply anti-environmental nutcases. In short order, debate ends, even though
prominent scientists are uncomfortable about how things are being done.
When did "skeptic" become a dirty word in science? When did a skeptic require quotation marks around it?