Would dust blown into the atomsphere from nuclear explosions stop global warming?

Question

Would the dust stop the uv light from the sun getting through?.

Answer 1

In theory, yes but then you'd have to worry about the aftereffects of nuclear contamination. Give me global warming any day!

Answer 2

To phrase the question somewhat differently, would nuclear winter cancel out global warming?

Not much of a choice if one had to choose, but lets look at the science and see if there is a preference.

Global warming is a function of green house gases carbon dioxide, methane etc moving into the atmosphere and trapping infrared wavelengths of light and thus causing the ambient air temperature to rise.

Nuclear winter is a function of large amounts of pulverized dust (all radioactive) moving into the upper atmosphere along with water vapor and blocking out the visible light and some shorter wavelengths of IR light. So the immediate effect of nuclear winter is a falling global temperature.

However, not all IR ight is blocked by the suspended particulates from nuclear winter so the planet begins to warm again, but more slowly.

The short answer, nuclear winter immediately cools the planet , but only slows down global warming. This assumes that the amount of water vapor thrown into the upper atmospere by the explosions is not significantly different than what is in the atmosphere now. More water vapor equals more ice crystals which in turn will reflect more IR light and the planetary temperature drops dramatically. So, one would hope that the beligerent's aim is quite good and no one drops too many weapons into the ocean or other large bodies of water.

Answer 3

Global warming is from light not being able to bounce back out. It's called the greenhouse effect. The hole in the ozone is not part of the global warming problem. The hole in the ozone creates a hazard of skin cancer from too much uv radiation. Those are 2 different issues. The nuclear fallout would cause more greenhouse effect because you would have more clouds from the dust. But, If you explode too many nukes you get a nuclear winter because not enough light gets through the atmosphere. You would need to detonate about 1000 nukes to cause a nuclear winter. That would be like an ice age and would kill about 90% of life on earth.

Answer 4

Those of us lucky (if that is the right word) to survive the fallout would have to survive the nuclear winter that followed. The shortest time I have heard for this period is around 7-10 years before the dust cloud cleared enough to allow the solar radiation back in. By this time all plant life would probably have died due to the lack of sunlight, most animal life would have gone the same way and we'd be surviving on carrion, can food and cannabalism probably.

If anything had managed to survive the fallout and the winter it would still have to deal with the Earth in the midst of an ice age which could easily last for a million years, the last one (Pleistocene) lasted nearly 2.5million years.

So all in all a pretty drastic method to stop global warming. And besides it isn't sunlight getting in that is the problem but the heat getting back out. We need the 'greenhouse effect' to actually keep the planet habitable. Without it the average global temperature would be around -15C, without an atmospheric blanket we'd be shivering at -200C.

We'd all be better trying to reduce our individual energy useage and allowing Mother Earth to catch up. She has dealt with bigger climate upheavals than we may (or may not) be causing in the past but she does need time.

Answer 5

Interesting idea, but no. The effects of isolated nuclear detonations would be quickly overcome. The radiation from a ground explosion like you are talking about would spread over fifty miles or more and last for ten thousand years.

An airburst explosion like happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was fairly clean by comparison and most of the deadly long lasting radiation (Alpha and Beta particles) was confined to a couple of miles around the epicenter. The gamma radiation spread much further, but the half life of it is 3 or 4 days.

The contamination of the nuclear solution would be more deadly than global warming itself. We should tackle that problem by promoting wind and solar energy and cutting fossil fuels. If we get enough trees replanted and manage the forests effectively, we can still reverse global warming.

Answer 6

That's a very frightening thought. You want to set off nuclear weapons in an effort to control something you know almost nothing about? Do you mind providing me and the rest of humanity transportation to another planet first?

Answer 7

I'm not exactly sure, but that would defininatly not be a good idea, that would cause a bunch of other problems even if it did block out UV

Answer 8

Yes, let's detonate some nuclear weapons to stop global warming. Is this really how scared the young people are of an unproven theory?

Answer 9

Yes, for about two years, then back to how it was prior.

Answer 10

Well, then there's that whole nuclear winter problem...oh, and radiation.