Abandon the Nuke

I rarely ever get political.
However, when there’s a matter inevitably concerning the well being and existence of our species, our environment and our survival–I tend to let my voice be heard.
There are things that have developed in our societies’ advancements that are deemed to be the ultimate destruction.
I am not a man that is obsessively science oriented, or even necessarily aware of each of the technological and scientific innovations that take place at an insanely quick speed. Though, I am aware of the painful repercussions that rocked the globe in the world’s not-so-long-ago debut of atomic bombs. And now that the political field seems to be buzzing with our time’s dangerous N-word (aka nuclear); I literally find my skin assaulted by foreboding goosebumps.
You see, it really is a horror when we look back at the atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The human losses and the continuous rebirth of side effects in the victims of these attacks are unbelievably heartbreaking.
Any person who calls for and believes in peace and safety of human kind should be inconsolably apprehensive at any threat of nuclear war.
However, in my opinion, people who care about the environment should be doubly terrified and even more aggressively fighting for the end of nuclear weaponry.
Why? Because according to this article published on the Guardian’s website, scientists have discovered that nuclear weapons “pose the single biggest threat to the Earth’s environment”.
As if it wasn’t terrifying enough thinking of a nuclear war’s crushing death toll, now we find out that the environment will suffer an extreme hit- which in turn means more suffering and death to all life on our now fragile planet.
The article discusses a 2006 study by Professor Richard Turco of UCLA and Professor Alan Robock and their team. Their research found that even a small-scale nuclear war could rapidly “devastate the world’s climate and ecosystems, causing damage that would last more than a decade”.
Prof. Turco disclosed that detonating between 50-100 bombs (which is just 0.03% of the world’s nuclear arsenal) would release enough soot into our atmosphere to create climactic disasters unparalleled in the history of humankind.
Besides millions of people dying, global temperatures would plunge and “most of the world would be unable to grow crops for more than five years after a conflict”.
Furthermore, the ozone layer (our protector from harmful ultraviolet radiation) would be “depleted by 40% over many inhabited areas and up to 70% at the poles.”
The professors found that environmental impacts, unlike human losses, would spread to the entire globe and not be constrained by geography. When examining a scenario of 100 warheads being detonated, they found that five million tones of sooty black smoke would emerge from the resulting firestorms. “This smoke would float to the upper atmosphere, get heated by the sun and end up being carried around the world. The particles would absorb the sunlight, preventing it from reaching the surface, which would result in a rapid cooling of the Earth by an average of 1.25C”.
The result would be global temperatures colder than the little ice age, which is the largest climate change in human history, Prof. Robock disclosed. Additionally, the studies show that this state would last even a decade after the initial conflict.
This, of course, translates into a devastating impact on agriculture with less precipitation and less sunlight- i.e a major shock, he added.
Overall, the scientists concluded that this sudden change in the Earth’s ecosystem would be worse than any effect of global warming because the effect would be instantaneous and not gradual such as in other scenarios not involving nuclear weapons.
One more point I would like to stress on is that these are the results of scenario predicting the use of 100 warheads. However, as of 2009 the world arsenal of nuclear weapons is 23,576, according to data also published on the Guardian’s website.
So yes, take the 100 warhead scenario and amplify it by over 235 times worth of damage and you can imagine the possible complete and utter destruction of our world. I myself am fiercely opposed to nuclear weapons and although I do believe a country has the right to defend itself, I do not support that defense would come with the risk of abolishing our species and planet. The facts have alarmed me. And although it has been reported that some nations have started dismantling their nuclear weapons and the world is trying to get rid of this arsenal; there still remains much tension over the issue.
Again, I do not want to get political, but I do believe as people who care about our kind, about creatures and our world, we should support any effort to curb the usage of nuclear weaponry. Our and our planet’s livelihoods are at risk here, and to me this is a thing undeniably worthy of discussion and calls for abandonment.
**Published with permission of our partner, Ecooptionsegypt.com
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