Talk:Nuclear winter/Archive 2

KGB involvement revisited
The discussion regarding KGB involvement above seems to revolve around the reliability of Pete Earley's book "Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War", which devotes a section on Tretyakov's claims. Nigel West has reviewed this book (West, Nigel(2008) 'A Review of: “The New Kind of Russian Defector”', International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 21:4, 793 — 796), and he doesn't dismiss the book as unreliable or Earley's discussion of Tretyakov's claims as fringe, his only criticism was "author Pete Earley is guilty of a major irritant— failure to provide an index, thereby reducing the utility of his otherwise fine volume". Unless we can find another published source that claims Earley's book is unreliable or fringe, we cannot really dismiss and exclude this. So I think we do need to restore that section concerning claims of KGB involvement, with appropriate attribution ofcourse. --Martintg (talk) 21:02, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * No, this makes no difference at all. Its NN junk, as it was before William M. Connolley (talk) 22:55, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Do you have a cite to a published source that claims this is NN junk? Pete Earley and Nigel West have published otherwise. --Martintg (talk) 22:58, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * How could I possibly have a cite saying tht it is NN? By its very nature, that isn't possible William M. Connolley (talk) 23:01, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * On what basis are you making the claim it is NN junk? We have Pete Earley publishing the claim and Nigel West reviewing the claim in a scholarly journal. So you are questioning the credibility of both Earley and West, on the basis of what? WP:OR? --Martintg (talk) 23:07, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * You appear to be shifting your ground somewhat. Earlier, you said that West had reviewed the book. Now you say he reviewed this NW claim. What does he say about teh NW claim, then? William M. Connolley (talk) 23:09, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not shifting ground at all. West reviews the book by Earley, which is about Tretyakov, and a section is devoted to Nuclear Winter. In the view of Nigel West, Earley's book is "a fine volume" and Earley's account of Sergei Tretyakov's claim exposes Nuclear Winter "as a gigantic fraud, and a classic example of KGB ‘‘active measures.’’". Perhaps I didn't make that clear in my initial statement above, but West does discuss Earley's treatment of Tretyakov's claims about NW and seems to accept them as credible. I think West is more qualified than us to pass judgment on the credibility of these claims. The question is really of what due weight should these claims be given in the article, but in any case some mention must be made since we can cite a number of notable authors that discuss this. --Martintg (talk) 23:17, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * We discussed this matter with William M. Connolley previously (should be somewhere at this page), and he did not provide any reasonable arguments why this information should not be included. This claim has been published in a reliable source, a book by a notable author Pete Earley. This claim has never been disputed. Hence, it represents a majority view, as long as no opposite views exist. This claim does not disprove any scientific aspects of the problem; it only tells that subject was used and exaggregated for political purposes. No reason to delete. This should be asked at a noticeboard or using an RfC. I suggest to include this.Biophys (talk) 03:12, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * In other words, William tells that the claim is wrong. Said who? Please provide any good source telling that the claim is wrong.Biophys (talk) 03:26, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Not only does William contend that Pete Earley's book is unreliable (based on William's own research apparently), but he also doesn't accept that Pete Earley's book (along with the NW claim) was positively reviewed in the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence by Nigel West. I'm not sure which Wikipedia policy allows more weight to be given to the opinion of User:William M. Connolley over the opinion of Nigel West in reviewing the reliability of Pete Earley's book. Nigel West is a published expert in intelligence matters, I'm not sure of William's qualifications here. --Martintg (talk) 05:29, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

WP:CONSENSUS, WP:PROVEIT, WP:V: WP:REDFLAG. Removed. Anarchangel (talk) 03:50, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Rather than WP:CONSENSUS, it seems more like a combination of WP:CENSOR, WP:IDONTLIKEIT and defense of WP:TRUTH. It is easily verified that Pete Earley and Nigel West, both eminent authors support the claims, so WP:PROVEIT, WP:V and WP:REDFLAG don't apply here. I think we will have to escalate this to the relevant notice board to get some outside view. --Martintg (talk) 05:01, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

WP:CONSENSUS: There is no consensus at this time for inclusion of this material. Anarchangel (talk) 05:38, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

PROVEIT applies to a points in discussion made against inclusion: "William M. Connolley...did not provide any reasonable arguments why this information should not be included" PROVEIT reads "The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material", which means that those against inclusion do not have to have evidence that the material should not be included. I am not saying that evidence has not been provided, merely that arguments for inclusion based on alleged lack of evidence for non-inclusion are unfounded.
 * No, PROVEIT simply states that material must be supported by a reliable source. If you read the next sentance: "All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation". This condition has been fulfilled with the provision of several inline citations. --Martintg (talk) 06:00, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

REDFLAG applies under points 1 "surprising or apparently important claims not covered by mainstream sources" and 3: "claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view within the relevant community, or which would significantly alter mainstream assumptions, especially in science, medicine, history, politics, and biographies of living persons." Anarchangel (talk) 05:38, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * REDFLAG also states "Exceptional claims in Wikipedia require high-quality sources" The exceptional claims contained Pete Earley's book were reviewed by Nigel West and published in a high quality source, being the peer reviewed scholarly journal International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence. So that condition is also fulfilled. --Martintg (talk) 06:06, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Because the information adheres to one of the points in REDFLAG it doesn't have to adhere to the others? If you plan on ignoring others' arguments to a glorious consensus, I can tell you right now, it won't succeed. Points 1 and 3, please. You might also presume that I read the rest of the article, and therefore had a reason to not mention high-quality sources, such as it wasn't the most pressing issue. This is your one and only opportunity to start acting as though you can be reasoned with. Anarchangel (talk)

Beginning of the argument against inclusion of the Tretyakov material in another article, by User:Marshall46 "I have deleted Tretyakov's conspiracy theory about Nuclear winter as WP:Fringe.

He is the only source given for the claim that the nuclear winter hypothesis was a malicious fabrication by the KGB foisted on credulous westerners in order to foment opposition to the US weapons programme. The claim is inherently doubtful.


 * The hypothesis appeared in the magazine Nature (journal) before it appeared in Ambio, the western journal in which Tretyakov suggests it was planted.


 * One of the co-authors of the Ambio article was a Nobel prize winning scientist specializing in the the study of the earth's atmosphere, so he is unlikely to have been duped by falsified research.


 * We are expected to believe that Western scientists have naively accepted nonsense foisted on them by the KGB.


 * The nuclear winter hypothesis is not a fact but a scientific model of what might happen after a nuclear war, and as such can't be faked, it can only be proposed. It has lasted and has been subject to repeated analysis. If it was a crude hoax it would not have survived.


 * The citation of the Time article about the disappearance of the Soviet mathematician who wrote one of the models is the stuff of conspiracy theories. It implies, without actually saying so, that he falsified his model and was killed by the Soviets to silence him; but if his model was false it could be analyzed and its fallacies exposed whether he was dead or alive. That has not happened.


 * Finally, it has not occurred to the editor who included this passage that Tretyakov, as an experienced intelligence agent, is perfectly capable of creating black propaganda about the KGB atfer defecting to the West. His testimony should not be quoted unless corroborated. Marshall46 (talk) 07:25, 20 July 2009 (UTC)" End of the argument against inclusion of the Tretyakov material in another article, by User:Marshall46

The above added by Anarchangel (talk) 05:03, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * This is WP:OR. I'd rather rely upon the published view point of Pete Earley and Nigel West, rather than your unpublished synthesis that contends that Pete Earley and Nigel West are WP:FRINGE authors. --Martintg (talk) 05:06, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * You claim to be relying on NW. Indeed you said and Nigel West reviewing the claim in a scholarly journal. But when challenged, you can't find anything that NW said about the claim. Since you care, I assume that means that NW said nothing about the claim. He reviewed the book, but ignored that bit. Hmm William M. Connolley (talk) 07:51, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * You must be kidding me. I said above "In the view of Nigel West, Earley's book is "a fine volume" and Earley's account of Sergei Tretyakov's claim exposes Nuclear Winter "as a gigantic fraud, and a classic example of KGB ‘‘active measures.’’". I'm intrigued about how you arrived at the conclusion: "But when challenged, you can't find anything that NW said about the claim." Now that I am home I have access to Nigel West's paper, and the following is a direct quote:
 * "And his version (Tretyakov’s) of the KGB’s promotion in 1982 of the wholly bogus ‘‘nuclear winter’’ debate will confirm the worst fears of those who always suspected that Moscow had orchestrated the protests in academia against NATO’s deployment of Pershing missiles in Europe. Led by the late Carl Sagan, the propaganda offensive purported to prove that an Allied response to the arrival of SS-20 mobile launchers in the Warsaw Pact countries would risk a nuclear exchange that could plunge the entire world into a new ice-age. The highly suspect climate calculations had been fabricated by Soviet scientists and then peddled to the gullible in the West, creating a wholly artificial controversy that lent support to the misguided disarmament movement. Now, in Comrade J, the whole sham is exposed as a gigantic fraud, and a classic example of KGB ‘‘active measures.’’"
 * Strong stuff, and published in the peer reviewed International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, not some fringe publication. West in his concluding remarks assesses the motivation of Tretyakov, and states:
 * "His decision to spy, and then defect, was driven by altruism, for he was already a wealthy man with a promise of promotion. He has waived any royalties from this book, so Tretyakov is that most dangerous of all species, a man of principle."
 * So it cannot be claimed that Tretyakov was motivated by profit in making these claims. I see on your user page that you had worked as a climate modeler and perhaps see yourself as qualified to discuss this topic, perhaps you have even published some papers on this. However Nigel West is a expert on intelligence and counter intelligence field and is eminently qualified to assess whether the claims published by Pete Earley are fringe, and this he certainly does not do. As Biophys stated above, "This claim does not disprove any scientific aspects of the problem; it only tells that subject was used and exaggerated for political purposes". I think it is valid to mention this political aspect, including the claims of KGB exploitation of this subject in the "criticism" section. --Martintg (talk) 11:10, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Having NiW talk specifically about the NuW claims is better. But NiW cannot be considered as an expert on the NuW claims. Biophys's assertion This claim does not disprove any scientific aspects of the problem is wrong: your text inserts According to Nigel West, Sergei Tretyakov's account exposes Nuclear Winter "as a gigantic fraud"'' - but NiW knows nothing of NuW. It isn't clear to me why you think NiW is neutral and impartial in this. The idea that one Russian created the NuW model in 1985 does not seem at all plausible. As I've said before William M. Connolley (talk) 22:59, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * How would knowledge of NuW claims assist NiW in determining the veracity of claims that that foreign intelligence services had a role in the promotion of the NuW hypothesis into the political arena? The nuclear winter controversy is a notorious example of the politicization of science. This article is extremely anaemic as it gives no sense the the level of controversy that was generated during the 80's. Now if you wish to confine this article purely to the science, well and good, but if the science is so strong why shy away from the related controversy? Perhaps we need another article that discusses the political controversy, including the alleged involvement of various intelligence agencies. Perhaps Nuclear winter controversy? --Martintg (talk) 02:13, 23 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The assertion by Nigel West (that the theory is wrong) is perhaps an extraordinary claim. The assertion by Tretiakov (about the KGB operation) is nothing unusual and does not contradict anything we know about the Nuclear winter theory. This is not an extraordinary claim at all. Still, there are no sources that disputed Tretiakov claim Biophys (talk) 01:25, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Good point. --Martintg (talk) 02:13, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I debunked Earley/Tretyakov here. It IS original research, but the easily verifiable one. 89.230.208.18 (talk)

There is no reason for us to take Tretyakov's claims seriously. It's the typical conspiracy theorist pattern: he doesn't present any concrete evidence; we are supposed to believe him only because he was a member of a secret unit where he heard things. There is a group of former Russian security service officers who are making money by publishing such claims - without presenting any real evidence of course. A typical example is Alexander Litvinenko's claim, that the FSB organized the Danish cartoon controversy to punish Denmark for protecting Chechen terrorists, and that Romano Prodi is KGB agent. The more outlandish the claim, the harder it is to disprove. In short, Tretyakov is not an expert and he is not reliable in any way. Offliner (talk) 05:37, 23 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Except that Tretyakov has waived any royalties from the book, so much for your theory of the profit motive. --Martintg (talk) 05:51, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

There are enough reliable sources to mention that some (cite who) have claimed that nuclear winter was invented by KGB, and more realistically, others (cite who) shown that the theory has played into KBG hands as a tool to infuence public opinion. The first is likely wrong, and the article makes it clear it is a well documented theory, the second one shouldn't really be that controversial, as a lot of science has been used in politics. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 18:35, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Keep going from here
I've added a subheader for everyone's convenience. I just stumbled across this, and thought I'd offer a WP:30: You guys should seek mediation. not formal mediation, but mediation under something like the MEDCAB. Being a cabalist, myself, this is precisely the kind of debate that could be resolved through mediation, provided everyone agrees to cooperate and pursue the mediation. I'd even be willing to take the case myself, though I would understand if y'all didn't want that, as I am no longer purely neutral for having weighed in here. Tealwisp (talk) 18:16, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Again with the KGB
It would seem that there once was an active debate on the inclusion of allegations that the KGB were involved in this. Since the material meets all the criteria for inclusion, I am going to reinsert it. WVBluefield (talk) 18:34, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

After going over some of the talk page archives, I think the locus of the dispute lies in particular editors claiming that the material is wp:fringe or not notable. While it appears that the real reason is something more like they don’t like it, there are others who think that Earley’s work is spot on, and also think that the nuclear winter/KGB idea is entirely plausible.

"COMRADE J can help to dispel our illusions. One of its suggestive passages recounts how the late Carl Sagan, a popular and prominent astro-physicist, for instance, fell for a phony program gestated by the KGB at Yuri Andropov’s request based on some draft paper that three Russians — a geophysicist, a mathematician, and a computer expert — concocted from their fantasied mathematical model about the impending “nuclear winter.” Sagan spent some years alarming the world with his campaign to disarm his own country and the West, as if Dr. Strangelove were a real person and Edward Teller a monstrous fool. Such hoaxes have regularly been propagated by the KGB and swallowed whole by scientists and the media."

more

"Tretyakov puts Russian fingerprints on some previously disclosed perfidies at the UN and elsewhere. He confirms that Mr. Putin had direct knowledge of how Russian officials used the so-called 'Oil for Food' program ran before the toppling of Saddam Hussein to put scores of millions of dollars into their own pockets and those of Kremlin superiors, as long suspected by investigators. He offers direct evidence that the 'Nuclear Winter' scenario pushed by the late scientist — and anti-nuclear activist — Carl Sagan in the 1970s was part of a KGB-directed disinformation campaign to halt deployment of Pershing II missiles in Europe by NATO."

This might not pursuade everone, but its another piece of the pie. WVBluefield (talk) 19:06, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Looks like the same old tired stuff. What has changed that you want to bring this up again? William M. Connolley (talk) 22:44, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * It is the same old tired stuff, and if the editors who keep putting it in would bother to look at the history of publications about NW, instead of returning to this one book like a dog to a bone, they would see that Tretyakov's assertions don't tally with the facts. Russian academics actually published on NW after those in the west. Tretyakov has been pushed on Wikipedia by editors on the secret Eastern European Mailing list, who are absolutely paranoid about the KGB but not very good at checking sources.  Marshall46 (talk) 12:27, 27 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I discuss Tretyakov's claims in full here Marshall46 (talk) 08:29, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Dodgy Russian sources
We're currently using http://www.ng.ru/style/2004-02-06/24_golitsyn.html as a source for "His conclusion that the atmosphere would be heated and that the surface of the planet would cool were published in The Herald of the Academy of Sciences in September 1983". But babelfish says it about the Hapburgs. Has anyone read the original?

The other one,, says "Further there was the Gulf war, in Kuwait petroleum fires began. Our colleagues intended there to fly, but money it was not located. However, Americans left in Kuwait by two aircraft and observed. Their results confirmed our calculations and conclusions." I wonder if we should put that in?

That page (in the original) is the source for the Committee of Soviet Scientists in Defense of Peace, Against the Nuclear Threat headed by Russian atmospheric scientist Georgy Golitsyn, applied their research on dust-storms to the situation following a nuclear catastrophe. It isn't entirely clear exactly where in the text that occurs, let us say delicately.

Perhaps using dodgy Russian sources isn't good.

William M. Connolley (talk) 23:06, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I can't say anything about the second reference, but the first is wrong. It should be Igor Shumeyko, Heavy dust "nuclear winter", 2003-10-08


 * There Golitsyn says in interview (Google translation):


 * "А у меня тогда уже были работы о пыльных бурях на Марсе, и я стал разрабатывать модель для атмосферы Земли в случае больших объемов дыма и пыли. And then I have been working on the dust storms on Mars, and I began to develop a model for the Earth's atmosphere in case of large volumes of smoke and dust.


 * "Выходило, что атмосфера будет сильно прогреваться, а поверхность планеты - остывать. It turned out that the atmosphere will warm up much, and the surface of the planet - cool.


 * "Циркуляция атмосферы, конечно, изменится, испарение с поверхности океанов упадет и т.д. The circulation of the atmosphere, of course, change, evaporation from the surface of the oceans will fall, etc.


 * "В сентябре 1983 года все эти предсказания были опубликованы в "Вестнике Академии наук". In September 1983, all these predictions were published in the Journal of the Academy of Sciences." Marshall46 (talk) 13:01, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Freeman Dyson
I am more than a bit perplexed on why Freeman Dyson's comments are subject to dispute. He is a authoritative voice. His comments have been considered notable by other reliable sources and they are most certainly relevant to the material at hand. It would appear that at one time it was rejected because it was unsourced, but that is no longer the case. WVBluefield (talk) 16:06, 27 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm puzzled as to why FD is authoritative on this subject. Do please explain William M. Connolley (talk) 16:54, 27 October 2009 (UTC)


 * He did write about it in his autobiography where he commented on studing the subject at some length. Several other sources, cited above, considered it noteworthy enough to also reference his thoughts on the subject. What more could you need? A better question might be “why is Carl Sagan an authority on this subject”, given his batting average when putting his theories to the test in real life situation. But I suppose that’s a topic for another day.


 * At least you havent brought up the ludicrous claim that this is a BLP violation again. WVBluefield (talk) 17:45, 27 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Calling FD a warmonger is a clear BLP violation William M. Connolley (talk) 19:57, 27 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Its called satire, and Wikipedia has an excellent article on it if you are in need of further clarification. But thanks for staying on topic. WVBluefield (talk) 20:06, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
 * If you want to stay on topic, why are you wawsting everyones time by introducing digressions? William M. Connolley (talk) 20:58, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
 * it was in an edit summary so go grab that fire extinguisher because your straw man has been set ablaze. WVBluefield (talk) 21:05, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Naively, I'd hoped you might return to the subject of your own volition. But it looks like I was wrong. Ah well. You ask, weirdly, why Sagan might be considered important on this subject. The answer is, he wrote a paper that appeared in Science on the subject. You do understand the difference between a peer reviewed journal and an autobiography, don't you? William M. Connolley (talk) 21:36, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
 * And why isnt FD considered notable when multiple other reliable sources have reproduced his thoughts on this subject? WVBluefield (talk) 19:09, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I asked first, you have to answer first: have you realised yet why Sagan's Science paper is more important than FD's autobio? William M. Connolley (talk) 19:26, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I suppose because one was so full of demonstrably false information than the other? Anyhoo, I was being facetious when I suggested Sagan should be mentioned here. Now, again, why are FD's bio and all the other reliable sources that noted his comments on nuclear winter not worth inclusion here? WVBluefield (talk) 19:46, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm getting rather confused by all the stuff you later retract as "satire" or "facetious". You've been very unclear. BEfore we go further, can you please clearly indicate that you realise that a paper in Science carries rather more weight than an autobiography by a non-expert, no matter how eminent William M. Connolley (talk) 22:09, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree with your statement, but there is pleant of room in the article for both. WVBluefield (talk) 22:16, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

The Freeman Dyson reference is to a series of lecture he held in Aberdeen, Scotland April-November 1985. There are two comments : "I will criticize nuclear winter as harshly as I would criticize any other half-baked scientific theory"; The second is a characterization of Carl Sagan's intuition. What is the autobiography reference? Is there more substance to his critique anywhere else? Gabriel Kielland (talk) 16:26, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Edit war
Page protected, kindly discuss and seek outside help. Moreschi (talk) 19:08, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Well perhaps I can offer outside help?
As far as I can see the recent edit war is basically over whether, in discussing levels of nuclear winter, it is adequate to characterise the level of war in technical quantification (TNT equivalent) or whether we should also give casualties for each war scenario for context? Is this above somewhere in the discussion. Anyway, its a reasonable question, the casualties are all scenario derived and not especially reliable but they do give some context.

Does anyone know if we have a WP:RS for estimated casualties from the climatic impact for each scenario? It seems to me that comparing deaths from direct military action versus deaths from climatic indirect action is interesting. Otherwise I guess neither casualties nor TNT is especially helpful for comparison to weather effects but we have to have some basis. --BozMo talk 22:24, 27 October 2009 (UTC)


 * This is one of the points of my edits. The casualty figure is for the initial exchange not the subsequent climactic impacts. Thats why it was removed. I should have stated that on the talk page. WVBluefield (talk) 14:08, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Nuclear winter‎
There currently exists a content dispute over the inclusion of material from Pete Earley’s book Comrade J. Early has written a detailed account of the KGB’s involvement in pushing the Nuclear Winter theory as another front in Moscow’s efforts to stop the deployment of the Pershing Missile in Western Europe.

The editors who oppose the inclusion of this material claim its Fringe and should [sic] be given space. While the information may not be widely know, the author is well respected and

Early is clearly a reliable source on intelligence matters and his book was well received by many other journalists. Nigel West has reviewed this book (West, Nigel(2008) 'A Review of: “The New Kind of Russian Defector”', International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 21:4, 793 — 796), and he doesn't dismiss the book as unreliable or Earley's discussion of Tretyakov's claims as fringe, his only criticism was "author Pete Earley is guilty of a major irritant— failure to provide an index, thereby reducing the utility of his otherwise fine volume". Joseph C. Goulden of the Washington Times  and Jascha Kessler of the California Literary Reivew have also given quite positive reviews not only of Early’s book but have also commented on the specific allegations, including the Nuclear Winter disinformation campaign.

Comments from outside disinterred parties would be welcomed here. WVBluefield (talk) 17:38, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Tretyakov's claims are discussed in detail here. I suggest you read and reflect.  Marshall46 (talk) 20:29, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * That was nice and perhaps if you can get someone to publish your thoughts they might be worth including here. WVBluefield (talk) 20:35, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Question--Is the information from Tretyakov confirmed or duplicated or supported by any source independent of him? The question of how far to believe a defector is always problematic. Besides the favorable review of Early's book cited above, are there unfavorable ones?  The usual solution to questions of fringe sources which have some  outside attention, as this one does,  is to at least mention them with some indication of the degree to which they are taken seriously by  outside authorities.    DGG ( talk ) 21:40, 13 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I am not aware of any corroboration. There is certainly none in the Crutzen and Birks paper nor in Crutzen's account in his Nobel Prize speech. Tretyakov presents his claim in a way that makes it impossible to check.  He was not involved in the operation he describes and says he was told about it by a source he does not name.  He refers to documents he has read but gives no citations.  He does not say when the operation took place.  He says that the KGB commissioned dubious research, but that it was never published. He refers to the dissemination of this unidentified research to unnamed organisations in an unspecified manner by unknown agents. That is about as far as you could get from "a detailed account" of the KGB’s involvement. It also contains errors of fact. Tretyakov is an altogether unreliable source and his story is not worthy of inclusion in a serious article about nuclear winter.  West quotes Earley with approval but offers no corroboration.  Goulden and Kessler know nothing about the subject and their opinions are worthless.  Marshall46 (talk) 15:23, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I would defer to sources outside Wikipedia to determine whether or not Tretyakov and Early are reliable, and so far the consensus is yes, they are. Other sources as early as 1984 have made allegations that “nuclear winter” was part of a soviet disinformation campaign. These include: The United States Strategic Institute v. 13 – 1985, a 1990 article by Marian Leighton in the journal “Focus on issues” also claimed that “Nuclear Winter” was a Soviet Disinformation campaign. A quick google news archive search pulls up dozens of news articles that also make this claim. What Tretyakov has done is to confirm earlier allegations not create them out of thin air. WVBluefield (talk) 21:46, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I was asked to comment on this via my talk page. The topic of Nuclear Winter is not just about the science, but also the political controversy that surrounded it at the time. The nuclear winter issue was a notorious example of the politicization of science. This article is extremely anaemic as it gives no sense the the level of controversy that was generated during the 80's. That former KGB agents come out of the wood work to claim responsibility is an indicator of that level of politicization. IMHO, regardless of the truth of Tretyakov's claims, they are verifable. At the very least a section called, say for example Politicization and the Cold War or something similar, ought to be created that discusses this political aspect along with Tretyakov's claims. --Martin (talk) 19:27, 19 November 2009 (UTC)


 * WVB's google search is junk, and therefore worthless William M. Connolley (talk) 21:29, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Regardless of WVB's google search, the point is that Nuclear Winter did become highly politicised in the 80's, yet this article is lacking this important aspect. Another science topic that has become politicised is Global warming and the attendant political aspects are covered in Global warming controversy and Global warming conspiracy theory. I don't know if there is sufficient material to create a stand alone article Nuclear winter controversy, so don't you think there should be at least a "Nuclear winter controversy" section? --Martin (talk) 21:58, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It’s nice to see that WMC is as on topic and as civil as ever. The references above demonstrate that there were a group of notable individuals as well as the DOD and Regan administration in the 1980's believed the Soviets were pushing “Nuclear winter” as part of a propaganda campaign. It’s also relevant that Early has a source confirming this and that he was published in an WP:RS . I am sure there is an NPOV way to present this, but WMC’s grandstanding isn’t helping move this debate along. WVBluefield (talk) 22:38, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Your google search is junk. Please specify which of the top ten hits it pulls up are relevant William M. Connolley (talk) 23:03, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Regardless of your view on WVB's google search, the point is that Nuclear Winter did become highly politicised in the 80's, or don't you agree? As I said, another science topic that has become politicised is Global warming and the attendant political aspects are covered in Global warming controversy and Global warming conspiracy theory. I don't know if there is sufficient material to create a stand alone article Nuclear winter controversy, so don't you think there should be at least a "Nuclear winter controversy" section? --Martin (talk) 23:36, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * There is the section Policy implications with contradictory content presently. The article nuclear disarmament has the one sentence: "When the extreme danger intrinsic to nuclear war and the possession of nuclear weapons became apparent to all sides during the Cold War, a series of disarmament and nonproliferation treaties were agreed upon..." The nuclear winter scenario played an important part in this awakening. The Gorbatchev quote is the best reference in support of that opinion. There should be more. Gabriel Kielland (talk) 13:59, 20 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Lawrence Badash's recent book gives a detailed and measured account of the political controversy surrounding nuclear winter, and I agree with Martintg that it should be reported better here.


 * However, the question is not whether the Soviet Union made propaganda out of nuclear winter, but the reliability of Tretyakov. He makes a very specific allegation that cannot be verified, namely, that Crutzen and Birks were influenced by the dissemination by the KGB of falsified research authored by Kondratiev, Moiseev, Golitsin and Alexandrov. None of the supporters of Tretyakov address this. Tretyakov, by the way, does not claim responsibility: he says he was not involved in the operation. I do wonder whether his defenders have even read what he says.


 * It is worth adding that Tretyakov's claim is at odds with another source, which say that, as at 1985, Soviet propaganda was based entirely on Crutzen and Birks and TTAPS, and that "Soviet scientists have made no independent or new contributions to the study of the 'Nuclear Winter' phenomenon". Leon Goure,Soviet Exploitation of the "Nuclear Winter" Hypothesis, Science Applications International Corporation, McLean, Virginia, June 5, 1985 Marshall46 (talk) 10:16, 23 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The question I am putting for the here is this: are there allegations from notable sources that the Soviets were using the concept of Nuclear Winter as part of a wider propaganda front to impact US foreign policy and are these notable enough to be included in the article? The information presented here would suggest that many sources for the 80’s did make just such a claim. Early’s work confirms the claim and we can certainly debate on its inclusion. WVBluefield (talk) 15:36, 23 November 2009 (UTC)


 * You are avoiding the question of Tretyakov. Earley's work does not confirm the claim, it repeats the claim. That is not the same thing.  I suggest you read Lawrence Badash's excellent account of how NW developed and how it became a political issue. The matter is far more complicated than conservatives and KGB paranoiacs make it seem. In particular, there is some suggestion that Soviet scientists used it to attack Soviet defence policy in the same way as liberals like Sagan used it to attack US defence policy.  If you would like to write a section based on Badash that would be very welcome.  I'm afraid I'm too busy at the moment.  Marshall46 (talk) 15:55, 23 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I am not avoiding anything. I stated above that since Tretyakov’s claims have been reproduced in a reliable source, namely Early’s book, and this book, the claims in it, and specifically the Nuclear Winter questions have all been favorably reviewed by experts in Intelligence matters makes it a reliable source for the purposes of inclusion here at Wikipedia. This in addition to earlier allegations of the Soviet’s using the theory to push a non scientific agenda makes Early’s work particularly noteworthy to the article. As far as Badash’s book, I have not read it but I certainly see no reason to not include it in the article. WVBluefield (talk) 16:46, 23 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Earley is a reliable source for information about Tretyakov, as his book is based on interviews with Tretyakov. I have no doubt that Earley accurately reports what Tretyakov says, and therefore this information is quite properly included in the article on Tretyakov.


 * But if Tretyakov's claims on NW are to be included here, it is not Earley who has to be reliable but Tretyakov. Tretyakov gives no sources for his claims, does not provide basic information about when the events took place, who was involved, what were the organisations to which information was distributed or in which way Ambio was targeted.   His claims cannot be checked and have not been corroborated.  The relevant evidence (e.g. Crutzen's paper in Ambio, Crutzen's Nobel Prize Speech, the Leon Goure article and Badash's history of Nuclear Winter) points to the fact that, contrary to what Tretyakov says, NW was developed mainly in the United States and Western Europe, with Russian scientists following behind. Tretyakov's claim is so wacky and far out that the only reasons an editor could have for including it in the article on NW is muddled thinking, gullibility or prejudice.


 * The reviews referred to are reviews of Earley, not of Tretyakov. As far as support or corroboration is concerned, book reviews are beside the point unless they are written by those who can confirm what the book contains.  That is not the case here, as all the reviewers do is praise Earley. They make no claim to knowledge of the development of NW or of the operation Tretyakov describes.


 * I am not sure what is meant by "the Soviet’s using the theory to push a non scientific agenda". If it means that the Soviet Union used the NW theory in diplomacy, I can't see how in any way that demonstrates the validity of Tretyakov's claim that NW was a myth invented by the KGB.  Marshall46 (talk) 17:32, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Kearney
From the section on "Scientic criticism" I have removed a passage that reported Kearney's opinion that the NW hypothesis was largely propaganda. This was replaced, with the following explanation: "without Dyson, the other material is a copied verbatim from the source and was condensed". I cannot understand this. A scientist's personal opinion, and in particular his opinion on other people's motives, as opposed to his professional judgment on scientific matter, does not constitute scientific criticism. Marshall46 (talk) 15:47, 23 November 2009 (UTC)


 * you have a point and I fixed it with my subsequent edit. WVBluefield (talk) 15:51, 23 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I moved this passage from the Policy section to the Debate section: "The original work by Sagan and others was criticized as a "myth" and "discredited theory" in the 1987 book Nuclear War Survival Skills, a civil defense manual by Cresson Kearny for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Kearny said the maximum estimated temperature drop would be only about by 20 degrees Fahrenheit, and that this amount of cooling would last only a few days. He also suggested that a global nuclear war would indeed result in millions of deaths from hunger, but primarily due to cessation of international food supplies, rather than due to climate changes."  It's not about policy, it's about the basic science. Marshall46 (talk) 18:24, 24 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Kearney's criticism is presently given undue weight. The overview paper "Nuclear winter: science and politics" by Brian Martin already referenced includes Kearny with similar criticism from others:


 * Ian James Barton and Garth William Paltridge, "'Twilight at noon' overstated", Ambio, 13 (1), 1984, pages 49-51.
 * Sherwood B. Idso, "Calibrations for nuclear winter" (correspondence), Nature, 312, 29 November 1984, page 407.
 * "Nuclear winter and the greenhouse effect" (scientific correspondence), Nature, 321, 8 May 1986, page 122.
 * Cresson H. Kearny, "On a 'nuclear winter'" (letter), Science, 227, 25 January 1985, pages 356-357.
 * John Maddox, "From Santorini to armageddon", Nature, 307, 12 January 1984, page 107.
 * "Nuclear winter not yet established", Nature, 308, 1 March 1984, page 11.
 * Russell Seitz, "More on nuclear winter" (correspondence), Nature, 315, 23 May 1985, page 272.
 * "Siberian fire as 'nuclear winter' guide" (scientific correspondence), Nature, 323, 11 September 1986, pages 116-117.
 * S. Fred Singer, "Is the 'nuclear winter' real?", Nature, 310, 23 August 1984, page 625.
 * "On a 'nuclear winter'" (letter), Science, 227, 25 January 1985, page 356.
 * Edward Teller, "Widespread after-effects of nuclear war", Nature, 310, 23 August 1984, pages 621-624
 * "Climatic change with nuclear war", Nature, 318, 14 November 1985, page 99.


 * Martin also concludes that ... the critics too can be assessed as having made assumptions, selected evidence and emphasised results which support their conclusions. Gabriel Kielland (talk) 11:47, 25 June 2010 (UTC)


 * If given undue weight, it should be deleted. Marshall46 (talk) 13:14, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

A "Minor" Nuclear War is "50 detonations"?
Seriously? WWII was a minor nuclear war...50 detonations is not minor, regardless of size, no? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.221.95.175 (talk) 13:41, 17 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes it is. A large scale nuclear exchange would consist of hundreds, not if thousands nuclear explosions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.102.20.165 (talk) 09:50, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Policy implications
I found the two paragraphs under this heading to be contradictory. The first one seems to say that research into nuclear winter didn't have any implications on policy. But the second states that Gorbachev was directly moved by the research. Agentchuck (talk) 18:15, 11 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The second is probably wrong :-) William M. Connolley (talk) 22:26, 11 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The first is wrong, but except for the Gorbatchev quote I cannot prove it. Gabriel Kielland (talk) 23:20, 12 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The article actually says that the research made no substantial difference to policy. Its policy implications and the policy lobbying that took place still have to be written up. If anyone has read Laurence Badash's recent book, perhaps they could take it from there. Marshall46 (talk) 09:04, 13 January 2010 (UTC)


 * In 1983 the US abandoned a doctrine of mutual assured destruction to be replaced with the Strategic Defense Initiative. The nuclear winter research obviously played a part. Gabriel Kielland (talk) 21:27, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Badash on page 163: "- At a press conference on 11 February 1985, president Reagan spoke of NW in terms that seemed to signify acceptance of its likelihood: 'And they called it the year [1816] in which there was no summer. Now if one volcano can do that, what are we talking about with the whole nuclear exchange, the nuclear winter that scientists have been talking about?' By the following month ... the administration had all but embraced NW ... With amazing cheek, Secretary of Defence Caspar Weinberger asserted that the new geophysical conditions nuclear war might bring changed no current policies but instead supported them." Gabriel Kielland (talk) 21:53, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

This would take effect instantly
..."This would take effect instantly"...

What? In less than a second?--Theo Pardilla (talk) 13:13, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Rm myth etc: why
I took this out:


 * The original work by Sagan and others was criticized as a "myth" and "discredited theory" in the 1987 book Nuclear War Survival Skills, a civil defense manual by Cresson Kearny for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Kearny said the maximum estimated temperature drop would be only about by 20 degrees Fahrenheit, and that this amount of cooling would last only a few days. He also suggested that a global nuclear war would indeed result in millions of deaths from hunger, but primarily due to cessation of international food supplies, rather than due to climate changes.

This looks to be from a highly-partisan and non-scientific source. It does claim to quote actual science: if you can find the actual science, that would do William M. Connolley (talk) 09:15, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I saw the book. Why exactly do you think it is "non-scientific"? Biophys (talk) 00:22, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Seems obviously so. Consider for example  Facts: Unsurvivable "nuclear winter" is a discredited theory that, since its conception in 1982, has been used to frighten additional millions into believing that trying to survive a nuclear war is a waste of effort and resources, and that only by ridding the world of almost all nuclear weapons do we have a chance of surviving. Non-propagandizing scientists recently have calculated. The book itself I think is unusable; the refs it quotes may be of value; I don't know, not having checked them. I certainly wouldn't trust it to accurately present them William M. Connolley (talk) 15:10, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Tretyakov
I have removed this passage:

''Former KGB officer Sergei Tretyakov, after defecting to the US, claimed that the early nuclear winter work of Moiseyev and Aleksandrov was promoted by the KGB as part of a disinformation campaign. Tretyakov told his biographer "I was told the Soviet scientists knew this theory was completely ridiculous. There were no legitimate scientific facts to support it.  But it was exactly what Andropov needed to cause terror in the West." ''

Three reasons:


 * It was put under "Policy Implications", and it does not refer to the policy implications of the nuclear winter hypothesis.


 * It is inaccurate. Tretyakov did not claim that the early work of Moiseyev and Alexandrov was promoted by the KGB as part of a disinformation campaign.  He claimed that the KGB ordered Kirill Kondratyev, Georgii Golitsyn, Nikita Moiseyev and Vladimir Alexandrov to forge scientific papers about dust storms after a nuclear war.


 * It is a fringe theory. Tretyakov is the only only person who has made the claim and it has received no corroboration. It has been repeated by Tretyakov's supporters, but repetition is not corroboration. What is more, Tretyakov makes it plain that, as a KGB officer, he was not personally involved in the alleged episode, and he gives no source for the story. The claim is inherently unlikely because, according to Tretyakov, the papers were never published and have never been identified, their chronology is vague, Kondratyev published on the topic openly in a western academic journal long before the nuclear winter theory developed, and western academics published on the topic before Golitsyn, Moiseyev and Alexandrov. The claim is given due weight in the article about Tretyakov, but it does not deserve to be repeated here.  Marshall46 (talk) 09:13, 12 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I moved it into policy because it seemed closer to that than science. I have the same objections to this text as I had before; the difference this times was that it was all phrased as "T says..." which was more tolerable. But I have no complaints about it being removed William M. Connolley (talk) 09:20, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Seems to be back again so I've removed it again. It definitely doesn't belong under science. I'd rather it was out William M. Connolley (talk) 08:55, 20 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. It is repeatedly put in by POV-pushers.  And we still need a decent account of policy implications.  If someone could summarize Laurence Badash's book "A Nuclear Winter's Tale" that would be good.  I haven't had time to read it yet.  Marshall46 (talk) 10:14, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Random Pictures?
This article seems to have too many pictures that are relatively unrelated to the subject. They depict various nuclear tests and questionably, a home in winter. Furthermore, none of the images have descriptions (that would be irrelevant anyways. I suggest we remove all or most of these images. Xomm 02:06, 13 May 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xomm (talk • contribs)


 * Agreed. Marshall46 (talk) 15:21, 16 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Also agreed. Cliko (talk) 06:10, 13 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I also agree. Atheuz (talk) 00:34, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Removed. Marshall46 (talk) 11:31, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Split/rename?
As it is, this article tells about a very general subject of the Climatic effects of nuclear war and should be renamed as such. The nuclear winter theory is only a part of this. It claims the cooling must be so significant that it would lead to total loss of agricultural vegetation (hence the "nuclear winter"), as must be defined in the lead sentence of a separate sub-article, specifically about the nuclear winter.Biophys (talk) 14:26, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

POV section
The section that says: Has several problems - first of all i question the flammable part, where it is essentially asserted that modern cities can't burn this way because they aren't made of wood. Neither Hamburg nor Dresden (and probably quite a few others) fall into that category - the cities were mainly stone/brick buildings. At least one of the papers on nuclear winter that we cite, at least asserts that the Dresden and Tokyo fire-plumes reached the upper atmosphere (Robock et al.(2007) lines 278-282). The entire section seems to be written from a personal viewpoint of some editor. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 06:04, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * None of the papers examine under what conditions, or indeed if at all, a true firestorm can form in a modern city. Few modern cities are built out of predominantly flammable materials like wood (which historically seems to have been a prerequisite for a firestorm), but built of mostly concrete and masonry brick, so the mechanism for how exactly a firestorm is to be generated in a concrete and brick environment has never been explained. Nor have there been any attempts to link climatic effects and previous city firestorms (which were notably all wooden cities at the time) such as the World war II Dresden firebombing, Tokyo firebombing and the Atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The last example is most important since the infamous black rain formed soon after the bombing, this rain due to its colour washed large amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere, which is an important feature never discussed in the climatology papers: the fact that the soot generated in a firestorm is never dry.
 * The rewrite, which now claims that the firestorm only happened in the Medieval areas of the German cities is not much better. Where does this information come from? Pictures from Hamburg belies that claim, for instance this and this - these are certainly not Medieval buildings or in a predominantly Medieval building zone. Or as another example this documentary from the Hamburg fire-department --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 07:20, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Citation was given for these claims - but the actual document that the citation refers to does not contain this information. And does in fact indicate that the opposite was the case. [corrected ref: ]. The medieval part of Hamburg (Altstadt) is not the location of the firestorm as far as i can determine. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 08:40, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Neither of those buildings in the photographs were in the firestorm area, they were blown up by explosives and burned! Have you actually studied the evidence at the National Archives, or you just relying on the internet? The firestorm area was composed of wooden buildings. For a photo from the research into the the Hamburg firestorm area (not the area of generally bombed and burned buildings around the actual firestorm in the medieval wooden area) please see http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_8adFNycaanI/ShRTRkXFhqI/AAAAAAAAA34/OzRyrFQNcY0/s1600-h/Hamburg+after+July+43+attack.JPG

George R. Stanbury, the Home Office scientist who conducted Civil Defence research int fallout protection at Monte Bello for Operation HURRICANE, Britain’s first nuclear test in 1952, explains in detail how the Hamburg firestorm was produced in his classified article, ‘The Fire Hazard from Nuclear Weapons’, Fission Fragments, Scientific Civil Defence Magazine, Home Office, London, No. 3, August 1962, pp. 22-6, British Home Office, Scientific Adviser’s Branch, originally classified Restricted :

We have often been accused of underestimating the fire situation ... we are unrepentant in spite of the television utterances of renowned academic scientists who know little about fire. ... Firstly ... the collapse of buildings would snuff out any incipient fires. Air cannot get into a pile of rubble, 80% of which is incombustible anyway. This is not just guesswork; it is the result of a very complete study of some 1,600 flying bomb [V1 cruise missile] incidents in London supported by a wealth of experience gained generally in the last war. Secondly, there is a considerable degree of shielding of one building by another in general. Thirdly, even when the windows of a building can "see" the fireball, and something inside is ignited, it by no means follows that a continuing and destructive fire will develop. ... A window of two square metres would let in about 105 calories at the 5 cal/cm2 range. The heat liberated by one magnesium incendiary bomb is 30 times this and even with the incendiary bomb the chance of a continuing fire developing in a small room is only 1 in 5; in a large room it is very much less. Thus even if thermal radiation does fall on easily inflammable material which ignites, the chance of a continuing fire developing is still quite small. In the Birmingham and Liverpool studies, where the most generous values of fire-starting chances were used, the fraction of buildings set on fire was rarely higher than 1 in 20.

And this is the basis of the assertion that we do not think that fire storms are likely to be started in British cities by nuclear explosions, because in each of the five raids in which fire storms occurred (four on Germany - Hamburg, Darmstadt, Kassel, Wuppertal and a "possible" in Dresden, plus Hiroshima in Japan - it may be significant that all these towns had a period of hot dry weather before the raid) the initial fire density was much nearer 1 in 2. Take Hamburg for example:

On the night of 27/28th July 1943, by some extraordinary chance, 190 tons of bombs were dropped into one square mile of Hamburg. This square mile contained 6,000 buildings, many of which were [multistorey wooden] medieval.

A density of greater than 70 tons/sq. mile had not been achieved before even in some of the major fire raids, and was only exceeded on a few occasions subsequently. The effect of these bombs is best shown in the following diagram, each step of which is based on sound trials and operational experience of the weapons concerned.

102 tons of high explosive bombs dropped -> 100 fires 88 tons of incendiary bombs dropped, of which: 48 tons of 4 pound magnesium bombs = 27,000 bombs -> 8,000 hit buildings -> 1,600 fires 40 tons of 30 pound gel bombs = 3,000 bombs -> 900 hit buildings -> 800 fires Total = 2,500 fires

Thus almost every other building [1 in 2 buildings] was set on fire during the raid itself, and when this happens it seems that nothing can prevent the fires from joining together, engulfing the whole area and producing a fire storm (over Hamburg the column of smoke, observed from aircraft, was 1.5 miles in diameter at its base and 13,000 feet high; eyewitnesses on the ground reported that trees were uprooted by the inrushing air).

When the density was 70 tons/square mile or less the proportion of buildings fired during the raid was about 1 in 8 or less and under these circumstances, although extensive areas were burned out, the situation was controlled, escape routes were kept open and there was no fire storm."

See also http://glasstone.blogspot.com/2006/04/ignition-of-fires-by-thermal-radiation.html for a discussion of the documentary evidence. Photocopier (talk) 10:14, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * First of all the blogspot.com reference is a non-WP:RS - it can't be used to reference factual information. It is self-published material.
 * Second, the pictures i referenced are (according to the source) from the center of the firestorm - so your claim that it wasn't there is wrong.
 * Thirdly, while the Stanbury review is interesting - it is a very old reference that doesn't appear to have researched this particular aspect, a hint here is that he classifies the Dresden firestorm as a "possible" but the Darmstadt, Kassel and Wuppertal as definite. Current sources say that the definite ones are Hamburg and Dresden, while it is uncertain as to whether it happened in Darmstadt,...
 * Fourthly, the whole section is basically original research/synthesis where you cherry-pick sources that tell you what you want, and then combine it into a conclusion not provided by any reliable source (except possibly the blogspot one).
 * So please reinstate the POV tag and work to address the issues. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 10:40, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * A bit of information for you: The city-area in Hamburg that was completely razed from the firestorm Hammerbrook was primarily settled in the 17 and 18 hundreds. Before the 19th century the area wasn't drained (drainage ended in 1909). So it is quite impossible for this area to be primarily Medieval. (at that time the area was primarily Marsh, used as a cattle grazing area). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 11:00, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I have added the Synthesis section tag. The references are mostly from the 1940's and 50's and it seems that none of them present the argument given in the section. Mostly it is a POV section written by someone who appears to try to contradict new research with old manuscripts. I've presented some of the problems above - the most glaring being the description of Hamburg as a predominantly Medieval housing area - which was the one that i focused upon first, since it didn't fit with what i know about Hamburg's development. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 12:03, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Finding the Truth
I'll start by thanking you Kim D. Petersen, this question is something that I have debated with myself quite extensively, and there seems to be so much contradictory information out there concerning Firestorm formation, and the likelihood of a post nuclear explosion firestorm developing in a modern city that I will enjoy getting to the bottom of things. It does appear from a superficial examination that the Hamburg Firestorm occurred in 'multi-storey apartment buildings' and not completely timber framed buildings However I don't think anyone would contend that with a concentrated enough incendiary bombing run, on a target that contains High amounts of wood, (e.g as roof support bracing) that a firestorm will not form. Surely however the difference in fire starting mechanisms between Conventional methods and Nuclear explosions needs to be kept in mind, Blockbuster bomb drops[to knock roofing tiles etc off] and then incendiary bombs to kindle loft/attic material is different than the effects of a nuclear explosion, were a thermal pulse arrives first before the slower blast wave. Thus effectively reversing the order of events in a conventional WWII Incendiary bombing run. Also to be kept in mind is that Nuclear weapons ignite material by thermal radiation, whereas Incendiary bombs ignite by Conduction(direct contact) with combustable material.

To help us get to the truth: Leaving aside for the moment the quantiy of soot that will reach the Stratosphere, and only examining the probability of a firestorm in a modern city after a nuclear explosion.

1. The main mechanism and source of ignition needs to be found for all known City Firestorms, There must be military research conducted in this regard? I'll start by presenting what little I've found- This reference suggest in Hamburg that Coal supplies may have contributed to the apartment building fires and this cites in Hamburg before the development of the firestorm that There had been no rain for some time and everything was very dry

2. How long are things heated and to what extent: Thermal fluence(heat energy emitted from the nuclear fireball) in calories per centimeter squared cal/cm^2 or J/cm^2 striking material at various distances, as a function of weapon yield in Kilotons,( say 200-500 kt) coupled with the length of time that such heat radiation is being absorbed(determined by how long the fireball lasts) will help put us on track to determining what can ignite after such an explosion, and thus if a firestorm will form after a nuclear explosion in a modern city. The Equation on pg 23 of this will help us determine the Thermal fluence at various distances, Then we must examine what will be in the line of sight of the fireball, bearing in mind that the location of the explosion will be high above the ground(at its optimum Height to maximise blast damage) which for a explosion of yield 200-500 kt is ~ 1-2 km above the target city.- The equation for this is on pg 19 of this Princeton document, and it will confirm the ~ 1-2 km value.this gives the blast pressure & thermal fluence values at Hiroshima and Nagasaki for comparisons sake

We must also look at exactly how flammable is the material that will 'see' the fireball, especially focussing on materials behind windows, While not forgetting to take into account the average value of all the modern standards for flame retardancy. These flame retardancy standards must be met by all commercially available carpets, curtains, chairs etc, like hereand here. Notably These flame retardant materials, are designed so that even if they ignite they quickly self extinguish. These materials, unless I'm mistaken, will be the main kindling in a nuclear fireball induced city firestorm.*
 * Granted Secondary fires, like Broken Gas lines from the blast, may contribute to the fires, but we'll perhaps discuss that at a later date.

3. Exactly how much of a modern city building is constructed of flammable material? This question is also important - or put another way, what is the fuel density or 'fire load' of a city? I had No luck finding information on this question but this is slightly on track pg 27 cites that a building is considered combustible if greater than 20% of it is combustible material and by extension what is the limit at which multiple seperate fires can be considered as forming a firestorm A firestorm is possible whenever this density exceeds 20% referring to Roof to ground area- this also discusses fire loading The two above documents also brings up the issue of fire suppression systems, which I don't think anyone would argue that these systems would remain operational for the 13+ seconds before the blast arrives. I estimated the 10 seconds figure from pg 25 of the Princeton document above, and the speed of sound- if indeed the mass fire hazard area is a ring of 2.7 to 7 miles around air zero(ground zero) for a 200kt explosion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Boundarylayer (talk • contribs) 01:05, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Hypnosifl shifts the goalposts, and questions firestorm generation as important

 * Hypnosifl, You wrote -
 * If you look at the section Nuclear_winter, in the last part about a 2007 study, it seems that what's needed to loft a lot of soot into the upper atmosphere is not necessarily a firestorm, but just a fire covering a sufficiently large area of land.


 * Incorrect. Firestorms are necessary to heat the soot to reach the stratosphere, I suggest you go read some more. Without a firestorm, you won't generate the heat energy in Joules to lift the soot to the stratosphere, as it is this stratospheric soot that is responsible for the modelled nuclear winter effect, firestorms are a necessity. That you debate this is pretty absurb.


 * Hafemeister, David W, ed. (1991), Physics and Nuclear Arms Today, Issue 4 of Readings from Physics Today (illustrated ed.), Springer, p. 24 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Hckys7gpwl4C&pg=PA24&lpg=PA24#v=onepage&q=fire%20storm&f=false
 * Page 24 reads Smoke from fires rises to heights primarily dependent on the intensity of the fire. Typical plume heights might be 1-5 km for forest fires, and 1-7 km for urban fires. The plume height from the Firestorm of Hamburg reached an estimated height of 13 km.


 * Note the Stratosphere is around 10+ km from the surface depending on time of year etc.


 * Carl Sagan even discussed this error in his book The Demon-Haunted World, and later research discovered the reason. The smaller individual smoke plumes, spread over a wide area, did not generate sufficient uplift to get the smoke into the upper atmosphere, even though theoretically enough smoke was produced.


 * If you honestly do not believe that firestorms are necessary to generate sufficient uplift to get the smoke into the upper atmosphere then I'd love to know how you explain 66 Japanese cities, 178 sq miles in total, being reduced to ashes in 1945, without global cooling in accordance with the predictions of the 2008 paper being observed in 1945 or 1946. The recent 2008 Nuclear Winter paper states that 50 burning cities would produce climate effects similar to the little ice age.


 * Waves of B-29s destroyed over half the total area of 66 urban centers, reducing 178 square miles to ashes. This March-July fire-bombing campaign is estimated to have taken more civilian lives than the half-million killed during five years of Allied bombing of Germany. 
 * http://www.atomicbombmuseum.org/2_manhattan.shtml


 * Also see Strategic bombing during World War II for a similar long list of German cities that were burnt to the ground but did not firestorm. Like Cologne, It is honestly pretty self evident that firestorms are necessary to generate the type of cooling discussed in the Nuclear Winter paper. Otherwise, if 'fires over a large area' as hypnosifl contends is all that is needed we should have observed at least a little ice age in 1946.


 * and while you're on that page note that the admirality of japan were aware that their cities were particularly vulnerable to firebombing in WWII, being made out of bamboo and paper, which like the point made earlier in the firestorm section, is completely different to modern city construction, with fire protection building code practices-


 * '''The effects of the Tokyo firebombing proved the fears expressed by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in 1939: "Japanese cities, being made of wood and paper, would burn very easily. The Army talks big, but if war came and there were large-scale air raids, there's no telling what would happen."

'''
 * Spector, Ronald (1985). "Eagle Against the Sun." New York: Vintage Books. p. 503
 * Spector, Ronald (1985). Eagle Against the Sun. Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0-394-74101-7


 * Also the very fact the authors of the 2008 Nuclear Winter paper discuss rain out by firestorm generated clouds further reinforces that they assume firestorms will occur in modern cities. If as you suggest, firestorms are not necessary then again, I charge you to explain why they chose two cities that firestormed in WWII( Hiroshima and Hamburg) to base their model off? That is no mere coincidence son.


 * Further sources that support that firestorms are necessary to loft soot to the stratosphere in the Nuclear Winter papers-
 * In 1983, R.P. Turco, O.B. Toon, T.P. Ackerman, J.B. Pollack, and Carl Sagan (referred to as TTAPS) published a paper entitled "Global Atmospheric Consequences of Nuclear War" which is the foundation that the nuclear winter theory is based on. Theory states that nuclear explosions will set off firestorms in the cities
 * http://www.atomicarchive.com/Movies/Movie6.shtml


 * Again, that you even try and debate this, is pretty absurd.


 * On average ~ 936 Tg of Carbon smoke is emitted annually from the globes forest fires, of note however is this 'Carbon' dubiously includes CO emissions from the fires.
 * http://eastfire.gmu.edu/EOS900-06/papers/W5-1.pdf
 * As we both know, no serious global effects are observed each year from this. This, again, does not lend much weight to your dubious belief that firestorms are not necessary to loft soot to the stratosphere.


 * In a similar vein, as presented already -
 * DETERMINING EFFECTS OF AREA BURNED AND FIRE SEVERITY
 * ON CARBON CYCLING AND EMISSIONS IN SIBERIA
 * Shostakovich, V. B.: 1925, ‘Forest Conflagrations in Siberia’, J. Forestry 23, 365–371. reported on
 * Fires in 1915 in Siberia burned for 50 days, and produced a smoke pall that
 * covered 680 million ha and burned 100 million hectares 10,000 km^2 about the size of the island of jamaica, keep in ::::mind that The global annual Average forest burn area is ~ 5 million hectares. ::::http://eastfire.gmu.edu/EOS900-06/papers/W5-1.pdf
 * Therefore The 1915 Siberian forest fire soley produced over 20 times more burning/carbon than annually comes from forest fires globally, again, with no global cooling effects observed, and none anywhere near that of the little ice age as predicted from 50 cities burning in the 2008 Toon paper.


 * Russell Seitz expands upon this in "Siberian fire as 'nuclear winter' guide" ::::(scientific correspondence), Nature, 323, 11 September 1986, pages 116-117
 * http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v323/n6084/abs/323116a0.html


 * Also Yellowstone fires of 1988 where 3,210 km^2 of forest burned in 1988. Again :::No Global cooling was observed and here, there were even reports of firestorms.


 * You then wrote-
 * some of the info you post above is basically unrelated to your arguments about firestorms, like the quotes from the Pielke/Cotton book


 * You're right there, I don't soley focus on the firestorm aspect of the nuclear winter papers, I also had the audacity to include a quote from a previous advocate of the Nuclear Winter hypothesis, Dr. William Cotton, which I referenced above.


 * William R. Cotton Ph.D. in Meteorology who developed one of the first comprehensive mesoscale weather forecast models in the US - the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) which is cited over 561 times -> http://www.springerlink.com/content/h0mk3154hp513482/ So, as you should now see, he would hardly be classified as holding a minority view, as you suggested earlier, what was it you said - 'his view is a minority view of how to approach climate science'.


 * Roger A. Pielke who would be more aptly described as a flip flopping sceptic of AGW, however I don't think that matters, both are highly cited Doctors of Meteorology and both their wikipedia article pages include that they are skeptical of climate models, afterall they are qualified to know, they produced one of the most cited climate models in the world i.e RAMS!


 * It is actually pretty sickening to me that you try to contend they both these highly cited PhD's in Meteorology are unreliable simply because they have challenged the consensus view on an entirely unrelated hypothesis, that of AGW.


 * If you must know William Cotton agrees that anthropogenic CO2 is the most convincing culprit to explain global warming, he simply argues that GCM climate models do not take Aerosols into account, and therefore there are large uncertainties in the models veracity when they omit important real world factors. Gone be the day that healthy skepticism was deemed a virtuous quality, and a dogmatic herd mentality was that which was derided.
 * Regardless, your point about them both being suspect of failing to meet Wikipedia criteria - undue weight - is false. As I've written already William Cotton is a very reliable source as he previously agreed with and even worked on prior Nuclear Winter models.
 * pg 184 A Nuclear Winter's Tale MIT Press.
 * http://books.google.ie/books/about/A_Nuclear_Winter_s_Tale.html?id=y8M5vx-Lrk0C&redir_esc=y — Preceding unsigned comment added by Boundarylayer (talk • contribs) 03:24, 4 July 2012 (UTC)


 * You accuse me of "shifting the goalposts", a phrase which would suggest I initially gave you one goal, then when you satisfied it, I shifted to a different goal. Do you actually think I have done this, or are you just comparing my goals to those of previous editors you've debated with (which is no concern of mine since I wasn't present for earlier debates on the firestorm issue), or misunderstanding the meaning of the phrase "shift the goalposts"? (it doesn't just mean that you find the goals I have set unreasonable) If you do think I've shifted the goalposts in the first sense, please be specific about how you think I have changed the goals over the course of our brief exchange. I think I have been pretty clear the whole time that the goal for inclusion of an argument in the wikipedia article is that there is a reliable published source that makes exactly that argument.


 * Your response just seems to be trying to convince readers that what you are saying is true, and completely ignoring the question of whether it meets the requirements for inclusion in a wikipedia article. Do you disagree that the rule on "synthesis" is saying pretty clearly that any time an editor wants to say that fact A has implications for the validity of theory B, they have to find a published paper from a reliable source that clearly connects A and B in this way? Please answer this question yes or no. Even if you think it's straightforward that findings suggesting a lack of firestorms in a nuclear attack on modern cities with Hiroshima-sized bombs implies a problem for nuclear winter theory (do you also think there would be a lack of firestorms in H-bomb attacks, by the way, or are you only criticizing the paper about regional nuclear war between powers that only have fission bombs?), I don't think such an argument would merit inclusion in the article unless a published paper from a reliable source could be found that made that specific argument.


 * With the "synthesis" rule, I think there is some leeway when a connection between two facts is sufficiently obvious to all editors involved, especially if the two facts are simply mentioned in sequence in the article with it being left to the reader to see how they are connected. For example, if one paper said "urban firestorms are a critical assumption in nuclear winter models, without firestorms very little soot would reach the upper atmosphere and so there would be little effect on climate", and then another paper said "recent studies have called into question the idea that a nuclear attack on a modern city would generate firestorms", then I think it would be OK to put those two quotes in successive sentences. But the quotes you have provided don't seem to say clearly that firestorms are a necessary assumption for getting a lot of soot into the upper atmosphere, even if the authors indicate that they think firestorms will occur (and in some of those cases they seem to be talking about attacks with vastly more powerful H-bombs, not Hiroshima-type bombs). You said:


 * Without a firestorm, you won't generate the heat energy in Joules to lift the soot to the stratosphere


 * This may well be true, but you can't expect other editors to just take your statement on your own authority, and none of your quotes clearly state this. For example, your first quote says that the height of plumes depends on the "intensity" of the fire, but doesn't say that only a firestorm can create enough intensity for plumes to reach above 10 km, it just lists the firestorm in Hamburg as an example of a particularly intense fire. Carl Sagan's comment in the Demon-Haunted World doesn't seem to be about the fact that the oil fires weren't hot enough, but rather that the plumes weren't large enough, consistent with the quote from the 2008 Toon et al. paper mentioned in Nuclear_winter: Stenchikov et al. [2006b][26] conducted detailed, high-resolution smoke plume simulations with the RAMS regional climate model [e.g., Miguez-Macho et al., 2005][27] and showed that individual plumes, such as those from the Kuwait oil fires in 1991, would not be expected to loft into the upper atmosphere or stratosphere, because they become diluted. However, much larger plumes, such as would be generated by city fires, produce large, undiluted mass motion that results in smoke lofting. Again, you may well be right that without a firestorm the plume cannot reach the stratosphere no matter how wide it is, but you need a reference that clearly says something like this. Your argument about 66 Japanese cities being burned without effects on the climate might be a good one if we were simply having a debate about the truth of the matter, but again if we're debating inclusion in a wikipedia article this isn't relevant unless a published reliable source makes the same argument (I would also say the argument is not completely convincing given that modern cities probably contain a lot more flammable material per unit area than the average Japanese city burned in WWII, especially given the statement in the 2008 paper that studies of various cities "suggest that the amount of fuel per unit area in the urban developed world, Mf, is a linear function of the population density P")


 * And the fact that authors of recent papers about modeling nuclear winter mention firestorms does suggest they think firestorms would occur (which may be reasonable if the flammable material per unit area in modern cities is much larger than Hiroshima/Nagasaki), but it doesn't clearly indicate that they think this is a necessary condition for injecting soot into the stratosphere. And it does not appear to be true that "they chose two cities that firestormed in WWII( Hiroshima and Hamburg) to base their model off" in the 2008 Toon et al. paper you linked to, Hamburg is only mentioned in connection with the relation between fuel per unit area and population density (and that relation was also said to be derived from modern US cities), while Hiroshima is only mentioned in connection to the relation between the area burned and the bomb yield, there is no indication that either city figured into their calculation of the amount of soot that would reach the upper atmosphere for a given area of city that was burned. Probably firestorms did increase the area burned in Hiroshima relative to Nagasaki by a bit, but the table here indicates 28.3 percent of buildings in Nagasaki were "blasted and burned", and the text above mentions that 67% of buildings and Hiroshima "were destroyed or severely damaged", a difference of a little more than a factor of 2, suggesting that the difference in area burned also probably wouldn't be too much larger.


 * Similarly, the quote from the 1983 source you mention by Turco et al., "Theory states that nuclear explosions will set off firestorms in the cities", does not specifically say that such firestorms are a necessary condition for putting large amounts of soot in the upper atmosphere. And wasn't that paper more likely discussing a war between the US and USSR involving H-bombs, not a regional war between countries like India/Pakistan using fission bombs?


 * You also bring up forest fires. Some very large forest fires do indeed produce plumes that reach the stratosphere, see the references following the phrase "but that smoke from fires covering a large area, like some forest fires" in the section Nuclear_winter. But unless you know of an estimate suggesting that the amount reaching of soot from forest fires reaching the stratosphere (as opposed to the total amount of soot) is comparable to the amount assumed in the model of a regional nuclear war, there is no particular reason to think this casts doubt on the climate model used by Toon et al. (and even if it did, though this might convince me, I wouldn't say it could be used as an argument against their model in the article unless a published reliable source could be found making the same point).


 * Finally, as for Cotton and Pielke, you say "It is actually pretty sickening to me that you try to contend they both these highly cited PhD's in Meteorology are unreliable simply because they have challenged the consensus view on an entirely unrelated hypothesis, that of AGW." In fact I never called them "unreliable", and I didn't mention the wikipedia rules on reliable sources, only the one on not giving undue weight to minority viewpoints, which is a separate issue. And I didn't do so merely because they are AGW skeptics, but rather because they (Pielke anyway, I'm not as sure about Cotton) appear to cite as one of the main reasons for their skepticism a distrust of climate modeling as good way to determine causality in climate changes and predict future climate outcomes (like all AGW skeptics I have seen, they appear not to offer any detailed alternative climate model that accurately accounts for past temperature changes given plausible estimates for both natural and anthropogenic climate forcings in the past, as mainstream climate models do...the RAMS model you mention is an atmospheric model of short-term weather changes, which is quite distinct from a global climate model just as meteorology is distinct from climate science, see here and here for more on weather vs. climate). This is a minority view of the proper approach to climate science, and it's directly relevant to evaluating nuclear winter scenarios which are all based on the use of climate models. If their book did not mention any doubts about climate modeling, and only discussed the issue of uncertainties in the amount of soot that would reach the stratosphere in a nuclear attack, then this might not be relevant, but I doubt that this is the case. And even if Cotton is not as leery of climate modeling as Pielke, the specific issue of how aerosols affect climate is of course directly relevant to nuclear winter (a form of aerosol-based cooling), so if the majority of the climate community thinks that the assumptions about aerosols built into climate models are largely correct, his questioning of nuclear winter models on this basis would also be a minority view.


 * Like I said, the main issue here is not whether a given claim is plausible to you or me, but whether it satisfies the criteria for inclusion in wikipedia. Only claims which are clearly stated in reliable published sources meet the criteria, and in some cases such claims may reflect a minority view among experts in the field, in which case they should be mentioned as such. Please address these specific issues, not just what you believe to be true. Hypnosifl (talk) 16:18, 5 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Also, I just had a look at the section on google books of the book where you got the first quote (Hafemeister, David W, ed. (1991), Physics and Nuclear Arms Today, Issue 4 of Readings from Physics Today) and it actually seems to go against the idea that firestorms are an absolute necessity for getting significant amounts of soot into the stratosphere. The part you quoted was from p. 24, but then page 25 of the book goes on to say: Whatever the initial distribution of smoke in the atmosphere, it may well be altered by subsequent dynamic effects. For example, two recent climate models suggest that the upper part of the smoke cloud may be lofted to much greater heights due to heating by the sunlight it absorbs. One of these reports comes from a very detailed climate model that assumes 20 vertical levels in the atmosphere. As shown in figure 4, for a July simulation, with 170 Tg of smoke initially injected between 2-5 km, some fraction of the smoke gets lofted to altitudes of 15-25 km, from which it is removed very slowly. Figure 4 is on p. 23, it shows where the smoke would be concentrated 20 days after being injected at 2-5 km, it seems from the contour diagram that while the mixing ratio of smoke to air would be highest (70 * 10-9) below a height of 10 km (the height of the stratosphere), it would still be only slightly lower (60 * 10-9) just above that height, gradually dropping at greater heights (for example, it'd still be 40 * 10-9 at a height of 15 km according to the model). And note that the author uses the word "lofting" to refer specifically to the increase in height due to warming by the sun, not the original rising of the smoke from the fire; I think that the Robock et al paper from 2007 is using "lofting" in the same technical sense in the quote mentioned in Nuclear_winter: Stenchikov et al. [2006b][26] conducted detailed, high-resolution smoke plume simulations with the RAMS regional climate model [e.g., Miguez-Macho et al., 2005][27] and showed that individual plumes, such as those from the Kuwait oil fires in 1991, would not be expected to loft into the upper atmosphere or stratosphere, because they become diluted. However, much larger plumes, such as would be generated by city fires, produce large, undiluted mass motion that results in smoke lofting. Note that earlier in the Robock et al 2007 paper, on p. 3, they wrote Malone et al [1985] showed that lofting of aerosols in the summer due to solar heating would prolong their lifetime, because in the stratosphere they are removed from precipitation scavenging, and on p. 6 they note that the aerosols in the 5 Tg case were assumed to be pure smoke, and they said this implied that per unit mass, the aerosols in the 5 Tg case would be expected to absorb more solar radiation, producing more lofting. And on p. 7 they write about the lofting of smoke by solar absorption. So, I think it's safe to say that the quote above from p. 12 of Robock et al 2007 which appears in Nuclear_winter, saying the Stenchikov paper showed that the plumes from the oil fires were too small for significant lofting but that larger plumes would loft a greater proportion of smoke, was specifically talking about this effect where sunlight raises the height of the smoke to much greater heights than the heated air from the fire itself would be able to raise it to. Hypnosifl (talk) 18:23, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Ozone Depletion
The discussion of ozone depletion (excluding the 1st paragraph) seems to be just an attempt to mudsling a scientific publication in a public forum.

The main focus of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) article is that the use of nuclear weapons would lead to a massive injection of soot (1Tg - 5Tg for the different cases) and with that soot would come black carbon. This black carbon would heat the stratosphere and this heating of the stratosphere would disrupt the Chapman mechanism in the long-term (it can be assumed the O2 would be well mixed by then).

The authors of the PNAS article argue that this temperature change would affect the catalytic loss-cycle of O3 due to NOx, not because of an increase of NOx from the detonations. The PNAS authors actually point out that they chose to not inject any additional NOx into the atmosphere even though previous studies had (3rd paragraph). So the argument in the wikipedia page that all of the NOx would react and form nitric acid is essentially a moot point.

The final citation (Goldsmith et al., 1973) would be valid if the authors of the PNAS paper had actually injected NOx into the stratosphere which they did not. Here's a quote from the implications (final section) of the Goldsmith paper: "We conclude that past nuclear explosions have been equivalent, as far as nitrogen oxide stratospheric injections are concerned, to large numbers of these fully operational Concordes." Furthermore, the Goldsmith paper has come under quite a bit of scrutiny in recent years due to bias. Goldsmith and Johnston were both accused of selectively using data and there is even a book published with this Goldsmith paper and Johnston et al., (1971) as the focal points due to the arguments and alleged scientific bias.

In summary the paper discussed a modeling study where soot was injected into the stratosphere that heated the stratosphere. The chapman mechanism and the catalytic loss cycle through NOx are both temperature dependent cycles that are affected in the modeling study. Those are what lead to the O3 destruction, not an injection of NOx so the 2nd through last paragraphs in the Ozone Depletion section are entirely moot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.138.222.48 (talk) 01:11, 29 April 2011 (UTC)