Climate change: Nuclear war is our greatest threat

The Pope recently urged world leaders to act on climate change. Very laudatory, as long as we remain focused on the biggest threat to humanity: global cooling.

Scientists predict that the global cooling resulting from a regional nuclear war using just 0.03 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads would cause widespread famine and disease.

As a corollary to his eponymous Paradox, Physicist Enrico Fermi famously asked: “Where is everybody?” Carl Sagan mused that a technologically advanced civilization tends to destroy themselves. So far we’ve been more lucky than rational, but nuclear-armed nations are becoming increasingly antagonistic.

Scientist Max Tegmark offers optimism when contrasting climate change caused by fossil fuels versus nuclear: “Nuclear climate change also has the advantage of being an easier problem to solve. Whereas halving carbon emissions is quite difficult to accomplish, halving expected nuclear climate change is as simple as halving nuclear arsenals.”

In Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan wrote, “Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot.”

Panglossian it may be, but recognizing nuclear climatic cooling as our greatest threat is a start.

This story was originally published December 29, 2016 at 4:52 PM with the headline "Climate change: Nuclear war is our greatest threat."