Regional Nuclear War Offsets Global Warming

See National Geographic February 22, 2011 article at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/02/110223-nuclear-war-winter-global-warming-environment-science-climate-change/
Small Nuclear War Could Reverse Global Warming for Years
Regional war could spark "unprecedented climate change," experts predict.

by Charles Q. Choi

"Even a regional nuclear war could spark "unprecedented" global cooling and reduce rainfall for years, according to U.S. government computer models.
Widespread famine and disease would likely follow, experts speculate."

"To see what climate effects such a regional nuclear conflict might have, scientists from NASA and other institutions modeled a war involving a hundred Hiroshima-level bombs, each packing the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT—just 0.03 percent of the world's current nuclear arsenal."
"The global cooling caused by these high carbon clouds wouldn't be as catastrophic as a superpower-versus-superpower nuclear winter, but "the effects would still be regarded as leading to unprecedented climate change," research physical scientist Luke Oman said during a press briefing Friday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C."


Also a very interesting comment / question:
erikleeolson
February 28, 2011
I have a question about the "Scenario" where 100 15KT bombs are used in this war. I'm just wondering about the numbers. That would be 1.5 Megatons of energy, whereas many above-ground atomic tests had a much higher yield, such as the 5,000Kt Tsar Bomba which was 1,400 10 times the combined energy of all explosives used in WWII, yet just one quarter of the estimated yield of the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. Did any of these events change the climate of the whole planet?

Michael Barone on Americans' Reaction to the Expansion of Government

See Wall Street Journal FEBRUARY 28, 2011 Notable & Quotable at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703933404576170404203823980.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Michael Barone writing Feb. 26 in the Washington Examiner:

"It's a question that puzzles most liberals and bothers some conservatives. Why are so many modest-income white voters rejecting the Obama Democrats' policies of economic redistribution and embracing the small-government policies of the Tea Party movement?

It's not supposed to work out that way, say the political scientists and New Deal historians. Politics is supposed to be about who gets how much when, and people with modest incomes should be eager to take as much from the rich as they can get. . . . [But people] are entitled to base their vote on the things they think important. . . .

The recoil in 2010 against the Obama Democrats' vast expansion of the size and scope of government seems to have a cultural or a moral dimension . . . It was a vote, as my Washington Examiner colleague Timothy P. Carney wrote last week, expressing "anger at those unfairly getting rich—at the taxpayer's expense."

Those include well-connected Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs that got bailed out and giant corporations like General Electric that shape legislation so they can profit. They include the public-employee unions who have bribed politicians to grant them pensions and benefits unavailable to most Americans.

A government intertwined with the private sector inevitably picks winners and losers. It allows well-positioned insiders to game the system for private gain. It bails out the improvident and sticks those who made prudent decisions with the bill.

Modest-income Americans think this is wrong. They want it fixed more than they want a few more bucks in their paychecks."

Federal Workers Have No Collective-Bargaining Rights

See Feb 26, 2011 Wall Street Journal by John Fund
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704150604576166034245532792.html

“[Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker] The governor knows he has become a national lightning rod, but he says he was nonetheless surprised when President Obama jumped into the fray last week by saying that the governor's proposal to limit collective bargaining sounded like "an assault on unions." He finds it ironic that Mr. Obama criticized his collective-bargaining changes when federal workers lack the power to bargain for wages or benefits—a fact demonstrated last month when Mr. Obama imposed a wage freeze on all federal workers. Under Mr. Walker's proposal, Wisconsin unions could still bargain for cost-of-living raises or more if approved by a voter referendum.”

Obama Budget Doubles National Debt to $26.3 Trillion in 10 Years

See http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-budget-nearly-double-national-debt

CBS News Monday, February 14, 2011 by Matt Cover

(CNSNews.com) – "If the federal budget released by President Barack Obama today is implemented, it will double the national debt over the next 10 years. The current national debt is $13.56 trillion (end of FY 2010). By the end of 2021, that debt would rise to $26.3 trillion under the White House budget.

The figures reflect the effects of Obama’s fiscal year 2012 budget priorities, particularly a federal deficit that never falls below $500 billion in any year between 2010 and 2021.

The national debt – both debt held by the public and debt held by “government accounts” (the Social Security trust fund chief among them) – was $13.56 trillion on Sept. 30. 2010, the end of fiscal year 2010. (The national debt today, Deb. 14, 2011, is $14.08 trillion.)

In 2021, the national debt will have risen to $26.3 trillion, increasing by $1 trillion every year until 2021. Obama’s budget does not contain any plans for balancing the federal budget or reducing the national debt."

Sarah Palin on ObamaCare "Death Panels"

Statement on the Current Health Care Debate
by Sarah Palin on Friday, August 7, 2009

See http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=113851103434

"The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."