Why Carl Sagan ' s ' nuclear winter ' scenario is an unscientific fraud

On Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, a wide-ranging coalition of environ­ mentalist and population-control organizations sponsored a conference bankrolled by the Rockefeller Foundation on "The World After Nuclear War: Conference on the Long-term World-wide Biological Consequences of Nuclear War." As­ tronomer Carl Sagan and biologist Paul Ehrlich announced the results of a supposed scientific investigation of this sub­ ject conducted by a task force of over 100 scientists worldwide. The claim popularized by Carl Sagan at this congress was that nuclear war of even modest proportions would lead to devastating climatic effects, which he dubs the "nuclear win­ ter. " His assertion is that a dramatic fall in temperature glob­ ally of as much as 40 degrees centigrade will threaten to destroy the biosphere and make man extinct. The scenario upon which he bases his results calls for a 5,000 megaton nuclear detonation. However, he asserts that even 100 me­ gatons would lead to the same consequences. Despite the fact that his claims are in some cases unsubstantiated, and are in general incompetent, he has already received the type of media play-up aimed to create mass hysteria. Sagan is di­ rectly deployed to discredit any attempts at civil defense or anti-ballistic missile defense with his "end of the world" scenario. Sagan is pushing the Pugwash proposal for a massive builddown which would limit the Soviet Union and the United States to 500 warheads each, i.e., less than 100 megatons. Not only would this proposal, if implemented, allow a war­ winning advantage to any third party coming into the nuclear scene or to either superpower who wished to violate the treaty, but of course it would be totally unacceptable to either side. Sagan's only purpose can be to render the West impo­ tent in face of the escalating Soviet threat. Briefly, the Ehrlich-Sagan claims are that in addition to the immediate destruction wrought by a U.S.-Soviet nuclear exchange, a war would throw up into high altitudes of the atmosphere enough dust and soot to block out 98 percent of solar radiation in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemi­ sphere for weeks to months-with the result that average temperatures would plummet 15 to 25 degrees centigrade, photosynthesis would cease, and there would occur wide­ spread extinction of plant and animal life (especially vertebrates) . We document elsewhere in this Special Report that this