After Hiroshima, nuclear threats still have a long half-life

11 August 2020 / raminskibba / Leave a comment

The massive explosion that rocked Beirut’s port likely killed hundreds, wounded thousands, and rendered 300,000 Lebanese people homeless. But in comparison, the atomic bomb dropped by the United States’s B-29 bombers on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 75 years ago had 15 times that explosion’s destructive power, killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese people, and sickened many more.

After three quarters of a century, the threat of mutually assured destruction engulfing our planet continues to loom over us. President Trump’s nuclear policies — including tearing up international treaties, deploying so-called “low-yield” warheads on submarines, keeping nukes on “hair-trigger alert” to be launched at a moment’s notice, and refusing to rule out new nuclear testing — have only expanded those threats and encouraged proliferation. Trump’s successor will have a huge responsibility to pull us back from the brink and disperse the calamitous mushroom cloud from our horizon.

While the Hiroshima bomb erupted with the energy of 15,000 tons of TNT, many weapons available for launch in the US’s and other country’s arsenals have the explosive power of megatons of TNT. Even the low-yield nukes promoted by the Trump administration aren’t particularly small, and they arguably encourage an arms race and lower the bar toward somebody once again pressing the big red button and unleashing a weapon of mass destruction. Combined with the lack of US support for at least four nuclear treaties, it’s no wonder that leaders of North Korea, Iran, Saudia Arabia, and Turkey want such weapons for themselves.

As Lesley M. M. Blume writes in her new book, Fallout, if it weren’t for journalist John Hersey’s reporting on the horrific devastation and death toll in Hiroshima, Americans might not be aware of the damage the world’s worst weapons have wrought. Another new book, The Beginning or The End, by Greg Mitchell, also demonstrates the attempt by the federal government and Hollywood to cover up the massive death and destruction let loose by the atom bomb. After the war, such an indisputable attack on civilians and civilian infrastructure came to be viewed as a war crime and a crime against humanity.

With the pandemic and climate change, we already have plenty of threats to humanity. 75 years is already too much time to have such horrific weapons in our midst. Trump’s successor will have their work cut out for them to ensure that our era of toying with nuclear disaster soon comes to an end.

Iran Could’ve Been Our Ally

17 January 2020 / raminskibba / Leave a comment

As an Iranian-American writer, I just wanted to offer a few brief thoughts on the current simmering conflict, which is threatening to boil over…

Despite claims of a clash of cultures or civilizations, Iran and the United States actually have some common interests in the Middle East. And had history played out differently, the countries might even have become allies, while Iranians and Americans could have been colleagues especially in the arts and sciences. But to forge a new relationship, at least one of mutual respect, it will require coming to terms with America’s oppressive past in the region.

Azadi Tower, Tehran

Britain was once Iran’s biggest nemesis, but the US government took on that mantle in 1953. That was when the CIA played a major role in overthrowing Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran’s popular elected leader who had the gall to nationalize the oil company later known as BP, which had for decades been extracting Iranian oil to grease the wheels of the British Empire.

US officials re-installed the Shah, a brutally repressive autocrat who was so disliked that Iranians united to overthrow him. Students, activists, trade unionists, poets, and Islamists came together in that revolution, but the latter shunned the others and assumed power when the dust settled. US governments since then have failed to understand Iranians’ anger against them. The US supported Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war, shot down a civilian airplane that killed 290 people, invaded Iran’s two biggest neighbors with more than 100,000 troops, supported Iran’s two biggest rivals with powerful weaponry, installed dozens of military bases that surround the country, insisted Iran’s part of some Axis of Evil, and repeatedly hit Iranians with sanctions, to which they have no recourse. No wonder Iranians feel threatened.

Iran remains a divided country: many Iranians support their government in response to the Trump administration’s crippling economic sanctions and assassination of General Soleimani while others oppose their government’s mishandling of the economy and limitations on their political freedoms. (Some Iranians are in both camps.)

“That’s history” is a dismissive phrase in America, but to Iranians, a proud people whose trials and achievements go back millennia, history matters indeed.

I’ve visited many places throughout Iran to give talks and to see family. Iranians have their own critically acclaimed and Oscar-winning films, but they love American movies, too. They quote their own poets and writers, but they also read American literature. They have plenty of physicists, astronomers and doctors — algebra, optics and pediatrics all arguably began in Persia — and these accomplished scientists would jump at the opportunity to collaborate with their American counterparts.

Relations between the two nations seem to be at their nadir, but both Americans and Iranians don’t want war. If the Trump administration and leading Democrats realize that the days of US empire in the Middle East are over, they can step back from the brink of war, withdraw troops and military bases, and stake out a path toward peace, which would greatly benefit the people of both countries.

New freelance writings: space arms race, scientific racism, women in physics

27 May 201927 May 2019 / raminskibba / Leave a comment

In case you missed them, here’s a few pieces I’ve recently written and published for Medium, Nature, and Smithsonian magazine. Thanks as usual to my excellent editors! I’m only posting brief excerpts here, so if you’re interested, please check out the whole thing using the links below.

You can stay more up-to-date if you follow my electronic newsletter, Ramin’s Space!

Are We at Risk for a Space Arms Race?

The Pentagon’s space-based missile defense plans could escalate tensions with rival space powers.

On March 27, India tested its first anti-satellite weapon, an interceptor missile that blew up an Indian military satellite in space. The test put India in an exclusive club of nations — including the U.S., Russia, and China — that are building the capacity to shoot down both missiles and satellites. And the other members of the club aren’t happy.

On April 1, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine criticized India’s test, angry that the resulting debris may have reached the orbit of the International Space Station and other satellites.

“That is a terrible, terrible thing, to create an event that sends debris in an apogee that goes above the International Space Station,” Bridenstine said at a town hall meeting that was livestreamed on NASA TV. “And that kind of activity is not compatible with the future of human spaceflight that we need to see happen.”

Yet the future of human spaceflight looks increasingly militarized. The Department of Defense has declared its own plans to attach missile-detecting sensors on satellites, and more menacingly, to seriously consider building interceptors that could be deployed in space. If Congress approves new funding for these projects, the technology could encourage rivals to ratchet up their own space weapon capabilities, triggering an arms race that could make orbital wars with lasers and satellites a reality…

[Read the entire piece in Medium magazine, published on 18 April.]

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The Trump administration’s encouraging nuclear brinkmanship, not deterrence

14 September 2018 / raminskibba / Leave a comment

[I was thinking of publishing an op-ed somewhere about these issues, but I decided to just post my thoughts in the form of a blog post here.]

President Trump recently signed a massive defense bill, and of the whopping $716 billion bill, $65 million goes to new submarine-launched “low-yield” nuclear weapons.

At a time when we’re supposed to be leading the way on cutting back on nuclear arms, this comes across as a “Do as we say, not as we do” policy. The low-yield warheads are likely to backfire by contributing to another arms race with Russia that lowers the bar to nuclear war.

The name’s misleading: such nukes are about half as devastating as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima and killed some 100,000 people. They’re still weapons of mass destruction. They’re also redundant, considering that the military already has plenty of “dial-a-yield” weapons that can be adjusted to release the same degree of explosive power.

Philip Calbos of Trump’s National Nuclear Security Administration thinks the Obama administration was weak on nuclear deterrence, according to comments he made that I obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. He believes that these new weapons will somehow deter nuclear rivals like Russia and aid nonproliferation efforts at the same time.

This new array of weapons is supposedly part of the nuclear “modernization” program, which began under Obama and actually replaces and upgrades the nuclear arsenal to the tune of more than $1 trillion dollars over the next 30 years. It also includes new bombers with new cruise missiles, new earth-shattering gravity bombs, new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and new nuclear submarines.

Are thousands of nukes in ever more varieties really necessary? Does they even accomplish what they’re ostensibly for — deter a nuclear first strike? It’s more realistic that Russia, China, and other nuclear powers will see these new weapons not as merely defensive but as something that themselves could even be used as a first-strike option. This growing supply of missiles, subs and bombers doesn’t benefit any of us, except perhaps the stockholders of Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman.

If we seems to have a military advantage, surely our nuclear adversaries will try to bridge that gap — and then just as surely nuclear advocates in the Pentagon and Congress will come back asking for even more weaponry, escalating the nuclear brinkmanship. The US, Russia and China are already developing hypersonic missiles that travel three times the speed of sound, as well as new missile-defense systems, and adding more kinds of nukes would just encourage others to follow suit.

“We are at our busiest since the Cold War,” Calbos said. We shouldn’t take comfort in that.

Furthermore, in a relic of the Cold War, the US military still keeps hundreds of nukes on hair-trigger alert, ready to launch from silos and subs on a moment’s notice. A false alarm or ambiguous signals from early warning sensors could lead to Dr. Strangelove-style irrational retaliation from President Trump.

More low-yield warheads will just obliterate the distinction nuclear weapons and conventional ones. The Pentagon even reserves the right to respond to non-nuclear attacks, like to the electric grid, with nukes, and low-yield weapons just makes it more conceivable for a small conflict — or a mistake or misread intelligence — to turn into a nuclear one.

This completely reverses efforts to gradually reduce nuclear stockpiles. If the Trump Administration and Congress are serious about nonproliferation in the Middle East and East Asia, they should resist adding to our own arsenal.

Many Congressional Democrats — though not California’s senators — voted for the huge military bill, despite including investments in these new low-yield nukes, which could find their way onto subs at sea within the next few years. But Democrats have the chance to redeem themselves if they retake Congress during November’s election and stop this dangerous weapon from being deployed.

Thoughts on the Doomsday Clock ticking forward

2 February 20182 February 2018 / raminskibba / Leave a comment

[Here’s my two cents on the Doomsday Clock, building on a Facebook post I made last week.]

After the United States’s atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the risks of nuclear disaster and the dangers it posed to humanity became very real in the public imagination. The Doomsday Clock has drawn attention to these threats ever since, and since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has been inching closer and closer to midnight.

Aboveground Nuclear Test conducted at the Nevada Test Site on 25 May 1953. (Source: Nevada Department of Environmental Protection)

As I predicted, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists updated the clock last week by moving it from two and a half to two minutes until midnight, the nearest humans have been to apocalypse and annihilation. It would put 2018 in a grim tie with 1953, when the U.S. and U.S.S.R. developed the hydrogen bomb and heightened the Cold War.

In an attempt to make the Doomsday Clock more punctual, a decade ago the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ science and security board incorporated climate change threats in their assessments. In the following years, they have also referenced emerging technologies in the life sciences — mainly gene editing and gene drives — as well as killer robots, cyber attacks, and bioweapons.

Nuclear brinkmanship between the unpredictable governments of U.S. and North Korea, combined with the possibility of proliferation in the Middle East if the Iran nuclear agreement unravels, have helped push the minute hand farther last year. Now we have the Trump administration continuing Obama’s ill-advised policy of modernizing and expanding the US nuclear arsenal. And like his predecessor, Trump continues the Cold War-era policy of having nukes on hair-trigger alert. Then we had the false alarm of a missile alert in Hawaii, highlighting just how quickly a situation could escalate and weapons of mass destruction could be unleashed. [Update on 2 Feb.: The Pentagon today announced plans to develop low-yield nuclear weapons — “only” as explosive as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima — for ballistic and cruise missiles launched from submarines. They also said that nuclear weapons could be used in response to non-nuclear attacks.]

Simultaneously, global warming continues relentlessly, and though it’s a long-term problem, in the short term the time for action is ticking down, especially as the Trump administration retreats on efforts to combat climate change. So I think it makes sense for the clock to move forward, as we’re in more danger than before.

Nevertheless, it’s challenging to assess this dizzying array of global perils and potential threats together. Furthermore, how can we simultaneously evaluate or even rank these threats to civilization — while evaluating how well or poorly our society is currently addressing them? (One might also ask who is left out of the Doomsday Clock, since billions of people in poverty and environmental refugees often bear the brunt of disasters, but they’re threatened by smaller scale disasters than can be registered by a clock attuned to global threats to humanity.)

In any case, I don’t think we have to view all this entirely with doom and gloom. Just as a handful of people (and not just Trump) can push that minute hand forward, by working together to stop global warming and by focusing on diplomacy, we can pull ourselves back from the edge of the precipice.

New freelance writings: forensic science reform, planet impacts, earthquake forecasting

5 June 2017 / raminskibba / Leave a comment

Check out my latest articles and writings this past month, for Undark, Nature, New Scientist, and Now.Space. As always, thanks go to my editors. If you read just one, I recommend the Undark piece, which I’m particularly proud of and took a lot of work to write and report on.

Bite Marks and Bullet Holes

The Attorney General ended the National Commission on Forensic Science, suppressing an opportunity for reducing convictions based on faulty evidence.

Forensic scientists working in the crime laboratory located in Ridgepoint House. (Source: West Midlands Police – Forensic Science Lab)

Keith Harward spent more than three decades in prison on the presumed strength of forensic dentistry. No fewer than six forensic dentists testified that his teeth matched a bite mark on a 1982 victim of rape and murder. But in April of last year, after serving more than 33 years in a Virginia penitentiary, new DNA evidence prompted the state Supreme Court to make official what Harward knew all along: He was innocent, and the teeth mark analysis was unequivocally, tragically wrong.

“Bite mark evidence is what the whole case hinged on and ultimately had me convicted,” Harward said. “But,” he added, “this stuff is just guesswork.”

Today, many forensic scientists would agree — and they’d say the same, or nearly so, about a menagerie of other techniques that are used to convict people of crimes, from handwriting analysis to tire track comparisons. And while some techniques fare better than others, everything short of DNA analysis has been shown to be widely variable in reliability, with much hinging on forensic practitioners with widely varying approaches and expertise.

[Read the entire story in Undark, published on 2 June.]

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Nuclear Risk Reduction After the Iran Deal: Take Nukes Off Hair-Trigger Alert

16 October 201521 October 2015 / raminskibba / Leave a comment

By Ramin Skibba and Stephen Young

Following weeks of intense debate in the United States, the international agreement to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, supported by all California Senators and Bay Area Representatives, will go forward. It is an historic arrangement that demonstrates the world’s resolve to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. However, it will not solve all the nuclear threats that face the world.

With the Iran agreement now entering its implementation phase, it’s important to ask what other steps can be made to reduce the still considerable risks posed by nuclear weapons. The place to start is with countries already possessing nuclear weapons, pressing them to reduce the threat that their massive stockpiles still represent. Removing nuclear weapons from “hair-trigger alert” would be an important first step.

A decommissioned Titan II missile in an Arizona silo. (Credit: Sam Howzit, Union of Concerned Scientists)

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Physics Diplomacy and the Iran Nuclear Deal

17 April 2015 / raminskibba / 3 Comments

After much anticipation and cautious optimism, US, European, and Iranian negotiators managed to put together a nuclear framework in Lausanne, Switzerland earlier this month. It sets the stage for a final detailed agreement to be developed in June, which will transform Iran’s nuclear program and reduce sanctions against Iran that have weakened its economy. It appears that diplomats have nearly bridged a formidable foreign policy impasse that plagued their respective governments for over a decade.

Perhaps more importantly, a rapprochement with Iran could gradually end the country’s international isolation since 1979 following the revolution. In addition, from the perspective of Iran and some other Middle East countries, Iran’s improved relations with the US and its fair treatment under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) would make the US appear less hypocritical and less a source of instability. As an historical aside, it’s also worth noting that Iran started its nuclear program in 1967 with US help as part of Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program, and unlike Iran, three countries in the region with nuclear programs (Israel, Pakistan, and India) have not signed and ratified the NPT.

Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif and US Secretary of State Kerry in Paris on 16 Jan. 2015. (Source: US State Department)

Important Characters

Many interesting aspects of this agreement and situation are worth discussing. First, much credit for this historic achievement goes to Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif, US Secretary of State Kerry, and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, though of course all of the negotiating teams put in a lot of hard and stressful work to make it happen. Both Kerry and Zarif now face a difficult balancing act: staying true to the framework and focusing on delivering a final agreement while navigating domestic political concerns.

The latter may reflect the different messages and emphases in the statements made by Kerry and Zarif as they returned to their home countries. For example, Zarif and President Rouhani spoke more about relief from sanctions and freedom to enrich uranium while Kerry and President Obama spoke about the limits and restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. Furthermore, while some influential Iranian “hard-liners” like Hossein Shariatmadari criticized the deal, US senators in the Foreign Relations Committee led by Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) sought to pass a bill that would incorporate Congressional oversight but also had the potential to jeopardize diplomatic efforts.

US Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz and Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization also are important characters in this story. As pointed out in the New York Times and the Guardian, both had studied nuclear science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the mid-1970s, and they became No. 2 negotiators and “atomic diplomats” during the nuclear talks. Perhaps having experienced physicists involved helped cooler heads to prevail? (I’m half-joking; remember the Manhattan Project?)

Technical Details

Let’s explore some of the technical elements of the nuclear framework. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and US intelligence, Iran ended any weapons research it may have had in 2003. However, because of its power plant in Bushehr, its enrichment facilities in Natanz and Fordo, and its heave water reactor under construction near Arak, Iran has the capability to enrich weapons-grade uranium.

Only 0.3% of natural uranium is in the form of the ²³⁵U isotope. For power reactors, 3.5% enrichment is needed, while 20% is considered a threshold for “weapons-usable” uranium, and 90% enrichment is weapons-grade. Moreover, when uranium is burned, the spent fuel can be processed to extract plutonium. (And as we know from Fukushima, those spent fuel pools can be dangerous.)

Iran currently has 19,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium, and they are operating only 9,000 of them. If Iran wanted to, analysts predict that they are 2-3 months away from acquiring enough fissile material for one weapon; the US and Europe seek to prevent a nuclear “breakout” by extending this to at least one year, for a duration of at least 10 years. In addition, the international community will set up strict inspection and transparency measures that would allow it to detect any Iranian efforts to violate the accord.

For more information, see the US State Department’s detailed fact sheet and these Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and Science Insider articles. The UCS also recently held a webinar with directors and members of its Global Security Program: Drs. Lisbeth Gronlund, David Wright, and Edwin Lyman.

The agreement’s key provisions may be summarized as follows. The first one involves inspections and transparency: the IAEA will have access to Iran’s nuclear facilities, supply chain, uranium mines, centrifuge production, storage facilities, as well as any suspicious sites. Second, US and EU nuclear sanctions will be lifted after the IAEA verifies key steps, and they will “snap back” if necessary. Also, the UN Security Council will pass a new resolution and will set up a dispute resolution program. Third, for the enrichment, the number of centrifuges will be reduced to 6,104 IR-1s (1st-generation centrifuges), and Iran is not allowed to enrich uranium beyond 3.67% for at least 15 years or build new enrichment facilities during that time. Enrichment R&D will be limited as well, and there are plans to convert Fordo facility to an international research center. Fourth, Iran will modify the Arak research reactor to reduce plutonium production, ship spent fuel out of the country, and they are not allowed to engage in reprocessing or reprocessing R&D indefinitely.

The Fordo facility, built below a mountain, will be turned into a research lab. (Credit: IAEA Imagebank/Flickr)

According an interview with Seyed Hossein Mousavian, former ambassador and nuclear negotiator for Iran, the US and world powers got what they wanted: Iran has accepted the maximum level of transparency and verification, including confidence-building measures that would ensure there would be no breakout or diversion toward weaponization. For Iran, negotiators can say that their rights for peaceful nuclear technology under the NPT was accepted, and all unilateral and multi-lateral nuclear-related sanctions will be lifted.

Implications

This historic diplomatic achievement, assuming that it comes to fruition with a final detailed agreement in June, will satisfy many concerns on both sides. It likely will result in improved relations and more respect for Iran. Importantly, it will also aid scientists and scientific research in Iran. Over a history of thousands of years, Persians have contributed fundamental scientific discoveries, including for example, by 10th century luminaries, the physicist Alhazen and astronomer Biruni. Now Persian scientists can engage in more international collaboration, and the new physics laboratory in Fordo will be an excellent start. (For more, see these articles in Science, Nature, and NY Review of Books.)

Finally, this has implications for the region. If relations between Iran and world powers improve, Iran could play a much more important role in Middle Eastern affairs. I think this is as it should be, but those who see these relations as a zero-sum game, including some in Saudi Arabia and Israel, oppose the deal for that reason. Leaders of another regional power, Turkey, have not opposed it, however. Furthermore, the success of diplomacy helps to continue nonproliferation efforts under the NPT around the world. We should also acknowledge though, as long as people view nuclear power as the primary alternative to fossil fuels, many countries will invest in it, and the risk of nuclear breakout and proliferation will remain, in spite of IAEA efforts and the NPT.

Geoengineering and Climate Interventions: Too Risky or Needs More Research?

4 March 2015 / raminskibba / 2 Comments

At the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in San Jose in February, scientists from the US National Research Council released two high-profile reports on climate interventions and geoengineering techniques. The most thorough evaluation of its kind, this pair of studies assesses proposed climate intervention approaches including their cost, technological capacities, uncertainties, impacts, challenges, and risks. As the Earth and its inhabitants experience a changing climate nothing like any in recorded human history, and as concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continue to rise, scientists are interested in considering all possible responses.

The research committee consists of an impressive array of experts from a variety of institutions and universities, including Ken Caldeira (Carnegie Inst. for Science), Lynn Russell (Scripps Inst. of Oceanography) and David Titley (Penn State), and it is chaired by Marcia McNutt, editor-in-chief of Science and former director of the US Geological Survey, and they are informed by numerous analysts and staff. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the US intelligence community, NASA, NOAA, and the Dept. of Energy sponsored the studies. One can access both full reports and a 4-page summary at the NAS website.

Photograph: Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press/Associated Press

The authors avoid the more commonly-used term “geoengineering,” which they also used in previous reports, because they consider the atmosphere and not just the Earth and because engineering “implies a greater degree of precision and control than might be possible.” Instead, they propose the term “intervention,” with its connotation of “an action intended to improve a situation.”

Through these reports, the committee makes three main recommendations and conclusions. First, the authors argue that there is no substitute for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Second, they recommend research and development investment to improve methods of carbon dioxide removal and disposal at scales that would have a significant global climate impact. Third, they oppose deployment of albedo-modification techniques but recommend further research.

Carbon dioxide removal and sequestration

NAS report: “Climate Intervention: Carbon Dioxide Removal and Reliable Sequestration”

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategies involve capturing carbon in the terrestrial biosphere or the ocean after it’s been emitted. These approaches are intended to mimic or accelerate processes that are already occurring as part of the natural carbon cycle. The authors consider five types of CDR techniques: land-management approaches such as forest restoration; accelerated weathering techniques (allowing the oceans to absorb more CO₂ than normal); ocean iron fertilization (so that more microorganisms such as plankton consume CO₂, like a “biological pump”); bioenergy (using biomass) followed by CO₂ capture and sequestration; and direct air capture of carbon.

The authors describe ocean fertilization and direct air capture as “immature technologies,” while land management and weathering processes have only been carried out on a limited scale, and bioenergy is limited by the availability of land for biomass and by the need to transport it to processing facilities. The barriers to CDR deployment involve slow implementation, limited capacity, policy considerations, and high costs of currently available technologies. The committee concludes the report with the following recommendation:

Recommendation 2: The Committee recommends research and development investment to improve methods of carbon dioxide removal and disposal at scales that would have a global impact on reducing greenhouse warming, in particular to minimize energy and materials consumption, identify and quantify risks, lower costs, and develop reliable sequestration and monitoring.

Albedo-modification research

NAS report: “Climate Intervention: Reflecting Sunlight to Cool Earth”

Albedo-modification techniques ignore the greenhouse gases and instead seek to avoid global warming by blocking the sun to prevent light from reaching the Earth’s surface. Such methods could lower average global temperatures in a couple years, like the effects of volcano eruptions, such as Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991. The authors mainly consider two methods for scattering sunlight: injecting millions of tons of aerosol-forming gases into the stratosphere; or marine cloud brightening, increasing the efficiency with which the ocean clouds reflect sunlight. They also briefly consider other techniques including: space-based methods, placing scatterers or reflectors in the atmosphere; and cirrus cloud modification, such that more long-wave radiation can flow up into space.

The authors acknowledge that albedo-modification techniques only temporarily mask the warming effect of greenhouse gases and would be needed to be sustained indefinitely. In addition, there could be unanticipated and unmanageable risks and consequences, “including political, social, legal, economic, and ethical dimensions.” Therefore, the committee comes to the following simple conclusion:

Recommendation 3: Albedo modification at scales sufficient to alter climate should not be deployed at this time.

Media Response

It’s interesting that with the same pair of reports, journalists at different media outlets present the study’s results in a variety of ways, demonstrating the many perspectives with which people approach these issues. For example, journalists and editors at the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Science, and National Geographic point to the need for more research, primarily on carbon dioxide removal techniques. On the other hand, Suzanne Goldenberg at The Guardian writes that the consideration of planetary-scale interventions shows how concerned scientists have become about advancing climate change, while Alexandra Witze at Nature writes about how these reports legitimize geoengineering, though many of the climate intervention approaches are deemed too risky.

I would argue that most of these journalists describe the study correctly, but since the study has multiple recommendations that are somewhat at odds with each other and since the committee includes people with different views and backgrounds, it’s inevitable that some people would be more responsive to some aspects of the report over others. You may also be interested in critical responses by people blogging with the Union of Concerned Scientists and the National Association of Science Writers.

Moving Ahead

Finally, I’ll end with my view of this study and of climate interventions. I’m not sure that the term “climate interventions” itself is an improvement over “geoengineering”: I think that the former amounts to re-branding the issue and that it sounds less serious. Make no mistake, what scientists consider in these reports are serious stuff indeed. And as some have mentioned before, such a scheme has been imagined before—by “The Simpsons” villain Mr. Burns.

The study’s authors state that there is no substitute for climate mitigation and that we should focus on the root cause of climate change, which is the carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. However, the carbon emissions are themselves caused by human society’s growing energy demand and the widespread use of fossil fuels: coal, oil, and gas.

The authors point out that most geoengineering schemes are too risky, involve immature technologies, have high costs, and could have unknown consequences on a planet-wide scale. Is it really worthwhile to invest in more research of them? The only exception is forest restoration and other land management methods, which would help when combined with reduced carbon emissions, and I wouldn’t group them with these other carbon-capture climate interventions.

I worry that this report would pave the way for wasting large investments of funding and effort researching these schemes, rather than focusing on the goal of slowing and eventually stopping climate change by transitioning to a low-carbon economy. Moreover, if people believe that a technological solution is possible in the distant future, they will not strive so hard to reduce carbon emissions today and will continue with business-as-usual. Above all, we should be focusing on expanding climate mitigation efforts. We should also work on climate adaptation, since the carbon already in the atmosphere will cause some warming in the coming decades no matter what.

Nuclear (non)proliferation and the Security of Earth

28 August 201425 February 2015 / raminskibba / Leave a comment

We all want global security, since at least for now, the Earth is the only planet we’ve got. In the words of The Tick (in the 1990s cartoon), “You can’t blow up the world…That’s where I keep all my stuff!”

In my previous post, I ended by raising the issue of the political scientist James Doyle, who was apparently fired from the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico after publishing a scholarly article questioning US nuclear weapons doctrine and defending President Obama’s goal of a nuclear weapons-free future. James Doyle’s article was titled “Why Eliminate Nuclear Weapons?,” and I’ll give you an extended quote from its conclusions, as it’s written rather well:

The marginal contribution that nuclear deterrence now makes to the absence of major aggression between great powers is being purchased at too high a price. That price is the constant risk that a complex, tightly coupled and largely automated system subject to normal, systemic and human error will, as science tells us, inevitably fail, and fail catastrophically, with unprecedented and unjustified loss of civilian life…Nuclear weapons are useless for confronting and resolving the most likely future international security challenges, but steady progress towards the elimination of such weapons can help nations confront these transnational problems…[E]limination of nuclear weapons will allow creative, intellectual, technical and financial resources now devoted to nuclear threats to be focused toward the resolution of transnational crises faced by all nations. As nuclear weapons are drawn down those resources can be re-focused toward developing clean energy, carbon-capture technologies, clean water management and low-impact, high-productivity agriculture.

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is calling on Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz to get involved in the case. According to Science journal, the lab recently made the following statement: “James Doyle’s separation from Los Alamos National Laboratory was a layoff due to the lack of available or anticipated funding in his area of expertise. The separation was unrelated to his publications or professional writings.” Many external arms control specialists are skeptical and believe Doyle’s downfall is the result of his airing of views that are unpopular among those opposing disarmament, including some of the Armed Services Committee’s Republican leaders and staff. And if you’re curious about how many resources LANL spends on weapons activity versus nonproliferation, take a look at the following graph (reported by the Center for Public Integrity).

Although nuclear weapons (and “mutually assured destruction”) seem like a Cold War issue and a thing of the past, they’re as relevant as ever today. In and near the Middle East, where Israel, Pakistan, and India have nuclear weapons, proliferation is a real concern. In addition, according to Newsweek, countries in Russia’s neighborhood are now considering nuclear deterrence. Altogether, the US possesses 2,104 (active) nuclear warheads, Russia has a similar number, and numerous other countries have hundreds either mounted on planes or on submarines. Germany will not continue its nuclear-hosting duties beyond the 2020s, and a Central European official was recently quoted as saying, “If the Germans don’t want [the bombs], we’ll take them.”

According to Scientific American, the FAS begin with the “scientists’ movement” in the mid-1940s when many scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project recognized that they had a special responsibility to educate policymakers and the public about the implications of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. (Carl Sagan, who is one of my heroes, had served on FAS’s advisory council and was a leading scientist devoted to reversing the nuclear arms race.) The FAS’s Nuclear Weapons Database is one of the most reliable sources on global nuclear arsenals, and the numbers in the previous paragraph were obtained from it. As far as we know, the US is not developing new nuclear weapons, but unfortunately it’s improving the weapon delivery systems (see this report from the Union of Concerned Scientists). This does not aid the goals of nonproliferation and reducing nuclear weapons, nor does the US’s nearly 500 land-based missiles on “hair-trigger” alert.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, nuclear weapons are also relevant to space security and to the risk of a space arms race. Although deploying nuclear weapons in space may be prohibitively expensive and are a violation of the Outer Space Treaty, certain nuclear missiles could have trajectories outside of the Earth’s atmosphere, and anti-satellite missiles are another concern. In any case, space weapons—nuclear or otherwise—increase tensions between countries and increase the risk of conflict.

Another related issue is the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (which, by the way, has never been signed by India, Israel, and Pakistan). In the 21st century era of worsening climate change, we need alternatives to fossil fuel-based energy, but nuclear energy surely is not ideal. It’s not clear how much, if it all, nuclear energy should play a role in our transition to a fossil fuel-free economy. Even in Iran, where there is an apparent abundance of oil, people are trying to prepare for the transition, and as in other places, they have turned to nuclear energy. An additional concern is that developing nuclear energy technologies produces a pathway for countries to develop nuclear weaponry as well; unfortunately, we’ve seen other countries follow this path already. In the case of Iran, as usual, what is required is a diplomatic and political settlement. As argued in a report by the FAS and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, by offering Iran cutting-edge alternative energy technologies, especially to take advantage of the country’s solar energy potential, a positive precedent could be set for other nuclear-hopefuls.