SPECULATION

The Five Apocalyptic Riders ride again, this time on somewhat different horses than the "Nuclear Winter" they rode last fall and Christmas, trumpeting the type of "science" that needs $200,000 just for paying full-time professional flaks to promote it [AtE Jun 84]. This time the TTAPS bunch rides through the August issue of the Scientific American, the world's leading popular science magazine, which has been degenerating into a propaganda voice for Tsipis, Rathjens, and the other scholars of the US School of Self-Deterrence. (On this point, see "Politicizing Science" by J. Marsh, Commentary, May 84.)

The gist of the new version remains summarized by the words "could," "might," and the other expressions of the speculator's vernacular; the scenarios remain military illogical and based on such weasel phrases as "All the postulated attack scenarios are well within the present capabilities of the two superpowers." (Have you considered what is "well within the present capabilities" of the government of Luxemburg if it were to act not in its self-interest, but with the sole aim of maximizing the damage it could inflict on everybody in the world?)

There is much questionable in the unexplained and implausibly high values of light absorption as a function of suspended dust quantity, and there are unanswered questions in every paragraph; but let me take up only a single point that should be sufficient to characterize this type of "science." The new version shifts its emphasis from explosion debris to forest and urban fires whose smoke reaches the stratosphere and blocks out sunlight.

And just bow does it reach the stratosphere?

We are given details about the firestorms in Hamburg in World War II (the rising hot air from the burning city drew in the peripheral cold air at high speed, further fanning the flames), all perfectly true, and all perfectly irrelevant. Did the soot in Hamburg reach the stratosphere?

No answer.

The normal, "unless-shown-invalid" mechanism at work is this: As hot air rises, it must (not could) reach the altitude of the dew point, i.e. of the temperature where water vapor condenses, and unless the absolute humidity is zero (are the Soviets going to nuke the Sahara?), a rain cloud would normally form; with the soot and other particles acting as condensation nuclei, drops should form, grow, and rain should clean the atmosphere of both soot and Sagan's speculations. This is, I believe, what happened in the fire storms of Hamburg, Dresden, and presumably Tokyo, in World War II.

This is not at all to say that this is the only possible mechanism; but it is to say that if you want to propose a different process, then the burden of proof is on you. Moreover, in the transportation of soot into the stratosphere an error is lethal: it will not ruin a part of this theory, but all of it.

To shirk the burden of proof on such a crucial point (beyond a vague and quite unclear assurance that "wash-out" had been taken into consideration) is something that would almost certainly result in the rejection of a paper in a professional-scientific journal; but to pass over it silently in a popular-scientific monthly read by unsuspecting laymen is, I submit, devious.

Yet these are but petty technicalities compared with the real issue: If all of Sagan's speculative horrors were true (and for all he knows they could be) -- would it not be all the more reason to arm to the teeth, to build a high frontier against the evil enemies of civilization instead of bargaining with them, and to make triply sure that they can never inflict these horrors on mankind?