NUCLEAR WINTER UPDATE

Evidence continues to accumulate that the "TTAPS" (acronym for the authors) scary-tale is propaganda based on doctored data and self-serving conclusions. For example, if the stationary sun used in the computer simulations is replaced by a sun moving across the sky, the nuclear winter changes to a nuclear summer (Sci. News, vol. 126, p. 182). But perhaps the most damning criticism comes from Cresson H. Kearny, a scientist retired from Oak Ridge and author of the fundamental text Nuclear Survival Skills ($9.95 from Caroline House Publishers, 920 W. Industrial Dr., Aurora, IL 60506), though most of his research has not yet been published in easily available sources (except for a letter in Science, 1/25/85, pp. 356-8). One of his telling points is that the TTAPS authors, following criticism of their theory, have significantly (and very quietly) changed their assumptions on such points as non-urban fires, yet they come out with exactly the same amount of smoke (to two decimal places!); in either case, Kearny shows the result to be totally unrealistic.

These rebuttals confirm the phoniness of the Nuclear Winter promoters, if that is still needed in view of other abundant evidence such as their "scientific," conference which paid $100,000 plus to a Public Relations agency to promote their "science," in the fall of 1983 [AtE Jun 84].

In the recent US-Soviet talks in Geneva, US reporters gushed about cooperation with the USSR and "asked" some very leading questions: Dan Rather asked Shultz whether he felt Gromyko was part of the same humanity on the same planet. Had he been born 50 years earlier, he would have asked a Western negotiator the same question about Joachim von Ribbentrop.