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Article: Nuclear thaw. (re-examination of nuclear-winter hypothesis)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- February 19, 1990
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1990 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Nuclear Thaw
BEGINNING IN 1983, much was heard about the likelihood of a "nuclear winter" if large-scale nuclear war should ever break out. According to this notion, which was advanced by various "scientific spokesmen," vast clouds of waste material would block the sun's rays; the extreme formulations asserted that this would lead to human extinction.
Many of those who earlier propagated this view have now pulled back. Climatologists and astrophysicists have been re-examining the nuclear-winter hypothesis, and the consensus, expressed in conferences and articles, has now shifted against any extreme scenario. The estimates now seem to converge on a ...