On one hand many countries will invest in heavy industry, manufacturing, and fall back to fossil fuels.
On the other hand, economy overall should slow down and consumption of non-essential goods and services will drop.
I’m not expecting any definite answers or numbers, of course, just some food for thought.
Speed up by far. All the focus will be on producing enough stuff to replace whatever the enemy blows up. Any invention in the renewable department will only come as a result of having used all available fuel already.
The world population still increased during the previous world wars so unless we have a major nuclear exchange that probably won’t change. If we do have a major nuclear war global warming is suddenly not a big deal anyway.
unless we have a major nuclear exchange
I was going to say, it really depends on just how hard we go on the “let’s kill everyone” vibe.
Also a lot less death more injuries than previous wars. With the same amount or more of environmental destruction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_war
Might be a starting point. It’s not looking good.
Never heard of electric tanks or jets
im a proponent of green, sustainable, homemade war
My question is whether nuclear winter will mitigate the CO2 warming.
Depends on how many humans die.
Yes, but the opposite way you might be thinking since mass death from war and other catastrophe is strongly correlated with very high birth rates. We’re on track for the global population to stabilize around 10 billion right now, but if billions die in a world war we will probably go exponential again for a long time.
Honestly, both outcomes seem equally terrifying. Either we wreck the planet faster through war-driven industry or everything collapses so badly that emissions drop, but at an enormous human cost.
In war, the economy does not slow down. It is turbocharged.
A nuclear war could counter global warming by triggering a nuclear winter but the actual effects are very uncertain. Basically, for a nuclear winter, a lot of “dust” needs to be lifted into the stratosphere. Those huge, multi-megaton bombs that they had back in the day caused a mushroom cloud that rose all the way to the stratosphere. Today, smaller, more precisely targeted bombs are preferred. It also depends on how combustible the targets are. No one is really quite sure what the climate effect of nuking a city is.
ETA: That was how climatologists saw nuclear winter ~15-20 years ago. No idea if anything has changed, but there probably wasn’t a lot of new data.
A substantial reduction in the human population would largely end the burning of fossil fuels and trigger reforestation; removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Ultimately, I would expect WW3 to greatly mitigate global warming.
Most countries don’t have fossil fuels and 28% of oil is offshore. Also heavy industry is very mineral dependent. Let’s be honest, if there will be WW3 most of people will starve to death and start killing and eating each other. Most people don’t know how to get clean water without water pipe. Look how much aid is coming to little country like Palestine to keep them alive. Given that I think it will decrease
