The Cold War

[Cynth]

The fact is, I'm mad as hell that we humans have got ourselves in such a mess. I don't blame any political party or group. It's just mass stupidity and not being able or willing as a species to take seriously the impact on the future, of what we do in the present moment.

But it really does look like we're in line for disasters on a massive scale that will probably affect the next generation or the one after it at least as profoundly as all the wars of the past have affected the generations before ours. I've lived my life as an idealist hoping to leave a better world, and I must confess, I'm disillusioned.

Well, Jerry, I don't know what to say. I would like to think the world is getting better and there have been some improvements in my lifetime. Our town recycles garbage, cities are trying to cut down on smog, pesticides are studied more carefully than they once were, more people are aware of the importance of rain forests to the planet----I know all this is small compared to global destruction, but it is something.

From the first immigration waves of anatomically modern humans, man has changed his environment----large mammals became extinct in a number of areas soon after the first hunters came into that area. The result was that domestication of animals came very late or never in those areas since any possible animals to domesticate had been wiped out. And these were quite small groups of people. Animals even, like beavers, cause large areas of trees to die when they build dams and stop creeks.

One would hope that we, since hindsight can teach us about the effects of, say, wiping out animals, could learn from these things and stop ourselves from doing things that will make our environment impossible or very hard to live in.

There are scientists who, I believe, are very seriously studying some important things. On the show "Nature", for example, they have been talking about rain forests and showing how people are trying to figure out just what is going on in them so that they can understand them. Then they will have data to show that these forests (especially the Amazonian one) are actually active parts of the global environment, affecting the amount of oxygen in the air, making clouds, etc., and not just a huge tract of unexplored trees---they probably have already shown this, it is just an example.

But it is hard for scientists to figure out what is going on. And then to convince people and governments to stop doing something they depend on for income or comfort in order to preserve the world----well, people need to eat and they like to be comfortable---they will do whatever it takes. We are animals. And there are so many of us.

I think we are hard-wired to think about our mates and children, but that's about it. Any consideration we give to others beyond that---including our descendents--- is the result of thought and teaching. Although I think the world has come along in this respect, it has not come along far enough and I personally doubt that it ever will.

As I mentioned, there have been some changes. In the case of recycling, our town did it not for good citizen reasons but because the cost of the landfill got too high. So basically, we went on and on until actual money was involved and that is what caused the change. Unfortunately, it will be impossible to avoid some disasters by the time they get to the financial problem stage, which is what motivates people to change.

I don't know the facts and studies about global warming, so I can't discuss that issue. I think idealists are the ones responsible for the improvements we have had, they keep pushing and pushing. I can see why you are disillusioned. I, not being an idealist, am not disillusioned or surprised. That doesn't mean I'm not worried. I think people who feel hopeful are very important and I hope you can concentrate on the small scale where things are changing, because some of those changes could end up being very important.

You are right to be worried, but I think the world you will be leaving is a somewhat better world. To be angry at our species as a whole is understandable but probably hurts you more than anyone else. Small groups can't agree on things, so a group of millions (I guess it's actually billions) will not likely make progress very quickly.

[jGilder]

Call me foolish, if you will, but I believe the end of any threat of mass human destruction is an improvement.

That would be an improvement -- too bad the threat still exists.

It does? We're on a hair trigger for launching our entire nuclear arsenal if there are unknown
objects entering our airspace? Where are we going to fire this full-scale nuclear blast? And
where's the other side of the equation, who's on the ragged edge of firing millions of nuclear
weapons at us?

--Chris

First of all, I don't remember ever having "millions of nuclear weapons" pointed at us, but the threat that existed during the Cold War hasn't exactly gone away as you suggest. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists are responsible for The Doomsday Clock and have been ever since 1955. They have the following to say about the matter.

================================

It's seven minutes to midnight

From the Board of Directors
March/April 2002, pp. 4-7 (vol. 58, No. 2). © 2002 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Chicago, February 27, 2002: Today, the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the minute hand of the "Doomsday Clock," the symbol of nuclear danger, from nine to seven minutes to midnight, the same setting at which the clock debuted 55 years ago. Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, this is the third time the hand has moved forward.

We move the hands taking into account both negative and positive developments. The negative developments include too little progress on global nuclear disarmament; growing concerns about the security of nuclear weapons materials worldwide; the continuing U.S. preference for unilateral action rather than cooperative international diplomacy; U.S. abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and U.S. efforts to thwart the enactment of international agreements designed to constrain proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons; the crisis between India and Pakistan; terrorist efforts to acquire and use nuclear and biological weapons; and the growing inequality between rich and poor around the world that increases the potential for violence and war. If it were not for the positive changes highlighted later in this statement, the hands of the clock might have moved closer still.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, founded by a group of World War II-era Manhattan Project scientists, has warned the world of nuclear dangers since 1945. The September 11 attacks, and the subsequent and probably unrelated use of the mail to deliver deadly anthrax spores, breached previous boundaries for terrorist acts and should have been a global wake-up call. Moving the clock's hands at this time reflects our growing concern that the international community has hit the "snooze" button rather than respond to the alarm."

================================

Chris... I realize you've dismissed the The Doomsday Clock already, but I haven't. Why? Well let's look a little closer at who's behind it and believes that the threat still exists.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Board of Directors


Thomas Blanton

Thomas Blanton is the executive director of the National Security Archive, the world's largest nongovernmental library of declassified documents, at George Washington University. He is also the managing editor of freedominfo.org, the virtual network of international freedom of information advocates. Mr. Blanton wrote White House E-Mail: The Top Secret Computer Messages the Reagan-Bush White House Tried to Destroy, coauthored The Chronology, and contributed to Atomic Audit and three editions of the ACLU's authoritative guide, Litigation Under the Federal Open Government Laws.



Cathryn Cronin Cranston
Vice chair and chair-elect

Cathryn Cronin Cranston is the publisher of Harvard Business Review, where she has developed strategic initiatives that have leveraged the Review's brand and doubled it's advertising revenues. She has extensive experience in publishing and has also worked for the New York Times. Ms. Cranston serves on the Independent Magazine Advisory Board and the Government Affairs Committee of the Magazine Publishers of America.



Lee Francis
Treasurer and secretary

Lee Francis is an internist and vice president of medical services at Erie Family Health Center. He is clinical instructor of internal medicine at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. He is a past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), a national organization dedicated to the prevention of violence and nuclear war, and continues to serve on its Board of Directors. Dr. Francis has received the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award from Northwestern Memorial Hospital and the Osler Award for Teaching Internal Medicine at Cook County Hospital. He is a coauthor of PSR's manual, Firearm Violence: Community Diagnosis and Treatment.



Henry J. Frisch
Vice chair

Henry Frisch is a professor of physics at the University of Chicago's Enrico Fermi Institute. His research has focused on the experimental exploration of new phenomena at very high energy, and his current emphasis is on looking for new states of matter, such as supersymmetric particles, for signs of extra-spatial dimensions, for the particles that form dark matter, or for new forces and/or symmetries.



Rose Gottemoeller

Rose Gottemoeller is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where her research focuses on issues of nuclear security and stability, nonproliferation, and arms control. Ms. Gottemoeller has also served as the deputy undersecretary for defense nuclear nonproliferation in the Energy Department. Her recent publications include Universal Compliance: A Strategy for Nuclear Security (Carnegie Endowment, June 2004).



Natalie Goldring
Vice chair and immediate past chair

Natalie Goldring is the executive director of the Security Studies Program and of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University. She also consults for the U. N. Department of Disarmament Affairs and the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy. Dr. Goldring has written extensively on topics such as conventional and nuclear weapons, the international arms trade, light weapons, and arms control, and regularly comments on global security issues for local, national, and international media.



Rebecca Johnson
Vice chair

Rebecca Johnson is the executive director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy in London, England, senior adviser to the Stockholm-based International Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, and also editor of Disarmament Diplomacy. An authority on the United Nations and multilateral arms control, Ms. Johnson has worked on nuclear and security issues for 25 years as an activist, organizer and, more recently, international policy analyst, with numerous publications to her name.



Lawrence Korb

Lawrence Korb is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. He was an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and is an expert on national security, arms control, and U.S. defense spending. Dr. Korb wrote American National Security: Policy and Process and The Fall and Rise of the Pentagon, and he was awarded the Defense Department 's Medal for Distinguished Public Service.



Leon M. Lederman
Ex officio

Leon Lederman, internationally renowned high-energy physicist, is director emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, and holds an appointment as the Pritzker Professor of Science at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He is a member of the Energy Department's Advisory Board. Among his many honors are the National Medal of Science, the Wolf Prize in Physics, the Nobel Prize in Physics, and the Enrico Fermi Prize given by President Bill Clinton. Dr. Lederman’s publications exceed 300 papers, and he has sponsored the research of 52 graduate students.




Katherine Magraw

Katherine Magraw has extensive experience in national security policy. She was a program officer for the Secure World Program of the W. Alton Jones Foundation and served as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for International Policy and Arms Control. Dr. Magraw also was a Legislative Aide for Foreign Policy for Senator Paul Wellstone and held several senior level positions in national non-governmental organizations. She currently consults for organizations and foundations.

 


Pavel Podvig

Pavel Podvig is a research associate at the Center for International Security and Coorperation at Stanford University. He was the principal investigator on the Russian Nuclear Weapons Databook project and has extensively published and presented on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Russian strategic forces, and the U.S.-Russian disarmament process.




Victor Rabinowitch
Chair

Victor Rabinowitch is the former senior vice president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and has served as the executive director of the Office of International Affairs at the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science. Dr. Rabinowitch also serves on the Board of Directors of the Civilian Research and Development Foundation and the Energy Foundation. He has contributed articles to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1965 and has also written for various scientific publications in the area of biology.




Thomas Rosenbaum

Thomas Rosenbaum, the James Franck Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago is the university's vice president for research and Argonne National Laboratory. He oversees over $800 million in research enterprises and sits on the university’s Science Council. Dr. Rosenbaum is an expert on the quantum mechanical nature of materials, and his honors include an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a Presidential Young Investigator Award, and the William McMillan Award for Outstanding Contributions to Condensed Matter Physics.




Annette Schaper

Annette Schaper is a senior research associate in the non-proliferation program at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. She is also an active policy consultant and consulted the German delegation to the test ban negotiations in Geneva. Dr. Schaper's main scientific interest is nuclear arms control and its technical aspects. Among her writing credits are A Nuclear Weapon Free World: Can It Be Verified? and Implementing Safeguards in Countries of Concern.




James Steinberg

James Steinberg is vice president and director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. He has held several senior positions in the Clinton administration, including deputy national security adviser to the president and director of the State Department's policy planning staff. Mr. Steinberg has written and contributed to many books on foreign policy and national security topics, including Protecting the American Homeland and An Ever Closer Union: European Integration and Its Implications for the Future of U.S.-European



And who doesn't think there's a threat from nuclear weapons and Cold War scale global destruction?

Chris A, someone on an Internet message board devoted to tin whistles.

[Jerry Freeman]

Yeah, I'm OK.

Cynth's remarks were fine. I took offense at being accused of trying to turn a thread about the cold war into a political thread when we already have a political thread.

I wasn't talking about you. jGilder had just posted stuff about the US's imperialist sins, and when that happens IRTrad4U usually comes in to counter him, and then it's three pages of tightly knit back-and-forth.

The thing about these Internet discussions is that we can easily fit five separate conversations in a single thread quite comfortably. It's an advantage that we can talk about everything even remotely related to the cold war all in one tidy package. But if a shouting match starts between two parties, the thread then becomes unreadable.

Sorry, it's my fault for not being careful. I replied to Cynth who was replying to you, so it came out wrong.

Caj

Sorry, Caj. Now that you put it in context, I see I misunderstood what you were trying to say.

Best wishes,
Jerry

[Jerry Freeman]

Cynth,

I agree with you, the world is getting better in a lot of ways.

What I'm specifically upset about is that it appears to be a fact that we humans have created changes in the atmosphere that will change the climate in ways that are unprecedented in hundreds of thousands of years, and that now appear to be irreversable. I've been listening to a lot of scientists commenting on this, and it does appear that the preponderance of evidence is that it's really happening and that it's too far along to be able to reverse. So sea level really is going to rise by 20 feet or more and there's nothing that can be done to stop it.

Responding the the "Doom" thread: Yes, I'm not especially happy about all the other examples of degradation of the environment, but I don't consider all forms of pollution, deforestation, etc. to be on anything like the same scale of significance as climate change because the pollution, etc. are mostly more or less reversable. However, the climate change isn't something we can come back around and clean up like we can clean up an oil spill or replant a forest.

Best wishes,
Jerry

[jGilder]

I wasn't talking about you. jGilder had just posted stuff about the US's imperialist sins, and when that happens IRTrad4U usually comes in to counter him, and then it's three pages of tightly knit back-and-forth.

The thing about these Internet discussions is that we can easily fit five separate conversations in a single thread quite comfortably. It's an advantage that we can talk about everything even remotely related to the cold war all in one tidy package. But if a shouting match starts between two parties, the thread then becomes unreadable.

I'm not speaking for TradR, of course, but it's interesting that you only see it as "shouting" when I add my insight and information to the discussions. Perhaps it's just that you don't agree with what I present, and that's cool... but I don't appreciate the insinuation.

[ChrisA]

First of all, I don't remember ever having "millions of nuclear weapons"

I dropped the word megatons. Millions of megatons worth of nuclear weapons.
And I think you're being deliberately obtuse.

The doomsday clock people are saying there is a risk of -a nuclear incident-.

I am saying there is a vastly reduced chance of a -nuclear holocaust that wipes out
most of the human race-.

You won't understand that difference, fine. You want to be deliberately obtuse and
throw up vast quantities of cut and pasted text to support your obtuseness, fine.
I'm done with this conversation.

--Chris

[jGilder]

I think you're being deliberately obtuse.

Chris, I'm not being "obtuse" I'm just making the point that the nuclear threat still exists. No offense, but if anyone’s being slow to understand something I think it might actually be you. You're dismissing critical evidence -- did you even read the statement on the Doomsday Clock page. They talk on there about how the IBMs still pose the same threat that was there during the Cold War. An accidental war is still a possibility -- especially considering the breakdown in maintenance of the Russian arsenal. There's still a hair trigger that can unleash the same destructive power that there ever was. The point is that so much still remains un-done to prevent a nuclear holocaust. I posted the BAS board member’s credentials in hopes to persuade you to reconsider (or read) what they're saying.

[IRTradRU?]

I'm not speaking for TradR, of course,...

You're darned right you're not!

[Jerry Freeman]

I'm not speaking for TradR, of course,...

You're darned right you're not!

See? They agree!

Best wishes,
Jerry

[Cynth]

Ma, get the camera!




Jerry, I do see your point about global warming being something it is too late to do anything about. It is happening right now. I don't know enough to talk about the certainty of the results, but the possibilities alone should scare any sane person.

[Darwin]

Responding the the "Doom" thread: Yes, I'm not especially happy about all the other examples of degradation of the environment, but I don't consider all forms of pollution, deforestation, etc. to be on anything like the same scale of significance as climate change because the pollution, etc. are mostly more or less reversable. However, the climate change isn't something we can come back around and clean up like we can clean up an oil spill or replant a forest.

Sure, you can replant a forest if all you care about are the larger trees, but it's commonly stated that about half of the world's species of plants, animals and microoganisms live in rainforests. Once they're gone, most of those can't be "replanted". Only a small percentage have been studied in even the slightest detail.

I recall a sci-fi comic book from the mid-50s that had a story about most non-agricultural plant life having been wiped out on earth. Then there was this disease of some kind that appeared, and somehow they figured out that the only cure was from some weed that had long since been eradicated. Of course, the hero finally found one in a vacant lot in some inner city slum.

That's just a kiddy story, of course, but the fact is that many of the drugs we use today were originally derived from plants. Even drugs that have been severely misused, like opium and its derivatives, have provided clues about important things like details of the structure of the brain. Who knows what medical value is being turned into boards or burned away to make room for corn fields?

As for climate change, massive deforestation could greatly increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Much deforestation in the rainforests is not done by cutting, but by burning. Not only is the vegetation being eliminated, so that it can't do it's part in taking in carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen, but the burning of trees creates large amounts of carbon dioxide directly. "Some estimates state that about one fifth to one third of the carbon dioxide being released is from rainforest fires, the rest resulting from the burning of fossil fuels - coal, gas and oil."

[Caj]

The doomsday clock people are saying there is a risk of -a nuclear incident-.

I am saying there is a vastly reduced chance of a -nuclear holocaust that wipes out
most of the human race-.

Right. Even if terrorists are vastly successful at attacking the United States, the grand majority of Americans will still not directly experience death or injury, or even know someone who has.

Meanwhile a full-blown US/USSR nuclear exchange (that's what we used to call a nuclear war, an "exchange") would wipe out civilization itself. I in Binghamton would probably still be here after 100 9/11s, and probably even a few megatsunamis in the Atlantic. I would have been vaporized in a nuclear war. So would pretty much everyone I know across the country, and we wouldn't really have a country an hour after the war.

Caj

[IRTradRU?]

See? They agree!

Ma, get the camera!

[jGilder]

The doomsday clock people are saying there is a risk of -a nuclear incident-.

I am saying there is a vastly reduced chance of a -nuclear holocaust that wipes out
most of the human race-.

Right. Even if terrorists are vastly successful at attacking the United States, the grand majority of Americans will still not directly experience death or injury, or even know someone who has.

Meanwhile a full-blown US/USSR nuclear exchange (that's what we used to call a nuclear war, an "exchange") would wipe out civilization itself. I in Binghamton would probably still be here after 100 9/11s, and probably even a few megatsunamis in the Atlantic. I would have been vaporized in a nuclear war. So would pretty much everyone I know across the country, and we wouldn't really have a country an hour after the war.

Caj

I think the BAS on their Doomsday Clock page are referring to your "full-blown US/USSR nuclear exchange" when they say:

"We also urge the United States and Russia to finally recognize the end of the Cold War by abandoning the practice of maintaining thousands of nuclear weapons on high alert, ready to be fired within minutes. This practice, born of fear and uncertainty during the Cold War, is a dangerous anachronism."

There have been tiny steps of progress, yes, but I don't think the threat has gone away according to what these experts are saying. I think we might be fooling ourselves to believe otherwise.

[jGilder]

Responding the the "Doom" thread: Yes, I'm not especially happy about all the other examples of degradation of the environment, but I don't consider all forms of pollution, deforestation, etc. to be on anything like the same scale of significance as climate change because the pollution, etc. are mostly more or less reversable. However, the climate change isn't something we can come back around and clean up like we can clean up an oil spill or replant a forest.

Sure, you can replant a forest if all you care about are the larger trees, but it's commonly stated that about half of the world's species of plants, animals and microoganisms live in rainforests. Once they're gone, most of those can't be "replanted". Only a small percentage have been studied in even the slightest detail.

As for climate change, massive deforestation could greatly increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Much deforestation in the rainforests is not done by cutting, but by burning. Not only is the vegetation being eliminated, so that it can't do it's part in taking in carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen, but the burning of trees creates large amounts of carbon dioxide directly. "Some estimates state that about one fifth to one third of the carbon dioxide being released is from rainforest fires, the rest resulting from the burning of fossil fuels - coal, gas and oil."

This kind of awareness is even threatened now thanks to the Bush Administration.

Campaign for Environmental Literacy Launches Citizen Campaign to Stop OMB Proposal to Eliminate Environmental Education

Washington, DC – In conjunction with the international Earth Day theme of protecting our children and our future, the Campaign for Environmental Literacy today announced a petition to restore $14 million in funding for environmental education (EE) that was completely eliminated by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the FY 2006 federal budget proposal.

“The federal government currently spends less than an estimated $.48 per person per year on this essential education,” said James L. Elder, coordinator of the Campaign for Environmental Literacy. “Unless the government makes a greater investment in environmental education, Americans will remain unable to achieve an improved environment, a more vibrant economy, better-planned communities, and even optimal human health —a frightening reality given that our children’s future is inextricable from the vitality of our environment.”

For example, childhood asthma is dramatically exacerbated by air pollution, which in turn is largely caused by emissions from engines such as car engines. Therefore, the driving habits and choices Americans make greatly affect the health of millions of children. Wide-spread environmental education can significantly influence such choices, and thus make children’s (as well as adults’) lives safer and healthier.

“Despite its obvious importance, the environmental education field is consistently under attack from special interest groups,” said Elder. “That’s why we’re asking citizens to use our website to fight back and demand restoration of $14 million in funding for environmental education. It’s time for the 95% of the American public who consistently tell pollsters we want environmental education in our classrooms to stand up and be counted by Congress.”

“Despite the best efforts of Earth Day and environmental education groups, indications are that this country suffers from a massive environmental literacy gap—and it is growing, just at the very moment in time when we need it to be shrinking,” concluded Elder. “We are forcing the next generation to solve all the environmental problems that we have been unable or unwilling to address ourselves: shouldn’t we be at least giving them the most basic tool—a degree of understanding and knowledge—with which to tackle such a daunting task?”