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Comment by cocoablazing | Hacker News Reader

Volcanic eruption energy is partitioned between thermal and mechanical energy. The mechanical energy is distributed between translation (ejecta) and vibrational (tremors). These proportions vary significantly between volcanoes and eruptions. So, perhaps little of the energy is imparted to bring cooling aerosols and particles into the high atmosphere.

A limited nuclear exchange between RF/USA could extend to all large munitions stores, rocket stores, and petrochemical stores. All stores of nuclear launchers, warheads, and supplies intended for strategic war could be targeted.

Imagine all significant above-ground petroleum storage in RF/USA - large petroleum producers - is ignited. All counterforce sorties against targets near wooded areas will result in large forest fires.

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"Imagine all significant above-ground petroleum storage in RF/USA - large petroleum producers - is ignited."

During the First Gulf War, the uncontrolled oil fires in Kuwait were burning at a rate equivalent to 30% of all US consumption. Nothing remotely resembling a climate apocalypse occurred; major volcanic eruptions have far greater effects. Empirically, it seems highly improbable that repeating that experiment on modestly larger scale will unleash a global apocalypse. It isn't a convincing argument based on the evidence.

The above-ground petroleum storage facilities only hold days worth of oil that we are going to burn anyway.

When modeling was done for the Kuwait oil fires, there were two opposing expectations. One was that the fires would cause a kind of "year without a summer" similar to the Tambora eruption in 1815. The other was that the smoke would affect local weather conditions and be rained out within a week. In retrospect, we know that the latter proved most accurate.

But from what I understand, the crucial difference between the two models was how high the smoke would go, and as such the gap between the two models is actually a lot closer than the outcomes would imply. Had the conditions (weather, geography, etc) been ripe for more "self-lofting" of particulates, far more of them may have made it as far as the stratosphere, at which point they would stay in the atmosphere for far longer and would spread much further, without any weather patterns at that altitude to accelerate their return to the surface.

Wouldn't we be burning that oil anyways? I'm sure it burns less 'clean' in a particulate sense, but orders of magnitude worse?

Seems from the petroleum front it's likely to actually reduce particulate matter over the course of months due to the lack of human industrial activity on the planet.

For particulate emissions I would imagine uncontrolled burning in the atmosphere is orders of magnitude worse than the very carefully controlled combustion in an engine with catalytic converters and particle screens. In the US anyway.

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