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核战争将引发气候大灾难

译言  · 公众号  · 国际  · 2017-07-27 14:59

正文

核战争不只是注定了参与者的相互毁灭,还将引发灾难性的气候变化。

核战争将引发气候大灾难

Nuclear War Would Set Off Climate Catastrophe

译者:leon921269 原文作者: Tim Radford 

Four US scientists have just introduced one more good reason not to launch a nuclear war. It would not simply guarantee the mutual destruction of the participants. It would also precipitate catastrophic climate change.

四名美国科学家刚刚提出了不能发动核战争的一个更充分理由。核战争不只是注定了参与者的相互毁灭。它还将引发灾难性的气候变化。


And, they argue in the journal Environment Magazine, even a single nuclear missile strike could darken the skies, chill the atmosphere, stop rainfall, ruin harvests and cost a billion lives.

他们在《环境》杂志上说,即使是一次单个核导弹袭击也会使天空变暗,大气降温,降雨停止,破坏收成,造成10亿人的生命损失。


Observers with memories that stretch back to the Cold War and the arms race between the US and Nato powers on the one hand and the USSR on the other will know something of this already.

那些还记得冷战时期,美国及北约列强一方和苏联另一方之间军备竞赛的观察者们一定对此有所了解。


In 1983 the astronomer Carl Sagan and colleagues introduced the idea of global annihilation, or at least the end of human civilisation, in a “nuclear winter” as a consequence of a nuclear weapons exchange.

1983年,天文学家卡尔·萨根和他的同事们提出一种理论,在核武器交战导致的“核冬天”,地球被毁灭,或至少是人类文明被终结。 


Years later, as the Soviet Union collapsed and the Russian Federation was born, the same scientists did their calculations again, and reduced the threat to a kind of “nuclear autumn”.

数年后,随着苏联解体,俄罗斯联邦诞生,还是这些科学家再次进行了计算,将核威胁降低到类似于“核秋天”的水平。


Eight nations now possess a nuclear arsenal: the US, Russia and China all have nuclear weapons big enough to precipitate a nuclear calamity, and a ninth, North Korea, now claims to have nuclear capability.

现在有8个国家拥有核武库:美国、俄罗斯和中国都拥有足够大量的核武器来引发核灾难,而第九个国家,朝鲜,现在宣称已拥有核打击能力。


This prompted researchers and political scientists from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to revisit the question. They contemplated the theoretical effect of a 15-kiloton nuclear warhead with the explosive force of 15,000 tons of TNT.

这促使内布拉斯加-林肯大学的研究人员和政治科学家们重新审视这个问题。他们认真考虑了一个15千吨核弹头的理论效果,其爆炸力为15,000吨TNT。


Once exploded, it would incinerate 1,300 square kilometres of a city and its surrounds. This would be quite enough to push five million metric tons of black carbon smoke particles into the stratosphere.

一旦爆炸,它将焚毁1300平方公里的一个城市及其周边地区。这将足以将500万公吨的黑碳烟雾粒子吹入平流层。


This would be enough to screen solar radiation, reduce the agricultural crop season by between 10 and 40 days a year for at least five years, and lower global temperatures to a point lower than normal for at least 25 years.

这足以遮挡住太阳辐射,使农作物季节每年减少10到40天,至少持续5年,使全球温度下降到低于正常水平,至少持续25年。


In the very short term, this cold snap would be colder than anything for the last 1,000 years. Rainfall would decrease by as much as 20% to 80% in the Asian monsoon region.

在极短期内,这种寒流将比过去1000年的任何时候更冷。亚洲季风地区的降雨量将减少20%-80%。


The American southwest and western Australia could become 20% to 60% drier. South America and southern Africa, too, would see less rain. This global “nuclear drought” and the resulting famines “could kill up to a billion people from starvation.”

美国西南部和澳大利亚西部地区的干旱可能会增加20%到60%。南美洲和非洲南部地区雨量也会减少。全球“核干旱”和由此产生的饥荒“可能会使10亿人死于饥饿。”


The most immediate victims would be those in countries that are already poor or food-insecure. And, the scientists warn, should a warhead fall upon a nuclear power facility “the spread of toxic radionuclides and their long-term effects would be greatly magnified.”

最直接的受害者将是那些已经贫穷或粮食无保障国家的人们。而且,科学家们警告说,如果一枚弹头恰好落在一个核动力装置上,“有毒放射性核素的扩散及其长期影响将被极度地放大。”


The drop in precipitation would, they warn, also increase conflict in developing regions,  “although global temperature reduction may reduce social violence in the United States and other developed countries.”

他们警告说,降水的减少还会增加发展中地区的冲突,“尽管全球降温也许会减少美国和其他发达国家的社会暴力。”


“We’re losing our memory of the Cold War and we’re losing our memory of how important it is to get this right,” said Tyler White, a political scientist concerned with international security and nuclear policy, and one of the authors.

“我们正在失去对冷战的记忆,我们正在忘记正确选择的重要性,”致力于国际安全和核政策研究的政治学家泰勒·怀特说,他也是其中一位作者。


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本译文仅用于学习和交流目的。非商业转载请注明译者、出处,并保留文章在译言的完整链接。商业合作请联系 [email protected]   参考原文地址:http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/nuclear_war_would_set_off_climate_catastrophe_20170718


  

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