Date

Mar 1, 1988

Description

At the request of the Department of Agriculture, a U.S. government interagency committee sponsored a review of some of the findings of a two-volume report, The Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War, published in 1985 by the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) part of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) (now the International Council for Science).[20] Some of the TTAPS authors, such as Richard Turco, contributed to the SCOPE report as did Michael MacCracken and Paul J. Crutzen. The first volume had focused on the physical and atmospheric effects of nuclear war while volume two looked at the ecological and environmental impact. The SCOPE report did not use the term nuclear winter, but it nevertheless treated atmospheric perturbations caused by mass fires as integral to the terrible devastation along with the blast and radiation effects. Thus, the authors found that the smoke and soot produced by a major nuclear war could significantly reduce sunlight and produce major drops in temperature.

According to Volume II of the SCOPE report, the effects of a nuclear war could disrupt agricultural production to the point where those who survived the “acute phase,” where smoke drastically reduced sunlight and temperature, would “starve during the chronic phase.” While the authors carefully qualified their conclusions, pointing to the limits of the models, they noted that even small changes in temperature could have a devastating impact on agriculture in the Northern Hemisphere. It was such findings that the Department of Agriculture wanted investigated.

The Committee on Interagency Radiation Research and Policy, set up by the White House in 1984, established a special task group of agricultural and meteorological experts from universities and government to review the findings of Volume II. The project team did special simulation studies based on models of corn and soybean growth, which helped lead them to the conclusion that there “is a high chance of complete crop failure if temperatures drop by 15°C even for one month during a crop season, as far south as 36°N latitude.” The report agreed with the SCOPE finding that smaller changes in temperature could cause crop failure at higher latitudes. Further, they agreed that the SCOPE report on Volume II “does present a wide range of possible post-nuclear war catastrophes in our life support system” and “clearly establishes the probability of mass starvation for the surviving populations as a direct consequence of nuclear attack.”

Yet, while finding that the SCOPE report’s methodology was “sound” the task group also concluded that it understated the effects of nuclear war on agriculture. Pointing to areas that should have received additional emphasis, they observed that the destruction of dams would cause “loss of large areas of irrigated agricultural land” while the destruction of the U.S. food and agriculture infrastructure would cause “severe disruption of production, processing, and distribution.” In their executive summary, the authors found that “the worst case scenario in Volume II may be a gross underestimation of the likely effects of a nuclear war on human populations.”

That White House’s science advisers had authorized this review of the SCOPE report is interesting in itself, and that its findings supported nuclear winter theories was also important. Yet, for reasons unknown, this report received no notice at the time, with apparently no publicity from the White House, although it would be cited in studies by experts.

Source

Department of Agriculture Library (Greenbelt, MD)

Document published in following posting(s):

Nuclear Winter: U.S. Government Thinking During the 1980s

Jun 2, 2022

Investigating the Climate Impacts of Nuclear War

Oct 30, 2024

Committee on Interagency Radiation Research and Policy Coordination, Science Panel Report No. 5, Review of SCOPE 28 Report on Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War: Volume II: Ecological and Agricultural Effects, March 1988 (Washington, D.C.: Office of Science and Technology Policy)