Pharyngula

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | July 27, 2008 8:41 AM

I remember growing up in the 1970s, including being absolutely terrified after watching "The Day After" (I must have been like 9 or 10), and constantly feeling terror. I seriously did not think I would live long enough to be this old because we were going to destroy the planet.

That kind of existential terror...well, I'm glad to see my students don't have the same sort of growing up experience.

Posted by: Roger | July 27, 2008 8:54 AM

>As I look at the front page of todays newspaper, I struggle to find much optimism

Is it enough to make you want to reach for your bible?!!!

Posted by: antaresrichard | July 27, 2008 9:01 AM

"Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!"

Posted by: Mike O'Risal | July 27, 2008 9:09 AM

Yeah, there's just nothing quite as comforting in the face of possible annihilation than a book that promises that the world will be annihilated and if you've missed the wrong bit of what you're supposed to think about the world then you get to face an eternity of ongoing annihilation. Who needs a teddy bear when you've got Jehovah? He's just like a plush toy, except he's hard, unyielding, constantly pissed off and completely imaginary.

Posted by: Matt | July 27, 2008 9:17 AM

>Indeed. But in the face of massive annihilation it's easy to understand why millions are

It's easy to understand why millions face massive annihilation at the hands of fairy-tale believers, too. The fact that an idea can influence apocalyptic behavior but also provide a psychological comfort for the death it prescribes does not redeem the idea in any way, shape of form.

It's one of those cases where the bathwater poisons the baby.

Posted by: JoJo | July 27, 2008 9:25 AM

For centuries there have been numerous attempts to outlaw various weapons. During the 14th Century, the Catholic Church declared crossbows to be "unchristian" and made their use a sin.* Everything that Sagan said about nuclear weapons is quite true. The question is, what do we do about it?

I've made no secret here that I was a naval officer. A major part of my job was to protect the country "from all enemies, foreign and domestic." I served in two different ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). At the time, and still to this day, I believe that Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) was and is a viable defense against nuclear attack. Attempts were made to limit nuclear weapons were made, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties (SALT I and II) were successful in reducing the number of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems.

One thing to consider about nuclear weapons is that world peace is in the hands of the country whose leadership is least stable. Whatever his other faults, Gordon Brown of Britain is unlikely to order missile launches without extreme provocation. Kim Jong Il of North Korea might blast Seoul or Tokyo just because he's feeling extra cranky. MAD is a deterrent to keep Kim in check.

One of my objections to the Bush administration is they decided to scrap the START III (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty). Instead, they went with the Star Wars Missile Defense System, aka No Defense Contractor Left Behind. While the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) has reduced nuclear warhead inventories in both the U.S. and Russia, START III would have done more.

As Sagan said in the video, producing nuclear weapons is actually rather easy. Any industrialized country has the capability of doing it. Delivery systems are more difficult. However, if I had only a nuclear weapon in the Middle East and wanted to destroy New York, I'd put it in an intermodal container and send it to the container port in Bayonne, New Jersey. Not as fast as an SSBN launch, but perfectly viable.

Nuclear weapons are here to stay. All we can do is discourage their use.

*The objection to crossbows was that they were relatively cheap and a peasant could be trained in their use in a few days. A crossbow bolt could penetrate a knight's armor. So instead of the nobility being able to kill the peasantry without fear of repercussion, a peasant could kill a knight from a distance. The church naturally wanted to put a stop to that nonsense.

Posted by: marc buhler | July 27, 2008 9:32 AM

Hear, hear!

Posted by: craig | July 27, 2008 9:54 AM

"Whatever his other faults, Gordon Brown of Britain is unlikely to order missile launches without extreme provocation. Kim Jong Il of North Korea might blast Seoul or Tokyo just because he's feeling extra cranky. MAD is a deterrent to keep Kim in check."

You're saying that logic will dissuade a nutjob from being a nutjob?

Sure, it may work in the case of a sociopath who wants power but wants to stay alive - but will it work if the nutjob doesn't MIND dying and taking his country with him?

Posted by: Sorry that this is off topic for this post | July 27, 2008 9:57 AM

"And more: we'll go to communion after that, we'll hide the hosts one way or another and bring them home; and at lunch we'll find some not very Christian use to which these abject symbols may be put." ...

"Once we have ceased to believe in God, my dear," I pointed out, "the profanations you have in mind become so much pure childishness, the worse for being useless."

"Childishness, yes," she rejoined, "that I cannot deny. But they excite me mentally and for that I value them. ... [T]he better part of Europe assigns a very holy significance to that host, to that crucifix, and that exactly is why I am fond of profaning them: I hit at public opinion, that entertains me, I vomit on the prejudices they strove to inculcate in me when I was young, I obliterate them, that excites me."

- From Juliette, by the Marquis de Sade, pp. 450-1 in Wainhouse's translation

Posted by: negentropyeater | July 27, 2008 10:19 AM

It is estimated that there are approx. 30,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled on the planet, of which 95% by two nations only, Russia (16,000+) and the USA (12,000+). The other 7 nations combined have less than 10% of Russia or the USA's stockpile.

Russia and the USA, seeing that this was a bit exagerated, agreed in 2002 in the SORT treaty to reduce their stockpiles to 2,200 warheads each by 2012.
In 2003, the US rejected Russian proposals to further reduce both nation's nuclear stockpiles to 1500 each. Many say that this refusal was a sign of US aggression and accuse the US of thus leaving the danger of US and Russia's mutual destruction.
In 2007, for the first time in 15 years, the United States built some new warheads. These were to replace some older warheads as part of the Minuteman III upgrade program.
Russia is actively producing and developing new nuclear weapons. Since 1997 it manufactures Topol-M (SS-27) ICBMs.

Needless to say, until Russia and the USA will have effectively reduced their stockpiles to a less threatening level of 3,000 to 4,000 warheads combined and stopped developping and producing new ones, I don't think any nation with nuclear ambitions will be treating any of these two nations talk of nuclear non proliferation seriously.

Posted by: Laser Potato | July 27, 2008 10:27 AM

"This is all so sobering that I feel the need to get drunk. Now."
I'll drink to that!
DOOK DOOK DOOK

Posted by: phisrow | July 27, 2008 10:36 AM

@ JoJo #12: As somebody once remarked in one of my history classes, the crossbow was a "weapon of class destruction" and hence banned.

Posted by: Xander | July 27, 2008 10:38 AM

Am I the only one who thinks Sagan sounds a lot like Agent Smith from the Matrix?

Posted by: Abie | July 27, 2008 10:43 AM

on the subject of nuclear aftermath, go watch Peter Watkins's War Game :
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059894/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Game

Posted by: decrepitoldfool | July 27, 2008 10:53 AM

Our foreign policy has painted us into a corner. It reminds me of the story about the kid whose grandfather sent him up a tree after a wildcat. He climbed the tree, there was a lot of yelling and howling, and he called down; "OK Gran'pa, I got him! Now how do I let go?"

We have been in a position for fifty years to change the world for the better and we've spent that time clutching oil drums to our chest and saying; "My Presscious!" and subverting small countries while building an arsenal that would be classed as a symptom in DSM-4.

For starters we should unilaterally reduce our arsenal to, say, 100 bombs. Start supporting green energy as if our (grandchildren's) lives depended on it. And as a basic heuristic, stop supporting countries that practice torture. Of course, that implies we stop practicing it ourselves.

Posted by: Roger | July 27, 2008 11:05 AM

100 bombs, or 30,000 - does it really make a difference? People are, naturally, very stupid, short-sighted, ill- (or un-)educated. And led by fools, to boot.

My feeling is that this is a beautiful planet, and that given it's great geological history BEFORE humans evolved, it might become beautiful again. Once we're all gone.

Posted by: Jesse, Dallas | July 27, 2008 11:24 AM

Meanwhile, the Catholics are going ape-shit over a cracker.

They just don't see the point. If people can get that stupid over a piece of bread, how hard would it be to talk them into using a nuke?

Seem like a stretch? Thing about how hard it was to talk the nation into a war in Iraq.

Posted by: JoJo | July 27, 2008 11:32 AM

You're saying that logic will dissuade a nutjob from being a nutjob?

Sure, it may work in the case of a sociopath who wants power but wants to stay alive - but will it work if the nutjob doesn't MIND dying and taking his country with him?

You're right. Nothing will deter a truly suicidal national leadership. Too few people know about Paraguayan president Francisco Solano López and the War of the Triple Alliance. If Solano López and Bartolomé Mitre, president of Argentina, had had nuclear weapons, most of South America would have become a wasteland.

Posted by: woody, tokin librul | July 27, 2008 11:38 AM

That kind of existential terror...well, I'm glad to see my students don't have the same sort of growing up experience.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | July 27, 2008 8:41 AM

I follow the advice of Taj Mahal, the legendary blues guy: "If you ain' scared, you ain' right!"

Posted by: decrepitoldfool | July 27, 2008 11:43 AM

Roger #32: 100 bombs, or 30,000 - does it really make a difference?"

Well yes it does; it's the difference between a couple of devastated countries and a devastated planet. Between a cautionary tale and no one left to hear it.

Sure it's easy to be cynical and think that if all the humans were gone that would solve everything. But for some reason it isn't a solution I find personally attractive. Much better if we used our brains to think our way out of the situation.

Posted by: Saganist | July 27, 2008 11:46 AM

One of my favorite pieces of his. Thanks for posting this.

Posted by: Dustin | July 27, 2008 11:57 AM

Nukes aren't going away, and since that's a fact, I'm glad that we have a bunch. I don't trust, or take at face value, everything my government says, but I trust it more with our nukes than I do most other countries.

Posted by: JoJo | July 27, 2008 12:04 PM

Like capitalist economics being based on the demonstrably wrong assumption that people are rational economic agents, MAD is based on the assumption that peope are rational about their survival. I don't think the evidence is terribly comforting there, ether.

Most people are rational about their survival, including national survival. Certainly most politicians are. It doesn't do a lot of good having power if there's nobody to be powerful over.

MAD was a successful deterrent against the USSR for forty years. There's a school of thought that, at the height of the Vietnam War, the USSR didn't take advantage of the U.S. preoccupation with Vietnam to further its international endeavors. On paper, the late 1960s would have been the perfect time for the Soviets to invade West Germany. The U.S. had most of its military committed to Vietnam (in 1968 12 divisions or division equivalents were in Vietnam out of 19 divisions in the Army and Marine Corps). The other NATO countries didn't have 12 divisions between them. The Group of Soviet Forces (GSF) in Germany had 24 divisions in 1968. So why didn't the Politboro allow the GSF to overrun West Germany? Because the Soviet leadership realized that the U.S. could not respond to an invasion with conventional forces and would probably use nuclear weapons.

As I said previously, MAD is not a deterrent against a suicidal national leadership. However, very few national leaders are or have been suicidal.

Posted by: Breakfast | July 27, 2008 12:06 PM

Given that the world hasn't been destroyed yet -- in fact, there's been no nuclear bombing I've heard of since 1945 -- I feel pretty confident in the MAD defence. I'd say even wacky dictators do still have a sense of self-preservation. I doubt if anyone rises to power by just being homicidal; they have to cultivate power intelligently and they will want to protect it. Even if their entire regime is an exercise in insane narcissism, they'll still have all the more reason to want to preserve themselves.

And even if it's not that effective...what's the alternative?
It's a classic no-win prisoner's dilemma situation. No country will benefit from reducing their armaments even if every country would benefit from the disappearance of all armaments. Moreover, pointing out the latter will mean nothing to nationalist, aggressive states whose goal is to take the upper hand rather than to maximize overall human success.

Posted by: Andrés Diplotti | July 27, 2008 12:17 PM

Sure it's easy to be cynical and think that if all the humans were gone that would solve everything. But for some reason it isn't a solution I find personally attractive.

I think that is what some people would call "curing a disease by killing the patient."

Posted by: JoJo | July 27, 2008 12:23 PM

Martin Van Creveld wrote in The Transformation of War:

History has shown that there are two kinds of warfare practiced. The first is the use of military forces and tactics to obtain territory, power, or position. The principle assumption underlying such 'power seeking' warfare is that the participants will refrain from actions threatening their survival.
The second, and much rarer, classification is 'total warfare'. This has its goal as the total destruction of a rival's military and political power. At times, total warfare may involve the total destruction of a specific culture or racial type, but the goal is still the total destruction of something.

Posted by: The Chemist | July 27, 2008 12:31 PM

I think a lot of people have missed the point Sagan was trying to make, that the traditional excuse: "Other countries have it", will only mean that more countries will see fit to obtain it in the future.

He's absolutely right, it is easy, and post AQ Khan, we have no idea how widely the Zippe type centrifuge design has been disseminated. I highly recommend the book Nuclear Weapons by Jeremy Bernstein if you do not already see the folly of it all.

There are people who just don't give a damn about how much the world suffers, who relish the thought of destruction, and for them MAD is sure victory.

I feel like I'm restating the video now, but it is possible to eliminate nuclear weapons entirely if we reach a committed decision to do so.

The idea that MAD will avert nuclear war in the first place is a tidy little assumption that we cannot afford to be wrong about. Oh, and the idea that we would have gone into all out war with the Soviets had we not had nukes is exceedingly difficult to justify. The Unites States is geographically isolated and as my history professor used to say, "The first rule of European warfare is: Do not invade Russia."

Somehow we managed to kill each other in large numbers anyway through proxy wars, and I suspect that the same thing would have happened anyway. You look at the balance of the situation and take the thousands killed in hot wars, and weigh it against the possible decimation of the human species, I'll take the hot wars.

BTW, what the fuck does the wafer thing have to do with this? I for one, and sick of the issue.

Did I miss something or has it suddenly ceased to be "just a cracker?"

Posted by: Nick Gotts | July 27, 2008 12:37 PM

On paper, the late 1960s would have been the perfect time for the Soviets to invade West Germany. - JoJo

Another possible explanation for why they didn't (two really): they lacked both the motivation to do so, and confidence in their capacity to do so successfully. To assume that the reason the Cold War never turned hot was the existence of nuclear weapons is unjustified: consider the long period without wars between the great powers from 1815-1866. Neither the USA nor Russia ("USSR" now looks like a temporary alias) had to destroy the other in order to survive, as the allies and Nazi Germany both did in WW2.

Posted by: amphiox | July 27, 2008 12:40 PM

ac: it is inaccurate I think to talk about a "need" for evolving. Evolution follows automatically from the action of natural forces upon a population. Humans may one day be able to inject a modicum of intent/design into our own evolution one day, through genetic engineering, so that if you wanted your child to have, say a third arm, (maybe you have dreams of being a tennis parent or something) you might be able to. We shall see.

Modern civilization has in some respects reduced selection pressure on our species, but this has been a recent phenomenon. There is already some good evidence that humans have been actively evolving in the near (historical) past at the very least. Reduction of selection pressure doesn't mean its total elimination. And genetic drift, random mutation, etc are still at work. In fact, with reduced selection pressure, there is an increased likelihood of the accumulation of neutral variation.

And if there ever is a nuclear war, selection pressure is going to go way up, and given the accumulation of variation during this civilized interlude, I'd wager that humans would start evolving pretty fast after that. In fact, there's a fair chance we'd speciate in that scenario.

Posted by: Andy James | July 27, 2008 12:48 PM

Considering so many climate scientists who say our climate is changing more rapidly than nearly all their models show, starvation and ecological collapse are more imminent than nuclear war.

The interesting difference between the two is not the result, the end of civilization and most life on Earth, but the source of our peril. Nuclear war is committed between nation-state leaders as a single moment of decision. Climate change is pushed along by every single person on the planet who decides they require more carbon be pumped into the atmosphere for their own petty needs.

Add to it the explosion of populations, and we have the recipe for utter disaster, and our only escape can be individual understanding of the scientific princpipals of climate change and its ramifications.

Climate change is far beyond the capabilities of any god to produce or reverse, but not beyond the mind of all humankind.

Posted by: amphiox | July 27, 2008 12:52 PM

The scenario jojo described with regards to crossbows also occurred with early firearms. Pretty much everything that made the crossbow "bad" to certain authorities is ten times worse with guns. Several European states did in fact outlaw the use of guns.

These pioneers in arms control ended up being overrun by gun-toting neighbours.

Firearms were successfully eliminated in Togukawa-era Japan, after the unification of the nation under the shogunate, by a dictatorial regime with complete control over the entire area of a nation isolated from outside influence by natural boundaries. This persisted until Admiral Perry forced open Tokyo harbor with the threat of cannon fire, after which the Japanese readopted guns with gusto.

So long as there is diversity in human society, advantageous weapons cannot be eliminated. There will always be someone nefarious to want it and resourceful enough to get it, whereupon everyone else will have to get it (or something that can neutralize it) to protect themselves.

Given that a nuclear weapon can now be assembled off instructions from the internet, if you want the total elimination of nuclear arms, the only historically proven method is to establish a total world-wide totalitarian dictatorship with complete control over all resources, means of manufacture, and information systems. I think that would be worse than having the nuclear weapons.

Alternately, one could through diplomacy and persuasion effect a voluntary global disarmament, but the voluntary aspect would have to be total. A single exception, and it won't have to be a nation-state, would ruin it for everyone. This has never been accomplished in human history. If we actually manage to do this, I think then that we could justifiably claim to have evolved into a wiser species, and have the evidence to back it up.

(There would still be the potential risk for the Simpsons scenario, whereby we get invaded by aliens wielding pitchforks, though)

Posted by: JoJo | July 27, 2008 1:00 PM

The Chemist #55

...but it is possible to eliminate nuclear weapons entirely if we reach a committed decision to do so.

The Chemist has expressed a noble sentiment. I'm sure none of us disagree in the least. However, like all idealistic ideas, application is a problem.

As long as one country or one major socio-political group or even a large company decides they need nuclear weapons, they'll have nuclear weapons. If Third World countries like Pakistan and North Korea can make nuclear weapons, then anyone can. The difficult part is delivery systems, not the warheads.

Posted by: Andy James | July 27, 2008 1:07 PM

I love Sagan, but toleration has been extended too softly and for far too long of the religious point of view.
We need PZ, to show its ok to stand up against religion. More importantly, we need every person who feels similarly to do the same publicly, matter-of-fact-ly, in a matter that diminishes the actions of the religious but not their innate human intentions to do good.

Religion must be dogged and ridiculed constantly. Its not OK to be wrong, not anymore. Its not ok to persist in fantasy that puts us all at risk. Religion persists in most minds not because of careful consideration of their surroundings, but because its the default explanation of our society. Public ridicule for religious beliefs can help to curb irrational attribution of natural and anthropogenic phenomena to a deity.

God must not take credit for what science has accomplished (i.e. the Green Revolution, amazing medical understanding, not to mention our grasp of our place on Earth amongst the living things and in the universe as a speck). Doing so diminishes our progress as a species. Worse than that, god taking credit is a deception which is used to diminish the lives of all mankind.

If god created "man", then the universe is a puppet show put on for its entertainment. With god's hand up your ass, who cares how things work.

If we evolved, then we are the benefactors of a long line of survivors from grand antiquity. It becomes our duty to both thrive, and appreciate our state, but more importantly, to pass long a better world to forthcoming generations.

Posted by: Al | July 27, 2008 1:18 PM

The problem with MAD is that it breaks down when nuclear weapons get into the hands of those not associated with any one nation state, or come to that, any nation at all. Who do we hold hostage then?

Posted by: acj | July 27, 2008 1:25 PM

Amphiox:
I said that "unless there are environmental changes far worse than global warming, there is no need for humanity to dramatically evolve... biologically". A world-wide thermonuclear war would certainly count as one major environmetal change; and I really don't want to ruin my nice and quiet Sunday afternoon thinking about how it would force our species to adapt to radioactive wastes and, most importantly, to the sudden lack of anything that could be called civilization.
Yes, there are genetic drifts; and yes, there are random mutations. I quite agree with you. It is, nonetheless, pretty hard for me to imagine any genetic drift or random mutation that would give an individual that extra chance of reproducing and passing on that particular trait on to the next generation.
My point is that the environment we live in is more and more man-made. That's a good thing, too, because for all I know, when it was only nature, unmitigated by urban civilization, that we were up against, it must have been close to hell on earth. Well, mostly. But think about how people died horrible deaths because there was no one who could set their broken leg straight and treat them with some anti-biotics, and you'll know what I mean.
Modern society sure does reward some traits such as intelligence and social skills, but these are not hard-wired into the DNA but acquired.
So I maintain that evolution, nay, changes in human DNA do happen, but, at least for the time being, it happens on the software level, while the hardware setup remains unchanged. The emergence of civilization has given a whole new meaning to the terms "nature" and "environment", as far as human evolution is concerned, and hey! I think we're going to see some very, very interesting papers on that published in our livetimes.
BTW, I have noticed that I've published my last post as "ac" instead of "acj" - so maybe evolution IS at work here and it wants idiots like me who can't even spell their own name removed from the gene pool... ;)

Posted by: scooter | July 27, 2008 1:26 PM

#23

for a taste of what a decades-long total war would be like, read Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Years of Rice and Salt".

Or talk to anyone from Vietnam over forty.

Posted by: JoJo | July 27, 2008 1:30 PM

A good number of years ago I wrote an essay on the Naval Disarmament Treaties of the 1920s and 1930s. I won't reproduce the essay here (it's quite long) but I'll quote from one paragraph:

These were agreements that did make a difference, as fleets actually were reduced. However, the treaties had some unintended results. Perhaps the biggest was that Japanese militarists would later use the treaties to argue that Japan had been insulted by relegation to a state of inferiority. Efforts at further significant reductions in naval armaments, which were made well into the 1930s, came to grief due to demands for "parity" by a militarized Japan and a resurgent Germany. Thus treaties aimed at reducing tensions and armaments eventually increased both. Disarmament does not always work out the way one would think it will. [emphasis added]

Posted by: scooter | July 27, 2008 1:38 PM

The Man who saved the World from a nuclear exchange