The only species clever enough to develop nuclear WMDs on this planet and also the only one foolish enough to use them.
Homo sapiens “Wise man” in latin. Turns out we’re badly misnamed. Taxonomists – renaming time for us?
PS. The thought occurs is there any species of Blattodea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blattodea ) named after Franz (Metamorphosis story) Kafka? If not there should be..
wzrd1says
Fools always think themselves wise. The wise know themselves to be fools.
Rob Grigjanissays
StevoR @1: One of the more polite possibilities I’ve considered is Homo myops (short-sighted man). Not sure what the Latin for “fucking dumbass” is.
chrislawsonsays
Minor proofreading note: it’s Tom Gauld.
birgerjohanssonsays
Ah, yes. New Scientist has an entry by Tom Gauld in every issue. I often copy them and tack them to walls.
Ray Ceeya, improved modeling disproved the nuclear winter theory back in the early 1990’s. Evidence further disproved the theory when, after Gulf War I’s dire climate cooling predictions of years to decades of cooling, only a few months were cooler in a much smaller region.
So, nuclear winter isn’t a reason to avoid nuclear warfare. Indeed, nuclear warfare and warfare in general have a better reason to avoid them, both are stupid fucking things to do in general.
I am growing ever more concerned about one thing that’s factual and that the cartoon slightly reflects, the erosion of all of our nuclear weapons treaties over the last decade. At the rate we’re going, we’ll be back to atmospheric testing in no time again… :/
birgerjohansson, hard for Ted to try to bribe trees when he’s in Cancun.
Besides, cesium-137 was the most peaceful tourist, along with the friend it shacked up with, strontium-90. Never fear though, Putin did threaten to salt his hypersonic missiles with cobalt-60.
Pop a bunch of those off, would we get Planet Hulk? OK, not really, but we’d not need to scrub so thoroughly before surgery, as the planet would become quite sterile.
IX-103, the ■■■■ing idiotsays
I can almost hear Trump asking if nuclear winter is a possible solution for global warming…
wzrd1says
Why not? He wanted to put a hurricane out with a nuke.
wzrd1says
BTW, one Carl Sagan’s DoD assignments was regarding detonating a thermonuclear warhead on the moon.
He mathematically showed that it’d have been a barely visible embarrassment.
StevoRsays
@11. IX-103, the ■■■■ing idiot : Yup. Talk about the cure being worse than the disease. Or at least as bad.
Also, FWIW, I imagine that after the breif but devastating nuclear winter the atmospheric CO2 levels having remained far above the pre-Industrial 280 ppm would cause comtinued Global Overheating anyhow. So our planet would get both in quick succession.
Seems like the Soviet Union had the same idea as well :
As left field as the nuclear idea might have been, the U.S. weren’t the only ones to consider it. Around the same time in 1958, the Soviets were cooking up the same scheme. Speaking in 1999, Boris Chertok, the famed Russian rocket engineer spoke of the Soviet plans to nuke the moon under the codename of Project E-4.
The Project was due to be executed in the summer of 1959 but was never given the green light due to similar reasons that prevented Project A119 from getting off the ground – safety. The Soviets also didn’t believe that the flash from their explosion would last long enough to catch on film, rendering the whole thing somewhat pointless from a propaganda point of view.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty between the U.S. and Soviets, among others, stopped any such plans cropping up again in the future. The treaty banned the placement of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in space and limited the use of the moon to peaceful endeavours only.
The only species clever enough to develop nuclear WMDs on this planet and also the only one foolish enough to use them.
Homo sapiens “Wise man” in latin. Turns out we’re badly misnamed. Taxonomists – renaming time for us?
PS. The thought occurs is there any species of Blattodea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blattodea ) named after Franz (Metamorphosis story) Kafka? If not there should be..
Fools always think themselves wise. The wise know themselves to be fools.
StevoR @1: One of the more polite possibilities I’ve considered is Homo myops (short-sighted man). Not sure what the Latin for “fucking dumbass” is.
Minor proofreading note: it’s Tom Gauld.
Ah, yes. New Scientist has an entry by Tom Gauld in every issue. I often copy them and tack them to walls.
Rob #3
Try: stupro republicania
Actually most species of cockroaches are tropical and in the event of nuclear winter, would fair poorly.
‘fare’, Ray.
Obs, the cartoon mocks the claim that cockroaches would be the last survivors after a nuclear Armageddon.
And, by mocking it, highlights it and the applicable circumstances.
The eejits will get us extinct.
“1000- plus years of tree rings confirm historic extremity of 2021 western North America heat wave”
This is not the kind of things you can blame of dishonest researchers- either the tree rings are there or they are not.
Trees can not be bribed, alrhough I would not put it past Ted Cruz to try.
This study will never be shown on Fox News, unless…
“BREAKING NEWS! Heat Wave of 2021 western North America was just peaceful tourist!”
https://phys.org/news/2023-03-plus-years-tree-historic-extremity.html
Ray Ceeya, improved modeling disproved the nuclear winter theory back in the early 1990’s. Evidence further disproved the theory when, after Gulf War I’s dire climate cooling predictions of years to decades of cooling, only a few months were cooler in a much smaller region.
So, nuclear winter isn’t a reason to avoid nuclear warfare. Indeed, nuclear warfare and warfare in general have a better reason to avoid them, both are stupid fucking things to do in general.
I am growing ever more concerned about one thing that’s factual and that the cartoon slightly reflects, the erosion of all of our nuclear weapons treaties over the last decade. At the rate we’re going, we’ll be back to atmospheric testing in no time again… :/
birgerjohansson, hard for Ted to try to bribe trees when he’s in Cancun.
Besides, cesium-137 was the most peaceful tourist, along with the friend it shacked up with, strontium-90. Never fear though, Putin did threaten to salt his hypersonic missiles with cobalt-60.
Pop a bunch of those off, would we get Planet Hulk? OK, not really, but we’d not need to scrub so thoroughly before surgery, as the planet would become quite sterile.
I can almost hear Trump asking if nuclear winter is a possible solution for global warming…
Why not? He wanted to put a hurricane out with a nuke.
BTW, one Carl Sagan’s DoD assignments was regarding detonating a thermonuclear warhead on the moon.
He mathematically showed that it’d have been a barely visible embarrassment.
@11. IX-103, the ■■■■ing idiot : Yup. Talk about the cure being worse than the disease. Or at least as bad.
Also, FWIW, I imagine that after the breif but devastating nuclear winter the atmospheric CO2 levels having remained far above the pre-Industrial 280 ppm would cause comtinued Global Overheating anyhow. So our planet would get both in quick succession.
@ wzrd1 : Yup. Named Operation A119 apparently :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-17/moon-us-plans-cold-war-russia-sputnik/11220340
Seems like the Soviet Union had the same idea as well :
Source : https://www.history.co.uk/article/how-america-nearly-nuked-the-moon
What might’ve been but thankfully wasn’t :
https://www.supercluster.com/editorial/we-choose-to-nuke-the-moon
Sometimes it helps to remember that even with the seemingly bizarre Trump POTUS-cy we don’t actually lie in the very worst of all posible timelines..