From Soot to CO2: The Scientific and Political Coevolution of Nuclear and Carbon Climate Change
This research would explore the stark disparity in attention and resources dedicated to nuclear and carbon climate change, despite their shared conceptual origins and potentially dire societal implications. Both phenomena emerge from an understanding of the atmosphere as a global system subject to human influence, with historical links to catastrophic events (e.g. mass extinctions). Nuclear climate change, often referred to as ‘nuclear winter,’ a global cooling effect arising from nuclear detonations over flammable material of only a small proportion of global nuclear weapons inventories, poses an existential risk via agricultural collapse. In contrast, carbon climate change, as driven mainly by greenhouse gas emissions, manifests more gradually but could also threaten human survival through runaway scenarios like ice sheet collapse or methane release.
This study will compare the funding trajectories, research dissemination, and policy engagement of these two themes to investigate the hypothesis that nuclear climate change remains generally underfunded and overlooked compared to carbon climate change. Employing a 3-phase interdisciplinary approach, the research would undertake a physical sciences meta-analysis, a social studies of science interrogation of research networks, and evaluative assessments of pathways from research to policy integration.
The outcomes aim to identify systemic barriers to existential risk research uptake while developing structured pathways for integrating nuclear climate change science into policymaking and risk mitigation strategies. This work seeks to foster informed decision-making and enhance the integration of exist risk science into policy, contributing to a humanity that is better able to navigate and mitigate threats to its collective survival.