Wow! We are all certified ecologists, meteorologists and physicists here!
Anyway, I think by now the differences between nuclear winters and global warming is quite clear, and may both be accurate occurances in civ4 in one form or another and I stand corrected on a few points.
In any case the important quetion is what do we do (mod) about it?
I think that Firaxis hasn't gone as deep into this as we are doing now because a) they are not nuke happy psychos like us
and b) by the end of the game when M.A.D. can actually happen the game is almost over and any very long term effects aren't gonna be around. (Insidentaly, does anyone know if excessive smog cities can trigger global warming?)
The scenario of global warming and/or a nuclear winter has never happened (or completed if it's happening now) in our recent civilisation, so there is no real scenario for recovering from it. Should we mod this it would be important to distinguish a few things, and I propose we work on that now with all the scientific knowledge that we have. Thusly....
Things to mod:
A nuclear winter: triggered by 100+ nukes in 3 turns
Effects: 50% farms on earth destroyed per turn randomly. Global unhappiness and health levels due to radiation poisoning?
Duration: 10 turns (as winds sweep away dust)
Gloabl warming: smog and nuke variables?
Effects: dessertification as per vanilla civ4
Nuke dropping bomber: one square effective. (can the nuke graphics be reduced in size for this?)
Or should we just start a new thread for all this?