Nukes' effect on the Environment

Soryn Arkayn

Prince
Joined
Oct 14, 2005
Messages
313
I know that in Civ4, using ICBMs trigger global warming, but IMO this is wrong. If anything they should cause nuclear winter, which is the opposite of global warming (wouldn't it be ironic if the solution to global warming was nuclear winter?). Perhaps there could be a kind of "Doomday Clock" (like in Empire Earth, which would begin to count down if nukes were used excessively) that would countdown to a nuclear winter that would effect the planet for at least 10 years, depending on how many nukes were used. The Nuclear Winter would effect the entire planet and either temporarily penalize production, food, wealth, etc. or it might destroy terrain improvements such as farms, which would have to be rebuilt afterwards.

I think that global warming should begin to occur after Industrialization is discovered, and then only if there are a lot of cities with more pollution than health. That way global warming is more of an issue, not merely a penalty for using nukes. Also, there'd be even more incentive to adopt Environmentalism (especially passing the UN's Environmentalism legislation, so all civs adopt it) and construct Recycling Centres and Health+ buildings, which would prevent or stop global warming.

Also, perhaps the Kyoto Protocol could be added as a new UN legislation? It would reduce pollution but it would also penalize production by perhaps 25%.
 
If anything they should cause nuclear winter, which is the opposite of global warming (wouldn't it be ironic if the solution to global warming was nuclear winter?).

Um... No. Nuclear winter is not the opposite of global warming. It does not make the world cooler in any way that humans would like to live through. Namely, it's theorized that so much soot and dust could get into our atmosphere that the sun's light is blocked significantly.
 
Based on that discription you give the only reasonable representation of Nuclear winter would be to have any tile effected turn to Ice rivers vanish to simulate freezeing and haveing the Ice on the water grow larger and if given enough time consume all of the water on the map, so from dust ball to ice ball, would look better as an effecte to have Global warming if given enough time Boil off all the water on the planet as it isnt that much more of a streach seeings as every square on land is going to deasert.
 
Could we not make this a political game, please?

How is this political? Its not a political debate. If anything, its a scientific debate on global warming and nuclear winter.

Edit: Global Warming dosn't neccesarily mean warming. If anything, the warming of the oceans will make the various currents go wonky and make certain places colder, not warmer. Really, the most realistic interpretation of Global Warming would be and increase in the various disasters that are being worked into the game (flooding, drought, hurricanes, etc...)
 
Ok i like the argument that using nukes causes too much global warming etc. but as with it happenining because of pollution? no..
 
Um... No. Nuclear winter is not the opposite of global warming. It does not make the world cooler in any way that humans would like to live through. Namely, it's theorized that so much soot and dust could get into our atmosphere that the sun's light is blocked significantly.
I know what Nuclear Winter is. It was a joke. (It was actually a joke I heard in an episode of Futurama.) But I think that it would be more realistic than nukes triggering global warming.
 
Based on that discription you give the only reasonable representation of Nuclear winter would be to have any tile effected turn to Ice rivers vanish to simulate freezeing and haveing the Ice on the water grow larger and if given enough time consume all of the water on the map, so from dust ball to ice ball, would look better as an effecte to have Global warming if given enough time Boil off all the water on the planet as it isnt that much more of a streach seeings as every square on land is going to deasert.
The Earth wouldn't turn into an "ice ball" as a result of Nuclear Winter. Nuclear Winter would primarily effect agriculture, resulting in global famine. That's the effect I'd like Civ4 to simulate as a result of rampant nuclear explosions, not an Ice Age.

Ironically, it's Climage Change (formerly known as Global Warming) that might trigger an Ice Age, not Nuclear Winter.

Also, volcanic eruptions can effect global weather and cause an effect similar to Nuclear Winter, so perhaps that could be another possible natural disaster random event.
 
I think the thread makes a good point, nukes don't cause global warming. It makes sense as a rule in this game but it doesn't reflect reality what so ever... if it was up to me i'd come up with some other drawback from using nuclear weapons instead.
 
I'm with the OP : if there is going to be a Global Warming in the game, it should come from polution, not from nuclear weapons usage ( or nuclear centrals meltdowns)

@ Elrohir : Nuke usage = Global warming is a political statement. Al Gore = Internet is a political statement. It civ IV is not a political game, it sure looks like it....

Nuclear winter is still misunderstood ( I read a article 2/3 weeks ago that stated that most probably it would be a nuclear early spring or late fall ), but one thing is sure : it has nothing to do with the nuclear weapons in itself. Nuclear winter ( if I recall the first articles of the deceased Carl Sagan ) would be caused if the nukes were launched into cities and if they burn hot enough to the smoke reaches the stratosphere. The hot fires that cause the so called "fire storms" ( fires that suck air into them) aren't a exclusive of nuclear bombings ( Dresden suffered one when Allies bombed it in 1944).

Global Warming is even a more nebulous deal.... All we know is that the planet suffered a somewhat abnormal heating in the last 150/200 years. Caused by Human action? Maybe... or maybe not. The medium temperatures of the last 200 years correlate well with the CO2 ppm ratio in the atmosphere ( that is well correlated the the industrialization of the planet), but don't correlate well with the other two major greenhouse effect gases ( methane and water vapour ). In fact, I read an article a year ago that stated that the agriculture revolution ( when people started to farm and to breed animals, things that release a enormous amount of CO2 and methane to the atmosphere) there wasn't any sharp peak on temperature, like we should expect is the simplest forms of the Global Warming theories ( the ones that we see on the TV and in some documentaries made by ex-politics that invented Internet :p ( sorry, I couldn't resist) ) were true. We just don't understand climate physics well enough to say that the shaep peak of temperatures observed in the last 200 years is caused by human activity.
 
Global Warming is even a more nebulous deal.... All we know is that the planet suffered a somewhat abnormal heating in the last 150/200 years. Caused by Human action? Maybe... or maybe not. The medium temperatures of the last 200 years correlate well with the CO2 ppm ratio in the atmosphere ( that is well correlated the the industrialization of the planet), but don't correlate well with the other two major greenhouse effect gases ( methane and water vapour ). In fact, I read an article a year ago that stated that the agriculture revolution ( when people started to farm and to breed animals, things that release a enormous amount of CO2 and methane to the atmosphere) there wasn't any sharp peak on temperature, like we should expect is the simplest forms of the Global Warming theories ( the ones that we see on the TV and in some documentaries made by ex-politics that invented Internet :p ( sorry, I couldn't resist) ) were true. We just don't understand climate physics well enough to say that the shaep peak of temperatures observed in the last 200 years is caused by human activity.
I agreed with most of what you wrote, until the above quote, which is total BS. It's ignorant, irresponsible, conservative anti-logic. IMO it's even worse than just ignorantly dismissing Global Warming/Climate Change and burying your head in the sand, as most conservatives have done for the past half century. It's worse because you're trying to subvert science into mystifying the cause of GW/CC when the facts prove and more than 90% of accredited scientists agree that humans are the direct cause. I don't think that Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth movie should be taken as scientific gospel, but the facts that he presents are genuine. In the movie, he shows that humans' effect on the global climate began rising beginning in the Industrial Revolution, but it's increased dramatically in the past 60 years, coinciding with global mass industrialization. Conversatives always claim that "there's no proof" of GW/CC or "there's conflicting data". That's BS! They reject the proof and instead choose to rely on bogus studies performed by unqualified "experts" (not scientists) funded by the worst polluters themselves.

The reason why conservatives refuse to accept Global Warming/Climate Change is because they don't want to deal with reality. And the worst culprits, the Baby Boom generation (who will continue to be the majority of the population for the next 30-40 years), are never going to do anything about it because they know that they'll all be dead before the sh!t really hits the fan and world reaches the crisis point that can be averted if we simply act proactively today.


There's no denying that this is a political issue anymore.
 
I only suggested the ice ball thing as a Poler opposite of the dust ball effect that is in the game now, not anymore realistic/unrealistic as what happens now.
 
civ 2 had global warming start happening long before nukes. the little sun on the interface started up once industrial pollution got out of hand. I remember many a game sacrificing engineers to clean up pollution in enemy territory just so my grassland didn't turn to desert.
 
upside of it in civ 2 is it would stop once industrial pollutant was under control and you could use them engineers to repair your land as far as i know i dont think the AI was awake enough in its programming to do muc terraforming but im not sure.
 
I agreed with most of what you wrote, until the above quote, which is total BS. It's ignorant, irresponsible, conservative anti-logic. IMO it's even worse than just ignorantly dismissing Global Warming/Climate Change and burying your head in the sand, as most conservatives have done for the past half century. It's worse because you're trying to subvert science into mystifying the cause of GW/CC when the facts prove and more than 90% of accredited scientists agree that humans are the direct cause. I don't think that Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth movie should be taken as scientific gospel, but the facts that he presents are genuine. In the movie, he shows that humans' effect on the global climate began rising beginning in the Industrial Revolution, but it's increased dramatically in the past 60 years, coinciding with global mass industrialization. Conversatives always claim that "there's no proof" of GW/CC or "there's conflicting data". That's BS! They reject the proof and instead choose to rely on bogus studies performed by unqualified "experts" (not scientists) funded by the worst polluters themselves.

The reason why conservatives refuse to accept Global Warming/Climate Change is because they don't want to deal with reality. And the worst culprits, the Baby Boom generation (who will continue to be the majority of the population for the next 30-40 years), are never going to do anything about it because they know that they'll all be dead before the sh!t really hits the fan and world reaches the crisis point that can be averted if we simply act proactively today.


There's no denying that this is a political issue anymore.

The facts are undeniable, conclusions may be or not. I am not a conservative guy and I'm not part of the Baby boom generation ( thank God, methinks). I just stated that we just don't know enough of climate physics to say, above all doubt, that global Warning ( If you read well my words, I'm not denying it, because that is a fact ) is caused solely because of the Human Actions.
What the film doesn't show is that this period of global warming is the fourth of fifth that the planet passed in the last 12000 years ( ok , is the biggest of them after the end of the last glatiations, and that's where we must look for human intervention) and that climate previsons aren't reliable at such long spans ( most of the equations that modelled the climate physics are caotic in nature ). But ( I repeat) I'm not denying the real nature of the problem; just questioning the degree of the human guilt ( I'm sure its not 100% ).
The only contact I really had ( in terms of field work ) with this problem was when I was taking my degree in Biochemistry and was working with a teacher that was studing why tuna fish was changing their migration route to Mediterraneum Sea ( they used to pass near the Algarve's shore , feeding a thriving fishermen community ) and the first thougth was that Global Warming was forcing them to deviate their course, but further tests proved that it wasn't the case ( they were moving to even warmer waters; that part is still badly understood ). The problem with much of the "facts" ( not facts ) that some people ( not the scientific community) poses as proofs of global warming are from that nature: sum 10 migration deviations and we are facing a punishing for our evil ( read polluting ) deeds. Science just don't work like that: That is almost as absurd as saying that the US takeover of Iraq and Afganisthan caused Katrina (both never happened before, the invasions were before Katrina, then they must be the cause of Katrina).
And, to add, what can we do against Global warming? Should we do anything against Global warming? ( No doubt that we have to stop polluting. Just asking that we should or not take active measures against it, like storing CO2 in abandoned mines, like is being done in Scandinavia). I just don't know, and I believe most of the scientific community doesn't know either and is not eager to try to emulate Mickey's classical cartoon where he was a wizard student.

P.S I'm not employed by any of the quoted by you "worst polluters".
 
I think that global warming should begin to occur after Industrialization is discovered, and then only if there are a lot of cities with more pollution than health. That way global warming is more of an issue

Yeah there should be a global warming clock. As the clock approaches zero your cities get more and more unhappy. And when the clock gets to 0, nothing really happens and so the clock is reset a little higher and a popup informs you they were a little off on the estimates.
 
I agreed with most of what you wrote, until the above quote, which is total BS. It's ignorant, irresponsible, conservative anti-logic. IMO it's even worse than just ignorantly dismissing Global Warming/Climate Change and burying your head in the sand, as most conservatives have done for the past half century. It's worse because you're trying to subvert science into mystifying the cause of GW/CC when the facts prove and more than 90% of accredited scientists agree that humans are the direct cause. I don't think that Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth movie should be taken as scientific gospel, but the facts that he presents are genuine. In the movie, he shows that humans' effect on the global climate began rising beginning in the Industrial Revolution, but it's increased dramatically in the past 60 years, coinciding with global mass industrialization. Conversatives always claim that "there's no proof" of GW/CC or "there's conflicting data". That's BS! They reject the proof and instead choose to rely on bogus studies performed by unqualified "experts" (not scientists) funded by the worst polluters themselves.

The reason why conservatives refuse to accept Global Warming/Climate Change is because they don't want to deal with reality. And the worst culprits, the Baby Boom generation (who will continue to be the majority of the population for the next 30-40 years), are never going to do anything about it because they know that they'll all be dead before the sh!t really hits the fan and world reaches the crisis point that can be averted if we simply act proactively today.


There's no denying that this is a political issue anymore.

Since when have the "conservatives" (assuming you mean the ideology) been the only opponents of any theory relating to Global Warming?

In BtS, I hope Global Warming becomes a new religion...

"Believe in Global Warming or pay the Consequences!"

"I'll declare war on Civ x if YOU put more into preventing Global Warming"
 
@ Elrohir : Nuke usage = Global warming is a political statement. Al Gore = Internet is a political statement. It civ IV is not a political game, it sure looks like it....

The English languages has many nuances, so it's not surprising that you missed the subtle difference between "political statement" and "poorly-researched innacuracy." :lol:

Since when have the "conservatives" (assuming you mean the ideology) been the only opponents of any theory relating to Global Warming?

Here in America, we've successfully divided all people into "conservative" and "liberal" camps. Anyone who doesn't fully agree with either view is a "third party" and will utterly fail at the next election. So, yes, conservatives are the only people who oppose global warming in America.

---

Back on topic, the pollution system in CivIII annoyed me to no end. I really hope that never comes back. I like the OP's suggestion that Global Warming be caused primarily by unhealthy cities, but what sort of tech would cause it? Combustion? Assembly Line?
 
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