| Abstract: | This essay questions the effectiveness of nuclear winter modeling as a means of impacting nuclear policy and changing public attitudes about nuclear issues. In nuclear winter modeling, humanistic concern over the possibility of global environmental destruction is cloaked in the ostensibly neutral language of science. Nuclear winter modeling attempts to apply rational argument to an issue that is rooted instead in human affect and morality. The implications of this misappropriation are discussed in terms of the dehumanizing nature of the images conjured up by nuclear winter, its attention to the effects of nuclear weapons rather than deeper structural problems, and its political ambiguity as a function of unresolvable uncertainty in model results. |
