Surprise! Nukes do more harm to environment than carbon

During the Obama administration, the proletariat was constantly scolded that climate change is the biggest threat to people and the planet. The Earth's rising temperatures resulting from the carbon emissions of modernity were endangering our immediate and long-term future. Who knew that destruction from a nuclear blast of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit could be vastly more devastating to our world?

Apparently not the previous administration, or maybe they just weren't admitting it. After all, keeping the North Koreans from finalizing weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver those weapons is a much harder task than saving the great unwashed from a fantasized future. Yet, when faced with imminent nuclear obliteration versus theoretical inconvenience from an uncomfortable ambience, some are still ignorant or Pollyannaish. The New York Times published an article this past Friday that claimed, "North Korea Aside, Guam Faces Another Threat, Climate Change." Really? A mushroom cloud courtesy of Pyongyang is a bit more ominous than a cloudy weather forecast from vaunted climate models. Disastrous climate change is always passed on as a foregone conclusion. Mankind is causing extreme weather now, and more is to come, unless all heed the giants of politicized science. The conclusion is foregone, settled, because it is a long-range forecast by some eminently smart and prescient people based on really sophisticated, super-fast computer outputs. So follow the lead of the smartest people in the room to safety from certain doom. We realize now that they may not be the smartest in the room; rather, they are more likely the most arrogant. Protection from the potential loss of millions of lives should always be a top agenda item on any president's to-do list. And even if environmentalist constituents aren't moved by a tremendous loss of life, perhaps the loss of biodiversity would pique their interest? Incineration and contamination from a nuclear explosion can really play havoc with an ecosystem for many years to come. The emergence of a nuclear attack from North Korea has become a hard reality with the threat of real harm to people and the planet. As such, can we all just get on the same page for once, come together, Republican, Democrat, independent, right, left, and center, to support and, dare I say, pray for the president and Congress to make intelligent decisions about this dire dilemma? Anthony J. Sadar is a certified consulting meteorologist and author of In Global Warming We Trust: Too Big to Fail (Stairway Press, 2016).