AHC/WI: Nuclear Winter Hypothesis Rejected

Delta Force

Banned
Scientists have gone back and forth on the validity of the nuclear winter hypothesis since it was first proposed in the early 1980s. What if the nuclear winter hypothesis had been rejected in the mid-1980s? Could it lead to reduced pressure to rein in the nuclear arms race?

As a possible PoD, perhaps Soviet scientist Vladimir Alexandrov delivers a presentation to the Madrid Conference denouncing the theory instead of vanishing like he did in our timeline.
 
Even without the nuclear winter hypothesis, both the Soviet and the American leadership were aware that using any kind of nuclear weapon would be suicide. The bombs that leveled down Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 50 kiloton of TNT equivalents, and the nuclear stockpiles by 1983 had hundreds of warheads over a megaton equivalent. Even if the rest of the world were to be thought to be unaffected, both warring countries would end up demolished.

I'd say that it wouldn't have all that big of an effect.
 

Archibald

Banned
Wasn't Carl Sagan instrumental in the nuclear winter hypothesis ? Change the space program, keep Sagan estranged from Reagan politics, and the hypothesis will go nowhere.
 
Scientists have gone back and forth on the validity of the nuclear winter hypothesis since it was first proposed in the early 1980s. What if the nuclear winter hypothesis had been rejected in the mid-1980s? Could it lead to reduced pressure to rein in the nuclear arms race?

As a possible PoD, perhaps Soviet scientist Vladimir Alexandrov delivers a presentation to the Madrid Conference denouncing the theory instead of vanishing like he did in our timeline.

Any effect is going to be very small. There are plenty of reasons nuclear war is horrible without nuclear winter. It's not like anyone is going to say "Hey, since there's no nuclear winter, let's start a nuclear war!"
 
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