Resource April 11, 2016

Meet The Journalist: Kit R. Roane

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Cold War scientists once worried that a nuclear war could plunge the world into a deadly ice age...

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A 1971 file photo of a nuclear bomb detonated at the Mururoa atoll, French Polynesia. (AP Photo)

In 1983, scientists gave the world a new reason to fear nuclear war. They called it "Nuclear Winter," a theory that prophesized a climatic armageddon caused by the smoke lofting from nuclear explosions. At its worst, they feared that a war between the United States and the USSR would create an ice age so severe that it would cause the extinction of humankind.

Now, decades after the end of the Cold War, this theory continues to raise tantalizing new questions—not only about the devastation that would follow a nuclear conflict, but also more fundamental ones about the human ability to alter the earth's climate, for both good and ill.

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Nuclear Threats

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Environment and Climate Change

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