Part of the GCRI series of news summaries
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists published former US airman John Bordne’s first-hand account of his commanding officer’s refusal to launch nuclear weapons during the Cuban Missile Crisis. On October 28, 1962, Bordne says the secret US missile site in Okinawa where he served received orders to launch missiles at four targets. Bordne said that even though the launch orders were initially confirmed the officer in charge suspected the orders were a mistake both because the US forces were not at DEFCON1 status and because not all of the targets were in Russia. To ensure that no missiles were launched accidentally, the commanding officer ordered two airmen to shoot the lieutenant in charge of a second crew if he tried to launch without either the commanding officer’s authorization or an upgrade to DEFCON1 status. The records that could confirm the story have not been released by the US government, but according to a Kyodo News report another former US veteran who served in Okinawa confirms parts of Bordne’s story. Bruce Blair, a research scholar at Princeton’s Science And Global Security Program, told The Bulletin that a launch order could have mistakenly been given to a nuclear launch crew. “It’s happened a number of times to my knowledge,” Blair said, “and probably more times than I know.”
According to a recently declassified US intelligence review, the Soviet Union was concerned that the 1983 NATO Able Archer exercises were a cover for a nuclear surprise attack. The 1983 Able Archer exercises tested new communications systems and included live mobilization exercises, which may have looked more to Soviet intelligence like a real attack. The report, which was produced for the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in 1990, found that during the exercises the Soviet Union placed air forces in Eastern Europe on higher alert, flew more reconnaissance missions, and told intelligence officers to watch for signs of a nuclear first strike. The report said these steps “strongly” suggested that “Soviet military leaders may have been seriously concerned that the US would use Able Archer 83 as a cover for launching a real attack”. The report concluded that the 1983 exercises “may have inadvertently placed our relations with the Soviet Union on a hair trigger”.
According to a Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) report, security experts from the US, Europe, and Russia believe that the danger that nuclear weapons could be used in the Euro-Atlantic region is growing. Nearly all of the experts NTI surveyed agreed that while the chance that a nuclear weapon would be used in their region is still small, deteriorating relations between the US and Russia have increased the danger. Experts said that the greatest risk is that a misunderstanding or miscalculation could cause a minor incident to escalate.
In early October, a Russian aircraft violated Turkish airspace. The Russian Defense Ministry said the violation was a mistake, but NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that “it doesn’t look like an accident”. Russian planes have flown into or near NATO airspace on a number of occasions recently. Such flights are sometimes used to test the military and political response of other countries. The US and Russia signed a memorandum of understanding establishing safety protocols to “deconflict” air operations around Syria and prevent incidents between their two air forces. The protocols require aircraft to maintain a minimum safe distance and establish means for the two militaries to communicate with one another.
India announced that by 2030 it will generate 40% of its power from non-fossil-fuel sources and reduce its carbon emissions intensity to 2/3 of 2005 levels. India is the largest national emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the US. The plan is India’s Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) to the agreement that is supposed to come out of the climate change conference in Paris in December. Unlike many other major emitters, India did not commit to reducing its carbon emissions in absolute terms.
Indonesian wildfires have produced carbon emissions than the US economy over the last two months. More than half of the nearly 100,000 wildfires burning in Indonesia are in tropical peatlands, which store large amounts of carbon. Droughts and temperature extremes caused by climate change may contribute to an increase in the annual global extent of wildfires.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that high ocean temperatures are causing corals to bleach around the world. When corals are stressed, they expel the symbiotic algae that live inside them, causing the coral to turn white. Severe bleaching can kill the corals and damage the important ecosystems coral reefs support. This is the third global bleaching event on record (the first was in 1998 and the second was in 2010). “We are losing huge areas of coral across the U.S., as well as internationally,” NOAA Coral Reef Watch coordinator Mark Eakin said. “What really has us concerned is this event has been going on for more than a year and our preliminary model projections indicate it’s likely to last well into 2016.”
A Nature Scientific Reports paper concluded that a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) would cool the planet enough to pause global warming for 40-50 years. The Northern Atlantic circulates as warm, salty waters flows north on the surface of the Atlantic, before cooling and sinking and flowing south again. This system conducts heat north and keeps Europe relatively warm. But an influx of fresh water from melting glaciers in the Northern hemisphere could shut down this circulation. The paper found that if the AMOC were to collapse, global temperatures could go down more than 1°F (0.6°C) over the course of 15 years before starting to rise again. The shutdown of this circulation could potentially cool Europe enough to trigger a new “Little Ice Age”. It would also raise sea levels along Atlantic coasts further than under global warming scenarios alone.
This news summary was put together in collaboration with Anthropocene. Thanks to Tony Barrett, Seth Baum, Kaitlin Butler, and Grant Wilson for help compiling the news.
You can help us compile future news posts by putting any GCR news you see in the comment thread of this blog post, or send it via email to Grant Wilson (grant [at] gcrinstitute.org).
Image credit: Amirin
