War releases MASSIVE amounts of CO2 and green house gasses and destroys casts swaths of green spaces.
That's your answer.
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2025
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Thank god nuclear winter will cancel out global warming!
So it depends on the body count and and the average age of the people killed you are saying?
No, because after the war we'll need to start rebuilding stuff we just destroyed, so the people remaining will increase their emissions many times. Also, hypernormalisation after a war might just render public opinion towards climate change indifferent.
So imagine if the problem was deforestation and people heating with chopped wood. War means that we'll burn all their wooden houses down, and then see them cut down even more trees to rebuild them.
Also, large wars cause baby booms.
Honestly, both outcomes seem equally terrifying. Either we wreck the planet faster through war-driven industry or everything collapses so badly that emissions drop, but at an enormous human cost.
Speed up by far. All the focus will be on producing enough stuff to replace whatever the enemy blows up. Any invention in the renewable department will only come as a result of having used all available fuel already.
The world population still increased during the previous world wars so unless we have a major nuclear exchange that probably won't change. If we do have a major nuclear war global warming is suddenly not a big deal anyway.
unless we have a major nuclear exchange
I was going to say, it really depends on just how hard we go on the "let's kill everyone" vibe.
Also a lot less death more injuries than previous wars. With the same amount or more of environmental destruction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_war
Might be a starting point. It's not looking good.
We already have a model of this with Israel's genocide in Gaza wracking up a climate footprint bigger than entire countries. Scale that up to a world war and... Yeah, not fun.
Depends on how many humans die.
Yes, but the opposite way you might be thinking since mass death from war and other catastrophe is strongly correlated with very high birth rates. We're on track for the global population to stabilize around 10 billion right now, but if billions die in a world war we will probably go exponential again for a long time.
The tools that would kill enough humans to matter would hurt the biosphere much worse than it hurts humans. Otters and bees don't have gas masks and nuclear shelters.
Think Covid but with purpose.
This is the best and simplest answer.
My question is whether nuclear winter will mitigate the CO2 warming.
Most countries don't have fossil fuels and 28% of oil is offshore. Also heavy industry is very mineral dependent. Let's be honest, if there will be WW3 most of people will starve to death and start killing and eating each other. Most people don't know how to get clean water without water pipe. Look how much aid is coming to little country like Palestine to keep them alive. Given that I think it will decrease
In war, the economy does not slow down. It is turbocharged.
A nuclear war could counter global warming by triggering a nuclear winter but the actual effects are very uncertain. Basically, for a nuclear winter, a lot of "dust" needs to be lifted into the stratosphere. Those huge, multi-megaton bombs that they had back in the day caused a mushroom cloud that rose all the way to the stratosphere. Today, smaller, more precisely targeted bombs are preferred. It also depends on how combustible the targets are. No one is really quite sure what the climate effect of nuking a city is.
ETA: That was how climatologists saw nuclear winter ~15-20 years ago. No idea if anything has changed, but there probably wasn't a lot of new data.
A substantial reduction in the human population would largely end the burning of fossil fuels and trigger reforestation; removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Ultimately, I would expect WW3 to greatly mitigate global warming.
Well, if you have to build all kinds of stuff to win (or even survive) things like environmental regulations go out the window. You can expect factories, many not meant for it, to start running 24/7 and producing all kinds of pollution. People will need to get to those factories and it's also all using more power. All of those things also need to be shipped around, both to temporary storage and to staging areas for wherever they're destined.
During WWII in the US, a lot of old mines were also re-opened to get what was left of lead, copper, zinc, etc. and mining can have a huge environmental impact. I suspect we'd see that again along with rare earths mining and refining which is not great for the environment. I suspect we'd see more coal mining, facking, and other things as well to meet energy needs at home and abroad.
There will be tons of fires pumping carbon and I'm sure plenty of nasty materials into the atmosphere as well. Lead is going to end up all over the place in some areas and probably depleted uranium as well (you can see what that's done over time in various parts of the Middle East).
Congratulations.
In WW3 either you are going to die or you are going to die...