Easterbrook on Nuclear Winter

It seems to me that Gregg Easterbrook (“When Nutty Ideas Collide: SDI, Meet Nuclear Winter,” Opinion, May 30) displays a bit of “nutty” thinking of his own. The “nuttiest” aspect of his article is his analogy between the two ideas as if the consequences of accepting either were equivalent. They aren’t.

He is correct when he argues that SDI would not protect us from nuclear destruction, and was just a vehicle that was created for the purpose of funneling “pork” to defense contractors. The consequences for accepting that “nutty” idea would have led to a trillion-dollar boondoggle that would have accelerated our debt growth, pushing us even further down the road to financial calamity. It would also have further devastated our commercial industries by siphoning even more of our best and brightest engineering talent away from them, where they are needed, and putting us even further behind countries like Japan that are too smart to waste their resources on such nonsense.

On the other hand, one can only wonder what the point is when anyone argues either for or against the nuclear winter theory. His claim that it was the fear of nuclear winter that spurred arms control measures is simply silly. Is Easterbrook making the case that if there is no danger of a nuclear winter, nuclear war is an acceptable idea? Fantastic!

Neither the Soviets nor anybody else in their right mind needed nuclear winter to justify an end to the arms race madness. The truth is that nobody knows whether an all-out nuclear war would cause a nuclear winter, and the question is both irrelevant and inane. To argue that whether such an event would kill all of us or only most of us as if it were a rational basis for or against reducing the danger of such an event, is nuttiness of the first order.

SANFORD THIER

Irvine

* Easterbrook characterizes the possibility of a nuclear winter, from an all-out nuclear war, as a “nutty idea.” He goes on to say the extinction of humanity from a nuclear war has a vanishingly low level of probability. He implies the warnings of the unimaginable horror of a nuclear war is just a nutty idea--a non-event.

True, Carl Sagan might be wrong about the nuclear winter. Maybe we’ll fry instead. Maybe “only” 3 billion persons would die, so it would not be the total extinction of human existence.

Thanks for the reassurance, Mr. Easterbrook.

ROBERT S. GREENBERG

Granada Hills