With the war in Ukraine heating up again, as missile strikes from Russia hit multiple targets and Zelensky demands that NATO step up and preemptively strike Russia, we are getting dangerously close to the unthinkable: The use of nuclear weapons. And guess who might be smiling at the prospect? Global warming nuts.

Those Global warming nuts are, well, nuts. They are convinced that the planet would breathe a sigh of relief if humans disappeared from the planet. The birds would sing and the animals would rejoice for Gaia. Nothing is off the table if it means saving the planet from your SUV, gas stove, or lawn mower. If we had even a tiny nuclear war… well gosh, would that be such a bad thing?

Almost 21 years ago The Huffington Post offered some speculation.  “Could a small nuclear war reverse global warming?”

No, I am not kidding.

One of their “senior” editors penned a short “what if” about the possibility. In his scenario, the most likely to exchange nukes were Pakistan and India. Now the possibility of nuclear weapons destroying whole cities or countries or maybe the planet has again started to creep into geopolitics. But the players have changed.

HuffPo cited some sources that speculated on the aftermath. A tiny nuclear war would cause a nuclear winter and that war would have some “good” and, unfortunately, some “bad”. The war would release tons of particulates into the atmosphere which would block sunlight and lower temperatures. The bad? Ash would damage crops. According to National Geographic:

Models suggest that though the world is currently in a warming trend, small-scale war could lower global temperatures 2.25 degrees F for two-to-three years following war.

According to Huffington Post, “the cons seem to outweigh the pros in the event of global cooling caused by even a small nuclear war.”

What does Huffington Post say about the human cost, the untold millions incinerated or dead from radiation? Nothing.

It reminded me of Dr. Strangelove. Huffington Post calculating the “relative” pros and cons of nuclear war with respect to global warming seems oddly predictable. And it’s nuts.

Russia has more than 6,000 nuclear weapons, most of them intended for strategic use, some for tactical application. Putin isn’t a global warming nut – he’s just a nut.

Is he capable of launching tactical nuclear weapons to force a compromise? Yes. Will he? I don’t want to find out. Playing nuclear Russian roulette is a dead man’s game.

Former CIA chief General Patreus recently suggested that if Putin used a tactical nuke in a war we are not fighting, then America would destroy Russia’s Black Sea fleet. If that happened Russia would return the favor and likely with more tactical nuclear weapons and not in Ukraine. One can envision an entire carrier task force being wiped off the map. Then, all bets are off. Even if we avoided a nuclear winter, the world’s economy would collapse.

Gosh, we might get our hair mussed, but the planet would see a drop in temps. Millions killed? Meh. Could we prevail? I don’t want to know. I don’t want to “duck and cover” and kiss my ass goodbye.