Thursday was the 70th anniversary of the United States dropping the first ever nuclear weapon on Hiroshima. Many, many, well, let’s call them, charitably, idiots, wanted to re-litigate this, failing to understand what was happening at the time, and going plain stupid. Here’s one thing to consider in Reality Land
This is the casualty estimate for an invasion of mainland Japan. Those are just our casualties…Based on the Battle of Okinawa, the Japanese military casualties would have been about 20% higher, and the civilian casualties would have been 2 to 3 times as high.
The most telling statement in that passage is this: “Nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals (awarded for combat casualties) were manufactured in anticipation of the casualties resulting from the invasion of Japan; the number exceeded that of all American military casualties of the 65 years following the end of World War II, including the Korean and Vietnam Wars. In 2003, there were still 120,000 of these Purple Heart medals in stock.[60] There were so many left that combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan were able to keep Purple Hearts on hand for immediate award to soldiers wounded in the field.â€
People can argue all day about the predicted numbers but the logistics experts make their decisions based on reality and their data showed they needed 500,000 purple hearts. Thats an incredible number of expected casualties.
Compare that to the top estimates for the casualties for both bombs: 246,000.
Read that again, especially about the Purple Hearts. We were at war, a war we did not start nor want. In war, you should try and win, and that means destroying the enemy. None of these same idiots are complaining about the carpet bombing of Nazi Germany, which did more damage.
But, of all the idiocy, this one leads the pack, from Laura Turner Seydel (daughter of Ted Turner) at Eco Watch, who gets Climatourettes
Remembering Hiroshima: The Threat of Nuclear War and Climate Change
Exactly 70 years ago today, at 8:15 a.m. Japanese time, the world changed forever. The Enola Gay dropped the first nuclear weapon used in war on the citizens of Hiroshima. From that moment on the face of the world and the future of humanity became unrecognizable.
According to experts even though the Cold War is long over, in the short term, nuclear weapons remain the single greatest threat to humanity and the future of our planet. (snip)
Nuclear threat and climate change are the single biggest threats to civilization and are intrinsically linked. Beyond the physical destruction of the bomb and the resulting radiation, the impact of even a small nuclear disturbance could be profound, leading to serious issues of food scarcity.
Had she left “climate change” out (climate change that would cause cooling from the use of nuclear weapons), it would have been a decent article about the threat of nuclear war. Instead, it was just stupid. Warmists just can’t write something without bringing in this silliness.
That said, her points on causing cooling are valid, according to research. But, were they really necessary?
Some people seem to forget that Harry Truman was President of the United States, not somehow President of the World, and that his job was to win the war while suffering the fewest possible American casualties, and not to somehow minimize enemy deaths.
The atomic bombs did what they were supposed to do, to force the Japanese to surrender without us having to invade Honshu. We can’t know, with any certainty, how many American soldiers and Marines would have died in such an invasion, but from the perspective of President Truman’s job, if just one American was saved, it was worth it.
None of the pieces you cited criticized the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan.
The linking of climate change to a nuclear holocaust is obvious. Broad nuclear war would cause climate change, in this case cooling.
Maybe that’s the way Deniers wish to halt global warming – by promoting a nuclear war.
That’s strange logic, J. The warmunists, who believe “warming” is gloom and doom, one would think cooling by any means would be right up their ally.
Can one imagine the public outcry if Truman had not ordered the use of the atomic bomb?
It shows how little you understand. Too much warming is bad for human civilization. Too much cooling is bad for human civilization. Human civilization evolved over the past 10,000 years during the Holocene – a period of stable global climate.