Resubmitting since it seems the comment was lost.
The whole "Nuclear Winter" field of modeling was born in sin and hence must be suspect.
As far as I know the original models and simulations and the whole concept was promoted by Carl Sagan et el. ( TTAPS team i.e. Richard P. Turco, Owen Toon, Thomas P. Ackerman, James B. Pollack and Carl Sagan) from what seems to be almost purely political reasons and a transparent PR campaign i.e. "was with the explicit aim of promoting international arms control" - which might not be a bad political...
I think the issue is not the energy source/density, the issue is amount of particles in the atmosphere, Sagan/TTAPS is on record saying that the amount of particles is the same magnitude in the Kuwait fires as in their model, in addition at least in theirs simulations the burning of oil/gas deposits within cities like in gas stations cars etc... is what produced the most amount of the particles and particles in the correct mass that would rise and produce the most damage by "self lofting" into the upper layers - hence his predictions.
Also the t... (read more)