Nuclear winters occur somewhat regularly in earth’s history, usually after a very large volcano erupted but also sometimes after a large asteroid strikes. Unless I’m mistaken the last such natural nuclear winter was after the Pinatubo eruption in 1991, which caused a small but significant global cooling effect of 0.5˚C between 1991 and 1993.
Volcanoes of the same scale happen around every 50 to 100 years, but larger ones with more sever global cooling effects happen every 1000 or so years. Every 50 000 years we can expect a mega-colossal super volcano. The Youngest Toba eruption over 70 kya caused a nuclear winter for over 5 years with an accompanying cooling which lasted possibly for another 1000 years.
Even though these events are natural and happen regularly, they are usually devastating for the life on earth, usually with several species going extinct as a result. There are theories that the Toba eruption almost wiped out all of the human races and created a “bottleneck” in our evolution.
So evidence suggests that a quick dimming event range from being insignificant to catastrophic for the life on earth. There is for sure a reason for caution here.
Volcanoes of the same scale happen around every 50 to 100 years, but larger ones with more sever global cooling effects happen every 1000 or so years. Every 50 000 years we can expect a mega-colossal super volcano. The Youngest Toba eruption over 70 kya caused a nuclear winter for over 5 years with an accompanying cooling which lasted possibly for another 1000 years.
Even though these events are natural and happen regularly, they are usually devastating for the life on earth, usually with several species going extinct as a result. There are theories that the Toba eruption almost wiped out all of the human races and created a “bottleneck” in our evolution.
So evidence suggests that a quick dimming event range from being insignificant to catastrophic for the life on earth. There is for sure a reason for caution here.