Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - Volume 69 Issue 4

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July/August
2013
Volume: 69
ISSN: 1938-3282
Page count: 75
Issue external URL: Link

In June 2013, US President Barack Obama said that addressing climate change was a moral obligation. In this special issue of the Bulletin, experts offer new ideas to create a better world for future generations. 

Interview

1 July 2013
Americas
Interview

James Hansen: Taking heat for decades

Bulletin Staff

In this interview, outspoken climatologist James E. Hansen reflects on his 30-plus years of studying climate change and warning the public about its dangers. He talks about the most recent developments in climate science and the questions still to be answered.

The Climate Change Issue

1 July 2013
Middle East
The Climate Change Issue

Elephant in the room: How OPEC sets oil prices and limits carbon emissions

Alfred Cavallo

Despite a North American oil boom, non-OPEC crude oil production is not increasing, because new production roughly balances existing oil field decline. This situation allows OPEC, which has spare production capacity, to control the total global oil supply and therefore oil pricing.

1 July 2013
The Climate Change Issue

Meeting the world’s energy needs entirely with wind, water, and solar power

Mark A. DelucchiMark Z. Jacobson

The combustion of fossil fuels is largely responsible for the problems of climate change, air pollution, and energy insecurity.

1 July 2013
The Climate Change Issue

Dragons, mules, and honeybees: Barriers, carriers, and unwitting enablers of climate change action

Robert Gifford

Why aren’t more people engaged in actions that would help mitigate climate change? The psychological “dragons of inaction” that impede green behaviors fall into seven “genera,” each with multiple “species” of barriers to pro-environmental behavior.

1 July 2013
The Climate Change Issue

Getting serious about the new realities of global climate change

Jennifer A. BurneyCharles F. KennelDavid G. Victor

For two decades, the central challenge facing climate-change policy makers involved efforts to control emissions of carbon dioxide. While diplomats looked at many different global-warming pollutants, they designed rules that mostly focused on carbon dioxide.

Features

1 July 2013
AmericasMiddle East
Features

The Lavon Affair: How a false-flag operation led to war and the Israeli bomb

Leonard Weiss

The Lavon Affair, a failed Israeli covert operation directed against Egypt in 1954, triggered a chain of events that have had profound consequences for power relationships in the Middle East; the affair’s effects still reverberate today.

Nuclear notebook

1 July 2013
Europe/Russia
Nuclear notebook

The British nuclear stockpile, 1953–2013

Robert S. NorrisHans M. Kristensen

Recent research has revealed new facts about the British nuclear arsenal over a 25-year period starting in 1953. This accounting and the authors’ own research support an estimate that the British produced about 1,250 nuclear warheads between 1953 and 2013.

Journal Article

1 July 2013
AmericasMiddle East
Journal Article

The dimensions of contemporary war and violence: How to reclaim humanity from a continuing revolution in the technology of killing

Robert Jay Lifton

An emerging school of thought contends that the world is becoming increasingly safe. Proponents of the peaceable-world argument point to statistical evidence that war and violence have diminished since prehistoric times and to the non-use of nuclear weapons since 1945.