Dear Colleagues,
As you certainly know, the UN ban treaty negotiations will start on
March 27. This is one important step towards nuclear weapons abolition.
The Future of Life Institute has issued an open letter supporting the
negotiations: https://futureoflife.org/nuclear-open-letter/
It is also copied in this email at the bottom. The open letter has been
signed already by more than 2000 scientists of the STEM fields.
We ask you to sign and spread this information before March 27.
*/An Open Letter from Scientists in Support of the UN Nuclear Weapons
Negotiations/*
/Nuclear arms are the only weapons of mass destruction not yet
prohibited by an international convention, even though they are the most
destructive and indiscriminate weapons ever created. We scientists bear
a special responsibility for nuclear weapons, since it was scientists
who invented them and discovered that their effects are even more
horrific than first thought. Individual explosions can obliterate
cities, radioactive fallout can contaminate regions, and a high-altitude
electromagnetic pulse may cause mayhem by frying electrical grids and
electronics across a continent. The most horrible hazard is a
nuclear-induced winter, in which the fires and smoke from as few as a
thousand detonations might darken the atmosphere enough to trigger a
global mini ice age with year-round winter-like conditions. This could
cause a complete collapse of the global food system and apocalyptic
unrest, potentially killing most people on Earth – even if the nuclear
war involved only a small fraction of the roughly 14,000 nuclear weapons
that today’s nine nuclear powers control. As Ronald Reagan said: “A
nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”/
/
Unfortunately, such a war is more likely than one may hope, because it
can start by mistake, miscalculation or terrorist provocation. There is
a steady stream of accidents and false alarms that could trigger all-out
war, and relying on never-ending luck is not a sustainable strategy.
Many nuclear powers have larger nuclear arsenals than needed for
deterrence, yet prioritize making them more lethal over reducing them
and the risk that they get used./
/But there is also cause for optimism. On March 27 2017, an
unprecedented process begins at the United Nations: most of the world’s
nations convene to negotiate a ban on nuclear arms, to stigmatize them
like biological and chemical weapons, with the ultimate goal of a world
free of these weapons of mass destruction. We support this, and urge our
national governments to do the same, because nuclear weapons threaten
not merely those who have them, but all people on Earth./
Thanks for your support.
Best regards,
Lucas Wirl
--
INES
Marienstr. 19/20
10117 Berlin
www.inesglobal.net <http://www.inesglobal.net>
--
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Daniel Chateigner
Professeur Normandie Universite
http://www.ecole.ensicaen.fr/~chateign/danielc/
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Editor: "Combined Analysis", Wiley-ISTE:
http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1848211988.html
Workshops on Combined Analysis:
http://www.ecole.ensicaen.fr/~chateign/formation/
Advisory Board: Zeitschrift für Kristallographie
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Address:
CRISMAT-ENSICAEN and IUT-Caen,
Université de Caen Basse-Normandie, campus 2
6, Bd. M. Juin 14050 Caen, France
tel: 33 (0)2 31 45 26 11
fax: 33 (0)2 31 95 16 00
daniel.chateig...@ensicaen.fr
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Open Databases:
Full-Profile Search-Match: http://cod.iutcaen.unicaen.fr/
Material Properties Open Database (MPOD): http://www.materialproperties.org/
Crystallography Open Database (COD): http://sdpd.univ-lemans.fr/cod/
Theoretical (TCOD): http://sdpd.univ-lemans.fr/cod/tcod/
Predicted (PCOD): http://sdpd.univ-lemans.fr/cod/pcod/
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