Meet The Journalist: Kit R. Roane

In 1983, scientists gave the world a new reason to fear nuclear war. They called it "Nuclear Winter," a theory that prophesized a climatic armageddon caused by the smoke lofting from nuclear explosions. At its worst, they feared that a war between the United States and the USSR would create an ice age so severe that it would cause the extinction of humankind.

Now, decades after the end of the Cold War, this theory continues to raise tantalizing new questions—not only about the devastation that would follow a nuclear conflict, but also more fundamental ones about the human ability to alter the earth’s climate, for both good and ill.