The ancient doomsayers and 'end-of-the-world' fanatics had, for years,
predicted that global thermal nuclear war would cause the planet's ice
caps to melt, innundating the world's coasts.  Some had gone even furher
and suggested that the shifting of uncountable millions of tons of water
would result in the emergence of vast chains of volcanoes and disasterous
tectonic displacements which would alter the Earth's geography forever.

Looking back, its ironic how nearly right they all were.  Its even more
ironic how massively wrong they all were.

You see, everyone had expected a global temperature increase of anywhere from 
4 to 10 degrees.  Certainly there would be much higher localized temperatures 
wherever one of the nukes had detonated, but air, being a relatively poor
insulator and excellent temperature conductor, would produce an evening-out 
effect, dissapating the heat across the globe.

Or so it was thought.