<Sagan's bogus pseudoscience on nuclear winter has since been discredited. To his continued discredit, it was agenda driven science.

Discredited by whom, and when? I did a research paper on the topic within a year of the original TTAPS paper's publication in Science, and at the time the Pentagon was taking it seriously - at least one of the items I read for the work was an Air Force publication by a bird colonel from the War College. (That was, of course, m,ore than 15 years ago and I don't have the paper to re-cite the bibliography)

"Agenda-driven science"? I read TTAPS, not just Sagan's fluff pieces in Parade Magazine - I had a subscription to Science back then, when it was still affordable to the common man. The research was inspired by the measured effects of the dust load in the Martian atmosphere during a global storm - it has since become the foundation of speculation on the atmopsheric effects of a comet/asteroid impact on Earth. Science is science, Phil - if the results pass the test, the motive to begin is immaterial.

It had little to nothing do with the end of MAD,

My point exactly: Nuclear Winter confirms MAD, and includes, at minimum, the rest of the Northern Hemisphere among the collateral damage. No more smug self-assurance about "survivability". Bang - you're dead.

unless you're a university academic busily re-writing history to edit out Ronald Regan's major contribution to world stability

I will grant Reagan this: he listened to his advisors when they listened to Gorbachev, after the whole batch of them were scared s***less by the concept of Nuclear Winter - and then he met with Gorbachev at Reykjavik and the two of them got the nuclear disarmament effort off its ass. A rare moment of lucidity, to be sure, but no less lucid for its rarity.

And in case you're crediting President Alzheimer with any other major foreign policy victories... it was Dulles, Eisenhower and "containment" that brought the end of the USSR, not Reagan and his "Evil Empire" posturing - it just took four decades, and almost took us with it. Since then, the only signs of lasting world stabilty I see is that we're not still teaching our kids to hide under their desks when the sirens go off - and we have normalized relations with Vietnam. If anything, Eastern Europe and the Russian Caucasus were a lot more stable while under the Soviet boot. Any change on the rest of the planet? I haven't seen it....

E' (not sorry I didn't vote for Reagan, twice)