The Arctic Climate Paradox: recent snowy, cold winters are a result of a warming Arctic
USA Today, ran a story (USA Today Feb 6, 2014) indicating that the snowy, frigid weather of January and the tens of thousands of delayed or cancelled flights cost US airline companies some $150 million dollars. Economists estimate that that was chicken feed to the 30 million-strong flying business public who lost an estimated $2.5 billion dollars in decreased productivity, missed meals, foregone opportunities, lost contracts and lapsed hotel bookings, etc. A similar piece appeared in Bloomberg News, where the author focused on the economic impact of the unusually cold and snowy weather as a factor of these cancelled flights. Neither story mentioned anything about the probable underlying cause---global warming. In fact, the media generally present our recent spate of cold and snowy winters as a mild refutation of the “pointy headed” scientists and their unfounded” support for anthrogenic global warming. (Only a few days earlier, the NYT ran a piece on the State department Environmental Review of the Keystone XL Pipeline project which will carry environmentally disastrous tar sand product (liquified bitumen) south to Texas and other ports for processing in Texas and transport elsewhere. This will be burned as cheap dirty oil somewhere and the users will dump the considerable carbon wastes into the atmosphere and only dramatically increase global warming. Thus here we see how one group of businessmen are hit with the costly effects of global warming while another group like the Koch brothers and others exacerbate the problem and pocket the profits.)
It is a paradox difficult to accept that cold winters may be the result of arctic warming. It’s colder not warmer this year...does that not refute the concept of global warming in progress? But the difficult to understand inconvruity of this cooler-than-average winter season (for the USA) is as strong an argument--nay better-- than our recent waves of summer heat data in support of global warming.
First let us review some uncontested facts. The earth, as a whole, is warming---there is no question. According to our own government’s National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data, during the 130 year period from 1880 to 2010 the average earth temperature has RISEN just short of 1 degree Celsius (or more precisely about 0.85 degrees C which is just about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit).
One of the most dramatic effects of global warming has been the easily seen and documented loss of ice cover in the Arctic where the extent and thickness of the Arctic ice sheet has dramatically decreased. The North Pole is covered by an ocean, the Arctic Ocean, which in area is only slightly larger than the continental USA. That ocean has been in the past almost completely covered by thick, reflective sea ice. But in recent decades sea ice has been slowly thinning and melting away as the effects of global warming take effect.
Friday, February 7, 2014
PARADOX : GLOBAL WARMING CAUSES COLD WINTERS
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (See nsidc.org, downloaded 2/6/14) both the area of ice cover of the Arctic Sea, as well as the actual volume of Arctic Sea ice are less than their long-term averages calculated during the period from 1981 to 2010. Sea ice is without doubt melting away. So it is clear that it is warmer up there! (Warmth is relative of course. Arctic January temperatures average around -29 deg Fahrenheit, while summer temperatures hover around the freezing point of ice at 32 deg F.)
Both the area of cover of arctic sea ice and the actual volume of Arctic sea ice are considerably less than their long-term averages calculated from 1981 to 2010
In January of 2013 ice cover in the Arctic dropped to well below long term average (though it was not the lowest level reached). These January 2013 readings fall to a level just within two standard deviations (σ) from the long term mean. That means that the present low levels of ice cover are far away from the normal fluctuation around the average. The recent data ARE “abnormal”. On average, the “normal” area covered by ice is about 5.6 million square miles. In January of 2013 ice covered only 5.3 million square miles or about 300,000 square miles LESS than the the long-term average. The lost ice-cover in the Arctic Ocean is approximately equal to the combined areas of Texas (our largest State with 261,000 square miles) and Louisiana. Where has that ice equal to the area of Texas and Louisiana gone? Melted away as a result of warmer global temperatures to evaporate and enter the global ocean. That image is difficult to pass off as a fluke of nature and is difficult to deny. Just look at the aerial photographs.l
Not only has the area covered by ice decreased by the an area similar to that of Texas and Louisiana together, but new technology has permitted satellites to probe the THICKNESS of the ice as well. These data have clearly indicated that ice thickness is also decreasing.
So who cares about the loss of arctic sea ice? What effects could it have on us? The direct cause of rising sea level, altered climes, altered rain patterns,AND cancelled air flights and the indirect costs to businesses are probable effects. WARMER arctic can cause severe COLD weather in the contiguous USA and have a global impact on business too.
There is a POSITIVE FEED BACK mechanism in the Arctic ocean-atmosphere-lithosphere system or a vicious cycle at work there. The more Arctic ocean water that is exposed during the summer season to the sun’s rays as a result of retreating ice--the warmer the Arctic Ocean water gets. (Since solar radiation is absorbed better by sea water than by reflective ice and snow.) When ice-free sea water absorbs more heat in summer, it forms less ice cover in winter--the more sea water exposed--the more solar radiation penetrates its depths, the warner the Arctic sea water gets, the less ice it generates. etcetera, etcetera. (This can not happen in the Antarctic where a solid rocky continent underlies the ice sheet. There small changes in ice sheet thicknesses due to global warming may go undetected and do not have such dramatic effects.)
Now how might this warmer arctic lead to colder temperatures in Washington, DC or Peoria, Ohio ? If the air over the Arctic is even slightly warmer it can have an effect on the boundary zone known as the Polar Front. (Remember even at these recent elevated temperatures the Arctic is still on on average perhaps 40 F degrees colder in winter than the air masses over the mid-latitudes, such as New York or Washington, so even warmer polar air would feel very much colder than normal to us. In the past that cold polar air was generally confined to the high latitudes by the large differences in density between the very cold polar air and the much warmer mid latitude air.
There are physical and aerodynamic factors which control the shape of the boundary zone (the Polar Front) between the very cold polar air and warmer mid latitude air masses. These confining forces are weakened when the two air masses are closer in temperature, i.e. when the polar air mass is warmer. The boundary zone (Polar Front) between cold polar air and warmer mid-latitude air becomes more fluid under these circumstances. That fluidity generates more and deeper surges of outbreaks of cold polar air southward into the lower forty-eight. These cold air surges into warmer air initiate sever winter storms along the boundary zone. Thus warmer polar temperatures, lead to less sea ice, expanded areas of sea water exposed to sunlight, and result in higher summer Arctic sea water temperatures, causing decreased winter sea ice cover, and in the arctic summer further sea water exposed to warming sunlight, so the next summer is warmer, and so on in a vicious cycle that warms up the polar region and its air. The warmer (though still relatively cold to us) polar air is less confined by physical forces and then is more likely to “break out” forming large “tongues” of cold air which uncharacteristically penetrate far south into areas they usually do not go.
It is in this way that the unusually cold and snowy weather of our recent winter results from a WARMER Arctic Ocean.
We can only hope that humankind will come to a realization of the danger of global warming and begin to make changes which can help stabilize or reverse its effects. We hope our business leaders realize that global warming will affect profits. Let's goad government leaders, often too much in the grip of financial and business forces with short term bottom line agendas, to begin to realize and help publicize the negative effects our unthinking, irrational behaviors are having on the earth’s atmosphere and initiate corrective changes.
Get the picture?
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
THANK YOU MR KARZAI!
I read yesterday (NYT Feb 4, 2014) that Mr. Karzai of Afghanistan has been having long term and secret peace talks with the Taliban. The Obama Administration is miffed. They were not included in Mr. Karzai's secret talks. As I recall this has been a long term goal of the Afghanistan president.--peace with the Taliban. He has begged Mr. Obama to join in to no avail. That apparently is not on Mr. Obama's agenda. He would rather keep a residue of troops in that mountainous and difficult nation until hell freezes over.
Mr. Obama is stuck with the outdated dangerous idea foisted upon him by his military advisers and business associates ---the dangerous concept of US world hegemony...i.e. control of land and resources by military means so as to exploit these resources or to prevent our competitors to exploit them. Afghanistan is valuable territory based on its central location, corridor for oil and gas, and its own valuable mineral wealth. Imperialism and its modern equivalent may have been valid during the Cold War, but for a nation like the US struggling with unemployment, a fragile economy, crumbling roads and infrastructure, inadequate educational system and massive debts...it's out of reach for us now and not in OUR best interest. Time to put those old ideas to bed and focus on what we can do to improve our situation here at home.
Thank you Mr. Karzai...don't sign that status of forces agreement . You are doing yourself, the Afghanis and the citizens of the USA a great favor. Perhaps we can finally close the bloody books on this unnecessary war, bring our boys home and cut down on our wasteful military adventures abroad and the vast expenses which provide no benefit for the vast majority.
And why not?
Mr. Obama is stuck with the outdated dangerous idea foisted upon him by his military advisers and business associates ---the dangerous concept of US world hegemony...i.e. control of land and resources by military means so as to exploit these resources or to prevent our competitors to exploit them. Afghanistan is valuable territory based on its central location, corridor for oil and gas, and its own valuable mineral wealth. Imperialism and its modern equivalent may have been valid during the Cold War, but for a nation like the US struggling with unemployment, a fragile economy, crumbling roads and infrastructure, inadequate educational system and massive debts...it's out of reach for us now and not in OUR best interest. Time to put those old ideas to bed and focus on what we can do to improve our situation here at home.
Thank you Mr. Karzai...don't sign that status of forces agreement . You are doing yourself, the Afghanis and the citizens of the USA a great favor. Perhaps we can finally close the bloody books on this unnecessary war, bring our boys home and cut down on our wasteful military adventures abroad and the vast expenses which provide no benefit for the vast majority.
And why not?
Friday, January 31, 2014
IN DEFENSE OF GOVERNOR CHRISTIE
I am not turned off on Gov. Christie as a result of the scandal. His handling of the situation so far has made me more sanguine about his presidential aspirations.
Over the last few weeks the Governor has been the center of a media feeding frenzy regarding the George Washington Bridge traffic scandal. I had to turn off one TV network because it was so repetitious I just could not listen any longer. Bashing Christie was their only story, and listening to it over and over again just got so boring. (Furthermore it soon became apparent that the objective of this barrage was to sink the only viable Republican candidate so as to support the prospects of a Ms Clinton candidacy. To my thinking she would be a disaster.) What more could they say about him?
The hiatus from the talking heads on the TV gave me some time to think. I used that time to contrast the kind of Presidential leadership we presently have in Washington---timid, uncertain, tentative, and with little ability to use or manipulate the bully pulpit and levers of power the occupant of the Oval Office has at his or her disposal (if they have the guts to use them) in that chaotic, back stabbing, quagmire of political intrigue. Mr. Obama, an intelligent man-a nice man, a decent man but a man with no stomach for battle, any battle. His weakness was that he could never show passion or get angry. Perhaps he was too fearful of being cast as “an angry black man”. That was a weakness he brought to the job with him. He just never had a chance. His timidity gave the Republicans the opening to attack and they never let up. I suggest he has become the Arthur Ashe of the political world. I was a great admirer of Mr.Ashe---a great tennis player,--but one who angered me --when he let his opponents take an obvious close call along the line which they did not deserve. He was the first prominent black player and he often, gave up points he should have fought for.
What Mr. Christie’s “scandal” revealed to me was that he is just the kind of leader we might need in Washington, he is the kind of "bully" that City deserves. (But he has to have a better staff. The sort who won't get caught with their hands in the cookie jar.). OK, Trenton is not Washington, but from what we know now, it appears to be a microcosm of the big bad city on the Potomac...a great training ground for the next President. So rather than turning me off---the so called “scandal” left me more confident in Governor Christie’s Machiavellian abilities. He might just be the one able to “kick a bit of ass” and get things to happen.
Now what would those things he WANTS to happen BE? What is his real agenda (besides being reelcted)? That's what we would have to know before we sign on to his candidacy. But if he were to govern as he has in New Jersey, as a sort of middle of the road Republican, there are many --like me---that just might be convinced. Our vote is always a compromise. Here in the USA we have two parties that bicker and fight with each other but their agendas are very similar. Well excluding the far right idiotic fringe elements.
To my mind right now (admittedly I am still not fully informed about Mr. Christie) I can’t imagine a Mr. Christie in our current President's position. He has just begun his new term. He was reelected handily. But his opponents (unfairly and I’m sorry to say viciously ) used that weakness as a bludgeon to delegitimization and weaken him---and the nation as a whole. We all suffered with him. His administration is partly responsible for the government grid-lock we have now. But the Republicans must take the main part of the blame. So why elect a candidate that can not or will not fully grasp the reins of power? As a nation we might just need a Christie-like character in the White House to “kick butt” in Washington. No more nice guys. We must tame the beast that Washington has become. So our nation can function again.
Over the last few weeks the Governor has been the center of a media feeding frenzy regarding the George Washington Bridge traffic scandal. I had to turn off one TV network because it was so repetitious I just could not listen any longer. Bashing Christie was their only story, and listening to it over and over again just got so boring. (Furthermore it soon became apparent that the objective of this barrage was to sink the only viable Republican candidate so as to support the prospects of a Ms Clinton candidacy. To my thinking she would be a disaster.) What more could they say about him?
The hiatus from the talking heads on the TV gave me some time to think. I used that time to contrast the kind of Presidential leadership we presently have in Washington---timid, uncertain, tentative, and with little ability to use or manipulate the bully pulpit and levers of power the occupant of the Oval Office has at his or her disposal (if they have the guts to use them) in that chaotic, back stabbing, quagmire of political intrigue. Mr. Obama, an intelligent man-a nice man, a decent man but a man with no stomach for battle, any battle. His weakness was that he could never show passion or get angry. Perhaps he was too fearful of being cast as “an angry black man”. That was a weakness he brought to the job with him. He just never had a chance. His timidity gave the Republicans the opening to attack and they never let up. I suggest he has become the Arthur Ashe of the political world. I was a great admirer of Mr.Ashe---a great tennis player,--but one who angered me --when he let his opponents take an obvious close call along the line which they did not deserve. He was the first prominent black player and he often, gave up points he should have fought for.
What Mr. Christie’s “scandal” revealed to me was that he is just the kind of leader we might need in Washington, he is the kind of "bully" that City deserves. (But he has to have a better staff. The sort who won't get caught with their hands in the cookie jar.). OK, Trenton is not Washington, but from what we know now, it appears to be a microcosm of the big bad city on the Potomac...a great training ground for the next President. So rather than turning me off---the so called “scandal” left me more confident in Governor Christie’s Machiavellian abilities. He might just be the one able to “kick a bit of ass” and get things to happen.
Now what would those things he WANTS to happen BE? What is his real agenda (besides being reelcted)? That's what we would have to know before we sign on to his candidacy. But if he were to govern as he has in New Jersey, as a sort of middle of the road Republican, there are many --like me---that just might be convinced. Our vote is always a compromise. Here in the USA we have two parties that bicker and fight with each other but their agendas are very similar. Well excluding the far right idiotic fringe elements.
To my mind right now (admittedly I am still not fully informed about Mr. Christie) I can’t imagine a Mr. Christie in our current President's position. He has just begun his new term. He was reelected handily. But his opponents (unfairly and I’m sorry to say viciously ) used that weakness as a bludgeon to delegitimization and weaken him---and the nation as a whole. We all suffered with him. His administration is partly responsible for the government grid-lock we have now. But the Republicans must take the main part of the blame. So why elect a candidate that can not or will not fully grasp the reins of power? As a nation we might just need a Christie-like character in the White House to “kick butt” in Washington. No more nice guys. We must tame the beast that Washington has become. So our nation can function again.
Friday, November 8, 2013
FUKUSHIMA --A GLOBAL DISASTER --MAKES FEAR OF NUCLEAR JUSTIFIED
FUKUSHIMA--A GLOBAL DISASTER--MAKES FEAR OF NUCLEAR JUSTIFIED
Recently I have seen an upsurge of an attitude about nuclear ionizing radiation which I might call “the “don't worry it’s harmless” school of thought. Such ideas, to my chagrin, are often expressed by my family dentist and the local orthopedic surgeon. I excuse their opinions, knowing they are colored by the fact that they prefer to have their patients think that their use of X rays (and a good part of how they make their comfortable incomes) incurs no danger to their patients. Their statements are in general valid...though more powerful ionizing radiation used in other protocols of medicine (i.e. MRIs) have been thoroughly criticized. But the media and practitioners of public opinion-control who have deep-rooted stakes in the viability and continued profitability of nuclear power are those with whom I have a real problem. Recently, some have argued, like my dentist, that radiation exposure should not be so frightening. For one example of such opinion pieces which look at radiation exposure through rose-colored glasses...(and may help get stories and books published by trade organizations) you may read:“Fear vs. Radiation: The Mismatch” by David Ropeik, NYT Opinion.
The blossoming of pieces such as those by Mr. Ropeik, who claims to be a risk analyst, is perhaps the natural outgrowth of the disaster that nuclear power has proved itself to be in the last two years as we all gaze on the slowly deteriorating conditions at Fukushima crippled since 11 March 2011. The Level 7 nuclear “event” (7 is the highest) in Japan is the second nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in little more than a quarter century. It is Fukushima which makes liars our of the nuclear advocates who attempt to paint nuclear as American as apple pie and as safe! After Chernobyl, and now Fukushima, world opinion now seriously questions the safety of this “most dangerous way to boil water” and to look more critically at all those sooth sayers in the nuclear industry who had profits rather than safety on their minds. Particularly devastating for the “its safe” crowd has been the disaster at Fukushima, occurring in a nation which prides itself on meticulousness, care and caution. If the methodical Japanese can't keep a lid on nuclear, how can we expect the Russians, Americans, or even French to do it any better. But the fear is not simply the result of the number of radiation deaths (a number difficult to pin down since effects take a long time to show up), which are admittedly...so far...few. The real fear is and should be of the long term contamination of wide swaths of countryside, the possibility of widely dispersed diluted amounts of biologically active nuclides being concentrated by the marine food chain, the direct contamination of water, soils, and food, the displacement of entire communities, the loss of agricultural areas to long term (virtually permanent)nuclear contamination, and finally not to mention the monstrous and debilitating costs. Risk analyst such as Mr. Ropeik make that analyis. What we do know is that Fukushima will eventually take four decades to clean up and cost unknown billions. After Chernobyl and now Fukushima the wisdom of this form of electrical generation is now more likely to be questioned. More and more thoughtful and knowledgeable leaders now consider nuclear to be too dangerous, unpredictable, and ultimately ruinously expensive. Now Germany (!), the financial and industrial powerhouse of Europe has decided to bring and end to its reliance on nuclear. Events such as this must make the powerful nuclear industry and their investors and political supporters shake in their boots and direct them to mount their campaigns of disinformation...an attempted “clean up” of their own.
So let's take a bit of review regarding the history of the earlier disaster at Chernobyl, since the Fukusihma event is difficult to evaluate since its story is still unfolding and the unpalatable and frightening facts are still “leaking out” from TEPCO like the highly contaminated water carrying dangerous Cesium 137 which is slowly leaking into the formerly pristine Pacific Ocean.
On April 26, 1986 the Chernobyl Plant at Pripyat in east Central Europe, in what is now the Ukraine,was the site of a massive nuclear accident which caused an explosion and fire that released a huge cloud of radioactive dust which dispersed and settled over a vast area of the Ukraine. Global winds carried nuclear dust west which settled over all of Europe, except for Spain and Portugal. (Even today some parts of northern Scotland still have readily detectable levels of radioactivity in their soils and in the foods produced on them. In Germany hunters can not eat the boars they kill in the forests because the meat of these beasts is too radioactive.)
The world first became aware of the Chernobyl accident two days after the explosion when workers in a Swedish nuclear power plant in Forsmark,(nearly 700 miles away from Chernobyl) were found to have radioactive dust on their clothes. Swedish nuclear regulatory investigators attempting to find the "leak" at Forsmark were finally led to conclude the nuclear materials were coming from a far off site--in the Ukraine.
In attempting to control the disaster at Chernobyl many workers heroically exposed themselves to fatal doses of radioactivity. In the end it took the efforts of some half a million workers and cost 18 billion Russian rubles (today $600 million dollars) to temporarily staunch the leak of radioactivity and stabilize the shattered Chernobyl plant. To accomplish this the plant was covered over with tons of concrete and then an outer concrete shield was built over the entire plant. But over the years, the outer shield has decayed and cracked and is now subject to collapse---and a possible repeat of the leaks and spread of nuclear contamination. As a consequence, the Ukraine is presently building on the site an even more massive (20,000 ton) arched concrete “sarcophagus” which is being built on rails next to the plant and will when completed (at a cost of some 1.5 billion Euros) be slid over the existing plant on rails to cover and protect the plant for some future date, when the process will no doubt have to be repeated to prevent further harmful leakage.
As a result of the 1986 accident a vast area of the highly productive agricultural lands of the Ukraine were so badly contaminated by radioactive dust that they had to be permanently evacuated and their farms, homes and businesses abandoned for (20,000 years) virtually forever. Russian and Ukraine officials cleared an area within a radius of about 19 miles from the plant as too contaminated with radioactive materials for human life. This zone covering nearly 1,100 square miles is known as the “zone of alienation" and is nearly the size of the US State of Rhode Island. After more than a quarter century it remains uninhabited. The untended farms, fields and meadows have have reverted to forests where wildlife such as wolves and moose now wander. Officials estimate that the land will not be safe for human habitation for 20,000 years!
Can we all afford to put at risk of permanent contamination an area the size of the State of Rhode Island around each of our many nuclear plants? Would the aftermath of a massive nuclear accident result in multiple zones “of alienation” for twenty millennia? Imagine the effects on our metropolitan areas (some of which like New York are virtually ringed with old nuclear plants similar to those at Fukushima). As humans we are supposed to be able to learn from our mistakes. Chernobyl was enough to have most of us realize nuclear power was a big mistake. One mistake was enough for some of us. But now after Fukushima, if we do not change our ways and turn to better, less expensive, systems less prone to accidents which become global disasters----in a word safer ways to generate electricity--such as solar panels, wind, renewables, geothermal, tidal, etcetera, etcetera, after this second global disaster Fukushima, if we do nothing we are just plain dumb!
Get the picture?
rjk
Recently I have seen an upsurge of an attitude about nuclear ionizing radiation which I might call “the “don't worry it’s harmless” school of thought. Such ideas, to my chagrin, are often expressed by my family dentist and the local orthopedic surgeon. I excuse their opinions, knowing they are colored by the fact that they prefer to have their patients think that their use of X rays (and a good part of how they make their comfortable incomes) incurs no danger to their patients. Their statements are in general valid...though more powerful ionizing radiation used in other protocols of medicine (i.e. MRIs) have been thoroughly criticized. But the media and practitioners of public opinion-control who have deep-rooted stakes in the viability and continued profitability of nuclear power are those with whom I have a real problem. Recently, some have argued, like my dentist, that radiation exposure should not be so frightening. For one example of such opinion pieces which look at radiation exposure through rose-colored glasses...(and may help get stories and books published by trade organizations) you may read:“Fear vs. Radiation: The Mismatch” by David Ropeik, NYT Opinion.
The blossoming of pieces such as those by Mr. Ropeik, who claims to be a risk analyst, is perhaps the natural outgrowth of the disaster that nuclear power has proved itself to be in the last two years as we all gaze on the slowly deteriorating conditions at Fukushima crippled since 11 March 2011. The Level 7 nuclear “event” (7 is the highest) in Japan is the second nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in little more than a quarter century. It is Fukushima which makes liars our of the nuclear advocates who attempt to paint nuclear as American as apple pie and as safe! After Chernobyl, and now Fukushima, world opinion now seriously questions the safety of this “most dangerous way to boil water” and to look more critically at all those sooth sayers in the nuclear industry who had profits rather than safety on their minds. Particularly devastating for the “its safe” crowd has been the disaster at Fukushima, occurring in a nation which prides itself on meticulousness, care and caution. If the methodical Japanese can't keep a lid on nuclear, how can we expect the Russians, Americans, or even French to do it any better. But the fear is not simply the result of the number of radiation deaths (a number difficult to pin down since effects take a long time to show up), which are admittedly...so far...few. The real fear is and should be of the long term contamination of wide swaths of countryside, the possibility of widely dispersed diluted amounts of biologically active nuclides being concentrated by the marine food chain, the direct contamination of water, soils, and food, the displacement of entire communities, the loss of agricultural areas to long term (virtually permanent)nuclear contamination, and finally not to mention the monstrous and debilitating costs. Risk analyst such as Mr. Ropeik make that analyis. What we do know is that Fukushima will eventually take four decades to clean up and cost unknown billions. After Chernobyl and now Fukushima the wisdom of this form of electrical generation is now more likely to be questioned. More and more thoughtful and knowledgeable leaders now consider nuclear to be too dangerous, unpredictable, and ultimately ruinously expensive. Now Germany (!), the financial and industrial powerhouse of Europe has decided to bring and end to its reliance on nuclear. Events such as this must make the powerful nuclear industry and their investors and political supporters shake in their boots and direct them to mount their campaigns of disinformation...an attempted “clean up” of their own.
So let's take a bit of review regarding the history of the earlier disaster at Chernobyl, since the Fukusihma event is difficult to evaluate since its story is still unfolding and the unpalatable and frightening facts are still “leaking out” from TEPCO like the highly contaminated water carrying dangerous Cesium 137 which is slowly leaking into the formerly pristine Pacific Ocean.
On April 26, 1986 the Chernobyl Plant at Pripyat in east Central Europe, in what is now the Ukraine,was the site of a massive nuclear accident which caused an explosion and fire that released a huge cloud of radioactive dust which dispersed and settled over a vast area of the Ukraine. Global winds carried nuclear dust west which settled over all of Europe, except for Spain and Portugal. (Even today some parts of northern Scotland still have readily detectable levels of radioactivity in their soils and in the foods produced on them. In Germany hunters can not eat the boars they kill in the forests because the meat of these beasts is too radioactive.)
The world first became aware of the Chernobyl accident two days after the explosion when workers in a Swedish nuclear power plant in Forsmark,(nearly 700 miles away from Chernobyl) were found to have radioactive dust on their clothes. Swedish nuclear regulatory investigators attempting to find the "leak" at Forsmark were finally led to conclude the nuclear materials were coming from a far off site--in the Ukraine.
In attempting to control the disaster at Chernobyl many workers heroically exposed themselves to fatal doses of radioactivity. In the end it took the efforts of some half a million workers and cost 18 billion Russian rubles (today $600 million dollars) to temporarily staunch the leak of radioactivity and stabilize the shattered Chernobyl plant. To accomplish this the plant was covered over with tons of concrete and then an outer concrete shield was built over the entire plant. But over the years, the outer shield has decayed and cracked and is now subject to collapse---and a possible repeat of the leaks and spread of nuclear contamination. As a consequence, the Ukraine is presently building on the site an even more massive (20,000 ton) arched concrete “sarcophagus” which is being built on rails next to the plant and will when completed (at a cost of some 1.5 billion Euros) be slid over the existing plant on rails to cover and protect the plant for some future date, when the process will no doubt have to be repeated to prevent further harmful leakage.
As a result of the 1986 accident a vast area of the highly productive agricultural lands of the Ukraine were so badly contaminated by radioactive dust that they had to be permanently evacuated and their farms, homes and businesses abandoned for (20,000 years) virtually forever. Russian and Ukraine officials cleared an area within a radius of about 19 miles from the plant as too contaminated with radioactive materials for human life. This zone covering nearly 1,100 square miles is known as the “zone of alienation" and is nearly the size of the US State of Rhode Island. After more than a quarter century it remains uninhabited. The untended farms, fields and meadows have have reverted to forests where wildlife such as wolves and moose now wander. Officials estimate that the land will not be safe for human habitation for 20,000 years!
Can we all afford to put at risk of permanent contamination an area the size of the State of Rhode Island around each of our many nuclear plants? Would the aftermath of a massive nuclear accident result in multiple zones “of alienation” for twenty millennia? Imagine the effects on our metropolitan areas (some of which like New York are virtually ringed with old nuclear plants similar to those at Fukushima). As humans we are supposed to be able to learn from our mistakes. Chernobyl was enough to have most of us realize nuclear power was a big mistake. One mistake was enough for some of us. But now after Fukushima, if we do not change our ways and turn to better, less expensive, systems less prone to accidents which become global disasters----in a word safer ways to generate electricity--such as solar panels, wind, renewables, geothermal, tidal, etcetera, etcetera, after this second global disaster Fukushima, if we do nothing we are just plain dumb!
Get the picture?
rjk
Monday, October 28, 2013
TIME FOR GEN. KEITH ALEXANDER TO GO!
Recent revelations regarding the excesses of the NSA and its gratuitous spying on our own allies, such as tapping German chancellor Angela Merkel's personal cell phone, proves Snowden was right! (What could we have learned about global terrorists from that phone tap? ) The NSA under Gen. Alexander ( the man who began his career hoovering up war data in US-occupied Iraq, who carried those very same procedures and polices home to the USA , and one who it has been recently revealed spent tens of millions of tax dollars creating a goldfinger-like Star Wars fantasy "spy command center" at NSA headquarters in Washington) is obviously out of control. Let's bring that young man Snowden back from Russia and award him with a whistleblower's medal.
We are a great nation, which on one level leads the world because of our immense wealth, and military power. But on another, our world stature comes from our moral authority and the trust other nations have in our system of justice and the adherence of our leaders to legal standards. That trust is also derived from our our past behaviors in which we worked to foster a world in which all nations including the USA exists within a frame work of mutually acceptable laws. We are at our core a nation of laws...our own and those we have help foster internationally. Too often in recent decades, since 9-11 and the Bush-Cheney debacle, we have become the world's law breaker, engaging in illegal invasions, occupations, wars, torture, renditions, extrajudicial assassinations, and setting up off-shore gulags, like Guantanamo....in short a "do what we say and not what we do" nation---all to our own detriment and to the detriment of our businesses and to that of the world as a whole.
It's time for President Obama, who is down deep a decent, intelligent man and a leader who respects the law, to rise up and assert his authority. Firing General Alexander might be a good first bold step. That should be followed by retreating from the undeserved attempts at arresting and punishing Mr. Snowden, without whom all of this mess would still be festering under the national carpet.
We are a great nation, which on one level leads the world because of our immense wealth, and military power. But on another, our world stature comes from our moral authority and the trust other nations have in our system of justice and the adherence of our leaders to legal standards. That trust is also derived from our our past behaviors in which we worked to foster a world in which all nations including the USA exists within a frame work of mutually acceptable laws. We are at our core a nation of laws...our own and those we have help foster internationally. Too often in recent decades, since 9-11 and the Bush-Cheney debacle, we have become the world's law breaker, engaging in illegal invasions, occupations, wars, torture, renditions, extrajudicial assassinations, and setting up off-shore gulags, like Guantanamo....in short a "do what we say and not what we do" nation---all to our own detriment and to the detriment of our businesses and to that of the world as a whole.
It's time for President Obama, who is down deep a decent, intelligent man and a leader who respects the law, to rise up and assert his authority. Firing General Alexander might be a good first bold step. That should be followed by retreating from the undeserved attempts at arresting and punishing Mr. Snowden, without whom all of this mess would still be festering under the national carpet.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
CIA DOUBLE TAP DRONE STRIKES ARE WAR CRIMES
CIA "Double Tap" Drone Strikes Indicate President Obama Misleads American Public On His Drone Strategy.
In his May 23 2013 address at the Defense University on drone warfare the President assured the American public that his use of armed unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) was legal and that his government has taken scrupulous care to avoid civilians casualties. But past studies by Stamford and New York Universities and more recently a study by Amnesty International (See my previous blog) indicate he mislead the public. The tactics used by the CIA, and apparently supported by Mr. Obama, are designed not to simply kill insurgents "allied with Al Qaeda" as he claims, but to terrorize entire civilian populations which may harbor these extremists. That is a war crime and one reason why he can not come clean with the American public.
The earlier studies and more recent ones document that about one-third of all casualties are innocent civilians. That does not seem to square with the President's description of "precision, surgical strikes". So there is more here than meets the casual eye. What that "more" is has been touched upon by both the Stamford study and the recent Amnesty International report which document the prevalence of what are termed "double tap" strikes which intentionally target first responders and civilians. Such a tactic is a war crime....no question.
The use of "double tap" strikes suggest that the actual purpose and intent of the drone campaign is not simply "neutralizing" bad guys but to cow and terrorize the civilians who may tend to support the militant insurgency. Apparently that is OK with the President as long as it remains a secret....but if it comes out in the open ( as at present) he and all those who are complicit in this campaign are potentially subject to war crimes charges. In these attacks, a first strike by a drone hellfire missile is followed a few minutes later by a second ( or even a third missile) which kills near by residents, or relatives who had responded to help the wounded, or find elderly or children buried in the rubble. Often police, doctors and other first responders are killed in this manner. The "double tap" strike is of course a heinous war crime, designed not to surgically kill the bad guys..but to sow terror and are no different than the car or truck bomb used by the other side. (see: "Outrage at CIA's deadly double tap drone attacks", in "The Independent", by Jerome Taylor, 25 September, 2012)
The attempt to use terror by invading armies, and others to quell insurgency is as old as the hills. From Julius Caesar in Gaul , the Nazis in occupied France, to Lt Calley in Mai Lai, Vietnam, and now Obama in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere, when fighting a native insurgency the military (and sometimes their civilian leaders) believe they are in a battle for "the minds and hearts" of the natives. To win that battle they seek to terrorize the locals and so deny the insurgents (Gauls, Free French partisans, Viet Cong, Taliban, Al Qaeda, etc. ) sustenance and safe harbor. Obama's drone strikes in Pakistan are DESIGNED to kill indiscriminately so as to elicit terror. It explains why the civilian deaths are so high...one third of the total. Drones are a form of terrorism as brutal and inhumane as the car bombs the other side uses. The President's claim that the strikes are "surgical" and designed to "neutralize" our enemies with limited civilian casualties is a perversion of the truth. The revelation about "double tap" drone strikes is a shattering revelation which exposes the drone warfare strategy as a terrorist attacks similar to those used by less sophisticated car and satchel bombers. The second series of bombs from the drone takes out women and children, and innocent bystanders who in any normal society rush to the aid of the stricken. That is what our CIA is doing on a regular basis in Pakistan---killing, maiming and terrorizing whole villages all civilians---grandmothers! parents! children! Think about it...and oppose this horror and perversion of American values-- or become one with with the jack booted perpetrators of Oradour-sur-Glane.
Get the picture?
rjk
In his May 23 2013 address at the Defense University on drone warfare the President assured the American public that his use of armed unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) was legal and that his government has taken scrupulous care to avoid civilians casualties. But past studies by Stamford and New York Universities and more recently a study by Amnesty International (See my previous blog) indicate he mislead the public. The tactics used by the CIA, and apparently supported by Mr. Obama, are designed not to simply kill insurgents "allied with Al Qaeda" as he claims, but to terrorize entire civilian populations which may harbor these extremists. That is a war crime and one reason why he can not come clean with the American public.
The earlier studies and more recent ones document that about one-third of all casualties are innocent civilians. That does not seem to square with the President's description of "precision, surgical strikes". So there is more here than meets the casual eye. What that "more" is has been touched upon by both the Stamford study and the recent Amnesty International report which document the prevalence of what are termed "double tap" strikes which intentionally target first responders and civilians. Such a tactic is a war crime....no question.
The use of "double tap" strikes suggest that the actual purpose and intent of the drone campaign is not simply "neutralizing" bad guys but to cow and terrorize the civilians who may tend to support the militant insurgency. Apparently that is OK with the President as long as it remains a secret....but if it comes out in the open ( as at present) he and all those who are complicit in this campaign are potentially subject to war crimes charges. In these attacks, a first strike by a drone hellfire missile is followed a few minutes later by a second ( or even a third missile) which kills near by residents, or relatives who had responded to help the wounded, or find elderly or children buried in the rubble. Often police, doctors and other first responders are killed in this manner. The "double tap" strike is of course a heinous war crime, designed not to surgically kill the bad guys..but to sow terror and are no different than the car or truck bomb used by the other side. (see: "Outrage at CIA's deadly double tap drone attacks", in "The Independent", by Jerome Taylor, 25 September, 2012)
The attempt to use terror by invading armies, and others to quell insurgency is as old as the hills. From Julius Caesar in Gaul , the Nazis in occupied France, to Lt Calley in Mai Lai, Vietnam, and now Obama in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere, when fighting a native insurgency the military (and sometimes their civilian leaders) believe they are in a battle for "the minds and hearts" of the natives. To win that battle they seek to terrorize the locals and so deny the insurgents (Gauls, Free French partisans, Viet Cong, Taliban, Al Qaeda, etc. ) sustenance and safe harbor. Obama's drone strikes in Pakistan are DESIGNED to kill indiscriminately so as to elicit terror. It explains why the civilian deaths are so high...one third of the total. Drones are a form of terrorism as brutal and inhumane as the car bombs the other side uses. The President's claim that the strikes are "surgical" and designed to "neutralize" our enemies with limited civilian casualties is a perversion of the truth. The revelation about "double tap" drone strikes is a shattering revelation which exposes the drone warfare strategy as a terrorist attacks similar to those used by less sophisticated car and satchel bombers. The second series of bombs from the drone takes out women and children, and innocent bystanders who in any normal society rush to the aid of the stricken. That is what our CIA is doing on a regular basis in Pakistan---killing, maiming and terrorizing whole villages all civilians---grandmothers! parents! children! Think about it...and oppose this horror and perversion of American values-- or become one with with the jack booted perpetrators of Oradour-sur-Glane.
Get the picture?
rjk
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
CIA TARGETS AFGHAN GRANDMOTHER AND 18 CIVILIAN LABORERS--INSISTS THEY ARE TERRORISTS
CIA drone kills Afghan grandmother and 18 civilian laborers in drone attacks--yet claims they target only terrorists and kill no civilians.
“In his May 23, 2013 speech on drone policy delivered at the National Defense University, in Washington the Presidentried to assure the American public about his drone warfare by stating that outside of Afghanistan, which is a legitimate theater of war, the US targets "only al Qaeda and its associated forces”. At that time he also claimed he is “bound by state sovereignty" and also must "act (only) against terrorists who pose an imminent threat to the American people”. Furthermore, he stated, before any strike there must be “near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured." The President's press secretary recently stated (October 22), flatly that “targeted lethal action (drone strikes) are necessary, are legal, and only kill terrorists.” Though he did not elaborate how he defined a terrorist.
Some ugly facts about OBAMA's drone warfare campaign the president does not know or did not acknowledge:
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism based in London states that the US, under President Obama’s direction, has carried out 376 drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004. The estimated death toll from media reports indicate more than 3,000 fatalities, of which approximately one-third, or approximately one-thousand (1000) were innocent civilians. Thus, under Obama, approximately one-in-three victims of drone attacks are non-combatants mostly the elderly, women, young boys and small children. How can the President be so wrong?
Several times before, (see my previous blogs) I have railed against the America’s use of drones and drone warfare. This secret method of killing our so called enemies is mostly carried out in those distant parts of the world where few reporters can go, where the terrain is daunting, natives are poor, and speak incomprehensible dialects, and where custom dictates that they bury their dead within a few hours of an attack, leaving no evidence. Since these drone attacks are covert acts over which our own government has drawn a heavy veil of secrecy, the attacks are well-hidden and ignored by Congress and to a large degree our citizenry. In those previous blogs I was often reporting simply on what I read in the press, knowing full well the difficulties of sorting out the facts from these remote places. I weighed accounts from US government representatives: “We didn't do it!, or "The deceased were all heavily armed militant males ready to kill American troops.” Only to find out later that these accounts were untenable based on the known circumstances,ages of the victims, or conditions of the attack. But I persisted in comparing US accounts with those from Reuters, NY Times, Washington Post, Le Monde, Al Jazzeera or other main-line sources which often presented a different view. Frequently, the accounts conflicted wildly. (Well they did in the beginning, but all too often new evidences emerged which undermined the account of the US government.) The shroud of secrecy of our government, the remote and impenetrable nature of the terrain and lack of reporting from the actual site made it difficult to pin down facts. But a recent piece by Katherine Houreld in Reuters (Islamabad, October 22, 2013) makes clear in some cases who the culprits are.
t Katharine Houreld's piece in Reuters is not based on hear-say or second-hand reporting, but on a formal investigative study by Amnesty International using creditable researchers who visited the actual attack sites. The investigators focused on two specific drone attacks in North Waziristan, part of Pakistan's remote, native territories situated along the border with Afghanistan and one of the most frequently hit by drone-attacks in the world.
Amnesty International (AI) a London-based, non-profit, human rights organization founded in 1966, conducted more than sixty interviews of the Waziristan native population using teams of researchers, translators and others, working independently of each other. They recovered physical data, photographs and other facts-on-the ground to support their findings concerning the nature of the strikes, those killed, and the ages, sex and occupations of the victims, as well as the circumstances of the attack, such as the time of day and weather.
The teams focused on only two of many attacks which had taken place in that area. Ms. Houreld's piece states:
”London-based Amnesty said a drone strike in the village of Ghundi Kala in October 2012 killed Mamana Bibi, 68, the wife of a retired school principal, as she was gathering vegetables. Her five grandchildren were wounded, including Safdar, 3, who fell off a roof and broke bones in his chest and shoulders. It was unclear why Bibi was hit. The weather was clear, providing good visibility to drone operators, the report said. In the second incident, 18 men were killed in the village of Zowi Sidgi in July 2012. Residents described the dead as a woodcutter, vegetable seller and miners who had gathered in the shade at dusk to talk after a day's work. The youngest was 14. The first drone strike killed at least eight people in all, the report said. The second one killed more locals as they were trying to rescue the wounded. "Everyone in the hut was cut to pieces," Amnesty quoted one witness as saying. "We started to panic and each person was trying to run in a different direction." According to the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, drones often also target rescuers coming to help those injured in an initial strike." Their findings clearly indicate that the US government spokesmen, the President, and his spokesmen and others are not telling the truth. Perhaps now, as with the NSA revelations, the President and the nation will have to face the ugly truth concerning how we conduct our secret, inhumane, costly, counter productive and wildly expensive wars.
“In his May 23, 2013 speech on drone policy delivered at the National Defense University, in Washington the Presidentried to assure the American public about his drone warfare by stating that outside of Afghanistan, which is a legitimate theater of war, the US targets "only al Qaeda and its associated forces”. At that time he also claimed he is “bound by state sovereignty" and also must "act (only) against terrorists who pose an imminent threat to the American people”. Furthermore, he stated, before any strike there must be “near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured." The President's press secretary recently stated (October 22), flatly that “targeted lethal action (drone strikes) are necessary, are legal, and only kill terrorists.” Though he did not elaborate how he defined a terrorist.
Some ugly facts about OBAMA's drone warfare campaign the president does not know or did not acknowledge:
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism based in London states that the US, under President Obama’s direction, has carried out 376 drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004. The estimated death toll from media reports indicate more than 3,000 fatalities, of which approximately one-third, or approximately one-thousand (1000) were innocent civilians. Thus, under Obama, approximately one-in-three victims of drone attacks are non-combatants mostly the elderly, women, young boys and small children. How can the President be so wrong?
Several times before, (see my previous blogs) I have railed against the America’s use of drones and drone warfare. This secret method of killing our so called enemies is mostly carried out in those distant parts of the world where few reporters can go, where the terrain is daunting, natives are poor, and speak incomprehensible dialects, and where custom dictates that they bury their dead within a few hours of an attack, leaving no evidence. Since these drone attacks are covert acts over which our own government has drawn a heavy veil of secrecy, the attacks are well-hidden and ignored by Congress and to a large degree our citizenry. In those previous blogs I was often reporting simply on what I read in the press, knowing full well the difficulties of sorting out the facts from these remote places. I weighed accounts from US government representatives: “We didn't do it!, or "The deceased were all heavily armed militant males ready to kill American troops.” Only to find out later that these accounts were untenable based on the known circumstances,ages of the victims, or conditions of the attack. But I persisted in comparing US accounts with those from Reuters, NY Times, Washington Post, Le Monde, Al Jazzeera or other main-line sources which often presented a different view. Frequently, the accounts conflicted wildly. (Well they did in the beginning, but all too often new evidences emerged which undermined the account of the US government.) The shroud of secrecy of our government, the remote and impenetrable nature of the terrain and lack of reporting from the actual site made it difficult to pin down facts. But a recent piece by Katherine Houreld in Reuters (Islamabad, October 22, 2013) makes clear in some cases who the culprits are.
t Katharine Houreld's piece in Reuters is not based on hear-say or second-hand reporting, but on a formal investigative study by Amnesty International using creditable researchers who visited the actual attack sites. The investigators focused on two specific drone attacks in North Waziristan, part of Pakistan's remote, native territories situated along the border with Afghanistan and one of the most frequently hit by drone-attacks in the world.
Amnesty International (AI) a London-based, non-profit, human rights organization founded in 1966, conducted more than sixty interviews of the Waziristan native population using teams of researchers, translators and others, working independently of each other. They recovered physical data, photographs and other facts-on-the ground to support their findings concerning the nature of the strikes, those killed, and the ages, sex and occupations of the victims, as well as the circumstances of the attack, such as the time of day and weather.
The teams focused on only two of many attacks which had taken place in that area. Ms. Houreld's piece states:
”London-based Amnesty said a drone strike in the village of Ghundi Kala in October 2012 killed Mamana Bibi, 68, the wife of a retired school principal, as she was gathering vegetables. Her five grandchildren were wounded, including Safdar, 3, who fell off a roof and broke bones in his chest and shoulders. It was unclear why Bibi was hit. The weather was clear, providing good visibility to drone operators, the report said. In the second incident, 18 men were killed in the village of Zowi Sidgi in July 2012. Residents described the dead as a woodcutter, vegetable seller and miners who had gathered in the shade at dusk to talk after a day's work. The youngest was 14. The first drone strike killed at least eight people in all, the report said. The second one killed more locals as they were trying to rescue the wounded. "Everyone in the hut was cut to pieces," Amnesty quoted one witness as saying. "We started to panic and each person was trying to run in a different direction." According to the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, drones often also target rescuers coming to help those injured in an initial strike." Their findings clearly indicate that the US government spokesmen, the President, and his spokesmen and others are not telling the truth. Perhaps now, as with the NSA revelations, the President and the nation will have to face the ugly truth concerning how we conduct our secret, inhumane, costly, counter productive and wildly expensive wars.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)