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From the San Francisco Chronicle:
The Senate will decide this week whether to follow in California’s footsteps and pass legislation requiring cuts in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change.
Lawmakers are set to vote Monday to begin debate on a bill that could reshape the U.S. economy by requiring industry to pay to emit carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.
Opponents call it a new tax on industry that could raise gas prices and energy bills for consumers.
Now before I knew anything about wind power coming to Delaware, I would be apprehensive about taxing carbon and “increasing the costs to power plants, distributors, and consumers…….
But knowing what I now know, that all carbon prices are about to go ballistic as did our automobile and truck fuel, the faster we leave a carbon based economy, the faster we will pull out of this recession.
Congess just cannot slap the tax on carbon immediately. My recommendation is to start the tax in 2014, giving America 5 years to wean itself off carbon based electricity. Five years could do it…
Wind, particularly offshore wind, if built large enough is the cheapest form of energy available to us today. If solar improves to where it crosses the 10 cents/kwh barrier, it too can become a player….
There is enough wind power capacity in North Dakota to fuel the entire grid of North America…..
The financials show it could be done today for 2.3 cents per kwh… Imagine, all of the US energy needs met at 2.3 cents per kwh. Your $200 monthly electric bill would instead be $40 dollars. Which is right about where it needs to be…….
But not all the wind needs to come from North Dakota, even though it has tremendous potential……Up and down the Eastern seaboard, giant wind farms could drop our prices and save on long distance transmission costs…. From Texas to North Dakota, the wind belt could drive America’s mid section energy prices down to a tolerable level…..
By dropping worldwide demand, we could stop our dependence on energy coming from the Mid East. Being the sole planetary source of 2.3 cents per kwh of electricity, our manufacturing base could again begin to grow in places where it once walked away from union labor……Ohio and Michigan. What automobile company could pass up savings of 20 cents per kwh over what the paid in their home country?
Back to Carbon caps and taxes…..Taxing something that is bad for you at a rather high rate, is ironically a very good thing. It forces you to wean yourself off its toxic properties and seek another solution. It does so expediently. Forcing you to move quickly before your money disappears..unlike a government directive facing appeal after appeal after appeal…….
So raising the price of carbon is in the cards…..the higher the tax, the faster we move to a really cheap source of energy and power…..cheaper than all but the oldest of you can remember……
And if timed right, it won’t cost us a penny. For paying a million dollars for a kwh of coal fired electricity is moot, it there is no kwh of coal fired electricity left to be taxed…. …..
Finally found the original source on this. However there has been an update.
“It was originally reported that five nuclear warheads were transported, but officers who tipped Military Times to the incident who have asked to remain anonymous since they are not authorized to discuss the incident, have since updated that number to six.”
So it was indeed officers who tipped off the Military Times, as was speculated here. But wait! I am confused……which officers? For in the original story posted back on September 5th, we were told that Minot did not even realize nuclear warheads were missing, until they were confirmed as having landed at Barksdale, and once there, they sat unnoticed on the tarmac for ten hours until the Military Times verified they were indeed there. So by default, it was 1) neither officers at Minot, nor 2) the officers at Barksdale who were responsible for alerting the Military Times. And from what we understand, none of the officers aboard the plane knew they were flying “hot”.
The obvious implication from that one statement is that “somewhere out there” were other officers, privy to this transgression which violated nuclear weapons parameters, and were horrified enough to blow the whistle. Whether these warheads were sanctioned for removal by someone in the White House for official business, or were being smuggled out by an unscrupulous arms dealer for profit, it is obvious that all established protocol had been ignored in their transference.
“That’s perhaps what is most worrisome about this particular incident — that apparently an individual who had command authority about moving these weapons around decided to do so,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists.
“It’s a command and control issue and it’s one that calls into question the system, because if one individual can do that who knows what can happen,” he said. According to the Military Times:
“ Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, said a host of security checks and warning signs must have been passed over, or completely ignored, for the warheads to have been unknowingly loaded onto the B-52…..“It’s not like they had nuclear ACMs and conventional ACMs right next to each other and they just happened to load one with a nuclear warhead,” Kristensen said……The Defense Department uses a computerized tracking program to keep tabs on each one of its nuclear warheads, he said. For the six warheads to make it onto the B-52, each one would have had to be signed out of its storage bunker and transported to the bomber. Diligent safety protocols would then have had to been ignored to load the warheads onto the plane, Kristensen said……All ACMs loaded with a nuclear warhead have distinct red signs distinguishing them from ACMs without a nuclear yield, he said. ACMs with nuclear warheads also weigh significantly more than missiles without them………
Even though some officers knew that the plane was flying “hot”, the plane was allowed to fly SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). “The main risk would have been the way the Air Force responded to any problems with the flight because they would have handled it much differently if they would have known nuclear warheads were on board,” Steve Fetter, a former Defense Department official who worked on nuclear weapons policy in 1993-94, said.
The Air Force has disciplined those involved. Along with the 5th Munitions Squadron commander, the munitions crews involved in mistakenly loading the nuclear warheads at Minot have been temporarily decertified from performing their duties involving munitions, pending corrective actions or additional training,
It is quite possible that it was a simple mistake; someone did not know exactly what they were doing. (This error ironically comes after the Air Force announced last March, that the 5th Bomb Wing won two service wide safety awards during fiscal year 2006.)
Were it truly a mistake then it would be the first time in 39 years, since 1968, that it has been public that a nuclear warhead has flown on a US bomber. Nuclear weapons are normally transferred on special cargo planes, carefully constructed to contain radioactivity in the event of a crash; never on the wings of bombers.
According to Kristensen, the error could not have come from confusing the Advanced Cruise Missile with a conventional weapons since no conventional form exists. The munitions Airmen should have been easily able to spot the mistake. Other routine procedures were violated which awkwardly suggests a rather obvious explanation for the error. The military munitions personnel were acting under direct orders, though not under those passed down through the regular chain of military command.
The quick reaction of the Air Force, the issuing of a public statement describing the seriousness of the issue, and the launch of an immediate investigation, all suggest that whatever occurred, was outside the regular chain of military command extending from Gates downward.
If the regular chain of command was indeed bypassed, then we have no choice but to inquire as to whether the B-52 incident was part of a covert project, whose classification level exceeded those held by the very officers in charge of nuclear weapons at Minot. Some traits point out, that this was indeed a secret transference of nuclear warheads, known only to a select few within the military service. For 1) in this case, protocol was violated at Minot in not signing out the nuclear warheads, 2) was violated by installing “the red caps” under the B52, and 3) was violated by flying unrestricted between the airbases. Quite possibly, solely because of the tip provided by patriotic and non-corrupt officers, someone’s attempt to garnish 6 nuclear warheads was foiled.
After taking a hard look, all other explanations make little sense. Based on what we learned today, we do know this. Decommissioned nuclear warheads, as we were told these were, are to be taken to Kirtland AFB, where according to Kristensen, ” the warheads are separated from the rest of the weapon and shipped to the Energy Department’s Pantex dismantlement facility near Amarillo, Texas”
Instead, the plane flew to Barksdale, which just happens to be a major embarkation point for the Middle East. The speculation most in line with the current events happening today……… is that these advanced cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads, were on their way to the Middle East, to be used, if necessary, against the underground nuclear labs of Iran…..
So what does it boil down to? Three officers may have stopped nuclear weapons going to the Middle East, by alerting the Military Times to some discrepancies in an otherwise routine landing of another B52 in Barksdale.
