Author Archives: rff_blog_admin

Colorado Vote on a Proposal to Close Rocky Flats

Posted on by

 An extensive fire in 1969 at the Rocky Flats Plant attracted significant attention and led to information that a previous fire in 1957 and an outside storage area called the “903 pad” had released plutonium contamination. I discuss in the book “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats” (available on this web site, Amazon, and Createspace) that the reputation of the site never recovered from the negative publicity. However, it is apparently not well remembered that the voters of Colorado had an opportunity to express their opinion about whether the plant should remain in operation. As I wrote at the end of Chapter 11 of the book, there was a ballot issue in 1982 to end operations at the plant. The exact wording was, “Shall the constitution of the State of Colorado be amended in order to bring about cessation of nuclear weapons component production in Colorado…” The vote was defeated 584,356 to 326,550. The source of this information is an article published in the Rocky Mountain News November 4, 1982.

At least one person who followed the history of Rocky Flats closely mentioned they weren’t familiar with the vote on the amendment, and I decided I needed to look for additional verification. I was able to locate a reference on ballotpedia.org, which listed all the ballots issues for 1982. Proposition 6 was the measure that would have made it illegal to produce components for nuclear weapons at Rocky Flats. It did not specify which components were included, so production of stainless and other non-nuclear components would have been just as illegal as those made from plutonium.

The Rocky Mountain News article opens with mention that Denver and Pitkin country voters approved a “freeze on nuclear weapons,” but that was rejected in Mesa County. That vote did not have had any impact on Rocky Flats. Components for nuclear weapons manufactured there were shipped to other locations for assembly of the weapons. The proposal to end manufacturing at Rocky Flats was rejected in a statewide vote. A supporter of the initiative said it was believed confusion between the two proposals was part of the reason for the defeat. The coordinator of the Denver Freeze Campaign speculated that “…jobs, particularly with unemployment at its highest point since the Great Depression, might have influenced the verdict about Rocky Flats, which employees 4,700 in its production of triggers for the United States arsenal.” Another proponent suggested that the proposal might have lost votes because it “…may have suggested to voters a unilateral decision by the United States to cease nuclear production.”

Regardless of why the proposal was defeated, I suggested in my book that the proposal might have had a different fate if the vote had been held in the late 1980s. Negative stories about Rocky Flats in 1988 won the site the dubious honor of being the top news story for that year. Of course the raid in 1989 might also have swung a few (or many) votes.

Global Warming Reporting

Posted on by

This will be the third posting about the issue of global warming. The first point I will make is that the advocates for the idea that man’s activities are causing damage to the climate are moving to change “global warming” to “climate change.” They were wrong in the 1970s when they warned that a new ice age was a certainty, and they might be wrong that the temperatures are rising.  One of them was quoted as saying the fact that temperatures haven’t continued to rise the last few years with increasing levels of carbon dioxide as predicted by the computer models was “a travesty.”  (How dare nature to not comply with the computer models!) However, if they can complete the transition of the mantra to be “climate change,” they are assured of being right. The climate has always changed, and it would be quite safe to predict it will continue to change.

A majority of American people have been convinced that a climactic disaster is looming based on what they have heard about the certainty of coast lines being flooded, increasingly ferocious hurricane seasons, and famines.  I will admit that the level of the oceans has increased.  There was once a land bridge between Russia and the United States. In fact sea levels have increased by about 7 inches in the past 100 years. Of course that isn’t sufficiently dramatic to make a point in a movie, so you should show a depiction of most of Florida and other coastal areas being swallowed by water. The predictions of horrific hurricane seasons have not materialized, and some years have been exceptionally mild. That apparently wasn’t as news worthy as the warnings. And we should stop converting corn into ethanol if we are actually worried about food shortages.

Would you predict that there has been a continuation of the shrinkage of the Arctic sea ice based on recent reports?  Check out the National Snow and Ice Data Center and look at the charts.  The amount of ice coverage is well below the 1979 to 2000 average, but the line is bouncing along near the 2006-2007 level.  I previously printed their charts for 2005 to 2009.  Ice coverage decreased from 2005 to 2007, but there was a significant increase from 2007 to 2008 and 2009. Reading through the explanations of their data you will find that “this month had the sixth-largest snow cover extent since the record started in 1966.”  There is another statement that “Reduced sea ice extent and extensive snow cover are not contradictory…”  I admit I didn’t understand their explanation.

I want to close this by referring to an entertaining lecture given by Michael Crichton titled “Aliens Cause Global Warming.” I recommend reading the entire lecture, but I will mention a couple of points.  He dismisses the idea that there is “consensus.”  His discussion of that is brilliant. Later in the paper he discusses the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  The draft of their 1995 report concluded, “No study to date has positively attributed all or part of observed climate changes to anthropogenic causes.”  That statement was removed and replaced in the final report with “The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on climate.” Reread both statements and contemplate them.  The first draft said their studies hadn’t connected man’s activities to global warming.  The final report “suggests” a “discernible human influence…”

I want to emphasize that I am strongly in favor of showing good stewardship to the planet.  I favor conservation of resources and research into how to make us more energy efficient and less dependent on countries that don’t like us very much for most of the oil we burn.  I’ll stop doing blogs criticizing how the story is being reported when I believe the reporting is being done honestly.

History of the Global Warming Theory

Posted on by

The history of how we have arrived at the current “consensus” that man-made carbon dioxide is causing or will cause catastrophic climate change is interesting. The idea isn’t new.  A Time Magazine article published in 1972 describes how, “As they review the  bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are are actually part of a global climatic upheaval.”  The conditions that caused concern included a six year drought in Africa, record rains in the U.S., Pakistan, and Japan, a poor wheat harvest in Canada, dry conditions in Britain, and bitter winters in some areas while other parts of the globe where having the mildest winters in anyone’s recollection. Those words could come from the headlines today about the certainty that we are in a period of global warming. However, read on in the article. It says that meteorologists “…find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing…the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.” (emphasis added) We still have a “consensus” that there will be climate change, but the certainty of global cooling has somehow transitioned into global warming.

There was a politician credited with the transition from believing that global cooling was a certainty to the current belief that global warming is a certainty, and that politician was Margaret Thatcher. I’m certain many readers thought they were going to read Al Gore’s name, but he came late to the party. Ms Thatcher became Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1979, and she believed coal miner strikes were crippling the English economy.  She wanted to promote nuclear power as a replacement for coal, and began committing large amounts of government money to researchers charged with investigating climate change caused by the carbon dioxide that is emitted when coal is burned. Temperatures began to creep up, and researchers who had advocated global cooling adjusted their computer models or created new ones to arrive at the conclusion that carbon dioxide emissions were going to cause global warming.

Scientists have been debating the effect of carbon dioxide on climate since the late 1800s. Savante Arrheius, a Swedish scientist, is credited by some as being the first to theorize in 1896 that fossil fuel combustion would eventually result in global warming. The theory lay more or less dormant until the flood of government grant money began by Margaret Thatcher and then made available to researchers in the U.S. created opportunity for those who found a connection between carbon dioxide and temperatures.  Of course the research might not even involve that direct relationship.  It might involve the effect of increased carbon dioxide on the growth rate of hickory trees, and rapid increases in squirrel populations because there were more hickory nuts (as an example that I just invented).  However, studies that came to a dire prediction followed by the consistent conclusion “that more study is needed,” were more likely to be given news coverage followed by more government grant money. The Environmental Protection Agency has joined the party by finding that carbon dioxide is a toxic pollutant, but that is the subject of another posting.

The Climate is Changing

Posted on by

Over it’s historical record, in January, Northern Hemisphere snow cover averages 47 million square kilometers (18.1 million square miles), and in February it averages 46 million square kilometers (17.8 square miles)—approximately 45 to 46 percent of the land area in the region. While sea ice extent was below average for January 2011, this month had the sixth-largest snow cover extent since the record started in 1966, at 49 million square kilometers (18.9 million square miles). Snow was unusually widespread over the mid-western and eastern United States, eastern Europe, and western China. Snow cover in February remained above average at 47.4 million square kilometers (18.3 million square miles), with more snow than usual in the western and central U.S., eastern Europe, Tibet and northeastern China.

Reduced sea ice extent and extensive snow cover are not contradictory, and are both linked to a strong negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation (see our January 5, 2011 post). A strongly negative AO favors outbreaks of cold Arctic air over northern Europe and the U.S., as many people experienced first-hand these last two winters. Whether this is a trend, or in any way linked to ongoing climate warming in the Arctic, remains to be seen.

Then, in 1979, Mrs Margaret Thatcher (now Lady Thatcher) became Prime Minister of the UK, and she elevated the hypothesis to the status of a major international policy issue.

Mrs. Thatcher could not have promoted the global warming issue without the support of her UK political party. And they were willing to give it. Following the General Election of 1979, most of the incoming Cabinet had been members of the government which lost office in 1974. They blamed the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) for their 1974 defeat. They, therefore, desired an excuse for reducing the UK coal industry and, thus, the NUM’s power. Coal-fired power stations emit CO2 but nuclear power stations don’t. Global warming provided an excuse for reducing the UK’s dependence on coal by replacing it with nuclear power.

 

Recent Russian Spy Case

Posted on by

A posting on site dated February 25, 2011 described comments submitted after a DOE official read the book “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats” (available at Amazon and CreateSpace). One of the comments was about the funding and influence on the international anti-nuclear movement by the Soviet Union. I mentioned that I intended to do additional research on this subject, and had ordered some reference material listed in a Wikipedia article from my local library. I’m beginning to receive those books, and the first one lists ten references to the World Peace Council, which the Wikipedia article described as a Soviet front organization. Another book is by a Soviet agent who turned, and he talks about how the United States should not consider that the war with the Russians has ended.  That is reinforced with the reports of the FBI arresting ten “deep cover” Russian agents in 2010, and the interesting reports that followed that announcement.

The book, “Foreign Policies of the Soviet Union” written by Richard F. Starr in 1991, describes the World Peace Council, the organization founded in 1950 that funded anti-nuclear demonstrations, as supervising all Soviet-supporting front groups. Directives issued by the World Peace Council originated with the Communist Party.  People who participated in the activities organized by the council and other front organizations were called “useful idiots” by Lenin.  The effectiveness of the Council and Soviet propaganda is “perhaps reflected by the report that six U.S. congressmen facilitated establishment of a World Peace Council chapter in Washington, D.C.” (The congressmen are not named.)

But that is all ancient history, right?  Have the Russians become our friends?  Apparently the Russians haven’t backed off from their belief that the U.S. is their enemy, or at least that the U.S. has secrets worth stealing.  The FBI arrested 10 people who had “allegedly” spied for Russia for up to a decade.  They were posing as civilians while penetrating U.S. policymaking circles.  The 11th person accused of being the money person hadn’t been captured the last I heard.  Of course the U.S. media was more interested that one of the agents was a beautiful woman who had posed for Playboy.

I find the most interesting part of the story is that the ten agents were welcomed back in Russia as heroes and heroines after an exchange for four Americans held by the Russians, and there were threats made against the person the Russians believed was responsible for revealing the identities of their agents. The Russian newspaper Kommersant identified the guilty party as “Colonel Shcherbakov,” Shcherbakov had fled Russia for the U.S. in June, days before the arrest of the Russian agents.  His son and daughter aided in the betrayal.  Prime Minister Vladimir Putin denounced the collaborator as someone “who will wind up on booze, or drugs–under the fence.”  “We know where he is, a high-ranking Kremlin source told the…newspaper.  You can have no doubt–a Mercader has already been sent for after him.”  The Mecader reference is to Ramon Mercader, a KGB-hired Spanish communist who was sent to kill Leon Trotsky with an ice pick in Mexico in 1940.

As a closing comment, those of us who worked at Rocky Flats building components for nuclear weapons believed what we were doing was necessary for national defense against a dedicated enemy.  I hope that our current leaders don’t think that the intentions of our enemies have changed significantly.