WhirledView

by Cheryl Rofer

That’s been an environmental cry for some time, but now we’re also hearing it with regard to the Guantánamo detainees.

I’ve been reminded of it in several articles and opinion pieces on environmental issues lately, and it’s those I’ll deal with in this post, leaving the Guantánamo uproar to others, who are dealing with it quite competently.

There are good reasons for not wanting certain kinds of things in one’s backyard. The hurried uranium-mining for the Cold War buildup of nuclear weapons left some messes behind. Tajikistan currently gets Paul Goble’s spotlight, but there are others across the old Soviet Union: Ukraine and Uzbekistan, to name two more. It’s one of those cosmic oddities that Russia doesn’t have much in the way of uranium reserves, and it’s one of those political difficulties that the Soviet Union was less careful than they might have been, particularly when the mining was outside of Mother Russia, leading to some of the grievances that eventually tore the Union apart.

The United States did these things hurriedly, too, although many of them have been cleaned up. Some of the tailings remain, particularly on Indian land.

by Cheryl Rofer

A week or so ago, we received the wonderful news that those incessant robo-calls trying to sell us "extended warranties" on our automobiles (whether we had one or not) were being legally blocked. And we had a few days of blessed silence.

But in the past couple of days, my old friends 000-000 have been calling again, and just now I received, bristling with warnings about unauthorized use, a generous offer from those ingenious folks with the extended warranties.

Who are these people? Why do they keep going with the same pitch?

by Cheryl Rofer

Dan Yurman tweeted an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal with the above title. Since he's taking a long weekend, I thought I'd comment on it.

It's a good question, even if the op-ed contains a strong element of politics. There's another question that the op-ed takes more time on, but without much illumination: Should nuclear power be included with wind and solar energy as low in carbon dioxide emissions?

Taking the second question first, certainly the operation of a nuclear plant produces few or no carbon dioxide emissions. But lifetime emissions have to be considered, and I still haven't seen a good comparison for that. Nuclear power plants require a lot of concrete and use of heavy equipment for their construction and more heavy equipment for their eventual decommissioning. Windmills and solar cells require electricity for their refining and manufacture. Windmill components can easily be recycled at the end of their lifetime, solar cells are more difficult.

None of that qualitative analysis tells us which has the least emissions. We need numbers on the carbon dioxide emissions from cement production, from steel and aluminum making, from solar cell production, combined in ways that can be compared for the various energy sources.

On the first question, some of my friends would say that nuclear power is renewable if the breeder cycle is used, so that the uranium-238 becomes a power source (through being transformed into plutonium) as well as the uranium-235. If only the uranium-235 is used, as in the American approach today, then there is a finite amount of uranium-235, which will eventually be exhausted. I guess I wouldn't call either "renewable" in the way that wind and solar are, but, on the other hand, windmills and solar cells wear out and have to be replaced.

by Cheryl Rofer

The media are improving, marginally, at covering diplomacy. They no longer unanimously demand the hat, boots, and lasso as part of the operation. Which is not to say that they're doing a brilliant job, just that this part of their coverage has come up to their general standards.

I'm encouraged to see the improvement, although there are still many voices on the right and the left who insist on clear black and white rather than the gray that characterizes so much of diplomacy (and politics and governance, for that matter).

So I think I'll make this an occasional feature. I've got a couple of other posts I'm working on in different areas and hope to have them up soon.

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

India has run a spectacularly admirable election in terms of democratic process, and the Congress party returns to Parliament with a vastly improved ability to get things done, both reasons for all out celebration. 

V. Prabakaran, the Pol Pot of Sri Lanka, turns out to be a coward killed while fleeing (unsuccessfully) in an ambulance instead of (as he’d pledged his cadres) committing suicide with cyanide,  and Colombo quite understandably erupts in celebration over the end of a quarter century of civil war. 

Ok.  So there’s plenty of hard work ahead for New Delhi and Colombo.  But that doesn’t mean we should rain right away on either parade. 

Meanwhile, with the Swat campaign turning out to be no pushover for the army in Pakistan, it’s much too early to celebrate—and it’s not even clear as to who will be doing the most celebrating over the coming months.  Maybe there’s no reason to panic over the threat from the Taliban, but when you zoom in on the demographic details in Pakistan there’s no reason for smugness either.  Islamization, if it comes, could creep in by degrees—and by decree—rather than brute force.

This is a preview.  Beginning, with India, I’ll follow up with thoughts about Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

By Patricia Lee  Sharpe

Read Maureen Dowd.  Sometimes she’s just snarky.  Sometimes she’s  absolutely right and spares me the pain of writing a clever post to say the same thing.  So let me just follow up a little.

Obama seemed to take a somewhat tougher stand during his conversations with Benyamin Netanyahu, but the proof will be in the pushing---day in, day out---and in, eventually, using the power of the purse.   If ever there was an example of the tail wagging the dog,  the Israel/U.S. relationship is it, and we've had enough of it.  Peace in the Middle East begins not in Iran, as BN reiterated ad nauseum, but with justice for Palestinians.  Israel's  blank check days should be over.  Are they?  Or will the blackmail continue?

I’m happy that Obama is ready to talk with Iran, but I don’t see any attempt to educate Americans as to why Iran’s trust of the US is rightly at eggshell level.  Only on this basis can support for a more balanced policy toward Iran be strengthened.  Start by mentioning the US/UK overthrow of a democratically elected government that wanted to control its own oil resources, Mr. President.  Maybe Americans should know this, but our educational system is pretty lousy when it comes to foreign affairs.  Most people don't even know what the State Department does.

I’m appalled by the flimsy scare-mongering national security chestnuts the administration used to prevent release of the still sequestered Abu Graib/Bagram/Guantanamo photos and by Obama's strange reluctance to promote truth-telling in depth re torture and the general subversion of the Constitution by the Bush administration.  Dickie boy could have written Obama's recent scripts on these topics, and if these evasive and cowardly tactics aren't renounced, the Bush travesties will become the Obama perversions. 

I’m distressed that presidential signing statements have not been wholeheartedly dispensed with and, to the extent that they have been used, that texts are not accessibly and regularly published.  Americans have a right to know in what ways and how frequently the executive is still  attempting to circumvent Congressional intent without having to go (expensively) to court to pry out the information.

by Cheryl Rofer

I haven't done this for some long time. I've got a new camera, this one nice and small for my purse. Got it with those credit-card points that the bankers are now going to take away if they can't overcharge on interest, nyah, nyah, nyah.

Lots of things are blooming in my yard, with lots more to come. I'm pleased at some of my attempts from last year. Perennials are suspenseful the second year. Even if they seem to take during the first year, they may or may not come up the next spring. As usual, some have returned and some haven't.

I'm dedicating this post to a good friend of mine whose father died recently. He loved native Wisconsin flora. Here's some native New Mexico flora, some free-living and some in my flower beds. I'm going to just post the photos with a bit of commentary, no scientific names this time.

By Bill Stewart

President Barack Obama is learning some hard lessons about foreign policy. The war in Afghanistan and Pakistan is no longer George Bush's war; it is now Obama's war. This war doesn't respond to soft options, despite Obama's strategic review completed in March. During the week, the president got rid of Gen David Mckiernan, his top military man in Afghanistan, who was said to be wedded to the failed policies of the past. He was replaced by Lt. Gen Stanley McChrystal, a 6'2" ascetic who is a recognized expert in counter-insurgency. McChrystal is also renowned for his 6:30 am briefings, staff in tow. What his staff thinks of this Spartan regimen has yet to be revealed.

By: Bill Stewart

In 1964, American historian Richard J. Hofstadter wrote a seminal essay for Harper's magazine called "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." It was written at a time when Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater had won the Republican presidential nomination over the more moderate Nelson A. Rockefeller. The essay explored the influence of conspiracy theory and "movements of suspicious discontent" throughout American history. Goldwater, not Reagan, was the godfather of modern American conservatism. He went on to suffer a massive defeat at the hands of the incumbent Democratic President, Lyndon Baines Johnson.

by Cheryl Rofer

I spent two days last week at a conference honoring Robert A. Penneman, Larry Asprey, and Lew Jones. It was something of a homecoming for a chemistry group at Los Alamos that has contributed a lot to actinide chemistry. I wasn’t a part of that group, more of a fellow traveler, but more about that later.

The occasion was the year of 90th birthdays. Bob and Lew were there, but Larry died in 2005. His wife and three of his children came.

Bob, Larry, and Lew worked in the Manhattan Project. As one of the speakers observed, his (and my) generation was the last to work directly for and with the Manhattan Project pioneers. Most of them retired in the eighties. Some came back, occasionally, as consultants.

They are modest people. I keep learning new things. I didn’t realize until last week, for example, that Larry Asprey held the original patent for separating uranium and plutonium with tributyl phosphate, the basis for the PUREX process, which is the only industrial-scale process today for reprocessing nuclear fuel. And on which I got a patent for a photochemical improvement.

Penneman and Asprey were among the American scientists at the 1955 Atoms for Peace conference in Geneva, where American and Soviet scientists were able to discuss nuclear energy with each other for the first time. Here is President Eisenhower’s 1953 speech proposing Atoms for Peace and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

They contributed much to the early study of the actinides: uranium, plutonium, neptunium, curium, berkelium and californium. And they recruited a lot of good people to work at Los Alamos.

Nostalgia Time