Fuel supply lines are perhaps the Achilles' heal of the world's most powerful military. It was in response to that reality and not anything touchy-feely green energy enthusiasm that was behind our military's interest in alternative energy. It's about national security. It's about saving lives.
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Seeing as a good deal of this fuel was to run diesel electricity generators for the military, there was the impetus for developing alternatives such as solar electricity generation.
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Marine Corps Gazette: "Surging troops means surging supplies. Currently, “roughly one half of logistics tonnage . . . is solely the movement of fuel.â€4 Improvised explosive device (IED) attacks have doubled year after year since they were first used in Afghanistan, and their uptake continues to intensify. In July 2009 there were 828 IED attacks, up from 230 in July 2007.5 Today, 75 percent of allied casualties result from IEDs.6 This metric is even more significant when compared against the fact that 75 percent of all NATO supplies travel by road from the Pakistani port of Karachi via just two treacherous mountain passes (Khyber and Khojak) into Afghanistan.7 “From Karachi to Kabul there is trouble,†said Rahmanullah, a Pakistani truck driver. He added, “The whole route is insecure.â€"
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In addition to a tactical concern about oil truck conveys' there's a more broad strategic concern in terms of the military, like the US itself, being held hostage to foreign sources of oil.
In addition to tactical concerns about fuel security are concerns of direct impacts that greenhouse gas emissions pose to national security. All one need do is think in terms of the billion or so people living along coast lines being severely impacted by just one foot of sea level rise. The Pentagon's own study, National Security and the Threat of Climate Change, explores ways in which projected climate change is a "threat multiplier" in already fragile regions of the world at risk of becoming failed states and hence breeding grounds for extremism and terrorism.
Then again, there's reality and there are today's Republicans, and the two seem to be further apart by the day.
NPR:Â Senate Panel Reigns in Pentagon on Clean Energy: The moves by the Senate panel follow even tougher steps in the Republican-controlled House challenging the Pentagon's investment in clean energy. That version of the defense bill would bar the military from buying alternative fuels if the cost exceeds traditional fossil fuels. The bill also exempts the Pentagon from some requirements under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which is designed to increase production of clean renewable fuels.
It's not enough that carbon energy interests trump the well being of future generations? Carbon energy interests now must trump national security too? Is there no end to what must be sacrificed in the service of this addiction to fossil carbon energy?
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Comments: 10
because
the world is run by and for big oil
Oh yah!
Q:And how much oil did we get from that war in Iraq?
A: None!
Oh here's an idea let’s make 60 ton Tank that runs and fights on alternative power like solar energy along with helicopter gunships and fighter aircraft that rely on alternative energy along with solar powered battery operated vehicles that transport our troops, that's sounds a good idea doesn't it chaps.
Now watch our country’s being taken over by the countries that use fossil fuel to power their military vehicles. While the chaps in the 60-ton Tanks try to peddle their way into battle as the helicopter gunships try to get off the ground along with fighter aircraft and the vehicles that are being pushed by the soldiers trying to either get to safety or trying to get to the frontline fighting base
Dear God in heaven I give up Dan I really do I'm waving the white flag of surrender to these people, I have taken my white shirt of and I’m waving it above my head in a token gesture of surrender. We are all doomed God help us.
But when the right wing does shit like this, I just go berserk?
It's not enough to be maladaptive by yourselves? No? You've got to stop anybody else from facing facts.
A carbon tax, which is a reasonable rational way to respond to greenhouse gas emissions, has been successfully blockaded by the right.
Cap and trade has blockaded.
The EPA has been defacto blockaded from regulating carbon.
But. There was still this tiny small ray of a shread of a hope for humanity, which, ironically, had been a gift from the George II administration. The military was going to give bio-fuels and solar electricity a huge boost.
And you know what? This small thing could just possibly do the triick, and renewables quite likely could get to where they could compete head to head with carbon energy without even having to factor in the cost to humanity of rendering planet Earth uninhabitable.
But no. Even that door has to be slammed shut by the right wing. Stupid ma f'ers. I'm sorry, but that's how it is.
""These milestones are always worth noting," said economist Myron Ebell at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute. "As carbon dioxide levels have continued to increase, global temperatures flattened out, contrary to the models" used by climate scientists and the United Nations.
He contends temperatures have not risen since 1998, which was unusually hot.
Temperature records contradict that claim. Both 2005 and 2010 were warmer than 1998, and the entire decade of 2000 to 2009 was the warmest on record, according to NOAA."
You're right, ricochet. There's a generation of youngins coming who do see the writing on the wall, who do get it, who will get the impossible done, no sweat.
I'm just sorry that my piss poor excuse for a generation was such a disappointment all around.