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Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Last April in Prague, President Barack Obama gave a speech that many have interpreted as a commitment to significant nuclear disarmament.
Now, however, the White House is requesting one of the larger increases in warhead spending history. If its request is fully funded, warhead spending would rise 10 percent in a single year, with further increases promised for the future. Los Alamos National Laboratory, the biggest target of the Obama largesse, would see a 22 percent budget increase, its largest since 1944. In particular, funding for a new plutonium "pit" factory complex there would more than double, signaling a commitment to produce new nuclear weapons a decade hence.
Now, however, the White House is requesting one of the larger increases in warhead spending history. If its request is fully funded, warhead spending would rise 10 percent in a single year, with further increases promised for the future. Los Alamos National Laboratory, the biggest target of the Obama largesse, would see a 22 percent budget increase, its largest since 1944. In particular, funding for a new plutonium "pit" factory complex there would more than double, signaling a commitment to produce new nuclear weapons a decade hence.
So how is the president's budget compatible with his disarmament vision?
The answer is simple: There is no evidence that Obama has, or ever had, any such vision. He said nothing to that effect in Prague. There, he merely spoke of his commitment "to seek . . . a world without nuclear weapons," a vague aspiration and hardly a novel one at that level of abstraction. He said that in the meantime the United States "will maintain a safe, secure, and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies."
Since nuclear weapons don't, and won't ever, "deter any adversary," this too was highly aspirational, if not futile. The vain search for an "effective" arsenal that can deter "any" adversary requires unending innovation and continuous real investment, including investment in the extended deterrent to which Obama referred. The promise of such investments, and not disarmament, was the operative message in Prague as far as the U.S. stockpile was concerned. In fact, proposed new investments in extended deterrence were already being packaged for Congress when Obama spoke.
To fulfill his supposed "disarmament vision," Obama offered just two approaches in Prague, both indefinite. First, he spoke vaguely of reducing "the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy." It's far from clear what that might actually mean, or even what it could mean. Most likely it refers to official discourse--what officials say about nuclear doctrine--as opposed to actual facts on the ground. Second, Obama promised to negotiate "a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty [START] with the Russians." As far as nuclear disarmament went in the speech, that was it.
Of course, Obama also said his administration would promptly pursue ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, an action not yet taken and one entirely unrelated to U.S. disarmament. The rest of the speech was devoted to various nonproliferation initiatives that his administration planned to seek.
On July 8, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced their Joint Understanding, committing their respective countries to somewhere between 500 to 1,100 strategic delivery vehicles and 1,500 to 1,675 deployed strategic warheads, very modest goals to be achieved a full seven years after the treaty entered into force. Total arsenal numbers wouldn't change, so strategic warheads could be taken from deployment and placed in a reserve--de-alerted, in effect. The treaty wouldn't affect nonstrategic warheads. It wouldn't require dismantlement. As Hans Kristensen at the Federation of American Scientists has explained, the delivery vehicle limits require little, if any, change from U.S. and Russian expected deployments.
Ironically, it's possible that the retirement PDF of 4,000 or more U.S. warheads under the Moscow Treaty and other retirements ordered by George W. Bush may exceed anything Obama does in terms of disarmament. As for the stockpile and weapons complex, Bush's aspirations were far more hawkish than Congress ultimately allowed. Real budgets for warheads fell during his last three years in office. Now, with the Democrats controlling the executive branch and both houses of Congress, congressional restraint is notable by its absence. What Obama mainly seems to be "disarming" is congressional resistance to variations of some of the same proposals Bush found it difficult to authorize and fund.
Last May Obama sent his first budget to Congress, calling for flat warhead spending. At that time, the administration was still displaying a measured approach toward replacement and expansion of warhead capabilities.
That said, in last year's budget the White House did acquiesce to a Pentagon demand to request funding for a major upgrade to four B61 nuclear bomb variants--one of which had just completed a 20-year-plus life-extension program. Just one day before that budget was released a grand nuclear strategy review previously requested by the armed services committees was unveiled. It was chaired by William Perry, a member of the governing board of the corporation that manages Los Alamos, and recurrent Cold War fixture James Schlesinger. [Full disclosure: Perry is also a member of the Bulletin's Board of Sponsors.]
The report's recommendations for increased spending and weapons development quickly began to serve as a rallying point for defense hawks--surely the point of the exercise. Overall, it was largely a conclusory pastiche of recycled Cold War notions, entirely lacking in analysis and often factually wrong. But neither the White House nor leading congressional Democrats offered any public resistance or rebuttal to its conclusions.
More largely, opposition to nuclear restraint within the administration quickly emerged from its usual redoubts at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the Pentagon, STRATCOM, and interested players in both parties in Congress. Plus, Obama left key Bush appointees in place at NNSA while the Pentagon added some familiar faces from the Clinton administration, leaving serious questions about the ability of the White House to develop an independent understanding of the issues, let alone present one to Congress.
Either way, potential treaty ratification is surely a major factor in White House thinking. Senate Republicans, as expected, are demanding significant nuclear investments prior to considering ratification of any START follow-on treaty. Democratic hawks, especially powerful ones with pork-barrel interests at stake such as New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman, also must be satisfied in the ratification process. All in all this makes the latest Obama budget request a kind of "preemptive surrender" to nuclear hawks. So whether or not the president has a disarmament "vision" is irrelevant. What is important are the policy commitments embodied in the budget request and whether Congress will endorse them.
Investments on the scale requested should be flatly unacceptable to all of us. The country and the world face truly apocalyptic security challenges from climate change and looming shortages of transportation fuels. Our economy is very weak and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The proposed increases in nuclear weapons spending, embedded as they are in an overall military budget bigger than any since the 1940s, should be a clarion call for renewed political commitment in service of the fundamental values that uphold this, or any, society.
Those values are now gravely threatened--not least by a White House uncertain about, or unwilling or unable to fight for, what is right.
Lake Erie could freeze over entirely for first time in years
Frozen water tames lake effect, shipping
The power is running out on the Lake Erie snow machine.
And more cold weather could just about pull the plug on it.
The lake is about 90 to 95 percent ice-covered, and more cold temperatures forecast for the next week or so could freeze the entire lake, National Weather Service meteorologists in Cleveland said.
"We're thinking it probably will ice over the rest of the way,'' said weather service meteorologist Karen Oudeman.
Weather service meteorologist Robert LaPlante said Tuesday that the remaining open area extends from Long Point, Ontario, southeast to the New York state shoreline. Satellite images also indicate some waters just north and east of Erie, off Pennsylvania, are also ice-free.
An ice-covered lake could mean good news for winter-weary residents, or not-so-good news for people who can't get enough of the snow.
The ice-over also could mean a later start to the Lake Erie shipping season.
Complete or nearly complete ice cover lessens the chance of lake-effect snowstorms, which occur when cold air passes over warmer bodies of water, building up clouds and dumping snow downwind. Inland snowbelt areas are typically hit the hardest.
"The moisture source really isn't there when it's frozen. There's less moisture to work with,'' Oudeman said.
But here's three reasons why you shouldn't put away your snow shovels and snowblowers just yet:
- The Lake Erie snow machine can be turned on again by small, open areas of water, or high winds that break up the ice. "It's kind of a fragile ice setting out there,'' LaPlante said. "A county or two-sized area opens up and all of a sudden you have (the potential for) a snowstorm.''
Oudeman said even a completely iced-over lake typically has some open pockets of water. "It doesn't usually look like a perfect ice rink, because the wind is pushing ice and water in different directions. It's very dynamic,'' she said.
Even so, small, open areas of water would produce less lake-effect snow, she said.
- While most of our lake-effect snow comes from westerly winds over Lake Erie, some of it comes from Lake Huron, which is mostly still open, LaPlante said.
"If we get a northwest flow of cold, arctic air, it can flow off Lake Huron and affect northwest Pennsylvania,'' he said.
- And synoptic weather systems -- large-scale patterns that affect a larger part of the nation -- could bring snow to northwestern Pennsylvania, too, the meteorologists said. A storm system that started Tuesday, expected to move from Iowa to the East Coast, was such a system, LaPlante said.
The lake hasn't completely frozen over since the winter of 1995-96, though it virtually froze over a year later, at 99.6 percent, on Jan. 28, 1997, said George Leshkevich, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich.
But the ice cover reached 90.2 percent or higher five times from 2000-01 through 2008-09, he said. Leshkevich's data comes from the National Ice Center, an agency that comes under the umbrella of NOAA, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard.
But even at 90 percent, Leshkevich said much of the lake-effect snow potential is diminished.
This season, as of 5 p.m. Tuesday, Erie recorded 62.1 inches of snowfall at Erie International Airport, far below the pace of the seasonal total of 145.8 inches for 2008-09.
But recent ice cover is only one possible reason for the lower amount.
"There is a lot of variability from year to year,'' LaPlante said.
This season, November was mild, cold temperatures in early January gave way to moderate temperatures later in the month, and the region experienced few periods with below-normal temperatures that contribute to lake-effect storms, LaPlante said. Also, he said, the region has been spared large synoptic storms like the one that buried Pittsburgh and much of the East Coast over the weekend.
A complete ice cover of Lake Erie also could affect the multi-billion-dollar Great Lakes shipping trade, said Glen Nekvasil, spokesman for the Lake Carriers' Association, a Cleveland-based trade group representing U.S.-flagged vessels on the Great Lakes.
A later start to the shipping season is possible if "formidable'' ice forms on the lake, though U.S. Coast Guard ice breakers are available, he said. The ice thickness varies throughout the lake, the weather service's Oudeman said.
The U.S. Coast Guard has eight ice breakers stationed in the Great Lakes, and brought a ninth one from the East Coast for this winter, Nekvasil said.
But Nekvasil said only one is modern and capable of operating in all conditions, and he said Canada has scaled back its number of Great Lakes ice breakers.
The shipping season on Lake Erie typically starts about March 15, with coal shipments from Ohio ports to Canada and the United States, Nekvasil said.
The "starting gun'' for the rest of the Great Lakes is typically March 25, with the opening of the Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., he said.
Winter-weary residents have their eyes on a different season, the start of spring on March 20.
But with a lake that could freeze over entirely for the first time in 14 years, that seems like a long way off.
The lake is about 90 to 95 percent ice-covered, and more cold temperatures forecast for the next week or so could freeze the entire lake, National Weather Service meteorologists in Cleveland said.
"We're thinking it probably will ice over the rest of the way,'' said weather service meteorologist Karen Oudeman.
Weather service meteorologist Robert LaPlante said Tuesday that the remaining open area extends from Long Point, Ontario, southeast to the New York state shoreline. Satellite images also indicate some waters just north and east of Erie, off Pennsylvania, are also ice-free.
An ice-covered lake could mean good news for winter-weary residents, or not-so-good news for people who can't get enough of the snow.
The ice-over also could mean a later start to the Lake Erie shipping season.
Complete or nearly complete ice cover lessens the chance of lake-effect snowstorms, which occur when cold air passes over warmer bodies of water, building up clouds and dumping snow downwind. Inland snowbelt areas are typically hit the hardest.
"The moisture source really isn't there when it's frozen. There's less moisture to work with,'' Oudeman said.
But here's three reasons why you shouldn't put away your snow shovels and snowblowers just yet:
- The Lake Erie snow machine can be turned on again by small, open areas of water, or high winds that break up the ice. "It's kind of a fragile ice setting out there,'' LaPlante said. "A county or two-sized area opens up and all of a sudden you have (the potential for) a snowstorm.''
Oudeman said even a completely iced-over lake typically has some open pockets of water. "It doesn't usually look like a perfect ice rink, because the wind is pushing ice and water in different directions. It's very dynamic,'' she said.
Even so, small, open areas of water would produce less lake-effect snow, she said.
- While most of our lake-effect snow comes from westerly winds over Lake Erie, some of it comes from Lake Huron, which is mostly still open, LaPlante said.
"If we get a northwest flow of cold, arctic air, it can flow off Lake Huron and affect northwest Pennsylvania,'' he said.
- And synoptic weather systems -- large-scale patterns that affect a larger part of the nation -- could bring snow to northwestern Pennsylvania, too, the meteorologists said. A storm system that started Tuesday, expected to move from Iowa to the East Coast, was such a system, LaPlante said.
The lake hasn't completely frozen over since the winter of 1995-96, though it virtually froze over a year later, at 99.6 percent, on Jan. 28, 1997, said George Leshkevich, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich.
But the ice cover reached 90.2 percent or higher five times from 2000-01 through 2008-09, he said. Leshkevich's data comes from the National Ice Center, an agency that comes under the umbrella of NOAA, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard.
But even at 90 percent, Leshkevich said much of the lake-effect snow potential is diminished.
This season, as of 5 p.m. Tuesday, Erie recorded 62.1 inches of snowfall at Erie International Airport, far below the pace of the seasonal total of 145.8 inches for 2008-09.
But recent ice cover is only one possible reason for the lower amount.
"There is a lot of variability from year to year,'' LaPlante said.
This season, November was mild, cold temperatures in early January gave way to moderate temperatures later in the month, and the region experienced few periods with below-normal temperatures that contribute to lake-effect storms, LaPlante said. Also, he said, the region has been spared large synoptic storms like the one that buried Pittsburgh and much of the East Coast over the weekend.
A complete ice cover of Lake Erie also could affect the multi-billion-dollar Great Lakes shipping trade, said Glen Nekvasil, spokesman for the Lake Carriers' Association, a Cleveland-based trade group representing U.S.-flagged vessels on the Great Lakes.
A later start to the shipping season is possible if "formidable'' ice forms on the lake, though U.S. Coast Guard ice breakers are available, he said. The ice thickness varies throughout the lake, the weather service's Oudeman said.
The U.S. Coast Guard has eight ice breakers stationed in the Great Lakes, and brought a ninth one from the East Coast for this winter, Nekvasil said.
But Nekvasil said only one is modern and capable of operating in all conditions, and he said Canada has scaled back its number of Great Lakes ice breakers.
The shipping season on Lake Erie typically starts about March 15, with coal shipments from Ohio ports to Canada and the United States, Nekvasil said.
The "starting gun'' for the rest of the Great Lakes is typically March 25, with the opening of the Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., he said.
Winter-weary residents have their eyes on a different season, the start of spring on March 20.
But with a lake that could freeze over entirely for the first time in 14 years, that seems like a long way off.
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