Crosscurrents Presents Nora Marks Dauenhauer, Alaska's Writer Laureate, Tuesday at the Wilda Marston Theater

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On Bears, the Chelyabinsk Event, the Tunguska Event, John Bolton, Chuck Hagel - and Other Matters

Artist's impression of 1908 Tunguska explosion

At the Booman Tribune, BooMan speculates about actual and hypothetical reactions to Thursday's explosion in the sky over the Siberian region near Chelyabinsk.  He is concerned that had the explosion happened at the height of Cold War tensions, and in another region of the world, the explosion might have been misread as a hostile nuclear explosion, and provoked a thermonuclear response from the USA or USSR.  BooMan ties this in with an episode on Carl Sagan's Cosmos, and the interception back in early February, near Guam of a Russian Tu-95 Bear long range patrol aircraft:

Russia sent a couple of nuclear-capable bombers to circle around Guam, forcing us to scramble intercepters. This makes me a little nervous on a day that a meteorite blew up in the Russian sky with more power than the bombs we dropped on Japan. Carl Sagan once did an episode of Cosmos dedicated to discussing The Tunguska Event. The Tunguska Event was a still not perfectly understood catastrophe that happened in Siberia in 1908. It was probably a comet, a fragment of a comet, or an asteroid that exploded in the air and caused non-radioactive damage equivalent to our first test with a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb. Dr. Sagan pointed out that a similar explosion in the nuclear age might have been interpreted as an attack which required full scale retaliation, thereby ending all intelligent life on Earth.

It is beginning to appear, according to NASA, that the explosion was even more powerful than what BooMan relates:

The 55 foot wide rock, said by Nasa to have a mass of 10,000 tonnes, lit up the sky above the Urals region on Friday morning, causing shockwaves that injured 1,200 people and damaged thousands of homes in an event unprecedented in modern times.  

Nasa estimated that the energy released as the meteor's disintigrated in the atmosphere was 500 kilotons, around 30 times the size of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.  

It entered the atmosphere at 44,000 miles per hour, taking 32.5 seconds to break up at an altitude of around 15 miles above the earth's surface.

That is a lot of energy.  However, it is still only about 1 percent of the power of the largest hydrogen bomb explosion on record, the 50 megaton Tsar Bomba.  The May, 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens in Washington state, was measured at 24 megatons.

BooMan, comparing the Cold War, Chelyabinsk, Tunguska and the Guam overfly by a Bear aircraft, as prescient as his article is, missed a couple of points.

The first is that conservative media coverage of the Guam near-overflight  in the Washington Free Beacon makes it out to be something out of the ordinary (emphasis added):

Two Russian nuclear-armed bombers circled the western Pacific island of Guam this week in the latest sign of Moscow’s growing strategic assertiveness toward the United States.

The Russian Tu-95 Bear-H strategic bombers were equipped with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and were followed by U.S. jets as they circumnavigated Guam on Feb. 12 local time—hours before President Barack Obama’s state of the union address.

The article adds:

The bomber incident was considered highly unusual. Russian strategic bombers are not known to have conducted such operations in the past into the south Pacific from bomber bases in the Russian Far East, which is thousands of miles away and over water.

However, NBC News actually quotes USAF sources, and states:

According to one military official, the Russian Bear bombers remained in international airspace, the encounter between the U.S. and Russian aircraft “stayed professional” and there was no incident. The official said it’s impossible to determine whether the Russian bombers carried any nuclear weapons.

The NBC article goes on:

U.S. military officials say “it’s highly unusual but not unprecedented” that Russian bombers would fly training missions in the vicinity of Guam. According to one official, “It wasn’t provocative but it certainly got our attention.” U.S. long-range B-52 bombers, also capable of carrying nuclear weapons, are based at Guam.

Not unprecedented actually minimizes what happened.

There is an extraordinarily high amount of military activity going on in the Pacific recently.  The USA is pressuring Australia to increase basing of our military personnel significantly.  Japan and China are feuding over islands, atolls, rocks  and reefs.  North Korea's intent to explode another nuclear device has been known or predicted for a while.  They actually informed most local governments and the USA of their intent to test the weapon.

Tu-95's and their Russian naval version, the Tu-142, have been around the Pacific for over 55 years.  They've been around Alaska for all that time.  Here's a picture of one being intercepted near US territory in the 1950s, by a Canadian F-101, an aircraft removed from frontline service in the 1960s:

Here's a picture of one intercepted near Alaska recently:

The Washington Beacon article goes on to quote conservative nutcase, John Bolton:

John Bolton, former U.N. ambassador and former State Department international security undersecretary, said the Russian bomber flights appear to be part of an increasingly threatening strategic posture in response to Obama administration anti-nuclear policies.  

“Every day brings new evidence that Obama’s ideological obsession with dismantling our nuclear deterrent is dangerous,” Bolton said. “Our national security is in danger of slipping off the national agenda even as the threats grow.”

The second thing BooMan and others miss is that the Beacon article goes on to point out that somewhat "unprecedented" joint military activities are being conducted on Guam, led by the USA.

Russia has a huge amount of coast bordering on the Pacific rim.  They are currently developing large offshore oil and gas reserves in the Sakhalin and Sea of Okhotsk areas.  50-year old Russian reconnaissance aircraft keeping tabs on potentially challenging developments are normal, not "unusual."  I've witnessed aspects of it myself.  Long ago.

Back in late August, 1982, I was on the crew of the Crowley tug, Sea Giant, exiting the Arctic, after having brought the icebreaking barge Arctic Challenger from Seattle to Prudhoe Bay, and then picking up another barge in Kotzebue.  We were headed through the Bering Strait, en route to Captain's Bay, Unalaska.

Sea Giant 1982 - drawing by Philip Munger

As we approached the narrow portion of the straits, two IL-38 aircraft were observed from deck and bridge, circling us.  One stayed fairly high, over 5,000 feet above.  The other descended to under 500 feet.  It began making runs at our tug and barge from several aspects, particularly checking where we had just been.

Indian Navy IL-38

On the bridge, the captain and first mate were speaking softly to each other, then they chuckled. I asked the first mate what was up.  He told me, "We're probably masking a 'boomer.'"

He explained that ballistic missile-equipped nuclear submarines often took advantage of the turbulence in the wakes of barges going through the straits to either enter or exit Arctic waters.  The Bering Straits are so shallow it would be hard to hide a sub's movement through it, even underwater, unless somehow masked.

In spite of the Washington Free Beacon and John Bolton's takes on this, these games have been going on for generations, and will no doubt continue for a long time.

There have been close calls.  There will be more.

Let's hope people like John Bolton are not in positions to make decisions then.  Far better for Chuck Hagels to make split-second decisions.

Come Listen to the Chugach Brass Perform My Aleutian Sketches Saturday in Soldotna

Volcano Woman by John Hoover - Anchorage Egan Center - image by Philip Munger

Back in 2010, the University of Alaska Anchorage resident brass trio, the Chugach Brass, commissioned me to compose music for an upcoming concert they were to perform in Unalaska.  I decided to honor the Unalaska-Dutch Harbor area, and the Aleutians.  The result, Aleutian Sketches, for trumpet, French horn, trombone and piano, received its premiere in Unalaska in May, 2010.

The last movement of the four-movement suite honors my favorite sculpture (at the top of this post) by the late Alaska Native sculptor, John Hoover.  Volcano Woman is the Native art centerpiece of the main lobby of Anchorage's Egan Center.  I wrote about his sculpture and my music about it two years ago.

The Chugach Brass will be playing a lot of other works in Soldotna Saturday.  Here are links to two articles about the upcoming concert.

7:30 pm Saturday at Christ Lutheran Church

Here are the Chugach Brass, performing Aleutian Sketches, in October 2011, at UAA:

Come Hear About Envision Mat-Su Today at the Bartlett Club

Obama Inaction on Climate Change Forces Historic Sierra Club White House Civil Disobediance

Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune is arrested outside the White House

In regard to the pressing, growing catastrophes caused by human-induced climate change, which are killing thousands, and promise to kill millions, if not billions of people in the future, Obama has mostly done what he's best at: lie a little, promise a little, and kick the fucking can down the road a bit further.  His dithering on the Keystone XL pipeline is a case in point.

Frustration on this issue alone has forced the Sierra Club to reverse its 120-year old policy regarding civil disobedience:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Prominent environmental leaders, including the head of the Sierra Club, were arrested Wednesday after tying themselves to the White House gate to protest the Keystone XL oil pipeline. 

Executive director Michael Brune is the first Sierra Club leader in the group's 120-year history to be arrested in an act of civil disobedience. The club's board of directors approved the action as a sign of their opposition to the $7 billion pipeline, which would carry oil derived from tar sands in western Canada to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast. 

Activist Bill McKibben, actress Daryl Hannah, civil rights leader Julian Bond and environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also were arrested Wednesday, along with several dozen other activists. 

The protesters are demanding that President Barack Obama reject the pipeline, which they say would carry "dirty oil" that contributes to global warming. They also worry about a spill.

Here's Democracy Now's coverage of this historic event, from today's edition:
I've been criticized for not taking Obama's inaugural address comments on the environment at face value.  Believe me, I hope that I am wrong.

We should be getting better signs soon on whether or not there will be meaningful changes on major issues during Obama's second term.  March 7th is the date that the Department of Interior's review of Shell oil's Arctic Drilling program is due to be made public.

Meanwhile, the Obama White House-linked Department of Interior Office of Inspector General continues to put pressure on Shell's and Obama's witch hunt target, Dr. Charles Monnett:

Washington, DC — The U.S. Department of Interior has found no scientific error in a high profile research paper by its scientists on sightings of polar bears drowned in open water following a storm, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). This is another black eye for the agency’s Office of Inspector General (IG), which has waged a controversial but fruitless campaign against the paper’s authors for nearly three years.  

Since March 2010 the IG has vigorously pursued unspecified allegations about the peer-reviewed observational note published in a 2006 issue of the journal Polar Ecology, which galvanized public understanding of the effects of sea ice loss and other climate changes in the Arctic. The lead author is Dr. Charles Monnett, a senior scientist with Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).  

In late September 2012, the IG finally published its investigative report into the matter after BOEM rejected the IG recommendations that it take actions relative to both the paper and a joint U.S./Canadian polar bear research project. In a highly unusual step, the IG re-opened the case after it had been closed in order to request that BOEM commence a new scientific misconduct investigation. In a January 23, 2013 memo, Dr. Bradley Blythe, the BOEM Scientific Integrity Officer, rebuffed this latest IG overture:  

“Upon completion of my review, I have no findings of violations of the DOI Policy on Scientific and Scholarly Integrity [citation omitted] that would merit a further review of this case…I consider this matter closed.”  

Despite this second turn-down, the case remains in an open status while the “office is evaluating the response from the bureau,” according to an IG official in a February 8, 2013 email.  

“This outcome only underlines that this entire investigation was a misbegotten travesty that should never have taken place,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, whose organization provided legal representation for the scientists. “We can only hope that the IG’s Lazarus-like vendetta does not rise from the grave again. What part of ‘No’ doesn’t the IG understand?”

The part of "no" the DoI IG doesn't understand is the part, probably coming from the White House, that Monnett must be made an example of - like Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, and dozens of other whistleblowers Obama's people have hounded, tortured or imprisoned.  Other potential whistleblowers see this, and decide "No fucking way am I going to stick my head up!"

Two Valentines Day Salmon Thoughts - from Ray Troll and Mark Begich

Above, is Ray Troll's Valentine.

Below, is a frankenfish cartoon.

Sen. Mark Begich, on facebook this morning:

What did the Frankenfish say to the Atlantic Salmon on Valentine’s Day?  

I want to get in your genes.

Happy Valentines Day!

Chas Freeman on U.S. Grand Strategy Failures in the Middle East

Former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and President Emeritus of the Middle East Policy Council, Chas Freeman spoke there four weeks ago. He's a realist, which makes him unpopular in Washington D.C, particularly among those who are often called "Israel- Firsters."

Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (Former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia; Former President, MEPC) argues that the state of Israel craves land more than peace and that the U.S. de facto abandonment of the two-state solution is a boon for settlement expansion and harmful to U.S. influence in the region. He asserts that U.S. support for Israel, combined with anti-Islamism and growing use of drones, precludes a U.S. grand strategy in the Middle East.  

From the Middle East Policy Council's 71st Capitol Hill Conference, "U.S. Grand Strategy in the Middle East: Is there One?" This event was held January 16, 2013, in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC. Full video and an unedited transcript can be found at www.mepc.org.

Kulluk and Noble Discoverer to Both Be “Dry Towed” to Asia for Costly Repairs

Drill Rig Nautilus, being "dry towed" by Black Marlin

Shell Oil has finally gone public with the story first carried anywhere back in January by firedoglake, that their conical drill rig, Kulluk, will be taken from Kiliuda Bay in Kodiak to Asia for major repairs. Additionally, their powered drill rig, Noble Discoverer, berthed in Seward, Alaska since being impounded by the U.S. Coast Guard in November, will be "dry towed" across the North Pacific to a shipyard in Asia.

Their destination is almost certainly South Korea:

Both the much maligned Noble Discoverer and Kulluk, who have faced serious mechanical difficulties since completing Arctic drilling operations off of Alaska's Arctic Continental Shelf last summer, will be headed to Asia soon according to a statement from Shell Alaska spokesman Curtis Smith. 

The Kulluk, which has remained anchored off of Kodiak Island since its New Year's Eve grounding, will be towed from there to the international Port of Dutch Harbor pending a tow plan approval. From Dutch Harbor, the 266-foot diameter conical drilling unit will then be dry-towed to a ship yard in Asia with a suitable dry dock. 

The Discoverer's operator, Noble Drilling Corp., will also dry-tow the Discoverer from its current location in Seward to South Korea. 

“The outcome of further inspections for both rigs will determine the shipyard schedule and timing of their return to service,” Smith said in the statement. 

When exactly the rigs will leave Alaska is unclear. A representative from Unified Command, the joint operation involving Shell, U.S. Coast Guard and Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, could not say whether the vessel remained in Kiliuda Bay Monday. They noted that the latest information on the vessel was on the command's website -- which hasn't been updated since Jan. 30.

A "dry tow" or "dry-tow" is movement of a vessel on the deck of a large, semi-submerible ship, or powered, floating drydock.

For some reason, the transponders of all the vessels in and around the Kulluk in Kiliuda Bay, were turned off on January 30th and 31st, two days after I announced the contemplated Asia decision, and the same day Dan Joling from the Associated Press picked up the story, so it is difficult to know where the tug Aiviq is right now, for instance.

Lisa Demer, writing on the new development early this morning for the Anchorage Daily News, notes:

It has big vessels for the dry tows lined up, and the Noble Discoverer will leave Seward in three to six weeks for a trip across the Pacific Ocean that should take two to four weeks, Smith said. 

In a dry tow, a large vessel submerges through added ballast below the draft of the rig to be towed, Smith explained. That allows the drilling rig to float over the vessel's deck, and the tow vessel is raised up, with the drill rig on its deck for the tow. It's a faster method than towing on the water.

There are rumors that Shell is searching the world for replacement vessels, as it appears neither the Kulluk nor the Noble Discoverer will even be reaching a yard before mid to late April.

Investigations into the grounding and Shell's 2013 Alaska Arctic drilling season by the U.S. Coast Guard; the U.S. Department of the Interior; the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard; and possibly the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources, will begin within a few weeks. No precise information on any of these has yet been released.

This story may be updated later Tuesday.

Envision Mat-Su at the Bartlett Club Thursday

Help the Alaska Democrats Stop SB 80 - Join the Phone Banks!

From Zack Fields at Alaska Democrats:

Big news in Juneau today: The State Senate delayed a vote to repeal the 2006 citizens' initiative on cruise ship sewage releases.

The legislature would have passed the bill today if so many Alaskans hadn't called and emailed the legislature to express their outrage about Parnell's bill (HB 80)--thank you to those of you who have spoken out already.

The battle is far from over: 

On Wednesday at 11am the Senate will consider this bill again, and the final vote could be close. Please stay active and help stop this bill.

In Anchorage, there will be a phone bank at 406 G Street Suite 212 both tonight and tomorrow. 

Show up from 5:00-8:00. Call 868-9023 for more information or to get a call list if you don't live in Anchorage.

Advice from Cokk Inletkeeper: