Recent Articles America Fiddles While The Mid East Burns Iran: If Diplomacy Fails Spiraling Toward a Nuclear Exchange The Bear Is Awake Torture, Terrorist Rights & American Lives Click here for more articles by Lee Boyland About Lee Boyland Lee Boyland earned a degree in nuclear engineering, then entered active duty as an officer in the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps. A graduate of the U.S. Navy’s Explosive and Nuclear Ordnance Disposal Schools, Boyland was assigned to the Defense Atomic Support Agency in Albuquerque, NM. A member of DASA’s Nuclear Emergency Team responsible for nuclear weapons accidents, including the rendering safe of armed nuclear warheads, he had access to the design details of every nuclear and thermonuclear warhead developed by the United States through the Mark 63 warhead. His duties took him to the Nevada Test Site on many occasions. After leaving the Army, he designed conventional and special ordnance, and demilitarized chemical weapons at Rocky Mountain Arsenal and Tooele Army Depot. He made the transition to hazardous waste management by applying aerospace combustion technology to incineration of Agent Orange. He is the author of The Rings of Allah and Behold, an Ashen Horse, which received critical acclaim by the Military Writers Society of America. Click here to email Lee Boyland

Lee Boyland

The Bear Is Awake
August 14, 2008

After a fifteen-year hibernation, the Russian Bear has awakened, but few have noticed.

While one leader looked into the sleepy Bear’s eyes and got a sense of his gentle soul, another leader looked and remembered the specter of the K...G...B.

Many of America’s leaders, bathed warmly in the touchy-feely (T/F) politics of a green future, peace, assimilation, dialog, multiculturalism, and political correctness, thought the Bear harmless. Ignoring the warning signs of the Bear’s growing power, America and its allies in the West have become so consumed with their own carbon footprints that they have failed to recognize the signs of increasing Bear tracks around the world.

Take for example the September, 2007, when the US Air Force intercepted several Tupolev-95 Bear bombers as they approached our Alaskan coast line. Then, in February 2008, while America’s leaders smiled in true T/F fashion and bought more carbon offsets, audacious Russian pilots grew even bolder when one Bear pilot twice buzzed (flew directly over) the U.S. nuclear aircraft carrier CVN-68 Nimitz, at a low altitude of 2,000 feet, while another bomber circled 58 miles out in the Pacific—a provocation which was ignored by the U.S.

During the Cold War, such blatant challenges were met with similar flights of B-52s toward the Soviet Union. However, today’s T/F leaders paid more attention to the rights of ANWR’s grizzly Bears, than to the looming threat of an awakened Russian Bear, stalking oil rich allies and gobbling up its own natural resources in its renewed quest for world domination.

While the Bear was cozying up to Iran and taking over its own petroleum industry with its huge oil and gas reserves, America’s clueless politicians were selling the electorate their pie-in-the-sky pledge to make America energy independent in five years, a feat they swore could be accomplished—using nonexistent technology. Sheep that we are, some of us actually bought their rhetoric!

Like it or not, we have no one to blame but ourselves for electing technically-ignorant, emotionally-driven representatives whose political ambitions have been swayed – possibly even controlled—by one man. Our former vice president, who once claimed he invented the internet, today spends his time emulating Chicken Little’s hysteria by running about claiming—the planet is melting, the planet is melting. According to his solution, we are directly responsible for our energy crisis, as well as for global warming, because of the amount of carbon-based energy we are producing. Therefore if we work together by driving electric cars, generating electricity from windmill farms, using ethanol and methanol in our nasty internal combustion engines, or by replacing them with Hydrogen powered automobiles, we can reduce global warming, and our energy dependence on foreign oil will miraculously disappear. And, if this is not enough, you can purchase "carbon offsets.” The former vice president will gladly sell them to you. One must wonder if he has a green manufacturing facility to produce them?

If you don’t think the T/Fs love this kind of talk, just listen to most politicians! They lay it on thick at every opportunity, hoping to keep us so bamboozled that we run right out to buy a new alternative fuel vehicle, and/or call our broker to invest in alternative fuel futures. But before you do that, you might want to ask a Greenie where the hydrogen automobile dealers are. Or, ask where you can fill up with good old hydrogen (which is a very dangerous gas to handle).

Natural gas fueled vehicles? The hard fact is that while existing internal combustion engines can be converted to operate on natural gas, no network of fuel stations to support them currently exists. Electric cars require very large battery compartments. How long does it take to charge an electric car’s batteries? How many kilowatts equal a fill-up? How may miles between charges. Hybrids are somewhat more efficient, but still require a petroleum based fuel.

With all this to-do about greenhouse gases, carbon footprints, and alternative sources of energy, it is no wonder the public is confused. Sir Isaac Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. To meet the demands for ethanol, corn was diverted to ethanol production. The resulting opposite reaction is rising prices and looming food shortages. It’s no wonder that people are panic buying. Recent shortages of rice and flour are evidence of this hysteria, as the regulatory-driven switch to ethanol blended fuels continues to escalate. The Law of Unintended Consequences is real, and is often brought into play by ignorant and uninformed demagogues pretending to help the people.

According to research, ethanol, if used in amounts above ten percent, can damage existing engines. One gallon of ethanol contains thirty percent less energy than one gallon of gasoline. If your SUV gets ten miles per gallon on pure gasoline, it will get seven miles per gallon on pure ethanol. Methanol has even lower energy content. A total ethanol energy analysis (energy used to plant, fertilize, cultivate, harvest, and transport corn, and energy contained in ethanol produced) shows using ethanol to be less efficient than gasoline—and more greenhouse gases are produced.

The sad reality is that, according to current trends, our elected leaders seem intent on forcing our great country to change to unproven, questionable, energy sources, with no concept of how to calculate the nation’s energy requirement or how to do an energy balance for ethanol and methanol fuels.

Don’t misunderstand, several alternative technologies are feasible. Hydrogen power is coming. But all of this is decades away. Manufacturing, distribution, and infrastructure must be developed. When the Greenies talk about switching to "energy efficient” automobiles they ignore three problems: availability of energy efficient vehicles; their higher cost; and what to do with existing internal combustion vehicles—most of which are not paid for. Are we expected to junk our current vehicles and buy new ones? Switching from one technology to another is a long-term affair. In the meantime, we require oil—safe oil not controlled by OPEC or by the Bear.

Wind farms can provide a small but viable answer to some of our electrical power requirements—but there is a problem. It seems the NIMBY (not in my back yard) syndrome is alive and well in the Green community. Senator Ted Kennedy, a great Greenie liberal objected to having a wind farm off shore from his cottage on Martha’s Vineyard! Will other Greenies have NIMBY attacks? And, lest we forget, the former VP’s huge home in Tennessee consumes enough electricity to light and heat twenty "normal” homes.

NIMBYs may well be a factor in the construction of nuclear power generating plants, a proven, safe technology. Several permits for such plants have been submitted. How many years or decades will be spent in the permitting process? Lawsuits can be expected. Will the Greenies join them?

In the meantime, Nancy and Harry continue to dance the Carbon Footprint Waltz, while the Bear is at the buffet table ogling the snacks: Georgia, Romania, Ukraine, Belarus, and Azerbaijan. Yummy!

Now the Bear is standing on its hind legs—roaring and reclaiming his territory and selling advanced weapons and nuclear technology to our avowed enemy, Iran. Confident he can control them, the Bear appears willing to set the Islamic crazies in the Middle East loose. Can the Bear control the crazies? Can anyone?

Predatory animals know stealth, cunning, and timing is important. The Soviet Bear chose Christmas Eve for its 1989 invasion of Afghanistan. Now the Russian Bear has chosen the 2008 summer Olympic Games for its invasion of Georgia. If successful, Georgia is but the first of many more conquests to come. Will we let the Bear reclaim its territory? Can we stop him?

The Cold War is back, and more deadly than before, and most of our leaders don’t have a clue. Warning flags have been flying, and trial balloons have been successfully flown: the latest balloon was the possibility of stationing Russian bombers in Cuba.

In a few short years the gateway to the International Space Station will be in Bear territory. Now isn’t that a pleasant thought?