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Showing posts with label Arctic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arctic. Show all posts

Friday, December 13, 2013

Flashback 1974: NCAR Blamed ‘Dramatic Climate Anomalies’ on Growing Arctic Ice


By: - Climate DepotDecember 12, 2013 9:36 AM with 419 comments
[Related: Watch CNN climate debate about record cold and snow being used as 'proof' of global warming ]
Via Real Science
Excerpt from 1974 NCAR report:
Climate Change and its Effect on  World Food
by Walter Orr Roberts  Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, and National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado
In February of 1972 earth-orbiting artificial satellites revealed the existence of a greatly increased area of the snow and ice cover of the north polar cap as compared to all previous years of space age observations. Some scientists believe that this may have presaged the onset of the dramatic climate anomalies of 1972 that brought far-reaching adversities to the world’s peoples. Moreover, there is mounting evidence that the bad climate of 1972 may be the forerunner of a long series of less favorable agricultural crop years that lie ahead for most world societies. Thus widespread food shortages threaten just at the same time that world populations are growing to new highs. Indeed, less favorable climate may be the new global norm. The Earth may have entered a new “little ice age”
There are strong signs that these recent climate disasters were not random deviations from the usual weather, but instead signals of the emergence of a new normal for world climates.
www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull165/16505796265.pdf
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A key Hawaii official in the dispute over Barack Obama’s birth certificate – who lifted state restrictions to allow the White House to present the document to the public – has died in a plane crash.
Loretta Fuddy, the state health department director, was the only fatality among nine people aboard a Cessna Grand Caravan that went down at about 3:15 p.m. on Wednesday while heading to Honolulu.
Loretta Fuddy
Richard Schuman, president of Makani Kai Air, told NBC that the other eight people aboard were rescued from the site of the water crash.
KITV-TV in Honolulu reported Fuddy had been on health department business. Keith Yamamoto, the department’s deputy director, also was aboard and survived.
Makani Kai officials said it was was the company’s first fatality.
WND has reported since before the 2008 election on the dispute over Obama’s birth documentation.
Fuddy was appointed health director by Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who issued a statement in response to her death.
“Our hearts are broken,” he said, according to USA Today. “Loretta was deeply loved and respected. She was selfless, utterly dedicated and committed to her colleagues in the Department of Health and to the people of Hawaii. Her knowledge was vast; her counsel and advice always given from her heart as much as from her storehouse of experience.”
Recently she had been working on the state’s Obamacare website.
When he took office in 2010, Abercrombie, who claimed to have had a relationship with Obama’s parents in Hawaii as a fellow student, vowed to settle the birth certificate dispute once and for all. He finally gave up, however, insisting he didn’t have the necessary legal authority.
Read all the arguments in the birth certificate controversy, in “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” and check out the special reports, banners and bumper stickers on the subject.
Abercrombie told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser regarding Obama’s birth documentation: “It actually exists in the archives, written down.” The London Daily Mail reported, however, Abercrombie “suggested that a long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate for Barack Obama may not exist within the vital records maintained by the Hawaii Department of Health.”
Later, Obama asked for copies of the document, and under Fuddy, the state instantly waived a long-claimed ban on reproducing long-form birth certificates. On Fuddy’s instructions, copies were produced and delivered to Judith Corley, a private attorney for Obama.
Fuddy had written to Obama: “We hope that issuing you these copies of your original Certificate of Live Birth will end the numerous inquiries received by the Hawaii Department of Health to produce this document.”
Immediately after the delivered copy was posted on the White House website, however,  numerous computer graphics and software experts declared it fraudulent.
The birth certificate dispute centers on the constitutional requirement that a president be a “natural-born citizen.” Some argue that even if Obama was born in Hawaii, he was does not qualify because his father was a Kenyan citizen.
Still a live issue
The one official law enforcement investigation into the issue, conducted on the orders of Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio, concluded the document posted by the White House is a forgery.
Arpaio has said the investigation is ongoing and more evidence has been discovered to bolster his team’s conclusion.
WND reported Mike Zullo, the lead investigator for Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse in Arizona, has contributed evidence to a court case pending before the Alabama Supreme Court.
He has testified that the White House computer image of Obama’s birth certificate contains anomalies that are unexplainable unless the document had been fabricated piecemeal by human intervention, rather than being copied from a genuine paper document.
“Mr. Obama has in fact not offered any verifiable authoritative document of any legal significance or possessing any evidentiary value as to the origins of his purported birth narrative or location of the birth event,” he explained. “One of our most serious concerns is that the White House document appears to have been fabricated piecemeal on a computer, constructed by drawing together digitized data from several unknown sources.”
Zullo also has noted that the governor of Hawaii was unable to produce an original birth document for Obama, and it should have been easy to find.
See some of Zullo’s evidence:
More recently, Grace Vuoto of the World Tribune reported that among the experts challenging the birth certificate is certified document analyst Reed Hayes, who has served as an expert for Perkins Coie, the law firm that has been defending Obama in eligibility cases.
“We have obtained an affidavit from a certified document analyzer, Reed Hayes, that states the document is a 100 percent forgery, no doubt about it,” Zullo told the World Tribune.
“Mr. Obama’s operatives cannot discredit [Hayes],” the investigator told the news outlet. “Mr. Hayes has been used as the firm’s reliable expert. The very firm the president is using to defend him on the birth certificate case has used Mr. Hayes in their cases.”
The Tribune reported Hayes agreed to take a look at the documentation and called almost immediately.
“There is something wrong with this,” Hayes said.
Hayes produced a 40-page report in which he says “based on my observations and findings, it is clear that the Certificate of Live Birth I examined is not a scan of an original paper birth certificate, but a digitally manufactured document created by utilizing material from various sources.”
“In over 20 years of examining documentation of various types, I have never seen a document that is so seriously questionable in so many respects. In my opinion, the birth certificate is entirely fabricated,” he says in the report.
Investigator Douglas J. Hagmann of the Northeast Intelligence Network reported this month that in October an affidavit was filed in a court case, under seal, that purportedly identifies the creator of the Obama birth certificate.
He said Douglas Vogt, an author and the owner and operator of a scanning business who also has an accounting background, invested over two years in an investigation of the authenticity of document.
Vogt, along with veteran typesetter Paul Ivey, conducted “exhaustive research of the document provided to the White House Press Corps on April 27, 2011 – not the online PDF, a critical distinction that must be understood,” Hagmann said.
“Using their combined experience of 80 years in this realm, they conducted extensive examinations of the ‘copy’ that was used as the basis for the PDF document. They acquired the same type of equipment that was used back in the late 1950s and early 1960s in an attempt to recreate the document presented as an ‘authenticated copy’ proving the legitimacy of Barack Obama. Instead, they found 20 points of forgery on that document and detail each point of forgery in the affidavit,” wrote Hagmann.
“Even more interesting, Mr. Vogt claims to have identified the ‘signature’ of the perpetrator, or the woman who created the forged document, hidden within the document itself. Her identity, in addition to the identity of other conspirators and their precise methods are contained in a sealed document supplementing the public affidavit.”
Grounds for impeachment
Last month, WND columnist Christopher Monckton wrote that the controversy he calls “Hawaiigate” should be “the central ground of impeachment.”
“First, the dishonesty is shameless and in your face. Mr Obama’s advisers, once they realized the ‘birth certificate’ was as bogus as a $3 bill, knew that if they simply went on pretending that $3 bills are legal tender the hard-left-dominated news media would carefully and continuously look the other way, pausing occasionally to sneer at anyone who pointed out that, in this constitutionally crucial respect, the ‘president’ has no clothes,” Monckton wrote.
“Secondly, not one of the numerous agencies of state, as well as federal government, whose duty was and is to investigate the Mickey-Mouse ‘birth certificate’ has bothered even to respond to the thousands of requests for investigation put forward by U.S. citizens.
He said that in Hawaii last year, he watched “as a senior former state senator called the police and, when they came, handed over to them compelling evidence that the ‘birth certificate’ had been forged.”
“The police, correctly, passed the file to the state’s attorney general, a ‘Democrat,’ who did nothing about it,” he said.
“In Washington, D.C., I watched as a concerned citizen from Texas telephoned the FBI and reported the ‘birth certificate’ as being a forgery. They said they would send two agents to see him within the hour. No one came.”
One of the highest profile skeptics has been billionaire Donald Trump.
Trump said he can’t be certain that Obama is eligible to be president, and he pointedly noted that a reporter who was poking fun at the issue admitted he can’t either.
Trump repeatedly has insisted Obama has not documented his eligibility. At one point, he offered $5 million to the charity or charities of Obama’s choice if he would release his passport records and authorize the colleges he attended to release his applications and other records.
Trump argues that those documents would show whether or not Obama ever accepted scholarship or other aid as a foreign student, which could preclude him from being a “natural-born citizen.”
Trump’s conversation with ABC’s Jonathan Karl started with Karl noting that Trump took on the “not serious” issue of eligibility.
“Why does that make me not serious?” Trump demanded. “I think that resonated with a lot of people.”
Karl replied: “You don’t still question he was born in the United States, do you?”
“I have no idea,” Trump said. “I don’t know. Was there a birth certificate? You tell me. You know some people say that was not his birth certificate. I’m saying I don’t know. Nobody knows, and you don’t know either. Jonathan you’re a smart guy, and you don’t know.”
When Karl admitted he was “pretty sure,” Trump jumped on the statement.
“You just said you’re pretty sure … you have to be 100 percent sure,” he said. “Jonathan, you said you’re pretty convinced, so let’s just see what happens over time.”
Read all the arguments in the birth certificate controversy, in “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” and check out the special reports, banners and bumper stickers on the subject.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/12/top-official-in-obama-birth-mystery-killed/#ZLVSTyC3f4EAEQYG.99
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A key Hawaii official in the dispute over Barack Obama’s birth certificate – who lifted state restrictions to allow the White House to present the document to the public – has died in a plane crash.
Loretta Fuddy, the state health department director, was the only fatality among nine people aboard a Cessna Grand Caravan that went down at about 3:15 p.m. on Wednesday while heading to Honolulu.
Loretta Fuddy
Richard Schuman, president of Makani Kai Air, told NBC that the other eight people aboard were rescued from the site of the water crash.
KITV-TV in Honolulu reported Fuddy had been on health department business. Keith Yamamoto, the department’s deputy director, also was aboard and survived.
Makani Kai officials said it was was the company’s first fatality.
WND has reported since before the 2008 election on the dispute over Obama’s birth documentation.
Fuddy was appointed health director by Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who issued a statement in response to her death.
“Our hearts are broken,” he said, according to USA Today. “Loretta was deeply loved and respected. She was selfless, utterly dedicated and committed to her colleagues in the Department of Health and to the people of Hawaii. Her knowledge was vast; her counsel and advice always given from her heart as much as from her storehouse of experience.”
Recently she had been working on the state’s Obamacare website.
When he took office in 2010, Abercrombie, who claimed to have had a relationship with Obama’s parents in Hawaii as a fellow student, vowed to settle the birth certificate dispute once and for all. He finally gave up, however, insisting he didn’t have the necessary legal authority.
Read all the arguments in the birth certificate controversy, in “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” and check out the special reports, banners and bumper stickers on the subject.
Abercrombie told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser regarding Obama’s birth documentation: “It actually exists in the archives, written down.” The London Daily Mail reported, however, Abercrombie “suggested that a long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate for Barack Obama may not exist within the vital records maintained by the Hawaii Department of Health.”
Later, Obama asked for copies of the document, and under Fuddy, the state instantly waived a long-claimed ban on reproducing long-form birth certificates. On Fuddy’s instructions, copies were produced and delivered to Judith Corley, a private attorney for Obama.
Fuddy had written to Obama: “We hope that issuing you these copies of your original Certificate of Live Birth will end the numerous inquiries received by the Hawaii Department of Health to produce this document.”
Immediately after the delivered copy was posted on the White House website, however,  numerous computer graphics and software experts declared it fraudulent.
The birth certificate dispute centers on the constitutional requirement that a president be a “natural-born citizen.” Some argue that even if Obama was born in Hawaii, he was does not qualify because his father was a Kenyan citizen.
Still a live issue
The one official law enforcement investigation into the issue, conducted on the orders of Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio, concluded the document posted by the White House is a forgery.
Arpaio has said the investigation is ongoing and more evidence has been discovered to bolster his team’s conclusion.
WND reported Mike Zullo, the lead investigator for Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse in Arizona, has contributed evidence to a court case pending before the Alabama Supreme Court.
He has testified that the White House computer image of Obama’s birth certificate contains anomalies that are unexplainable unless the document had been fabricated piecemeal by human intervention, rather than being copied from a genuine paper document.
“Mr. Obama has in fact not offered any verifiable authoritative document of any legal significance or possessing any evidentiary value as to the origins of his purported birth narrative or location of the birth event,” he explained. “One of our most serious concerns is that the White House document appears to have been fabricated piecemeal on a computer, constructed by drawing together digitized data from several unknown sources.”
Zullo also has noted that the governor of Hawaii was unable to produce an original birth document for Obama, and it should have been easy to find.
See some of Zullo’s evidence:
More recently, Grace Vuoto of the World Tribune reported that among the experts challenging the birth certificate is certified document analyst Reed Hayes, who has served as an expert for Perkins Coie, the law firm that has been defending Obama in eligibility cases.
“We have obtained an affidavit from a certified document analyzer, Reed Hayes, that states the document is a 100 percent forgery, no doubt about it,” Zullo told the World Tribune.
“Mr. Obama’s operatives cannot discredit [Hayes],” the investigator told the news outlet. “Mr. Hayes has been used as the firm’s reliable expert. The very firm the president is using to defend him on the birth certificate case has used Mr. Hayes in their cases.”
The Tribune reported Hayes agreed to take a look at the documentation and called almost immediately.
“There is something wrong with this,” Hayes said.
Hayes produced a 40-page report in which he says “based on my observations and findings, it is clear that the Certificate of Live Birth I examined is not a scan of an original paper birth certificate, but a digitally manufactured document created by utilizing material from various sources.”
“In over 20 years of examining documentation of various types, I have never seen a document that is so seriously questionable in so many respects. In my opinion, the birth certificate is entirely fabricated,” he says in the report.
Investigator Douglas J. Hagmann of the Northeast Intelligence Network reported this month that in October an affidavit was filed in a court case, under seal, that purportedly identifies the creator of the Obama birth certificate.
He said Douglas Vogt, an author and the owner and operator of a scanning business who also has an accounting background, invested over two years in an investigation of the authenticity of document.
Vogt, along with veteran typesetter Paul Ivey, conducted “exhaustive research of the document provided to the White House Press Corps on April 27, 2011 – not the online PDF, a critical distinction that must be understood,” Hagmann said.
“Using their combined experience of 80 years in this realm, they conducted extensive examinations of the ‘copy’ that was used as the basis for the PDF document. They acquired the same type of equipment that was used back in the late 1950s and early 1960s in an attempt to recreate the document presented as an ‘authenticated copy’ proving the legitimacy of Barack Obama. Instead, they found 20 points of forgery on that document and detail each point of forgery in the affidavit,” wrote Hagmann.
“Even more interesting, Mr. Vogt claims to have identified the ‘signature’ of the perpetrator, or the woman who created the forged document, hidden within the document itself. Her identity, in addition to the identity of other conspirators and their precise methods are contained in a sealed document supplementing the public affidavit.”
Grounds for impeachment
Last month, WND columnist Christopher Monckton wrote that the controversy he calls “Hawaiigate” should be “the central ground of impeachment.”
“First, the dishonesty is shameless and in your face. Mr Obama’s advisers, once they realized the ‘birth certificate’ was as bogus as a $3 bill, knew that if they simply went on pretending that $3 bills are legal tender the hard-left-dominated news media would carefully and continuously look the other way, pausing occasionally to sneer at anyone who pointed out that, in this constitutionally crucial respect, the ‘president’ has no clothes,” Monckton wrote.
“Secondly, not one of the numerous agencies of state, as well as federal government, whose duty was and is to investigate the Mickey-Mouse ‘birth certificate’ has bothered even to respond to the thousands of requests for investigation put forward by U.S. citizens.
He said that in Hawaii last year, he watched “as a senior former state senator called the police and, when they came, handed over to them compelling evidence that the ‘birth certificate’ had been forged.”
“The police, correctly, passed the file to the state’s attorney general, a ‘Democrat,’ who did nothing about it,” he said.
“In Washington, D.C., I watched as a concerned citizen from Texas telephoned the FBI and reported the ‘birth certificate’ as being a forgery. They said they would send two agents to see him within the hour. No one came.”
One of the highest profile skeptics has been billionaire Donald Trump.
Trump said he can’t be certain that Obama is eligible to be president, and he pointedly noted that a reporter who was poking fun at the issue admitted he can’t either.
Trump repeatedly has insisted Obama has not documented his eligibility. At one point, he offered $5 million to the charity or charities of Obama’s choice if he would release his passport records and authorize the colleges he attended to release his applications and other records.
Trump argues that those documents would show whether or not Obama ever accepted scholarship or other aid as a foreign student, which could preclude him from being a “natural-born citizen.”
Trump’s conversation with ABC’s Jonathan Karl started with Karl noting that Trump took on the “not serious” issue of eligibility.
“Why does that make me not serious?” Trump demanded. “I think that resonated with a lot of people.”
Karl replied: “You don’t still question he was born in the United States, do you?”
“I have no idea,” Trump said. “I don’t know. Was there a birth certificate? You tell me. You know some people say that was not his birth certificate. I’m saying I don’t know. Nobody knows, and you don’t know either. Jonathan you’re a smart guy, and you don’t know.”
When Karl admitted he was “pretty sure,” Trump jumped on the statement.
“You just said you’re pretty sure … you have to be 100 percent sure,” he said. “Jonathan, you said you’re pretty convinced, so let’s just see what happens over time.”
Read all the arguments in the birth certificate controversy, in “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” and check out the special reports, banners and bumper stickers on the subject.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/12/top-official-in-obama-birth-mystery-killed/#ZLVSTyC3f4EAEQYG.99
  • Text smaller
  • Text bigger
A key Hawaii official in the dispute over Barack Obama’s birth certificate – who lifted state restrictions to allow the White House to present the document to the public – has died in a plane crash.
Loretta Fuddy, the state health department director, was the only fatality among nine people aboard a Cessna Grand Caravan that went down at about 3:15 p.m. on Wednesday while heading to Honolulu.
Loretta Fuddy
Richard Schuman, president of Makani Kai Air, told NBC that the other eight people aboard were rescued from the site of the water crash.
KITV-TV in Honolulu reported Fuddy had been on health department business. Keith Yamamoto, the department’s deputy director, also was aboard and survived.
Makani Kai officials said it was was the company’s first fatality.
WND has reported since before the 2008 election on the dispute over Obama’s birth documentation.
Fuddy was appointed health director by Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who issued a statement in response to her death.
“Our hearts are broken,” he said, according to USA Today. “Loretta was deeply loved and respected. She was selfless, utterly dedicated and committed to her colleagues in the Department of Health and to the people of Hawaii. Her knowledge was vast; her counsel and advice always given from her heart as much as from her storehouse of experience.”
Recently she had been working on the state’s Obamacare website.
When he took office in 2010, Abercrombie, who claimed to have had a relationship with Obama’s parents in Hawaii as a fellow student, vowed to settle the birth certificate dispute once and for all. He finally gave up, however, insisting he didn’t have the necessary legal authority.
Read all the arguments in the birth certificate controversy, in “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” and check out the special reports, banners and bumper stickers on the subject.
Abercrombie told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser regarding Obama’s birth documentation: “It actually exists in the archives, written down.” The London Daily Mail reported, however, Abercrombie “suggested that a long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate for Barack Obama may not exist within the vital records maintained by the Hawaii Department of Health.”
Later, Obama asked for copies of the document, and under Fuddy, the state instantly waived a long-claimed ban on reproducing long-form birth certificates. On Fuddy’s instructions, copies were produced and delivered to Judith Corley, a private attorney for Obama.
Fuddy had written to Obama: “We hope that issuing you these copies of your original Certificate of Live Birth will end the numerous inquiries received by the Hawaii Department of Health to produce this document.”
Immediately after the delivered copy was posted on the White House website, however,  numerous computer graphics and software experts declared it fraudulent.
The birth certificate dispute centers on the constitutional requirement that a president be a “natural-born citizen.” Some argue that even if Obama was born in Hawaii, he was does not qualify because his father was a Kenyan citizen.
Still a live issue
The one official law enforcement investigation into the issue, conducted on the orders of Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio, concluded the document posted by the White House is a forgery.
Arpaio has said the investigation is ongoing and more evidence has been discovered to bolster his team’s conclusion.
WND reported Mike Zullo, the lead investigator for Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse in Arizona, has contributed evidence to a court case pending before the Alabama Supreme Court.
He has testified that the White House computer image of Obama’s birth certificate contains anomalies that are unexplainable unless the document had been fabricated piecemeal by human intervention, rather than being copied from a genuine paper document.
“Mr. Obama has in fact not offered any verifiable authoritative document of any legal significance or possessing any evidentiary value as to the origins of his purported birth narrative or location of the birth event,” he explained. “One of our most serious concerns is that the White House document appears to have been fabricated piecemeal on a computer, constructed by drawing together digitized data from several unknown sources.”
Zullo also has noted that the governor of Hawaii was unable to produce an original birth document for Obama, and it should have been easy to find.
See some of Zullo’s evidence:
More recently, Grace Vuoto of the World Tribune reported that among the experts challenging the birth certificate is certified document analyst Reed Hayes, who has served as an expert for Perkins Coie, the law firm that has been defending Obama in eligibility cases.
“We have obtained an affidavit from a certified document analyzer, Reed Hayes, that states the document is a 100 percent forgery, no doubt about it,” Zullo told the World Tribune.
“Mr. Obama’s operatives cannot discredit [Hayes],” the investigator told the news outlet. “Mr. Hayes has been used as the firm’s reliable expert. The very firm the president is using to defend him on the birth certificate case has used Mr. Hayes in their cases.”
The Tribune reported Hayes agreed to take a look at the documentation and called almost immediately.
“There is something wrong with this,” Hayes said.
Hayes produced a 40-page report in which he says “based on my observations and findings, it is clear that the Certificate of Live Birth I examined is not a scan of an original paper birth certificate, but a digitally manufactured document created by utilizing material from various sources.”
“In over 20 years of examining documentation of various types, I have never seen a document that is so seriously questionable in so many respects. In my opinion, the birth certificate is entirely fabricated,” he says in the report.
Investigator Douglas J. Hagmann of the Northeast Intelligence Network reported this month that in October an affidavit was filed in a court case, under seal, that purportedly identifies the creator of the Obama birth certificate.
He said Douglas Vogt, an author and the owner and operator of a scanning business who also has an accounting background, invested over two years in an investigation of the authenticity of document.
Vogt, along with veteran typesetter Paul Ivey, conducted “exhaustive research of the document provided to the White House Press Corps on April 27, 2011 – not the online PDF, a critical distinction that must be understood,” Hagmann said.
“Using their combined experience of 80 years in this realm, they conducted extensive examinations of the ‘copy’ that was used as the basis for the PDF document. They acquired the same type of equipment that was used back in the late 1950s and early 1960s in an attempt to recreate the document presented as an ‘authenticated copy’ proving the legitimacy of Barack Obama. Instead, they found 20 points of forgery on that document and detail each point of forgery in the affidavit,” wrote Hagmann.
“Even more interesting, Mr. Vogt claims to have identified the ‘signature’ of the perpetrator, or the woman who created the forged document, hidden within the document itself. Her identity, in addition to the identity of other conspirators and their precise methods are contained in a sealed document supplementing the public affidavit.”
Grounds for impeachment
Last month, WND columnist Christopher Monckton wrote that the controversy he calls “Hawaiigate” should be “the central ground of impeachment.”
“First, the dishonesty is shameless and in your face. Mr Obama’s advisers, once they realized the ‘birth certificate’ was as bogus as a $3 bill, knew that if they simply went on pretending that $3 bills are legal tender the hard-left-dominated news media would carefully and continuously look the other way, pausing occasionally to sneer at anyone who pointed out that, in this constitutionally crucial respect, the ‘president’ has no clothes,” Monckton wrote.
“Secondly, not one of the numerous agencies of state, as well as federal government, whose duty was and is to investigate the Mickey-Mouse ‘birth certificate’ has bothered even to respond to the thousands of requests for investigation put forward by U.S. citizens.
He said that in Hawaii last year, he watched “as a senior former state senator called the police and, when they came, handed over to them compelling evidence that the ‘birth certificate’ had been forged.”
“The police, correctly, passed the file to the state’s attorney general, a ‘Democrat,’ who did nothing about it,” he said.
“In Washington, D.C., I watched as a concerned citizen from Texas telephoned the FBI and reported the ‘birth certificate’ as being a forgery. They said they would send two agents to see him within the hour. No one came.”
One of the highest profile skeptics has been billionaire Donald Trump.
Trump said he can’t be certain that Obama is eligible to be president, and he pointedly noted that a reporter who was poking fun at the issue admitted he can’t either.
Trump repeatedly has insisted Obama has not documented his eligibility. At one point, he offered $5 million to the charity or charities of Obama’s choice if he would release his passport records and authorize the colleges he attended to release his applications and other records.
Trump argues that those documents would show whether or not Obama ever accepted scholarship or other aid as a foreign student, which could preclude him from being a “natural-born citizen.”
Trump’s conversation with ABC’s Jonathan Karl started with Karl noting that Trump took on the “not serious” issue of eligibility.
“Why does that make me not serious?” Trump demanded. “I think that resonated with a lot of people.”
Karl replied: “You don’t still question he was born in the United States, do you?”
“I have no idea,” Trump said. “I don’t know. Was there a birth certificate? You tell me. You know some people say that was not his birth certificate. I’m saying I don’t know. Nobody knows, and you don’t know either. Jonathan you’re a smart guy, and you don’t know.”
When Karl admitted he was “pretty sure,” Trump jumped on the statement.
“You just said you’re pretty sure … you have to be 100 percent sure,” he said. “Jonathan, you said you’re pretty convinced, so let’s just see what happens over time.”
Read all the arguments in the birth certificate controversy, in “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” and check out the special reports, banners and bumper stickers on the subject.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/12/top-official-in-obama-birth-mystery-killed/#ZLVSTyC3f4EAEQYG.99

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Nazi UFOs

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Artistic impression of a Haunebu-type German flying saucer, similar in appearance to craft allegedly photographed by George Adamski, Reinhold Schmidt, Howard Menger, and Stephen Darbishire.
 
In UFOlogy, conspiracy theory, science fiction, and comic book stories, claims or stories have circulated linking UFOs to Nazi Germany. The German UFO theories describe supposedly successful attempts to develop advanced aircraft or spacecraft prior to and during World War II, and further assert the post-war survival of these craft in secret underground bases in Antarctica, South America or the United States, along with their creators.[1] According to the limited available information on the UFOs, various potential code-names or sub-classifications of Nazi UFO craft such as Rundflugzeug, Feuerball, Diskus, Haunebu, Hauneburg-Geräte, V7, Vril, Kugelblitz (not related to the self-propelled anti-aircraft gun of the same name), Andromeda-Geräte, Flugkreisel, Kugelwaffen, and Reichsflugscheiben have all been referenced.
Accounts appear as early as 1950, likely inspired by historical German development of specialized engines such as Viktor Schauberger's "Repulsine" around the time of WWII. Elements of these claims have been widely incorporated into various works of fictional and purportedly non-fictional media, including video games and documentaries, often mixed with more substantiated information.
German UFO literature very often conforms largely to documented history on the following points:
  • The Third Reich claimed the territory of New Swabia in Antarctica, sent an expedition there in 1938, and planned others.[2]
  • The Third Reich conducted research into advanced propulsion technology, including rocketry, Viktor Schauberger's engine research, flying wing craft and the Arthur Sack A.S.6 experimental circular winged aircraft.
  • Some UFO sightings during World War II, particularly those known as foo fighters, were thought by the Allies to be prototype enemy aircraft designed to harass Allied aircraft through electromagnetic disruption; a technology similar to today's electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons.[3][page needed]

Early claims

In WWII the so-called "foo fighters," a variety of unusual and anomalous aerial phenomena, were witnessed by both Axis and Allied personnel. While some foo fighter reports were dismissed as the misperceptions of troops in the heat of combat, others were taken seriously, and leading scientists such as Luis Alvarez to investigate them.[4][page needed] In at least some cases, Allied intelligence and commanders suspected that foo fighters reported in the European theater represented advanced German aircraft or weapons, particularly given that Germans had already developed such technological innovations as V-1 and V-2 rockets and the first jet-engine fighter planes, and that a minority of foo fighters seemed to have inflicted damage to allied aircraft.[4][page needed]
Similar sentiments regarding German technology resurfaced in 1947 with the first wave of flying saucer reports after Kenneth Arnold's widely reported close encounter with nine crescent-shaped objects moving at a high velocity. Personnel of Project Sign, the first U.S. Air Force UFO investigation group, noted that the advanced flying wing aeronautical designs of the German Horten brothers were similar to some UFO reports.[5] In 1959, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the first head of Project Blue Book (Project Sign's follow-up investigation) wrote:
When WWII ended, the Germans had several radical types of aircraft and guided missiles under development. The majority were in the most preliminary stages, but they were the only known craft that could even approach the performance of objects reported by UFO observers.[6]
While these early speculations and reports were limited primarily to military personnel, the earliest assertion of German flying saucers in the mass media appears to have been an article which appeared in the Italian newspaper Il Giornale d'Italia in early 1950. Written by Professor Giuseppe Belluzzo, an Italian scientist and a former Italian Minister of National Economy under the Mussolini regime, it claimed that "types of flying discs were designed and studied in Germany and Italy as early as 1942". Belluzzo also expressed the opinion that "some great power is launching discs to study them".[7]
The Bell UFO was among the first flying objects to be connected with the Nazis. It apparently had occult markings on it and it was also rumoured to have been very similar to a Wehrmacht document about a vertical take off aircraft. It is directly related to the supposed crash of a bell-shaped object that occurred in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, USA on December 9, 1965. The same month, German engineer Rudolf Schriever gave an interview to German news magazine Der Spiegel in which he claimed that he had designed a craft powered by a circular plane of rotating turbine blades 49 ft (15 m) in diameter. He said that the project had been developed by him and his team at BMW's Prague works until April 1945, when he fled Czechoslovakia. His designs for the disk and a model were stolen from his workshop in Bremerhaven-Lehe in 1948 and he was convinced that Czech agents had built his craft for "a foreign power".[8][9] In a separate interview with Der Spiegel in October 1952 he said that the plans were stolen from a farm he was hiding in near Regen on 14 May 1945. There are other discrepancies between the two interviews that add to the confusion.[10] However, many skeptics have doubted that such a Bell UFO was actually designed or ever built.[11]
In 1953, when Avro Canada announced that it was developing the VZ-9-AV Avrocar, a circular jet aircraft with an estimated speed of 1,500 mph (2,400 km/h), German engineer Georg Klein claimed that such designs had been developed during the Third Reich. Klein identified two types of supposed German flying disks:
  • A non-rotating disk developed at Breslau by V-2 rocket engineer Richard Miethe, which was captured by the Soviets, while Miethe fled to the US via France, and ended up working for Avro.
  • A disk developed by Rudolf Schriever and Klaus Habermohl at Prague, which consisted of a ring of moving turbine blades around a fixed cockpit. Klein claimed that he had witnessed this craft's first manned flight on 14 February 1945, when it managed to climb to 12,400 m (40,700 ft) in 3 minutes and attained a speed of 2,200 km/h (1,400 mph) in level flight.
Aeronautical engineer Roy Fedden remarked that the only craft that could approach the capabilities attributed to flying saucers were those being designed by the Germans towards the end of the war. Fedden (who was also chief of the technical mission to Germany for the Ministry of Aircraft Production) stated in 1945:
I have seen enough of their designs and production plans to realize that if they (the Germans) had managed to prolong the war some months longer, we would have been confronted with a set of entirely new and deadly developments in air warfare.[12]
Fedden also added that the Germans were working on a number of very unusual aeronautical projects, though he did not elaborate upon his statement.[13]

Later claims

Morning of the Magicians

Le Matin des Magiciens, a 1960 book by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, made many spectacular claims about the Vril Society of Berlin.[14] Several years later writers, including Jan van Helsing,[15][16] Norbert-Jürgen Ratthofer,[17] and Vladimir Terziski, have built on their work, connecting the Vril Society with UFOs. Among their claims, they imply that the society may have made contact with an alien race and dedicated itself to creating spacecraft to reach the aliens. In partnership with the Thule Society and the Nazi Party, the Vril Society developed a series of flying disc prototypes. With the Nazi defeat, the society allegedly retreated to a base in Antarctica and vanished into the hollow Earth to meet up with the leaders of an advanced race inhabiting inner Earth.

Ernst Zündel's marketing ploy

When German Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel started Samisdat Publishers in the 1970s, he initially catered to the UFOlogy community, which was then at its peak of public acceptance. His books claimed that flying saucers were Nazi secret weapons launched from an underground base in Antarctica, from which the Nazis hoped to conquer the world and possibly the planets.[18] Zündel also sold (for $9999) seats on an exploration team to locate the polar entrance to the hollow earth.[19] Some who interviewed Zündel claim that he privately admitted it was a deliberate hoax to build publicity for Samisdat, although he still defended it as late as 2002.[20][21]

Miguel Serrano's book

In 1978 Miguel Serrano, a Chilean diplomat and Nazi sympathizer, published El Cordón Dorado: Hitlerismo Esotérico [The Golden Thread: Esoteric Hitlerism] (in Castillan), in which he claimed that Adolf Hitler was an Avatar of Vishnu and was at that time communing with Hyperborean gods in an underground Antarctic base in New Swabia. Serrano predicted that Hitler would lead a fleet of UFOs from the base to establish the Fourth Reich.[22] In popular culture, this alleged UFO fleet is referred to as the Nazi flying saucers from Antarctica.

Fiction and media

  • In 1947 Robert A. Heinlein published Rocket Ship Galileo, a science fiction novel featuring a German moon base.
  • Iron Sky (2012): a sci-fi black comedy about Nazis who left Earth from their hidden base in Antarctica and established a secret fortress on the dark side of the Moon. After Germany's defeat in 1945, the Nazis vowed to return to Earth "in peace," and they finally return in the year 2018, but with a full invasion force of flying saucers in order to finally defeat the Allies and restore the Third Reich. During their invasion, they end up battling with the President of the United States (who in the film resembles Sarah Palin) and unintentionally cause a world-wide nuclear war when every space-faring nation on Earth lays claim to the Nazis' powerful Helium-3 resources on the Moon.
  • Iron Sky: Invasion (2012): a video game space combat simulator and an expansion of the 2012 movie, with interactive and flyable recreations of numerous alleged prototypes and models of Nazi UFO spacecraft.
  • Robert Rankin's novel Nostradamus Ate My Hamster features Hitler and a group of Nazis escaping the end of the war to the future in a time machine; they attempt the subtle takeover of Earth through media manipulation until their time machine is used against them.
Pictures, described as recently declassified and purporting to show these flying saucers, were shown on the History channel.[citation needed]

See also

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

The doomsday vault that keeps seeds for every type of agriculture mankind relies upon should a disaster ever wipe them out

  • The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway is home to more than two billion seeds

  • The seed bank can withstand a nuclear strike and aims to preserve crops in the face of natural disasters and war

  • Rare images of the food ark, which has 4.5 million varieties of seeds, were taken by photographer Jim Richardson

  • Vault was started by conservationist Cary Fowler from the Global Crop Diversity Trust and cost £4million to construct

By Tara Brady
|

These incredible images give a rare glimpse inside the 'Doomsday' seed vault which protects the world's food supply.
On an Arctic island off the coast of Norway lies the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which is home to more than two billion seeds.
The secure seed bank which can withstand a nuclear strike, aims to preserve crops in the face of climate change, war and natural disasters.
Scroll down for video
Food ark: Entrance to the Global Seed Vault in Norway which is home to more than two billion of the world's seeds
Food ark: Entrance to the Global Seed Vault in Norway which is home to more than two billion of the world's seeds
Supplies: Carey Fowler at the Doomsday seed bank in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway, which protects the world's food supply
Supplies: Carey Fowler at the Doomsday seed bank in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway, which protects the world's food supply

Life-saving: The seed bank was dug into frozen mountainside on an Arctic island in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway
Life-saving: The seed bank was dug into frozen mountainside on an Arctic island in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway

These rare images taken by photographer Jim Richardson offer a visual tour of the food ark, which safely homes up to 4.5 million varieties of seeds from almost every country in the world.
It preserves duplicate collections of seeds for everything from peas to wheat on behalf of the world's genebanks.

The seeds in the vault can only be accessed when the original seed collections have been lost.
The seeds are stored inside sealed envelopes, then placed into plastic tote containers on metal shelving racks and kept at a temperature of -18C. 
Unique: Carey Fowler at the Doomsday seed bank in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway which was dug into the frozen mountainside above the town
Unique: Carey Fowler at the Doomsday seed bank in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway which was dug into the frozen mountainside above the town

The seed bank was dug into a frozen mountainside above the town as a last chance repository for millions of seeds, that could be used to restore agriculture should a disaster wipe out plants we depend upon for food
The seed bank was dug into a frozen mountainside above the town as a last chance repository for millions of seeds, that could be used to restore agriculture should a disaster wipe out plants we depend upon for food

The secure seed bank which can withstand a nuclear strike, aims to preserve crops in the face of climate change, war and natural disasters
The secure seed bank which can withstand a nuclear strike, aims to preserve crops in the face of climate change, war and natural disasters

Cary Fowler speaks to visitors who have arrived to see the Svalbard Global Seed Bank, also known as the Doomsday seed bank
Cary Fowler speaks to visitors who have arrived to see the Svalbard Global Seed Bank, also known as the Doomsday seed bank

The seeds are stored inside sealed envelopes in the vault and can only be accessed when the original seed collections have been lost
The seeds are stored inside sealed envelopes in the vault and can only be accessed when the original seed collections have been lost

These rare images taken by photographer Jim Richardson offer a visual tour of the food ark, which safely homes up to 4.5 million varieties of seeds
These rare images taken by photographer Jim Richardson offer a visual tour of the food ark which safely homes up to 4.5 million varieties of seeds

Fascinating: Cary Fowler speaks to a crowd of people at the Svalbard Global Seed Bank, also known as the Doomsday seed bank, in Norway, about the collection
Fascinating: Cary Fowler speaks to a crowd of people at the Svalbard Global Seed Bank, also known as the Doomsday seed bank, in Norway, about the collection

Preservation: The seed bank contains more than two billion seeds in case the world's food supply is destroyed by a disaster
Preservation: The seed bank contains more than two billion seeds in case the world's food supply is destroyed by a disaster

Genius: The food bank preserves duplicate collections of seeds for everything from peas to wheat which are kept at a temperature of -18C
Genius: The food bank preserves duplicate collections of seeds for everything from peas to wheat which are kept at a temperature of -18C

The permafrost surrounding the facility helps maintain the low temperature of the seeds should the electricity supply ever fail
The permafrost surrounding the facility helps maintain the low temperature of the seeds should the electricity supply ever fail

The low temperature and limited supply of oxygen inside the vault prevents the seeds from ageing.
The permafrost surrounding the facility helps maintain the low temperature of the seeds should the electricity supply fail.
The vault was started by conservationist Cary Fowler from the Global Crop Diversity Trust. 
It cost £4 million to construct and since it's opening in 2006 it has accepted deposits of seeds from all over the world.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Putin: Russia to reopen Soviet-era Arctic military base


MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is reopening a Soviet-era military base in the Arctic, President Vladimir Putin said on Monday, part of a drive to make the northern coast a global shipping route and secure the region's vast energy resources.
Two decades after abandoning it, Russia has sent 10 warships behind four nuclear-powered ice breakers to the base on the Novosibirsk Islands, a show of force as it resumes a permanent naval presence in the thawing region.
The flotilla was led by Russia's flagship nuclear-powered cruiser, Peter the Great, along the Northern Sea Route, which connects Europe to Asia across Russian waters from the Kara Gate to the Bering Strait.
"Our troops left there in 1993, and yet it is a very important location in the Arctic Ocean, a new stage in the development of the Northern Sea Route," Putin told a meeting of Russian defense officials.
"We will not only reopen the military base but restore the airfield to working order and make it possible for the emergency services, hydrologists and climate specialists to work together to ensure the security and effective work of the Northern Sea Route."
Russia has staked future growth on mining the Arctic's vast energy resources, and reviving the Soviet-era shipping route is an integral part of that plan.
Warmer summers have thawed more of the frozen waterways, rendering it navigable for longer periods and raising hopes the maritime passage could become a shorter alternative to southern routes.
But industry analysts and mariners say poor infrastructure, ice floes, narrow straits, shallow waters, and stormy winters remain as obstacles to safe and profitable shipping.
(Reporting by Alissa de Carbonnel; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Nuclear marine propulsion

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Nuclear marine propulsion is propulsion of a ship by a nuclear reactor. Naval nuclear propulsion is propulsion that specifically refers to naval warships (see Nuclear navy). Very few experimental civil nuclear ships have been built.[1]
When the nuclear-powered Arktika class NS 50 Let Pobedy was put into service in 2007, it became the world's largest icebreaker.

Power plants

Operation of a civil or naval ship power plant is similar to land-based nuclear power reactors. A sustained nuclear reaction in the reactor produces heat that is used to boil water. The resulting steam spins a turbine. The turbine shaft may be coupled through a gearbox speed reducer to the ship's propeller, or in a turbo-electric drive system may run a generator that supplies electric power to motors connected to the propellers.
The Russian, US and British navies rely on steam turbine propulsion, while the French and Chinese ships use the turbine to generate electricity for propulsion (turbo-electric transmission). Most nuclear submarines have a single reactor, but Russian submarines and the USS Triton had two. Most American aircraft carriers are powered by two reactors, but the USS Enterprise had eight. The majority of marine reactors are of the pressurized water type, although the US and Soviet navies have designed warships powered with liquid metal cooled reactors.
Nuclear power for propulsion has several operating and logistic characteristics that appeal to the designers of ships for both civil and military purposes. A small amount of nuclear fuel can provide energy equivalent to millions of times its weight in coal or oil. It is quite practical to build a reactor which will operate a vessel for several years without refuelling. Although the cost of manufacturing nuclear fuel elements is high, the overall cost of fuel is much lower than that of the amount of fossil fuel required to generate the same amount of energy. Like sailing ships, nuclear vessels are independent of the vagaries of procurement of fuel at every port. The laborious and costly process of loading and burning fuel is largely eliminated for most of the vessel's operating life.
Because of its high power density and the elimination of the need for large fuel bunkers, a nuclear propulsion plant allows more space for paying cargo. It also allows a vessel to operate at higher speeds for years without refuelling. This improves the speed and efficiency of ocean-going commerce. Military vessels, such as submarines and aircraft carriers, can travel at high speeds over vast distances, limited only by the endurance of their crews. Arctic vessels can operate for months, independent of fuel supplies.
Nuclear reactors require no oxygen for combustion and emit no exhaust gas. This is a minor benefit for surface vessels, eliminating the ducts, exhaust stacks and machinery needed to support the burning of fossil fuels. For submersible vessels this is the most important advantage. With nuclear power, a submarine can be propelled at speeds comparable to those of surface ships for protracted periods, limited only by crew endurance instead of fuel supply or battery capacity. Although not a motivation for the original development of maritime nuclear power, environmental concerns have sparked increased interest on the part of some who are concerned about effects of CO2, SO2 and other air pollutants emitted by cargo ships. (For economic reasons, ships operate on the lowest-quality fuel their engines can tolerate, resulting in very high emissions of pollutants. (See Environmental impact of shipping.)

Differences from land power plants

Marine-type reactors differ from land-based commercial electric power reactors in several respects.
While land-based reactors in nuclear power plants produce thousands of megawatts of power, a typical marine propulsion reactor produces no more than a few hundred megawatts. Space considerations dictate that a marine reactor must be physically small, so it must generate higher power per unit of space. This means its components are subject to greater stresses than those of a land-based reactor. Its mechanical systems must operate flawlessly under the adverse conditions encountered at sea, including vibration and the pitching and rolling of a ship operating in rough seas. Reactor shutdown mechanisms cannot rely on gravity to drop control rods into place as in a land-based reactor that always remains upright. Salt water corrosion is an additional problem that complicates maintenance.
A nuclear fuel element for the cargo ship NS Savannah. The element contains four bundles of 41 fuel rods. The uranium oxide is enriched to 4.2 and 4.6 percent of U-235
The fuel in a seagoing reactor is typically more highly enriched (i.e., contains a higher concentration of U235 vs. U238) than that used in a land-based nuclear power plant. Some marine reactors run on relatively low-enriched uranium which requires more frequent refueling. Others run on highly enriched uranium, varying from 20% U235, to the over 96% U235 found in U.S. submarines,[2] in which the resulting smaller core is quieter in operation (a big advantage to a submarine).[3] Using more-highly enriched fuel also increases the reactor's power density and extends the usable life of the nuclear fuel load, but is more expensive and a greater risk to nuclear proliferation than less-highly enriched fuel.[4]
A marine nuclear propulsion plant must be designed to be highly reliable and self-sufficient, requiring minimal maintenance and repairs, which might have to be undertaken many thousands of miles from its home port. One of the technical difficulties in designing fuel elements for a seagoing nuclear reactor is the creation of fuel elements which will withstand a large amount of radiation damage. Fuel elements may crack over time and gas bubbles may form. The fuel used in marine reactors is a metal-zirconium alloy rather than the ceramic UO2 (uranium oxide) often used in land-based reactors. Marine reactors are designed for long core life, enabled by the relatively high enrichment of the uranium and by incorporating a "burnable poison" in the fuel elements, which is slowly depleted as the fuel elements age and become less reactive. The gradual dissipation of the "nuclear poison" increases the reactivity of the core to compensate for the lessening reactivity of the aging fuel elements, thereby lengthening the usable life of the fuel. The life of the compact reactor pressure vessel is extended by providing an internal neutron shield, which reduces the damage to the steel from constant bombardment by neutrons.

Decommissioning

Decommissioning nuclear-powered submarines has become a major task for US and Russian navies. After defuelling, U.S. practice is to cut the reactor section from the vessel for disposal in shallow land burial as low-level waste (see the Ship-Submarine recycling program). In Russia, whole vessels, or sealed reactor sections, typically remain stored afloat, although a new facility near Sayda Bay is to provide storage in a concrete-floored facility on land for some submarines in the far north.

Future designs

Russia is well advanced with plans to build a floating nuclear power plant for their far eastern territories. The design has two 35 MWe units based on the KLT-40 reactor used in icebreakers (with refueling every four years). Some Russian naval vessels have been used to supply electricity for domestic and industrial use in remote far eastern and Siberian towns.
Lloyd's Register is investigating the possibility of civilian nuclear marine propulsion and rewriting draft rules.[5]

Civil liability

Insurance of nuclear vessels is not like the insurance of conventional ships. The consequences of an accident could span national boundaries, and the magnitude of possible damage is beyond the capacity of private insurers.[6] A special international agreement, the Brussels Convention on the Liability of Operators of Nuclear Ships, developed in 1962, would have made signatory national governments liable for accidents caused by nuclear vessels under their flag[7] but was never ratified owing to disagreement on the inclusion of warships under the convention.[8] Nuclear reactors under United States jurisdiction are insured by the provisions of the Price Anderson Act.

History

Military

The nuclear-propelled French submarine Saphir returning in Toulon, its home port, after Mission Héraclès.
Under the direction of Admiral (then Captain) Hyman G. Rickover,[9] the design, development and production of nuclear marine propulsion plants started in the USA in the 1940s. The first prototype naval reactor was constructed and tested at the Naval Reactor Facility at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho (now called the Idaho National Laboratory) in 1953. The first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus, put to sea in 1955.[10]
The Soviet Union also developed nuclear submarines. The first types developed were the November class, the first of which, K-3 "Leninskiy Komsomol", was underway under nuclear power on July 4, 1958.
Nuclear power revolutionized the submarine, finally making it a true "underwater" vessel, rather than a "submersible" craft, which could only stay underwater for limited periods. It gave the submarine the ability to operate submerged at high speeds, comparable to those of surface vessels, for unlimited periods, dependent only on the endurance of its crew.
Nautilus led to the parallel development of further Skate-class submarines, powered by single reactors, and a cruiser, USS Long Beach, in 1961, powered by two reactors. The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, commissioned in 1961, is powered by eight reactor units.
By 1962 the United States Navy had 26 operational nuclear submarines and another 30 under construction. Nuclear power had revolutionized the Navy. The United States shared its technology with the United Kingdom, while French, Soviet, Indian and Chinese development proceeded separately.
After the Skate-class vessels, US submarines were powered by a series of standardized, single-reactor designs built by Westinghouse and General Electric. Rolls-Royce plc built similar units for Royal Navy submarines, eventually developing a modified version of their own, the PWR-2 (pressurized water reactor).
The largest nuclear submarines ever built are the 26,500 tonne Russian Typhoon class. The smallest naval nuclear submarines to date are the 2,700 tonne French Rubis-class attack submarines. The US Navy operated a 400 ton, unarmed nuclear submarine, the NR-1 Deep Submergence Craft, between 1969 and 2008, which was not a combat vessel.
The United States and France have built nuclear aircraft carriers. By 1990 there were more nuclear reactors powering ships (mostly military) than there were generating electric power in commercial power plants worldwide.[11] Many of these submarines and other vessels were decommissioned in the 1990s.

Merchant ships

Nuclear-powered, civil merchant ships have not developed beyond a few experimental ships. The US-built NS Savannah, completed in 1962, was primarily a demonstration of civil nuclear power and was too small and expensive to operate economically as a merchant ship. The design was too much of a compromise, being neither an efficient freighter nor a viable passenger liner. The German-built Otto Hahn, a cargo ship and research facility, sailed some 650,000 nautical miles (1,200,000 km) on 126 voyages over 10 years without any technical problems.[citation needed] However, it proved too expensive to operate and was converted to diesel. The Japanese Mutsu was dogged by technical and political problems. Its reactor had significant radiation leakage and fishermen protested against the vessel's operation. All of these three ships used low-enriched uranium. Sevmorput, a Soviet and later Russian LASH carrier with icebreaking capability, has operated successfully on the Northern Sea Route since it was commissioned in 1988. As of 2012, it is the only nuclear-powered merchant ship in service.
Civilian nuclear ships suffer from the costs specialized infrastructure. The Savannah was expensive since it required many initial costs for the first ship of its class and a nuclear civilian ship, as well as costs for a nuclear shore staff, and servicing facility. As there was only one ship, this was an expensive infrastructure for one. A larger nuclear fleet would be able to use the same infrastructure reducing successive incremental costs: each ship would be cheaper than the last.[citation needed]
Recently there has been renewed interest in nuclear propulsion, and some proposals have been drafted. For example, the cargo coaster[12] is a new design for a nuclear cargo ship.

Icebreakers

Nuclear propulsion has proven both technically and economically feasible for nuclear-powered icebreakers in the Soviet Arctic. Nuclear-fuelled ships operate for years without refueling, and the vessels have powerful engines, well-suited to the task of icebreaking.
The Soviet icebreaker Lenin was the world's first nuclear-powered surface vessel in 1959 and remained in service for 30 years (new reactors were fitted in 1970). It led to a series of larger icebreakers, the 23,500 ton Arktika class of six vessels, launched beginning in 1975. These vessels have two reactors and are used in deep Arctic waters. NS Arktika was the first surface vessel to reach the North Pole.
For use in shallow waters such as estuaries and rivers, shallow-draft, Taymyr class icebreakers are being built in Finland and then fitted with their single-reactor, nuclear propulsion system in Russia. They are built to conform to international safety standards for nuclear vessels.[13]

Civilian nuclear ships

Engineer Epaulette from Savannah
The following are ships that are or were in commercial or civilian use and have nuclear marine propulsion.

Merchant cargo ships

  • Mutsu, Japan (1970–1992; never carried commercial cargo)
  • Otto Hahn, Germany (1968–1979; re-powered with diesel engine in 1979)
  • Savannah, United States (1962–1972)
  • Sevmorput, Russia (1988–present)

Nuclear-powered icebreakers

All nuclear-powered icebreakers have been commissioned by the Soviet Union or Russia.

See also