Perhaps somebody heard my plea to kill the Air Force liquid coal plant. McClatchy reports:
The Air Force rejected the plans for the coal-to-liquids plant because of possible conflicts with the 341 Missile Wing’s nuclear mission. The release said the concerns included decreased security near the base’s weapons storage area, interference with missile transportation and “explosive safety arcs and operational flight safety issues.”
Not to mention that liquid coal is an environmental abomination with impossible economics used primarily by the desperate and isolated:
The main users and producers of fuel from coal have been South Africa and Nazi Germany.
Still you’ll be delighted to know that the Air Force is already using the fuel of the Third Reich and apartheid:
The Air Force has a goal to certify that all aircraft could fly on a 50-50 blend of fuel by 2011. It’s been purchasing fuel made from coal from Sasol of South Africa, most recently 300,000 gallons, said Air Force spokesman Gary Strasburg.
The B1, B52 and C-17 already have been certified to run on the coal-mix blend, and the F-15, F-22, C-5 and KC-135 all have also used the blend, Strasburg said.
Makes sense. Liquid cold drives up greenhouse gas emissions, which lead inevitably to massive environmental refugees and military conflict of water, energy, arable land, and food, according to U.S. intelligence agencies (see here).
National security gets trumped by job security in this full employment plan for the liquid-coal military industrial complex.
It remains worth noting that, as Greenwire ($ub. req’d) explains:
Section 526 of the 2007 energy bill bars federal agencies from buying alternative or synthetic fuels if they have higher lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than conventional petroleum fuels.
That should be fatal to essentially all fossil-based unconventional fuels, and most especially liquid coal.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
