Navy Pledges Green Strike Group by 2012

Its good to see the government leading by example, at least the DOD anyway.

It is heartening to see this kind of effort, true. It just sucks that the only reason the navy can provide such a rapid timetable is because the are afforded such a MASSIVE budget.

What could true green agencies do with a fraction of that money?

Sounds good except that it takes petroleum to make bio fuels, so the whole process releases more carbon to the atmosphere then would just using petroleum. Not to mention driving the prices of food up etc.

Sounds as though this is a combination of PR, desire to be green, and moving money from our taxes to private interests.

The us military are nearly criminal offenders against the environment. My time spent in Iraq saw tons and tons of garbage burned in heaps.

Stories came from my brother in the Navy of discretely throwing their garbage overboard when told that it needed to "disappear" by morning. When we talk about the floating island of garbage in the Pacific he gets ashamed because he knows some of it is his putting it there.

And then there is the fuel spilling. When he told me you could see diesel fuel for as far as you could see, one would hope that this "green" fleet is everything that we want it to be.

The assumption that fuel convoys would become unnecessary is naive. Those convoys will remain targets whether they carry diesel or vegetable oil. The article makes no mention of the strategic value of so-called "green" fuels, and I suspect that this move is far more political than strategic.

But I also suspect much of it is for show to quiet the yammering of the current administration. And if the sh*t hits the fan, you can be sure we'll get our fuel from the most readily available sources, whether it's a farm field or an oil well. Treehuggers are the *last* people I want in charge of military operations to protect this country and its interests.

Does anyone else see the masonic symbol created by the wake of these American war machines?

It's all most perfect!

Nuclear is not green.

Simply dumping nuclear waste into the vast ocean system also does make it green or disappear.

Clay Dillow was fed malarkey and is now passing that malarkey onto us.
It probably is a fake article penned by the Pentagon.

Shame on Clay Dillow and shame on Popular Science for trying to redefine green as corporate and military culture would desire.

I think the "Green-ness" of this program is just for public relations. The Navy is probably worried about the security of its fuel supplies. If a major war breaks out in the Middle East and cuts off oil supplies, they want a biofuel/nuclear alternative to keep the engines running. But given the current political climate I think "Green" gets you a lot more funding than "Security".

@Dougherty2010 Woooo!!! Did you see the face in the clouds? Or the solution to pie in the number of waves?

lnwolf41 @ leecal, the nuclear power system is a closed loop, there is no nuclear waste on board. And yes the navy dumps all its trash overboard in plastic baggs. As for going green, if you want to ensure you have fuel availble to run your equipment, you set up alternatives before you need them. FYI the US as enough oil reserves to run the military machine for 2-3 years.

Inwolf41, you are correct that Navy reactors are closed loop and therefore no waste goes overboard. However, you are wrong about the trash. It has been years since the Navy disposed of its trash over the side in plastic. Only food contaminated, non-plastics can go over the side now. Every ship in the Navy has a plastics recycling system that makes giant plastic discs out of the plastic waste generated on board, which are stored until the ship reaches port and the discs can be transferred to a recycling facility. Food contaminated plastics that cannot be recycled are stored onboard until the ship reaches port where they can be disposed of or sent to a recycling facility that can handle food contaminated recyclables.
The only problem I see with the green Strike Group plan, is the ability to actually move and procure the amount of bio-fuel a CSG will consume over the length of a deployment.