GOP: Make the desert sands glow in the dark

For some Republican presidential candidates ISIS is a problem we can bomb away.

Sound familiar?

“Bomb them back to the Stone Age.”

U.S. commanders did their best to do that in Vietnam.

“By the end of the war, 7 million tons of bombs had been dropped on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia - more than twice the amount of bombs dropped on Europe and Asia in World War II,” according to a book on the war, https://libcom.org/history/1957-1975-the-vietnam-war.

Sen. Ted Cruz has suggested considering nuclear attacks that would make “sand glow in the dark.”

For a world still dependent on fossil fuels what could that mean?

We only have to go to Colorado to still one possible result.

“Project Rulison, named after the rural community of Rulison, Colorado, was a 40-kiloton nuclear test project in the United States on September 10, 1969, about 13 kilometres (8 mi) SE of the town of Grand Valley, Colorado (now named Parachute, Colorado) near western Colorado's Grand Valley in Garfield County. The location of "Surface Ground Zero" is39°24′19.0″N 107°56′54.7″W.

“It was part of the Operation Mandrel weapons test series under the name Mandrel Rulison, as well as the Operation Plowshare project which explored peaceful engineering uses of nuclear explosions. The peaceful aim of Project Rulison was to determine if natural gas could be easily liberated from underground regions.

“The test succeeded in liberating large quantities of natural gas however the resulting radioactivity left the gas contaminated and unsuitable for applications such as cooking and heating homes. Although projected public radiation exposures from commercial use of stimulated gas had been reduced to less than 1% of background, it became clear in the early 1970s that public acceptance within the U.S. of any product containing radioactivity, no matter how minimal, was difficult if not impossible.[1] The Department of Energy began a cleanup of the site in the 1970s which was completed in 1998. A buffer zone put in place by the state of Colorado still exists around the site.”
Operation Plowshare

During the Republican presidential debate this week several candidates made it clear they weren’t worried about killing civilians in order to destroy ISIS.

How would the American people feel about paying high gasoline prices again. It might benefit Vladimir Putin.

Some environmentalists might think it is what is needed to move to other energy sources.

What irony. The Republicans, constant opponents of climate change science, might force a change.

Even if none of them cares about what it would mean to Arab countries, it is unlikely the oil companies that have backed them for so many years would be pleased.