Looked a little scary from late may thru mid june but the Arctic ice seems to have stabilized as of late. Search the subject above & one of you puter whizzes can post a gragh that shows this year at this time the ice mass is half way between the 1979-2000 ave & last years record low. You can see the gragh line trying to work its way back toward the 79-00 ave & away from the record low line...There will be winter this year!

July of this year compares to way back in 73...thats promising....This July also compares to 1998....keep your skis crossed...untill it starts Snowing ofcourse!

I really hope this does not make me a "puter expert".

You know, I'm really against messin' up the environment, I recycle everything, because I believe we should be good stewards of what God graciously gave us. But it amazes me how we humans think so much of ourselves and how we think we have such a great impact on our weather when in fact there is a nuclear incinerator 92 million miles away that controls our climate.

Leave it up to one of the funniest comedians in our lifetime, George Carlin, God rest his soul, to sum it up best... WARNING, the contents of this link contains some not so nice language.

http://www.habitablezone.com/flame/messages/420992.html

Ba-Bang-badda-Boom.....Thats it Puterex! Its the Sun & Plastic Stupid!

I think you missed his point -- I don't think he was saying so much that we are not technically able to do anything about it but instead he was saying that he didn't think we'd be able to do anything about it due to our own innate conflicted natures.

"The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance."

I guess he didn't in the end think much of folks.

I read it differently, not with one main point but two main points and several side points.

A1) he strictly defined "it" to be "our long term self interest" not "the health of the planet"

A2) we are not capable of doing anything long term (insert conflicted notes here)

B1) natures' machinery out there is bigger than us

B2) we incur consequences that can easily have continuing existence and persistence independently of our own self-interest or survival

Taking point B1) independently of the others (and it can be, just as much as A2), hockeydave's post is actually directly on topic.

So, fishnski, the solar astronomers said "look for a cooler winter" back in April, the Arctic ice is saying "look for a cooler winter" now, what was the problem again?

Actually the problem really lies in the fact that the Ice still is below the 30 year ave which is really the period that the earth has experienced a slight warming..aka..Global warming..which means we are still in deep Do-Do as far as us Nordics are concerned. I'm hopeing that we have bottomed out & we are heading for a more healthy & larger Ice pack which to me is the most important factor in any winter. I wont be happy till the ice hits the 79-00 ave & then I can relax.

The Ice pack we have now will still work for the elevated areas here in the mid Atlantic but without some growth in the pack I'm afraid the lowlands will continue to suffer. Ive looked back at some of the Snowier & colder years for the DC area & the Pack was definetly more solid & larger than now...Air florida crash..Jan 1982..potomac frozen over..Good snow pack...95/96..Allright snow pack but not that far off from what we have now...Conclussion is that it wont take that long if things work out that we will be Skating on the C&O canal again...Stay tuned!

Does anyone remember which human factory caused global warming and ended the last ice age?

That would've been the world renowned, buffalo chip/methane production facility located somewhere near what is now Gary, IN ......

Well at the heart of your argument is a core of rotten fatalism, and Carlin's.

But even little things add up -- try it, you'll like it.

So global warming causes glaciers in California to expand, too:

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/07/09/shasta-glaciers.html

Well, that's good news as far as I'm concerned. One of my favorite- if not my absolute favorite- towns in the U.S. sits at the base of Shasta. I've often thought that the only thing that would make the town better is if Shasta was more fully glaciated. Ask, and ye shall receive???

I saw that article too... ironic that data is suggesting global warming masses missed the boat years back and things are cooling. But hey, if this global warming things gives us longer and snowier winters, I'm up for it!!

Let me ask all of you naysayers and skeptics who would rather quote some obscure facts, isolated incidents, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannitty or representatives from the fossil fuels industry:
1) Let's try to use your common sense(not idealogy) for one moment. You'll have to excuse me since I am an engineer and we're heavily schooled in physics. What happens when you take hundreds of millions of years of stored fossil(solar) energy burn it inefficiently and exhaust by products (carbon dioxide) to our limited atmosphere??????????????????????
2) Can we not easily measure the amount of carbon dioide in the atmosphere??????? Wouldn't the fact that the CO2 is increasing in the atmoshere tell that little common sense part of your skeptical brain that we may be having some effect on our climate?
3) We're not talking about one factory~!! We're talking about millions of factories, and coal buring power plants and hundreds of millions of cars. So stop pulling out obscure, meaningless facts about Mt. Shasta glaciers!!!
4) The Pentagon and scientific institutions across the entire planet have recognized global warming as an issue. Does this mean anything to you?

Quite frankly I rather listen to my dog pass gas than some of the crap you guys come up with. Opinions are fine, but science is where the answers are.

Ohmygod Snow!!! You have committed sacrilege in even insinuating that Limbaugh and Hannity may not be receiving celestial truths in addition to manna from heaven. Your apostasy is unheard of and I'm sure that you'll also deny that our ongoing armed conflicts are the direct result of divine revelation to the incumbent head of the Executive Branch. Sacred cows in the heavens will rain bovine scatology on all of us now, and the snow will become turbid and scratch the ptex off our skis...

Now that's funny right there...

Snowsmith, I admire your firm stance on GW and how you perceive that science has all of the answers, although scientific theory on many subjects changes quite often when new evidence is unearthed or technological advances occur.

Below is a link to a graph of the temperature change in Greenland over the past 1500 years based on analysis of deep ice core samples.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Grtemp.png

Kindly explain the spikes in temperature prior to the 18th century.

I'm itchin to jump in but with both Ibotta & Snowsmith chiming in, I don't want to have Scott thinking I set this up for a good ole internet brawl!

Wondering, wondering if it's one o them biracial coondogs?

This graph shows fluxuation in temperature. Yes we have had fluxuation in temperature and will continue to have fluxuation in temperature even if all human beings dropped dead tomorrow. The point behind global warming is really very simple, the millions of years of carbon dioxide that was stored in the fossil fuels that we are buring at an alarming rate and are being released into the atmosphere over a very short period in climatic terms. What trends that are naturally occuring are not going to be completely reveresed by this, I do not believe based on what I have read. However, the climatic trends may be altered over the long term (in human terms), accelerating the warming that is already occuring (as shown on the graph you provided). What happens to the Mt. Shasta glacier next winter is completely irrelavant to this arguament.
If we look back at our climatic history, I doubt the dinosaurs would be wearing ski parkas or alternatively, at one time a glacier covered a good portion of North America. There was a 'mini - ice age' during the 1600 and early 1700's. What was that caused by? Since the human foot print at that time was very small, I doubt we had any effect. The planet has warmed considerably since that time, again most likely little effect from humans. However since the start of the industrial age, we have exponentailly increased carbon dioxide emmisions into the atmosphere. We here in the US use 22 million barrels of oil a day and God knows how much coal. Anybody with the common sense that God gave geese should be able to recogonize that this huge increase in carbon dioxide emissions into our atmosphere is going to have some kind of effect. To suggest that there is going to be some huge reversal in climatic trends is absurd. The warming trend is already happening as your graph shows. What is predicted is that the short term (in climatic terms) increase in CO2 due to the huge emissions fossil fuel by products will result in some warming of the planet. What caused the warming of the planet when the dinosuars were here? What caused the cooling of the planet when we had glaciets covering the North American continent? I don't know that answer. But we sure can figure how how much CO2 is in our atmosphere and we know what the properties of this gas are. The same posters can play the deny game all they want, but it boils down to basic physics whether they agree or not.

hockeydave,

That's an incredibly shallow argument. That human action can and does affect climate, does not prevent a myriad of other natural phenomena from doing so as well. Volcanic action has major effects. Changes in solar radiation intensity. Probably even continental drift and anything else that can affect ocean currents since they are responsible for shuttling a lot of heat around.

If we can see that we are affecting climate in a way that is likely to be detrimental to our own existence, then we should do something about it. Sure, maybe a super volcano or a comet will make all our efforts moot in the end, but personally I don't drink arsenic and then count on a car accident killing me first.

I'll jump in.

snowsmith, nothing of what you quote is disproven.

Assuming, however, that human-sourced gas is the only factor, or even the biggest factor affecting overall heating, let alone local temperature trends, is not scientific but symptomatic of media-driven agenda.

Let's say human-source gas emission heating is like a space heater in a house. It's too hot in the house, but we can't turn it off. Oof, we're sweltering here. Well, winter arrives and temperatures plummet to 10F. That space heater is still on, heating its little heart out, but the house is still half-freezing. Especially if the wind shifts and blows directly on the picture glass windows.

Have I set the scene enough yet? On to the story.

A person walks in and notices that the house is cold. The resident immediately jumps on the visitor and starts beating the visitor for daring to imply that the residents do not have a problem with a space heater they can't unplug anymore.

You know Operation Coondog was a federal anti-crime operation in the SW part of the great Commonwealth of Virginia?

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/vaw/press_releases/coondog_06feb2007.html

Hmmmmm, interesting, i did not know about that.

Just the day before last, i learned from a Congressman from Massachuesssts that the global warmings were to blame for the Blackhawk Down incident in, was that in Somalia? Guessin he'll be up for a Nobell soon enough .

I had to go to Abingdon and testify for the prosecution on that...

I just presented data, if it is in fact to be believed, that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that humans had absolutely zero impact on changes in Greenland's temperature prior to the onset of the Industrial Age (unless you include the impact from methane as a by-product of defecation). Shallow argument... HARDLY!

Secondly, I'll make the assumption that Earth is warming strictly because of us. Here's my theory on how Earth will correct "our" problem, even without our intervention. Increase in temperature causes more ocean evaporation. Evaporation causes more clouds. Clouds block sunlight. Lack of sunlight cools Earth. George Carlin was right... self correcting system (see the link in a previous post), even without the superior species intervention. Wonderful, isn't it?

Oh, by the way, plant life thrives on CO2. Several scientific studies, although I'm sure these are subject to change, indicate the Earth is getting greener due to higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. I for one like trees. Nothing like them, especially in a fireplace on a cool day (it never gets cold anymore).

You didn't address what I said at all. Yes, there were climate variations prior to human intervention. That does not in any way prove that a significant portion of current climate variations are not due to human activity. Climate variation has never been, nor never will be, due to a single cause. We have simply added another contributer that is pushing it in one direction. If you had a flag flapping in the breeze and then I put an big fan next to it, would you claim that my fan has nothing to do with the motion of the flag just because it was also moving before I placed it there?

To your second paragraph, increased temperature also melts ice, increasing sunlight absorption in most of the spectrum (water and dirt are darker than snow and ice), thus warming Earth. We can all spout off on our ignorance all day. When given the choice, I'm going to side with the people that have the knowledge and tools and have spent years applying them to the data over a random guy in the internet who thinks he can disprove years of research in two sentences (You're free to feel the same about me, except for the siding with the scientists part.).

Plants do indeed like CO2. If you look at the history of the planet, there were many times when the planet was much greener (think dinosaurs). They also mostly correlate with much higher CO2 levels and much higher average temperatures. Though I like trees, even their shade wouldn't make it livable if the average temperature around here went up 10C.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesozoic

I agree with you 100% that the earth will make adjustments based on the conservation of energy principle. However, this may take hundreds of years.
Most of the theories on global warming assume that like feeding pigs we'll remain at the fossil fuel trough feeding until we're fat. However, based on the extensive research that I have read, we're approaching or have passed 'peak oil'. Thus we're going to have to find another source of energy. Of course the USA is the Saudi Arabia of coal and there is oil shale out west which hold lots of oil but very expensive and energy intensive to extract.
What drives me crazy is that there is a huge, world wide scientific community out there that has done very extensive research on this and yet, I keep hearing the same old bull from people who quote that artic sea ice has returned in the winter ( a - dah!) and other irrelevant BS because they don't believe the global warming theory. But they have no facts what so ever to present that global warming is not in fact an issue that we need to be concerned about. You can't refute that the amount of CO2 has increased in the atmosphere. Period!

If arctic sea ice is returning, then it is returning. That is what the original thread was about, and bringing manmade gases into the discussion is irrelevant.



Nobody was even bothering to try. That is your straw man argument.

I swear... if the Potomac freezes over in 10 years with snow starting as early as first of October, I'm going to be laughing so hard I'll have to stop on timberlines new 6 mile long trail. :P

The CO2 that's piled up in the atmosphere will still have an effect even if we stopped using oil and coal RIGHT NOW, which we won't.

Technology might save us but why gamble? Personally I like solar -- coal based energy costs about $1 per watt, and solar is around $2 although I've seen some claims of it moving down to $1.60-$1.80 per watt, some even further.

That's getting close -- maybe in 5 yrs and that'll put the sword in the coal fired plants...

OR -- we could subsidize alternate power... make it happen, why depend on luck after all?

After all we subsidize coal and oil.

In fact if you have any doubts about the sea ice -- just look to the meeting held between Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States -- they (we) are looking to divy up the increasingly ice free actic sea bed...

Don't believe me -- check the news -- they met in Greenland in May.

Be careful of what you wish for Baywalker...There is a Russian Scientist..yeh I said Scientist..that predicts a return to another Ice age in 10 to 13 years. Our world temps have peaked out in the last 8 years..Have not really budged at all lately & if anything, are starting to drop allready. We might be wishing that the pidley amount of manmade gases that we have produced compared to what the earth could produce in a very short burst was a much larger amount!

Year after year we hear all the Doom & Gloom & I'm still waiting for these catostrophic events...still waiting for the 8 houses between me & the ocean to start to dissapear so I don't have to walk so far to take a dip...but nothing changes..Are we to listen to the Snowsmiths & Owl Gores in the world & start shelling out all our life savings to combat this evil & can we get the chinas in the world to go along or should we just Chill...Drill..& hope for the best??!

PS..I predict a better winter with better sking this coming winter...In the Mid Atlantic that is...couldn't get any better out West or up north than last year..Could it?

Daily Sea Ice
This is why my prediction will come true

Of course it doesn't take that much of a substained increase in CO2 -- which is a trace element in the atmosphere -- to have an effect. In fact its AMAZING STUFF because without we'd be "living" on an ice-ball otherwise. So pop open a soda and admire the little bubbles for what they are...

But even little changes in temps can have a bigger effect because so much carbon is locked up in things like sea ice and tundra. A little warming in avg temps can lead to melting -- and melting releases more carbon & other greenhouse gases -- which makes things a bit warmer and so on...

Taken to the extreme we'd have a "runaway feedback loop" if you will and really get quite warm... this would be over 10s or perhaps 100s of year time frames by the way.

The oceans on the other hand and trees absorb lots of CO2 themselves -- they are the "sinks" in the equation.

Some folks have proposed seeding the oceans with iron to increase their absorption in an attempt to scrub the atmosphere and bring the concentrations down.

Another one I found is an actual "CO2 scrubber devices" -- a plethora of recent media stories have surfaced on these -- I read of one being developed in arizona; the article was favorable on the concept. I have no idea how well these things really work but it certainly worth investing in the idea.

After all -- one thing you are right about, we may be able to stop ourselves from using coal or oil and replacing them with things like solar and wind power (and other energy sources) that are more carbon neutral.

But there's not a thing we can do when a huge volcano spews forth and changes the weather.

I guess in the end it comes down to this -- are we lurching towards managing the earth's ecosystems -- keeping it in a kind of "stasis" so its "just like we want it"?

I think so...

Interesting picture fishnski. But realistically you have to look at the moving average over a longer time than one year.

Wow I'm glad my birthday was yesterday and I was out drinking.

Here's something I've been pondering (like Pinky from "Pinky and the Brain") for a while now. Have y'all ever read the book "1491"? It's absolutely fascinating, basically a layman's overview of some of the big issues anthropologists are wrestling with vis-a-vis what the Western Hemisphere looked like prior to the arrival of Columbus.

One of the things that they mentioned is that a growing number of anthropologists (whether that means that the number has gone from 1 anthropologist to 2, or 10% to 11%, or 30% to 80% I don't know) are beginning to think that the Western Hemisphere was one of the most managed environments in the world, possibly in the history of human civilization. Some of the anthropoligists estimate that at one time as much as a quarter of the Amazon rain forest may have been deforested (much more than what is now), as well as massively thinned forests throughout the eastern part of North America. Much of the prairie may even have been woodlands that were chopped down and burned fairly regularly to keep regrowth from occurring (burning the prairie is practiced to this day).

This got me thinking about global warming. I note that the little ice age coincides pretty closely with the near-extinction of the people's of the Western Hemisphere. My question- how do we know that human activity hasn't impacted the climate in the past? All of our arguments over historical temperature trends take for granted that human "intervention" didn't occur in the world until the dawn the industrial age... are we so sure? Can we be?

Okay, I'm going back to watching my little global-warming fed glaciers on Mount Shasta grow...



oh, btw, if you think CO2 contributes a lot to global warming, wait until we move to a hydrogen economy and start "mass producing" water vapor.

Did anyone see Al Gore yesterday? Monumental speech. And impressive command of the subject. Shouldn't be a surprise to most here that I've been both, a proponent of much more expensive gasoline, a proponent of non-carbon energy sources accompanied by a domestic Marshall Plan to bring mass transit to the most remote corners of our country. Gore's remarks were transcendental. And dovetail into our conversation here.

Ah... Snowsmith, I meant absolutely nothing about the Mt. Shasta glaciers supporting or contradicting global warming. I was just happy to see that they're growing- I can assume that you and I can at the very least agree that, as skiers, glaciers growing = nice news??? I know the world's getting warmer and all but chill out, dude.

Everytime I fill up my tank I'm laughing because Al Gore is a joke and I won't be letting any commie liberals forcing me to a socialistic agenda by riding bicycles everywhere!!

I think humans can pollute localized areas to near devestation but The measure of our effect on the environment is impossible to measure. I remember being a kid in ohio and seeing ash from Mt. Saint Helens. No factory 3000 miles away has an effect that far away. I think alot of our global warming scare comes from the ability to accurately measure and micro-manage every little bit of information. We are a mere blip in history but are self concieved into thinking we can control the world. We do not accurately know anything about the weather before the last 200 years. The ice testing is even based on our observations over the past 100 years and correlated to all time. The earth has cycles we are just here for the ride

Lou, Lou, Lou........I saw some sound bites of old stone face's "Monumental" speech. I think he left out a few inconvenient truths as there was no mention of nuclear or, suprisingly (to me) hydro-electric generation. When he said that we are at the point that non-carbon sources are on a even cost basis with fossil fuels he told a bald faced lie, trancending the facts of the situation. So yes you are right I guess he was monumental and trancendental.

I do agree that the time has come to quit transferring this country's wealth to foreign nations, to move on to new ways of generating power and fueling personal transportation but the mass-transit utopia you keep touting does not and never will work across The United States. It's a small part of the solution. Your dream of $10/gallon gasoline and the ensuing re-distribution of wealth would cause more misery, chaos and failure in America than Katrina caused on the Gulf coast, what a disaster.

I am glad that Mr. Gore did find a nice, rational Polititian to carry the Global Warmings Banner while he solves the energy crisis, as snowsmith said, science is on the side of GWF.

What you mean is that we are going to pay thru the nose to "stabilize" Iraq ($500 billion spent so far and counting) and then pay through nose again for their barrels of oil as they have the "second largest reserves of oil in the world"... or so some estimate right after our buddies the Saudis.

I see what you mean there about wrecking the economy and ensuing re-distribution of wealth...

Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy... The twits in the White House have been transferring our wealth to despots and tyrants now for the last 8 years and redistributing wealth at an unprecedented speed to the top 2% of the country. At your expense. And we're on the hock for the next four generations so they can continue to get richer. As the middle class gets their homes foreclosed, tyrants and friends of tyrants buy $60 million dollar mansions in Palm Beach with your money. What's more obscene?

Kev, did you read my post??

Yes?

How did you get that from what i wrote?

I have got to seriously bite my tongue right now...Scott..I hope your catchin my self restraint...Whewww!!...Walk it off..Calm down Andy.....I'm heading up to Canaan to cool off...need some berries...

Alright Jimmy, guilty. I twisted your words around to make a point -- I thought it was, you know dry humor but I guess it doesn't go thru the text very well.

Anyway -- YOUR point is that conversion to these other technologies COULD be expensive and I agree its an issue.

My point is that we are already spending lots to keep what we have in place -- and that's any issue.

I'd personally rather spend it inside our borders and while I'd prefer more towards the "green" on the energy front, getting halfway there by whatever means is better to me than our "solution" now.

I think you'll agree with me there!

That's right, we agree on where we are and where we need to be. I just think we need a better way to get there than to just trust Senator Gore and Congressman Mularkey. Part of the problem is you have good people like you, me, lbotta, snowsmith, hockeydave & whomever at odds because my guy's a twit, his guy's a commie, the problem began in 2000, it began in 1976 whatever. I checked out Picken's Plan, there are problems with it, same as Senator Gore's has problems, but we need to get halfway to the goal, and i just feel we can do that without "sending a man to the moon". I believe that trusting our government to solve this problem is like digging a pit in SaudiA and sticking your head in it. The answer is American Ingenuity.

For some interesting facts while only spending 1.5 hours of your life, I urge everyone to watch the documentary film " A Crude Awakening". This film is not a bunch of liberal wackos spouting off about global warming or other such vitriole. These folks are experts fromt the oil industry, professors of physics and even our Congressman from Frederick, MD (can't remember his name right now, but he is a conservative Republican, but surprisingly informed and does not toe the old Republican line on oil). Folks, we are now floating on Shits Creek, we still have a paddle, but the boat is leaking and we're too busy not thinkin' because we're probably piloting a cigarette boat.
The truth is there is no simple (especially short term) replacement for oil:
) Hydrogen - takes more energy to separate the hydrogen atom from oxygen (with water being the raw material) than the energy you get out.
)Ethanol -this program is controlled by Republican and mid-west state Democrat agribusiness interest. Corn will produce approximately 1.6 energy units with energy 1.0 input. Brazil uses sugar cain which has a ratio of 8:1. Given the amount of crop land we have available to produce ethanol without all of us starving to death, it is estimated that at best, we could supply 6% of the fuel we need for transportation in this country.
)Oil - given the huge increase in demand expected from China, India and developing Africa, the demand will soon outstrip the supply. Cheap oil (that is oil that is easy to get to ) is being pumped out at an alarming rate. There are vast amouns of oil shale in Colorado and Wyoming, but it would require strip mining vast areas and then the rock needs to be heated to remove the oil! You keep hearing about ANWAR oil over and over again from Dumbyah, but we're only talking an estimated 1.5 billion barrels or about a month and a half supply in this country.And it would take at least 10 years to get to.
) Wind - every time we try to build a wind energy farm somebody complains that is going to spoil their view or kill birds. Maybe they'd rather look at a coal strip mine or power plant. Denmark now produces something like 15% of their electricy with wind energy. We produce way less than 1/10 of 1%.
)Electricity - nuclear, I am sorry to say, may provide some of the solution, however, the risks associated with nuclear are catastrophic if a plant fails. Solar has been researched for the last 30 years and there have been no breakthroughs.
)Wave energy - yes, ocean wave action can be used to produce electricy.
) Natural gas - not enough around to provide fuel for cars and heating/cooking at the same time.
)Conservation- us lazy Americans will wake up too late. And then we'll all start complaining and blaming the government. Why do we need 4,000 sf houses and Hummers. We are energy glutens and we are not ashamed at all. We need oil, hey, we'll spend $600 billion and slaughter a few hundred thousand people (so those people can be free!)and take over your country so we can get to your oil. So we can feed our insatialbe appetite for oil. So you see, gas costs a lot more tnan $4/gallon.
)Hot air from Fishnski - the old fish has a significant gas supply from all of that Pabst Blue Ribbon and ethic food (7-11 chilli dogs)which could be used to run a ski lift or power his Transam. Additional heat energy from reading my posts.

One cup of gasoline will transport 6 people in a internal combustion car, 1.5 miles. How can you replace a fuel that stores this much energy. Well in reality, you can't.

I don't mean to be a pessimist, but in about 25 or 30 years (after I can no longer ski of course), I'll be checking out to that great ski resort in the sky and looking down with pity on the clueless Generation X'ers and the smarter Millenials who are stuck with riding their bikes to work.

Screw oil... have we reached "peak beer" yet? That's when I'll start to panic!

Jimmy I will buy you beers (or your favorite Cabernet) until kingdom comes. Yes, we all want the best for our country and ourselves and the generations that come after us. We may differ on how to get there. And sometimes we listen to folks whose agendas may be anchored in making the other agendas look false. Not so.

I want there to be skiing in the year 2200. At least my condo will have been turned over at least three times, I'll be underneath flowers and grass at Arlington, and Thunder's picture catching a frisbee going down Widowmaker will still be on the wall. And thousands of skiers will still be swooshing down Cupp Run.

We all need to put our heads together and solve this mess. With the ingenuity that has made us the best on the planet. And hopefully we'll save the sport we all love... as well as ourselves.

Just got back from Canaan..B-Utifull 4 days..Cooling off & then I come back with a positive vibe & read your post Snowsmith & appreciating a good one for awhile untill I get to your ole fishy barb...Why did you have to go there my brother from another Party?...Why does this hot air have to spew from such an [censored]?..so sad...see ya on the Slopes good Buddy!

That (censored)addition was genious Scott!

I didn't do anything -- that's just the default forum software at work.

Interesting news. You may need to understand Spanish, but as I'm subscribed to numerous foreign news sources, I found this that directly impacts our oil prices and geopolitics.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frías is in Moscow signing oil exploration accords with Russian President Putin in the Orinoco River Basin, which many experts opine could be the largest underground oil reservoir on the planet. The Venezuelans (they have US F-16 aircraft) and the Russians also signed an armament pact.

The saddest part is that our media pays so little importance to Latin America that most of us aren't even remotely aware that over 30 percent of our imported oil, almost 3 million barrels a day out of the 9 million we import a day, comes from Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador. More than Canada, much more than Saudi Arabia. And three of these countries have recently become more and more allied with Russia and China. As well, China is financing a pipeline to draw the oil sand product from Canada to the Canadian West Coast.

http://ve.invertia.com/noticias/noticia.aspx?idNoticia=200807221216_EFE_FA2124

Time to begin our massive national investment in wind power, solar or whatever...

Is it just me or do any of you'all find some of Mr. Ibotta's posts so friggin confusing...Do I have to take Obamas advice & learn Spanish??!!.....& build wind mills because the Russians & citgo are going to drill more oil?...There goes the neighborhood Baby!......with all due respect ofcourse Mr. Ibotta..

& seriously though... As a red White & blue American may you rest in peace in Arlington Cemetary one day & thank you for your service to our country..United we stand Devided we fall...Good night..& God Bless..Ski On Brother!

You know F&S, for a guy who constantly dishes it out, you sure can't take any ribbing. That post seemed rather mild to me.If you can't fry in the pan with the other sausages, stay off the stove.

Mmmmm, sausage....

MMMMMMmm Sizzle..Sizzle...Good point SnooooGumms, It wasn't that bad & normaly I would have laughed it off but it is the accumalated effect of his posts that ..Like he said drew some hot air out of my lips....Tell me this ain't funner than listening to some lame ole, same ole Ski dribble though?...Bring it on...I just wish I could really dish it out & express it like I can do in a much more comfortable envirement like riding up a chair lift with any of you all...I'm much more fun in person...Really..I love you man!...Can I get a Bud Select from You?

PS..Thanks for Hi-Jacking my Post People...It made it more Interesting!

Hey I know I can get a little intense, preachy, self righteous,etc, but it really was meant to be a joke, from one (censored) to another (censored). No offense intended.

mmmmm sausage. Where's that big F250 truck I want to drive 1.5hr to Winchester to get some sausage?

Well Ahndy,

wile we are on the subject of sausage, I think snowsmith is probably more fun in person also, i certainly hope so..... i think you should challenge him to a ski off, but i must get back off topic.

One of the reasons you don't understand espaniel (push 2 to continue) very well is that instead of sausage, patties, links or big fat italianos your folks decided, in the interest of promoting u heritage to feed you lutfisk instead of the pig and now you are consumed in the pursuit of fresh fish as well as your quest for approval and an end to teh Global Warmings.....so here's my questions for you my friend Mr. Fishnski,

will you join in on the boycott now that Stella has bought out the Busch??

and how are the glaciers and sea ice doing this week????

.. i use chopped-up glaciers to keep my heinekin-bud cold while heating up my sausage using fuel from iraq ...

Yeah - I hope I'm fun in person too. I am a worrying type person and this oil situation has got me worried. Check out T. Boone Pickens website. This guy is an oilman, not some whacko. Yet, it business as usuall in this country. We have got to wake up and smell the sausage. I want to be able to drive to my ski house well into the future, ski and eat sausage. Bratwurst, Italian, Knockwurst and the best...keilbassa. And it all goes well with that Dutch...I mean American beer, Budiken.

Sad Citization about my Bud turning turncoat on me especially since I just came back to the "Other Bush" family from the Miller family...I do like the Bud Select now that my store has come back with the Manly beer can size...thru me off when they switched to the long thin girly thangs for awhile...couldn't get the things to stay in my huggies that I own & with this 3 to 4 month Global Warming spell we are in right now & with the huggies that fit the girly size getting kind of expensive I was getting (My Huggies in a bunch) disturbed...Maybe the reason I got so irratable with the likes of the Ibottas & smiths in the world.....I take all the nasty stuff Back mr smith & anyone else I have offended BUT Reserve the right to defend myself if ever Internetly Cold cocked again!

Heh Counsler Jimmi Jim Beam me back to Reality..Ice seems to be holding tough but with the thin nature of some of it we could see a dramatic meltdown in the next month...Good thing is that some of the thin stuff is way up in the northern lats & could ride out the storm...keep hope alive & Stay Tuned Waxed & ready for this coming Winter!

Snow, I'm not as concerned. We are an amazingly resilient people and will adapt and change minds as we need to face the realities of the world around us.

I've been preaching a change in paradigms is in order. Plain and simple. Someone remarked on this thread recently about future generations being "stuck" riding bicycles to work. Actually, the bicycle should be THE prime means of transportation for urban and suburban distances of less than 10 miles. Then there should be metro or trolleys, and finally, as a last resort, the car.

As I like to put my efforts where I put my moutn or my money, I was recently at a public meeting where the DC mayor declared that DC will become the least car friendly city in the US soon. That's a first step. The widening of the Beltway to include only carpool lanes is also a great idea. People will be able to ride solo on these lanes, but it will be at a price of at least $1.00 a mile. And yes, since I moved to DC in 1989 originally, I've been riding a bike to work Spring through Fall. The car now gets about 4K a year only to visit family in Fairfield and Stratford CT and to get to Snowshoe.

As for beer. I have Bud in my refrigerator, as it makes a great cooking medium... Great for Arroz con Pollo, Paella, and any seafood. As well as sausage.

Soon enough, there will be wind generators everywhere in the countryside. Only a matter of time.

& to Jimmi & anyone else that is interested & not just reading this for entertainment...The Graph posted by the Puter Whizzz(Norsky Mon) on the 1st day of this thread seems to be updating every day.

The problem with that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density

There is not one country on there with a well developed metro/trolley/train system and less than ~80+ citizens per square km. The US has 31.



But it hasn't become more bike friendly. IMHO a proper first step is to make it more bike friendly than car friendly, and the way it is going, it is rather on the path to neither.

However, we are very urbanized and that's where it counts. We have 77% of our population living in urban centers, we're more urbanized than France, Norway, Italy, Switzerland, Russia and the Czech Republic. (Source: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_urb-people-urbanization ). All of these countries have enviable mass transit systems. And I bet that none of them are throwing their money away in oil like ours.




There are significant changes in the offing. For example, the taking down of the "15th Street Expressway" by putting in separated bike lanes and more residential parking, the plans to close much of 16th Street's commuting lanes, and additional emphasis on mass transit, and the hiring of 60 additional policemen to ticket high-speed commuters and parking violators. It's only a beginning. But change comes slowly.

This coming as a surprise to 99% of DC commuters, who were sure that the city had won that award decades ago.

Lou- 77% of our population lives in areas defined as urban, not urban centers. The population density of our urban areas is also much lower than urban centers in Europe. We are slowly becoming more dense, while Europe is becoming less so. Density is really closely correlated not only with consumer preference (which you note rightly), but also wealth. The only way to make this country more dense quickly is to reduce real wealth.

I don't understand the demand for mass transit, to be honest. It does not provide the freedom and flexibility that individual transit does. It is an inferior good, period. Let me ask this: if you could decouple cars from oil (and, secondarily, from carbon-based fuel), would you still support mass transit over cars for a national strategy?

There are certainly some regional benefits to mass transit to reduce peak road demand- if costs are comparable between infrastructure service on both goods- so I could see some point to having mass transit even if cars were run on angel dust in high density regions. But trying to transform the whole country into something like New York City? I don't buy it.

Now, the follow-up question is this: if you answered "no" to my question above, then why not support more fuel efficiency, flex-fuel technology, and electric/alternative fuel-based vehicle development as well as (or in addition to, your pick) mass transit?

All that said, I'm starting to come around a bit to your perspective about trains, Lou. In particular because of the increasing craptacular performance of the national airlines. I think a high speed national rail system- or at the very least a few key routes such as the I-95 corridor, a coast-to-coaster, some routes like that- would provide a viable alternative to our oh-so-friendly skies.

One big turning point for me was when I saw a study from a few years back that showed that a high-speed, dedicated customer rail line could be built from Kansas City to Denver for less than a billion dollars (it would take seven hours each way). That got me thinking about how much we spend on upgrading airports each year (I don't know what it is, but it's almost certainly more than that). Open up the skies to foreign competition domestically, and get some rails in place. Seems logical that if we're talking about having flexible alternatives for fuel sources for energy use, the same rules would apply for traveling at the very least mid-range distances in this country.

I can certainly sympathize with the traffic conditions in DC, but frankly, there are numerous cities including nearby Arlington, where the local government has instituted traffic calming as a government fiat. DC is still a loooooong way from that.



Not necessarily. The Red Line in the DC Metro goes right through the tawniest and wealthy parts of the DC Metro area. Yet these areas can be both, dense, and wealthy. And their citizens crave the Metro simply because of the convenience it gives them. Arlington is another example. The Orange Line helped turn an entire corridor of low-density run-down neighborhoods into dense neighborhoods spotted with high-rises, where the median price of a home exceeds 800K. In this case, density has come with an influx of money, education, and resources.

Now I will agree with you that if you could decouple cars from oil (and, secondarily, from carbon-based fuel), it would be hard to support mass transit over cars for a national strategy. However, cars are inefficient means of travel, especially when you see an entire Beltway full of solo drivers. You don't see that anywhere else on the globe, even in countries with a higher quality of life than the US.

I have no opposition or argument against more fuel efficiency, flex-fuel technology, and electric/alternative fuel-based vehicle development in addition to mass transit and non-powered transportation such as bicycles. As a matter of fact, such intermodal transportation would be optimum.

I will also totally agree with you that a high speed national rail system would provide a viable alternative to our non-friendly skies. We've reached the point of saturation in the air system. I can attest to that as a pilot.

We agree more than we disagree. Taking it back to the ski world, leisure transportation needs to be intermodal also. Hopefully some day the subject of "White Christmas" train will once again appear in New Hampshire, Vermont, Colorado, Utah and West Virginia.

You guys are starting to Bum me out...Are you saying that I wont be able to commute to work or fly to my Fav golf/Ski club or Hover over my Fav Grouper/Snapper hole offshore in my 1 to 2 seat Jetson Airmoble??!!??...What about being able to get into a man sized Drivethru Banktube like thingy & getting sucked up & out to anywhere I want to go?

While public transportation is nice and needed in many urban and city areas, this nation is too large with people for too long using cars that the paradigm shift will never happen. People not only value but require their own personal transportation at their own convenience to get any where. In more rural areas like here in Hardy County having such transportation simply to survive is a must. Driving an hour round trip to Walmart to grocery shop simply can't be replaced by a rail line or a bicycle when you live 30 miles away.

Those people shop, live, move, drive on their own schedule with their own lives at their own times. The hauling capacity and transportation power for people in an area like this is a must. Obviously a bicycle can't provide that and building a billion dollar rail line in essence is a bit more ridiculous than building a billion dollar highway.

I can imagine some would suggest to make that paradigm shift would be to ask people to move closer together in a more densely populated area giving up what they have now. One that sounds an awful lot like socialist sprinkled ideology and secondly that's asking for trouble up here in these parts. heh That ideal will only work where capitalism has caused people to forcefully live in highly dense areas where such transportation shifts are fiscally allowable and physically allowable.

Personally with oil providing the most amount of cost effective energy per gallon compared to other fuels at this point, I see no reason not to support drilling full fledged ahead. Yes we should break ties with the Arabs, drill our own oil, refine our own oil, give to the American people what they want. On top of that I have more than enough doubts, as do most people I know that GW is an over pushed theory at the verge of televangelist like hype with nothing more than assumptions and theories at best. Yes I know I'll get a usual trouncing by others saying the data is there, it's clearcut, etc. But when numerous scientists at various universities claim that they are pushed to agree on what they know factually isn't right just to receive their funding, that tells me there is a nice little agenda at play.

So until the sky is literally falling me and everyone I know will use gas, albeit sparingly until prices fall then it's back to forging ahead on the road with the truck. Until I see that day, the earth will take care of itself, and I'm more than optimistic that in 15-20 years we'll be seeing snows more often and more reminiscent of the way it was in the 40s-60s. I honestly like the idea of possibly starting a profitable ski resort in Wardensville.

Bradley

Oh yeah, to keep sea ice topic moving, I expect in 15 years the sea ice will extend to the Chesapeake.

Waiting at this time probably is not an option -- waiting is a pragmatic approach that makes sense most of the time but in this case the accumulation of CO2 and other GH gases have a delay in their insulating effect. So if we wait, let's say we wait 10s of years until we absolutely agree "Yep there's a problem!" Then what do we do?

If we simply stop at that time right then and there producing any new CO2 it would still be 10s or 100s of years before the CO2 already produced and other GH gases are back to normal levels as they are slowly re-absorbed by oceans and trees, etc...

Meanwhile, depending on the overall rise in average temps, we will have had many many changes that will result in long term side effects to the environement that folks alive at that time will have to deal with.

Basically its the "you can't put the genie back in the bottle" sort of issue as far as this goes -- which is why the only realistic option right now is to hault the accumulation of these gases.

But to a degree we going on the CONSENSUS estimates of the BEST MINDS OVERALL in the world at this time on this issue. Yes -- the consensus could be completely wrong, are you willing to bet they are then?

HOWEVER -- recently there's been a little positive news on the "carbon scrubber front" -- and while these things have been largely dismissed in the past as in essence not being carbon neutral in the end (that is they produce just as much CO2 to run the things vs how much CO2 they actually remove ...)

Some have recently claimed to have gotten the advantage on the CO2 absorption side vs the CO2 produced to remove it.

And based on this, if someone soon will prove this sort of technology out -- that it could scale and be fielded in reasonable & cost effect way and actually make a difference in the overall percentage of these gases in the atmosphere, then I would say we could spend a bit more time -- not sure how much -- but taking a more wait and see attitude to improve the odds the consensus estimate is right and then proceed as is appropriate at that time.

Here's a link: http://limjunying.wordpress.com/2008/06/...n-of-co2-a-day/

I just heard on the radio today that a scientist in Australia who developed some sort of formula or theory on the insulating effect of co2...(caught the tail end of it) has changed his thinking...anyway bottom line..he is reducing the effect he feels carbon has on the atmosphere....another 2 cents for the pot... I'm with you Brad...

Well there has been both the Ray Spencer testimony:

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?F...4a-7afbc4ee72f3



and the Compo /Sadeshmukh:



http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/gilbert.p.compo/CompoSardeshmukh2007a.pdf

Auto trains.



Now imagine eliminating the car rental at destination, the weight limit on passengers (sure, pack 4 pairs of skis and a case of booze each (and several freeze packs of merguez sausage), luggage losses.

We can drill holes in the ground in the US until we are blue in the face, but if there is no oil there, it won't do us much good. Oil production in this country peaked in 1970 and has been dropping ever since. The geology of off shore areas as well of on shore area have been thoroughly explored and while there may be recoverable oil there, it it no where near enough to feed our thirsty engines. For example, you always hear about ANWAR...it is estimated to have 1.5 billion barrels of oil. That is a month and a half supply for this country. Why do you think we need to go to a god-for-saken place like that if the oil were available in our back yard.
You make a good point about rural areas and public transporation. A mass transit system is not viable. However, in Europe, they have bus systems everywhere and people are used to using them. Additionally, there is a vast network on intercity trains. These folks are going to be facing a grave crisis as prices rise and supplies dwindle.
I think the thing that is scary to me is that most people don't seem to understand that there is only so much oil in the ground and we just can't keep using it at the rate we are using it and expect business as usual. I love my car and the freedom that it gives me, but I am afraid that our lifestyles are going to change if we don't wake up and smell the roses. Fishnski is correct, we may need to be sucked up by the bank tube to go somewhere or some other means. When I was in Rome, Italy many people used motor scooters...that will be us soon.
We need a massive effort of energy conservation, smaller cars, many alternative sources of energy (gas, solar, wind, biofuels, coal, nuclear, hydroelectric) on a massive scale to make up for the soon to come shortages of oil. When will this happen...2 years, 5 years, 20 years, I am not sure. I have seen varying estimates. If you check out T. Boone Pickens website, he says we hit peak oil in 2005.
Quite frankly, I'm much more concerned about the energy situation than global warming theories.

Check out: http://www.crudeawakening.org/

http://www.PickensPlan.com

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

http://www.countercurrents.org/peakoil-deffeys270204.htm

So how much is 1.5 billon divided by 45?????

That's actually a myth too. Tomorrow, it will take my parents and sister's family a 35 minute drive from their house to get to a road (not a depot, mind) where a bus stops to pick them up. From there it is a 2.5hour bus ride to the nearest airport.


Edit: Pickens? Sorry, I don't see that as the second coming. Pickens is looking to create a growth market in alternative energy futures to replace dead manufacturing, belly-up real-estate, and pension-fund-saturated oil energy futures so we can do the entire pyramid scheme all over again without switching to yuans or euros. "american dream of a picket fence" real estate marketing now rewrapped with chest beating, hair pulling, hand wringing, guilt. Create an energy mae and energy mac so we can do it all again.

Well, Lou, it does seem we agree more than we disagree when we get down to the details of things. Dangit, and I was ready for a knock-down, drag-out brawl tonight (even have a beer open). Shucks. Well, we can continue to disagree about our priority for cars, there is that.

My big goals is that whatever we do, even if we somehow replace oil, we do so economically, not by making energy more expensive. I don't like that approach because the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that it is the people who can least afford it (rural folks, low income, fixed income, working class) that are affected the most by high energy prices.



Snowsmith, I have the opposite opinion, I think it's scary how most people don't seem to understand how much oil we have left. The amount of proven reserves has actually grown since 1980, and the USGS estimates that there may be as much as 3 trillion barrels of recoverable oil in the earth (this doesn't include oil shale- which is a technology I'm still skeptical about). Even if oil demand increased from 85 million barrels a day (our current level) to 105-110 million barrels a day, we have enough oil to meet that demand for more than a century. The great thing I see in that isn't that we should get complacent, but that we have more time than we realize to keep developing cost-effective technologies to compete with oil.

Apart from that, I generally agree we need a better diversified source for power in the U.S. I'm all for more nuclear, lots more nuclear (Did I see Britain just approved eight new nuclear power plants?). Solar and wind are nice but intermittent, and I think that opposition to both will increase dramatically when they become large-scale.

The biggest frustration in the U.S. right now is that, fine, we can talk about diversified energy sources or more oil or whatnot, but we are doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to increase the delivery of these products. All the wind power here in Kansas will do nothing for you folks back east because there's few power lines to get any energy between the different NERC regions, and almost no political will to build anymore. We can dump oil all over ourselves but without more refineries it's pointless. And even if you get the refineries, you need pipelines to deliver them.

The basic industries we're dealing with when we talk energy are network industries, and at any given time we focus on one part while ignoring the rest. It'd be like talking about buying more rail cars so people can take more mass transit, but not building any rail lines. And as long as our population keeps on growing (we're going to pass 400 million in the next 50 years, and among developed nations we're probably the fastest growing country on earth- unless you count India and China as developed), we're going to need a lot more of a lot of stuff. Somewhere, there's a disconnect between how to get what we want and what we need to get it. That's gotta change.

Mr Spencer's hypotheses and theories COULD be correct, but it'll take a lot more research to determine if he is correct. Once again we are still faced with the same dilemma -- how long do we wait to do you decide the confidence level is high enough to proceed with making changes.

We know we can't put the genie back in the bottle...

Right now we do have climate models that can replay the general trend of the 20th century's weather based on starting inputs...

NOT bad ...

You'd sort of assume it would hold into the future -- if that's NOT good enough, what is?

I really love the cks & balances I'm reading here on this thread...I'm also glad to finally see y'all behaving & following my lead on that !...Here is my 1 penny add on to a Scooter remark by MR Smith...More Scooters mean more Med Claims..& Bikes are old school & too Slow for todays pace!

OK - maybe it is 70 days or a little over 2 months. But you get the point. It supposedly would take 10 years just to get to this oil and we would need to build an 800 mile pipeline.
My other point is if there is so much oil here is the lower 48, why do we need to go to east Jesus to get 70 days worth of oil.

These are not hypothesis or theories or based on some idealogical bent, it is based on science and research done by others. All of these numerous experts, including the National Geologic Survey could be wrong.
But not one of you has presented any documented facts or research on this issue. You guys seem to think if we just deny this is happening, it won't happen. If all of these petroleum experts are wrong, and the vastly superior scientific knowledge presented here on DCSKI is correct, I'll be very happy. However, if you are wrong and the other do nothings we have in congress do nothing becuase they don't make the effort to educate themselves on this issue, then we are in deep doodoo. Do you really think T. Boone Pickens would be doing this at 82 years old if he did not think there was a problem???
The important point I would like to make is we need to start preparing for this situation NOW, not later when we could have total economic collapse. I don't even want to hear that "let's let the free market take care of the situation".
I heat my house with oil, and it's going to cost me $1,200 to fill my tank and I usually get 2 fill-ups during a typical winter. What happens if that goes up to $6.00/gal. There are going to be many people who can't afford to heat their homes.

Guys, you can keep you head in the sand and pretend this isn't an issue if you want. That is your perogative. I can easilly add 20 or 30 additional links to articles and research on this issue if you want, but I doubt it would change you minds.
"what me, worry?"

I disagree vehemently. The fact that people like living a certain way is fine. You have the right to, and I do also. I totally respect your right to live the way you wish and won't be as sanctimonious to state that you need to live the way I do.

However, two things come into play. First, people can live beyond their means and ignore reality only for so long. Second, if you wish to live like you do, go ahead. But it is up to you to pay for it. Cheap oil is not good for anyone.

The fact that the entire Congressional delegation from West Virginia voted for the 2008 intermodal rail act that calls for a vast expansion of our intermodal transportation capabilities is testament that at least the leadership of that noble state is in touch with reality.

The rest of the world isn't like Hardy County. The County, with 584 square miles, has less than 13,000 people. A third of the size of the State of Rhode Island with 1.1 million people. The transportation needs of the vast majority of our people need to be taken into consideration. And although automobile transportation may be a requirement, convenience must give way to need. As well as the fact that we no longer have the luxury of making national policy based on cheap oil.

The rise of megastores such as Walmart was predicated on cheap oil and cheap personal transportation. These are two luxuries we can now ill afford. When you spend $40 in gas getting to and from the store, that may negate the savings of the box stores and may in the long run lead to their disappearance.

As a result, people in the country may end up in the small towns in the way that people have done since before the rise of cheap oil. (That paradigm has been in existence way longer than the rise of the cheap oil society after WWII) And shop in the local stores, in the local food shops, and in the local butchers, to provide for local jobs and local economy instead of your dollars being sent to Bentonville AR and Red China.

The result, will be a people spending time in their communities and hopefully taking non-motorized short trips to do their daily chores, yes, that means bicycles, creating a much better and healthy way of life for all. That is a wonderful change in paradigms. You can correlate the loss of the American family with the loss of the small town and small neighborhood that was the result of cheap oil.

The effects of sedentary living that has been the result of cheap oil have been a disaster for West Virginia. The state is first in the nation in disability, second in the nation in adult obesity, second in childhood obesity, second in death rate from colo-rectal cancer, it is third highest in diabetes, fourth highest in heart disease rates, 16th in cerebrovascular deaths, and it ranks as 43rd lowest in participation in physical activity. And it sits as 11th highest in motor vehicle deaths. Who pays for that? We all do. That is another reason why it is a common problem.

Bicycles, trolleys, trains and not more roads and cars are the answer.

Yes, I do, if he thought the problem was that there was nowhere in the US to invest for growth on a scale to match the .com boom, the real-estate boom, the oil price and commodity booms.

Otherwise, he'd be completely up front with the fact that both "energy independence" and a broad-front all-energy-resources-development attack ignore the economic concepts of gains from trade and comparative advantage.



Maybe. I don't disagree with your analysis but I find it incomplete: it ignores the goods supply side. Essentially Malwart and its ilk have simplified distribution chains for goods in order to reduce their own supply price. Corner stores cannot do this and, in an era of high transportation cost, cannot take advantage of economies of transportation scale significantly better than individuals.

Essentially, if corner stores survive or revive, it will be on locally produced goods, extremely highly consumable goods, and high-value goods. I call this the sweet corn, cleaning suds and boutique-level tailored clothing model.

I've been loath to link to my own blog here, but since I don't want to find all these links and re-re-re-re-post them (I keep sending them to friends, family, whatnot), here's the research I did a few months ago using publicly available information that took, I don't know, maybe a whole hour to find:

http://drinkski.blogspot.com/2008/06/oil-fundamentals.html

The main point about providing the link isn't to read what I wrote- I'm not an expert- but because it's a concise listing of different sites I've gathered data from. If you'd like to dispute the geologists' findings, go ahead, I'm sure there's an email at DOE where you can write them and explain why they're wrong.

You're worried about the scientists being wrong- generally, they are. As technology advances they re-assess, and the reassessments are almost always larger, not smaller. So they're usually understating.



That's exactly why we should be opening up drilling fields, because these high oil prices are hurting the most those who can't afford this. This includes the poor, the elderly, school children, folks in rural areas (whom people are much more dependent on than vice-versa), and literally billions of people in the developing world.

Im convinced... Same as GW... As you know, the Prophet Isaiah also said that the earth was flat, had four corners, and it could not be moved. It's got to be true. Never mind these feeble scientists who are usually wrong. I'm sure there is an email at the Faith Based office of the White House where you can write them and tell them that NASA is wrong.

DRINKSKI??!! :D..I'm getting back from taking a sick outboard of mine out on a test ride & I get on the computer to see whats new & I start reading all these facts, Figures lectures, & some more stuff I i think to myself...Didn't I allready graduate from school?....I'm getting back to reality...To the fridge to get me a cold one!...you all figure it out...Good Luck & Godspeed!

Apropos to this discussion, Charleston WV is now considering a new transit plan that integrates bicycles into its transportation system. About time. Progress takes time.

http://www.wvgazette.com/News/200807250652

I think were going chinese..I think were going chinese...I really think so..Remember the song?..or is it Japenese?..Time to harvest my crab pots...

PS. If anyone thinks I'm monitering DCski too much.The fact is I am, Along with the Radar...need to see a couple of storms go thru before I head back out to harvest my delicacies

The point I was trying to make was, don't tell me without some reason that the data can't be trusted. If you can find some critique of the USGS surveys that you'd like to share, by all means do so. So... what data did you disagree with and why, Lou?

That'd be turning Japanese. And if you are, please keep it to yourself.

... actually it was:
"... we-are-turning japane-za , we-are-turning japane-z-i-really think-so ..."
da-da-duh-da
( - fifth lower - )
"... we-are-turning japane-za , we-are-turning japane-z-i-really think-so ..."


-heh-

Ah, but it is helping pensions:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...iness/special/3

Sorry bud, all there is so much retirement and pension money out there itching to be saved from the falling dollar, that there is no way for for oil resource exploitation to out-develop the ready speculation money. Further, lowering finished fuel costs presumes both that the new exploration can function at 2006 $75/bbl prices (Hah! Wanna see how fast they stop output if price goes that low?) and that the finished fuel is then sold domestically. As you so, finely put on your blog for the case of Saudi, why should they sell it here if they can get yens or euros?

US drilling = bigger playground for speculators.

Sure there is, you're presuming commodities will continue- indefinitely- to outperform other investment vehicles. That's almost impossible- maybe some variation on stagflation could continue it for a time, but sooner or later the party would end, just like it has in every other high-runup before this one.



If oil trades below investment value, that's because there's no demand so the new investment isn't needed. It's not going to fall to $20 a barrel during a supply shortage.

The finished fuel doesn't have to be sold domestically, it can be sold wherever the demand is. Oil and fuel are fungible. So if new oil fields are developed here or Venezuela doesn't really matter for that. The advantage to doing it here is that we're non-OPEC, so to the extent that OPEC's market share falls it reduces their ability to set prices.

Demand for US drilled oil above investment value isn't coming from the poor you wish to help.



So you've created a bad competitor to the Saudis, one that cannot sustain pumping operations below a price that the Saudis can easily beat, and one that also incurs local commons cost.



Yep. So moneyed non-US purchasers can buy whatever they want right out from under the poor you wish to help.



Disadvantage: you have a price floor below which Saudis or Venezuelans operate easily. Operations above this price floor do not help your poor but do increase market size and supply demand elsewhere. Drilling to satisfy rich Asian appetites. You've just diverted dollar-denominated capital to something you are not least worst at amongst other countries, so capital is more expensive for making airplanes/jet turbines/machine tools that you were least worst at originally. Net loss overall.

I can't compete with you rocket/economic scientist but I will make some predictions....We even hint that we are going to drill massivly & you will see the price of gas tank...although once we get our production up & running don't look for a really cheap product due to our.. verses thier costs of drilling...I am in & out of hopitals & Dr ofc's & cannot stand seeing the shlubs & lazyies that drive up my health care costs due to their inactivity..I understand Ibotta's pushing of bikes but that won't happen...The new 150cc Scooters that can go up to 80 mph with 80 to 100 miles per gallon that don't require insurance or regerstration will take hold....& the ICE WILL COME BACK!!!!........Crabs are good..MMMmmmmmmmmmmm...Somebody send me more Maryland spice for these north cackalacky crabs!

I've remarked elsewhere that imo the price of gas will drop by mid-Pestember, for the same reason that Roger Z names, the party will be over. My contention is that once the party's over US drilling won't be remotely interesting from the help-the-poor standpoint.

Old Bay or Wye River?

Comprex, I think you're mixing different arguments, or I'm not being clear enough. What I'm saying, quite simply, is supply growing faster than demand = lower prices.

The ancillary statement regarding the poor is that, I am of the opinion that people with less disposable income are more adversely affected by high commodity prices than those with more disposable income. It is not the sum total of my argument, it is actually just a hypothesis- I'm not aware of any research into this but will be keeping my eye open for it in the future. That's all.

A far more important consideration, really, is the effect of high commodity prices on economic growth more broadly. High commodity prices drive inflation and slower growth, which is a concern for everyone, all around the world.



Uh, Comprex, Saudi oil and Venezuelan oil are at wildly different price points. Venezuelan oil is heavy and needs extra refining, a lot of which is done here in the United States, and prices out close to where Canadian tar sands are- about $70-$80 a barrel. Saudi oil is the cheapest- or some of the cheapest- oil on earth.



I haven't diverted anything. Capital is (usually) invested by companies, not governments. Markets can figure this out, and oil is still being explored and developed domestically (like in North Dakota), which suggests that there's opportunity here.

Besides, you keep assuming prices, and you're not checking your assumptions. All OCS oil is not the same, just like Saudi and Venezuelan oil isn't the same. Here's one estimate on pricing:

http://www.mms.gov/revaldiv/PDFs/2006NationalAssessmentBrochure.pdf

and by these estimates the prices in the Alaskan OCS are typically in the 40-60 per barrel range, the Gulf of Mexico closer to 20-40, and the same for the Pacific, so that the vast majority of oil in the OCS (perhaps as much as 60 billion barrels) is cheaper than Venezuealan crude. Again, it's one estimate, but this estimate certainly doesn't suggest we've got the highest priced oil on earth.

I did actually check delivery prices

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_wco_k_w.htm

but those are delivery prices and not production costs.

Do you have a table of production costs per country?



Doesn't matter who invests it, an (uninflated) dollar invested in oil production is a dollar not invested in software, turbines, airframes. Key here being "dollar" not euro or anything else because currency value will track productivity.



That looks pretty good, for 2003 prices.

[/quote]
You're worried about the scientists being wrong- generally, they are. As technology advances they re-assess, and the reassessments are almost always larger, not smaller. So they're usually understating.


That's exactly why we should be opening up drilling fields, because these high oil prices are hurting the most those who can't afford this. [/quote]

http://www.askquestions.org/articles/oil/

Above is another link for you skeptics. All this talk about price...I assume you're talking very short term.
If there is much oil to be found in and around the USA (our production of oil peaked in 1970 and now stands at about 4.5 million barrels a day - about 16 -18 million barrels below demand), it won't come to market for at least 10 years. Now if there is money to be made (and we're talking about lots of money) why haven't we increased drilling and production in this country. I'll tell you why, we have already exploited what we had a long time ago.
How much oil is in the ground is immaterial. It's how much you can produce in relation to WORLD demand which is growing faster than new oil reserves.
With the thinking I hearing on this site, we're headed for disaster.
And what about our wonderful Congress. They proposed releasing oil fromt the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?????? Then they argued over opening up the continental shelf or forcing currently lease holders to start exploring or loose your lease. And you know what, none of these ideas will even remotely solve our prolbem.
The lack of leadership from the Democrats and Republicans on this issue is disgraceful. No one wants to tell the American people the truth...that they have to seriously start conserving. our energy.

Personally I think it hinges on the Saudis - if they can up their production as they've claimed on several occasions to meet rising demand, then we aren't at peak oil. We might be closer than many would care to admit... but not here yet. If not, then we be -- well probably just past it.

I don't think the local domestic exploration will make a hoot of difference and the tar sands are expensive to make oil out of, even though there be a lot of it and won't really do any good either.

Iraq fields COULD make a difference but we seem years away from a full accounting of what they really have and then just the shear ability to "pump it and ship it" in any meaningful quantities seems like just an wistful dream today...

And whether they could make up for a real decline in Saudis production is difficult to really say.

Soooo in the end, we'll know it when we see it sort of thing... planning ahead would make some sense, but we seem less inclined to it.

To be fair we don't really know who has what -- the Saudis for example again seem to view their oil data as state secrets, although they periodically publish info on it, there's not way to truly verify the info -- so you can't blame us for not knowing what we don't know.

Then again seems a bit silly to base national energy policy on that kind of flimsy info too.

The idea of "well it's 10 years away from meaningful production to affect the pumps" is what got us in this mess in the first place. It was the Clinton lead democrats that pushed for more banning of localized american drilling in ANWAR and the continental shelf regions. And to think of Congress would have blocked that back then, even after Katrina we'd still be having sub 2.25 gas prices. So we might as well not care now and complain in 2018 when gas is at $7.00 gallon because of no one doing anything 10 years ago when the big drilling debate raged. Sounds like more procrastination to me.

We need a little levity.
Anybody realize that if the Chinese keep producing everything in sight, that eventually we could be buying refined gasoline from them....then we have a problem give Chinese standards and track record...no lead free gas to run our cars!!
The Colonel

So, uh, Andy... how's the arctic ice doing?

I see you have an idealogical agenda here that does not take into account the facts.
I assume you voted for George W. Bush, not once but twice. Everyone in his administration is a former big oil employee. What has he done to address the situation? Other than invade a country with 93 billion barrels of oil...nothing. Now I will admit, not much has happened to address the situation as far as conservation, fuel efficienvy over the last 20 years, which includes the Clinton administration. But your party, the Replicans have blocked increasing fuel efficiency standards for a long time. Perhaps you heard John McCain admit this in a speach just yesterday.
Apparently one of those folks who have ANWAR stuck in your head despite the facts. ANWAR only has about a 70 day supply of oil based on how much we use. And we use 25% of the worlds oil yet make up only 5% of the worlds population.
The other day I was working at Dundalk Marine Terminal, and I was watching them unload these huge wind turbine blades from a ship. You know why we have to unload these from a ship, because we don't make them here. Europe is far ahead of us in utilizing solar and wind to produce electricity.

Again, here is some facts for you, which I know is hard believe,but it is fact...US oil production peaked in 1970! Do you think it hasn't increased because someone restricted them from drilling for oil. Well perhaps partially along the coasts, yes. But from what I have read, the geologic formations that mean oil is present generally do not exist there. Do we need more drilling and exploration ...yes. We atleast have to look. ANWAR is a drop in the bucket compared to what we use everyday. Do you understand that? It is critical that we develop new technologies ( and not depend on big oil and agribusiness who sole motivation is making money), energy sources, wind, solar, nuclear, wave energy, geothermal, hydrogen, biofuels, etc. because we do not have the necessary oil reserves to keep on the path that we're on. PLEASE LISTEN TO THIS, MY FRIEND. IT IS CRITICALLY IMPORTANT TO OUR FUTURE.
Folks - this is my last post on this subject, for which I am sure you'll all be gratefull since I am very passionate about this. Hopefully, some of you disbelievers will get the message before it is too late.

Anyone mind if we get back on topic and talk about sausage for a while??

I didn't think so. Snowsmith you ever had the gout? Well i never had until early this past Saturday. Let me tell you how i got it and then you'll no one way not to get it, amatuers do not try this at home.....anywayz last friday started the Upper Ohio Valley Italian Heritage Festival on the bank of the Ohio
River here in Wheeling. I had access to all the handmade, sweet italian sausage i could eat from the SOI, their sausage is always best in festival.....anywayz three of those, one for breakfst, lunch and dinner, one pint of water, a gallon of beer, sixteen hours on my feet adn six hours of sleep later my big toe hurt so bad i culdn't even touch it with my finger. Managed to play six games of bocce on Saturday, my foot was like a club, u get the picture. All i can say is hydrate hydrate and re-hydrate.

I agee Jimmy, this subject is depressing.

My grandmother used to make sausage by hand. She would walk to the little meat market in her neighborhood, buy pork loin and sheeps intestines (used for the casing). Then she would grind the meat with this hand operated meat grinder. Then she would place in a bowl, add the spices and then she had this hollowed out animal horn which she used to stuff the meat into the casing. Wow! you talk about good sausage. I can taste it now.

Another good sausage place...Schmankarl Stube in Hagerstown. On your way back from Whitetail, go to downtown Hagerstown where this great german restuarant has sausage entres with all the fixins'. Yum!

Never had gout...hope I never do.

Oh NO!!!!

Are you on a low-purine diet now?

Crab sausage?...There is enough oil in Indiana for a guy to invest $100,000 in drilling equip & is now pumping 3 barrels a day out of his back yard!...At 135 a barrel (ave guess) that comes out to $147,825 of gross revenue after just the 1st year...$47,000 profit...Ching-a-ling after that! Folks must be calling him Uncle Jed..

I throw an Oktoberfest party in the fall(good time for it, eh?), and make the sausage by hand with a hand-crank grinder. Last year, I made 25 lbs of bratwurst...

There's nothing better than good, fresh sausage!


aaron

For someone to be right, it doesn't necessarily follow that the other person has to be wrong. That's fundamentalism and hence, it is inherently false.

Some people like their sausage with honey. Some like it with hot pepper, Cayenne, and some people like apples with their sausage.

Same as steaks. I like medium rare. Some like it well done. Some like their steaks dripping blood. I may not find a blood-dripping steak appetizing, but some do and that's fine.

Some like Heffewizen. Some like Pilsner. Some like bitter or ale. But if the flavor is appetizing to the one who drinks, so be it.

I used to like Cabernet. Then as I got older, I find that Cabernet on an empty stomach sends me straight to the Rolaids cabinet. So I am now a Pinot Noir convert. I think that's fine.

I love Snowshoe. But I also like Liberty, White Tail, Wintergreen, Timberline and even Massanutten. That's fine too.

I swear by Volkls AC-40s. Some like Solomons. Some like Nordica. And yet some like the new Prada skis made by Volant. It gets you through the snow and if you rip it, that's wonderful.

You can achieve salvation in numerous ways. Same as skiing.

See Lou, there you go being so open-minded again that you can't even see truth and justice from pure, unadulterated evil.



The hell it is! Lou, you and I are square-on about steaks, but you have to understand that people who like steaks well-done are devil spawn and should be executed. I mean this humbly, of course.



See, here, as you've aged you've come to see the light vis-a-vis good taste and exquisite intelligence. I can forgive your youthful foray into madness, er, "Cabernet." Again, there is a small island somewhere with little water where cabernet lovers can live, otherwise they are a plague and infestation on our society, not unlike people who prefer Chevys to Ford.

And don't even get me started about that roadkill-excuse-for-food some refer to as "Memphis barbeque."

But all of this pales in comparison to the most important crisis of our age, the one that is as impenetrable a wall as the Cold War, the one in which there truly is no compromise, you are either with us, or you are against us:

Scotch, or bourbon?

Scotch!! straight single malt with a side glass of water and ice, and a CAO, Macanudo, or any good cigar. And something from the highlands. The lowland and Islay scotches have a strong peat taste that makes some taste like an anejo tequila(though I love anejo), smoky and peppery. Laphroaig(10 yr) is ok for an Islay but I like the Isle of Skye(12 yr?) single malt with the slight smokiness and a smoother finish. The highlands have to many to name. Some of the reasonably priced($25-$35) highland single malts I like are by Aberlour and Dalmore.

For sausage - the Pittsburgh Strip district at Sunseri's.

Talisker, or a Gordon & Macphail blend.


Cape dutch bakery, my boerewors suppliers, seem to be gone entirely

1. Well, having lived overseas for so many years I understand the fact that people DO like their steaks well done, but still can't understand the rationale. In Argentina, the world capital of steaks, meat, sausages and chorizo, they could take the most succulent cut of tenderloin and render it into unrecognizable charred leather. Throw a little chimicurri on it and they think it can be passable... Go figure...

2. Last night I had come Cabernet, EVEN with pasta and all the carbos in the world. Let's see... 2300, 0001, 0200, 0400 Rolaids ingestions and finally some Pepto Bismol. You're right...

3. I know I've lived a sheltered existence, but what's Memphis Barbecue?

4. Unblended, fersure. Now you got to my taste buds. Come to Snowshoe and I have in my little private cabinet:

- Dalwhinnie
- 25-yr Glenfiddich
- Cragganmore
- Oban
- Talisker
- Lagavulin

Of course, I have cheap Chevas for those who tell me that they want their scotch with ice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ubTQfr_tyY

and ALL will be explained.

That was awesome!

Mmm..... I did notice that they talked about Kentucky with the Virginia map in the background and that they had California on the stage when they slammed Florida. Guess the McCain campaign composed this from Czechoslovakia? Hehehe....

Well spotted.



That was funny enough to be intentional.

Yeah, I guess both Kentucky and Virginia are Commonwealths, do we throw Massachusetts in with that too? Pennsylvania? Seen one commonwealth, seen them all..... ;-)

I was at an event recently where I asked what they had for single-malt scotch, and the bartender suggested Jack Daniels. Um, no. Scotch is whiskey, but not all whiskey (whisky?) is scotch.

I do love bourbon, but there's a time and place for it. I don't know that I've ever turned down scotch. I don't even count Chivas as scotch, although I suppose that it is...

I've got an almost completely full bottle of Cutty Sark at home that was given to me as a gift 3 years ago. Can't bring myself to throw it out, but I really can't bring myself to drink it, either...


aaron

My Czech girlfriend would like to point out that there is no Czechoslovakia any longer... She's very, very particular about that!

(she'll often also point out that beyond merely being Czech, she's specifically 100% Moravian... I literally have zero understanding of what it must be like to be able to pin down one's own heritage to that degree of localization... I'm a typical American "mutt" of French, German, Irish, English, and Native American...)


aaron

I totally agree. My comment was tongue-in-cheek as one of the main contenders in the presidential race insists on referring to Czechoslovakia.

Does she ever play the "name people's origin within 80miles based on their name" game? That one can be fun.

Its snowing & 34 degrees up at Barrow,AK right now...Normal high is 47 Low is 35..all is good on the GW front for now

Scotch over Bourbon..Good rum over both(Good pure 10 year old sugar cane Rum from Guyana South America..Been there, done that ..lost my T-Shirt!)& Vodka works too well with too many chasers.

There IS indeed single barrell Bourbon available now at a premium price.




Same as beer. I keep Bud light in the beer fridge, but onloy because it helps makes an excellent paella.

I used to drink alot of scotch, but hard liquer can get you into trouble if you drink too much. Balvenie is good, but I think the best is Lagaluvun (spelling?).
As far as bourbon, I have had nothing better than Knob Creek.

Beer - I miss National Premium, at that time was probably the best American beer. I really enjoy Yeungling and Pilsner Urquel.

Wine - white - Sauvignon Blanc. Red - red zinfandel or Malbec

Oh... I guess I need to step up my viewing of coverage. She gets a lot of people with that Czechoslovakia thing. It's amazing - for a country that hasn't been around for a relatively long time (15 years), there are a ton of people who don't seem to remember.



I enjoy it when I can have it. Russel's Reserve, Woodford Reserve, and a few others come to mind. The problem (if it could be called a "problem") with the small batch bourbons is that they can be highly variable from batch to batch. I've had some Woodford Reserve that was amazing, and some that was "so-so". I had one called "Bullitt" the other night that actually seemed really good. I had it at a bar in DC, but have never seen it anywhere else. With a name like that, I expected rotgut, but it seemed good when I tasted it. I'd need more for a more thorough evaluation.

On a semi-skiing note, Stranahan's (named after one of the founders of Flying Dog, based in Denver) is a delicious newcomer to the American whisky scene, even if it's a tad overpriced.



What with the Czech girlfriend, I've had more than my share of PU. I'd highly recommend it in cans (as opposed to bottles). The green bottles always skunk the beer.

Beer is a serious focus of mine. I brew all the beer for that homemade-sausage Oktoberfest, too. 35 gallons of traditional German styles...


aaron

If we're talking bourbon, I have a sweet spot for Basil Hayden but I'm glad folks realize that scotch is, patriotism aside, far preferable to bourbon!

Lou, you ever had... crap, I keep forgetting the name. My grandad had a friend, his name was Brian (the friend, not my grandad), British bloke- medical unit in the Royal Navy during World War II, psychiatrist after, now passed away unfortunately great guy he was. The one time I met him in Rosslyn, we were at his place and I mentioned something about scotch which got him all excited. He broke out his "collection," which was really a small series of premium scotches not available in the U.S. (he said). We ended with a 25 year- it was the first time I had ever had a 25 year scotch and the flavor has haunted me to this day. Melted in your mouth, with an aftertaste of plum, beyond delicious, somewhere in the Elysian Fields Brian and his friends are drinking it now like water I'm sure.

Comprex, that video was funny but I noticed that it was, ultimately, tasteless. There is no barbeque unless you're talking KC barbeque, outside of Kansas and Missouri there is just meat with ketchup slabbed on it. Discussing barbeque without discussing KC is like discussing powder without discussing Utah- ultimately an exercise in futility. And North Carolina barbeque? My gosh, even when I was in southern VA I knew better than to call that filth barbeque. How dare those folks sing that song in Branson, I'm surprised they weren't lynched. Or maybe they were, they just cut the video off beforehand.

Oh, and to the comment about Islay- an acquired taste, but definitely worth having. Try it in front of a fireplace, on a night when it's about 35 and misting. For added kicks, break out a good, medium bodied cigar (cuban if you got some friends in the Coast Guard ) to go with it. Blissful. The Islay-anders knew what they were doing, you just have to be "in the spirit". A Bowmore does not cut it in August, though you can always find it on sale in Florida.

Lou, if you come home to Snowshoe one night and your liquor cabinet was raided, I swear it wasn't me I live in Kansas.

Roger, the Glenmorangie 25-year old single malt is normally not available in the US, but I understand that you can get it now in New York, almost $1,000 a liter. I had the opportunity to taste it at a British Officers Club in Scotland, has the bouquet and taste of blackberry and plums. The Ardberg single malt was also distilled and had plum taste but also with the peatiest flavor of all scotches. Although it was totally premium, it was off synch with the rise of yuppiedom and the distillery ceased operation, though I am told that they still manufacture it for a private club and you have to travel to Scotland.

30 degrees & Snowing up at Barrow..Wind has slammed the ice back on the point...Eskimos are drunk on Aristocrat Whiskey & are in the "Street" beating a poster of "Big Al" with Seal carcases!

PS The Coldest recorded Temp on this date at Barrow point is 28..Might get down to the mid 20's later on this Eve..

Scootetig

25 lbs of sausage, home brewed beer...Wow!

I say we elect Scootertig to be the official DCSKI caterer.

When's the party, Scoot?

Well, that doesn't include the 14 pounds of sauerkraut (bubbling away in the basement as I type this), the potato salad, or the pretzels...

I guess it's an instance of anything being worth doing, being worth overdoing.

Of course, this is always the point where I wonder how many times I was dropped on my head as a child to willingly embrace this sort of idea. The better question is why Jana doesn't stop me from doing it!

At some point, I'd love to bring a keg of homebrewed beer to an "official" après-ski event. We should plan one. I could even be persuaded to bring bratwurst, if someone else would provide the grill. I don't really have a portable option.

That's probably a discussion for about 3 months from now, though...


aaron

aaron

My liquor cabinet is always open for friends. Stop by. Single-malt scotch, Roast Pig, and Cuban coffee. Can't say anything about Cuban cigar because my ultra-Republican Miami family would disown me if they even thought I had inhaled the byproduct of Castro's enslavement.

Well there you go, just don't inhale. That excuse was good enough to for a president....

" My ultra-Republican Miami family...."

They got you "Treed" up at the top of Snowshoe Huh?...There is still hope!...GO Miami!!

Glenfracas, that was it. I remembered at 11:30 last night while lying in bed. Glenmorangie is probably my favorite scotch, especially the madera wood finish, though the Glenlivet 15 French Oak reserve, for being a standard-ish scotch, is pretty dang fine too.

I started work in a college town not too long ago, and of course college food standards usually leave a bit to be desired. However, believe it or not Lou I found what I think is a pretty decent Mexican restaurant in town- at least their chorizo is fantastic! I wasn't sure what I was ordering the first time, I had forgotten that word, but never again will I forget that delectable little dish, with a hint of sweetness and a touch of spice, mmm mmmm I'm getting hungry just thinking about it again!

What if your family in Miami knew you got the cigar from the American Coast Guard, who had confiscated it from some drug runners not far off shore? Would they make an exception for that? I do!

I think they would certainly make an exception if I gave them a toke...

Chorizo is my favorite sausage. It is sooooo versatile. I make Cuban Black Bean soup like my cousin does, with a "sofrito" first, made with onions, garlic, green peppers, chorizo, cumin, coriander, pepper, copious amounts of oregano, salt and bay leaf, and then put the beans on for almost a full day, add sliced plantains, and once cooked, puree about a quarter of it and add it to the soup for consistency, and my dinner guests are usually sucking their fingers and fighting over the last beans on the pot.

You mean Glenfarclas. For a conservative, you got some really elite and cultured taste buds, you know... ;-) New England roots?... Glenfarclas is now available in the US... for a price. Won't get below $200 for a 700ml of 25-yr old.

A couple of years back a friend of mine brought back a bottle of what I thought was 30 year old Scotch..Could have been this fracus stuff..Said it cost him $150. Over rated!..Tasted like "Censered"....Thank god I don't have Elite & Cultured tastes..sure would go broke trying to get some!

Now that Bean soup Ibotta talked about sounded real delish...Sounds like it would go down real well with a ...Nattie light!

Still Snowing lightly at Barrow with a steady 29 to 31 temp...ave high is 46

Bwahahahahaha. Ketchup? What's that, one mile over the border, maybe 1.5 miles outside of Kansas and Missouri? I'll allow 2 miles if you couldn't find a place to park next to that there McDonald's. Never let it be said I wasn't a genris fella.

Texas. Brisket. Smoke. Salt. Pepper. Now that's barbecue.

I come from the Ecclesiasticus school of conservatism: eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. You see, it's fun blended with an inordinate amount of cynicism, perfect for me. That and I think everyone is entitled to one addiction (mine is caffeine) and one luxury (mine is scotch). Of course if prices keep going the way they are, my luxury might soon be Mad Dog, we'll see!

Glenfarclas, thank you. It's been about 8 or 9 years since I've had it, I've had it only once so the fact that my brain has only scrambled a couple letters shows you how much it seared itself into my memory.

Comprex, I would call you out for the dog you are but I'm afraid if I- justly- go after Texas "bbq" Murphy is going to disown me. Friends before foodfights, no matter how delusional your opponent is.

Now, time for a little Natty Light and South Park, refined tastes of the world unite!!!

What I like about you Roger is the fact that you are an elite but not an elitest..You can hang with the home fries & then go sip tea with the Queen.....Ecclesiasticus???!!..What the f..?

Ecclesiasticus is the longest of the sapiental writings in the canons of the Old Testament. The Wisdom of Jesus, The Wisdom of Sirach in the old Greek. And Roger is most likely referring to the Ecclesiastes 3, To everything there is a time and a purpose under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die, A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance... A time for everything.

Gee Roger for a conservative you're quite enlightened! And by the way, if you try Lou's Black Beans at Snowshoe, you will be spoiled and think that any other black beans soup is soggy dog poop. Man he can cook.

Dang, Andy, I can't recall the last time I received a compliment from someone I didn't have dirt on. Thanks!

Schlittenfahrten (do you have a shorter name you prefer that's a bear to write), actually I was thinking of Ecclesiastes 5:18, but a better quote would be 9:7-10 : (this is from the NRSV) "Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do... Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowlege or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going."

I just can't read that passage without thinking of skiing... and teaching Sandra to ski. God had long ago approved it! (see? Don't you wish I had a ministry on Sunday morning? "And I SAY-YUH to YOU, you must SKI-YUH, for GOD SO ORDAINED US! Come forward, you non-skiers, and BE HEAL-UHD!!!!!")

ps- I don't think quoting Ecclesiastes is that big a deal. Most people have heard of it... even The Birds!

with a name like yours i'm thinking Ibotta should maybe think twice before serving you Bean soup! ...Thanks for the Schoolin though...I never could get past the Ark thing in the Bible(lost interest)..so I'm pretty much just following the book of Andy now...keep hope alive!

Obviously we have some pretty cosmopolitan people here. In one thread, we've gone from Arctic sea ice to chorizo, my Black Bean soup, and Ecclesiastes. I guess we're now officially Heel-udh! And didn't even have to open your bank account for that. Minister Roger's Kansas TV show is now gathering millions of followers and all the ski areas will be full when the Stowe Gondola shadow over the barn at 1530 hours looks like Jesus.

I agreee that many folks can remember the Ecclesiastes quote made famous by the Byrds in 1965, but just the other day I was arguing with some young folk about the song - making a comeback in the peace circles - that the song was original lyrics written by the Byrds until I showed them that the lyrics are about 4,000 years old.

And Roger, your quote is very apropos. Enjoy life. To the fullest. Each day. Every day I wake up is a day to be thankful to whatever one conceives as the Creator. Old guy with the beard, cosmic muffin, or eight-arm dancing figurine.

And Schlitten, thanks for the comment on the soup. And no, it doesn't make you fulfill the other half of Schlittenfahrten because I soak the beans about six times and put Bicarbonate of Soda. That practice somehow prevents the flatus normally associated with the ingestion of beans. Also, Black Beans and brown rice are THE perfect vegetarian protein.

Lou- there is but one God. Worship and obey your Lord!

This thread has gone on so long, there's actually been an update to what it was originally about. But it's puzzling. The web page monitoring sea ice extent has TWO charts covering the last two weeks that show OPPOSITE trends in the ice. One of them (if not both of them) have got to be an error.

First, we have sea ice melt increasing from July 16th-August 1st, which would be consistent with some of their warnings in their July 17th post:

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png

Yet just below that, on the very same page, we have a chart showing the ice melt to be decreasing:

http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20080801_Figure2.png

Can anyone figure this out?

Lastly, their projections for the remainder of the summer:

http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20080801_Figure3.png

It's actually pretty interesting to read their analysis. There's a lot of thin, first year ice that's got the web page writers over there kind of confused about what may happen next. My fingers-crossed-pray-to-the-Flying-Spaghetti-Monster-hope is that the "ice melt slowing" chart is the correct one (though I doubt it), that the first year ice somehow makes it past the finish line on September 10th (which looks like the average turning point for ice coverage) and that next year they're worried about a large extent of "second year ice" (if I recall from Barry Lopez' Arctic Dreams- I think that's where I read it at least- it takes about 5 years for ice in the arctic regions to become stable, long-term ice that you see in really great movies like Firefox and The Thing (John Carpenter's, that is)).

We'll see. We've got about five-six weeks to go before dark, hopeless doom and despair begins to engulf our hemisphere again!

Hunh. I get the same chart on both your links ???



Looking at NOAA's Chukchi sea chart here
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/products/arctic/index.htm

(click on the peach bit of sea between Alaska and Siberia), it seems to be relatively thick first-year ice (code 4*) and older ice (code 7*) with sparse area coverage (ranging from 0-10% and to 40-60% depending on area block). Most of the thinner first-year ice (code 4) seems to be over by the Siberian shore.

You sure? I just double-checked and they're different- look at the last week of July data on both charts (yes, they're the same but the tail of the blue line skivvies in different directions on each).

Its the same chart roger..the 1st one gets into Aug where unfortunately there has been a dip(Thin ice becoming a factor).The 2nd chart only goes to the end of July...The sun is lowering up there so the race is on between melt & hangin tough. I feel that a melt somwhere between the ave melt line & the faster melt line will occur....then lets hope for a massive
comeback this winter!

Fishing sucks or I suck at fishing...3 baby fish for dinner tonite...who or what can I blame that on?..My new Optimax engine is killer though!

Ah yes, now I see. Dang, there go my "learned" credentials.

Had some sidehill salmon for dinner tonight. It's slow, it moos, it's easy to catch. Still working on my smoking prowess for steak though. If you get hickory, adding some mint is fantastic, especially on a nice tender piece of filet or something.

Andy, I took your advice and decided to head down to the beach. I'm in North Myrtle. It is too salty, too hot, and too humid. But besides that I am having a blast. Bring the boat down for a visit and we'll grill up some WV Italian sausage....

Hey David, We were down in Surfside that week, mostly just schlittenfahrtemn around. U aughta try down south next year, surfside gardencity murreels inlet waccamaw river and georgetown, very laid back vibe reminds me of CV without the mountains, way less crowded than NMB & MB. Made it as far north as Hwy 501 once all week. Bad news tho i busted the ear stem on my frogskins, field repairs unsatisfactory, Oakley is out of repairs parts, oh the sorrow.

All this talk of sausage has reminded me of my old pet pig, Sam the Ham. Sam was a brittish pig who loved to play rugby and quote sir winston....."i like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals." Pretty deep for a pig huh?

Scootertig, hows the home brew/pork fest coming together? If ULLR agrees to let me pick the caterer for the first annual BlueKnob jimmy vs.ullr mountain masher memorial chainsaw ski-off, you my friend, are it.....

Good luck to the Botta family with the Snoeshoe intervention, i'm praying for you, Lou .

I just got back from garden city sun...North Myrtle is much closer to me & I like going to the Beach Cove resort which is in walking distance to a bunch of attractions & eateries but I agree with Jimmi about the South end of the Strand being more scenic & more laid back(Pawleys Island/Litchfield Area). Myrtle beach is a fun place to visit but I wouldn't live there...even though I only live a couple of Hrs north of there, my Camp is very different...& "Ahem"...Much nicer....Took the day off yesterday & took a crew up the Cape fear river where it runs Deep & fresh & went water sking...you can cruise miles up there & only see Cypress & natural pristine shores & water....I got to quit before I get hung...Enough of you Yankees moving down here!

Jimmy, if the'd let us we'd have the aroma of strong Espresso coffee, roast pig, and Chorizo-spiced black bean soup all over Snowshoe. And salsa music everywhere. To your delight, my South Florida Cuban family is even more conservative than Roger Z (not surprising for Cubans) and I'm to the left of Paris' Left Bank, which means there is never a lack of loud noise in Summot Condos when we're at the Shoe, but somehow we manage to get along.

Ooohhh... A sausage and brew apres at BK? Sign me up! I still haven't skied there (since I had the incident with the less-than-capable tires last year, I never made it up). I don't want to put the cart before the horse on this, but if the winter looks like some of the analogs are saying it might, let's plan for a late January/early February natural snow weekend at BK. I'll brew something for the occasion... I'll take a survey to see what style of beer is preferred among the denizens of DCSki...


aaron

Canaan valley,wv- if you go back as far as reliable records were taken- the valley floor gets an ave of 137 inches of snow a year.
Now when you add the GW factor or the last 20 years when we started to see a drop in the Arctic sea Ice the ave rises to 153" a year...the last 10 = 163..& the last 6 we have a whopping 181 inches of snow a year! Less Ice = more snow for Canaan?...


PS..the town of Stowe,Vt ave's 93 inches a year..Fargo,ND gets about 40 & Barrow,AK gets about 25...the Diff is that they will retain a whole lot more of their goodies than the Valley.

BUTTTTT watching it Snow is So Cool!..

Well, its bad news on the northern Front...The Ice pack just dipped below 2005's level which was the 2nd lowest on record. Good news is the fact that the surface Ice has stopped melting & even a little snow is being added here & there...Back to more bad news..Its melting from undernieth & on the sides due to above freezing sea temps ...The Thin Ice hung as tough as it could & I'm hoping the melt will halt soon..Not hit another record & start to regroup.

On the fighting of GW & finding Alt energy front.. us boaters & anyone else that uses engines that sit for awhile are starting to really get stung with this E-10 Ethanol blend...Ive had to shell out $750 in this past year for repairs on one of my outboards due to the moisture & the breaking down of the fuel during innactive spells because of the Alcohol in the gas.

Be carefull using additives to your fuel also since most of them are solvents containing even more Alcohol that compounds the problem....What a Friggin mistake this Ethanol thing has been!!!...Cannot believe that I have anything bad to say about Alcohol .....Stay Tuned..

I've had plenty of bad things to say about alcohol, but it's normally the morning after, not the night of. With one recent exception of a strong progression of plum brandy? courtesy of Comprex. A man has to know his limits, and I found mine.

Back to your other topic, beware the unintended consequences of any government plan.

Well put...

I seem to remember you held on just fine, past the plum limit and well into apricot.

I agree that ethanol is probably a cruel joke more based on Archer Daniel Midlands profits than is it a real alternative to gasoline. But when the US has 3% of the world oil reserves and we use 25 % of the worlds oil we have to use some kind of fuel to power our internal combustion engines. Unfortunately, it's only going to get worse. The US Government has mandated a certain amount of ethanol content in the gasoline so we don't have to import more oil. In Brazil , where they can make 8 times as much ethanol from sugar cane as we can from corn, they have using a gasoline/ethanol mixture for many years (I think it may be as much as a 50/50 mixture). So , your stalling outboard is only going stall more and your going to be be up the proverbial $%*ts creek with out a paddle as they say.

They have E100 cars in Brazil. 1.5 million CNG ones too.

One -nice- thing about ethanol in gas: no more MTBE.

Yeh..& don't mix any leftover MTBE with the E-10 blend. All newer model engines are having to be outfitted with all new fittings valves Ect... that can withstand the drying out & rotting of the material...The older models that folks hoped would last longer are going to see shorter lives. E-10 gets about 2% less power & Milage (Give or take)than reg fuel..breaks down much faster..& takes more energy to produce which pollutes way more than the intended cleaner air emmisions!! Don't mention the increased price of food due to the Corn shortage on top of all the costs of repairs & the increased price of product due to the upgrades...GEEEZZZ..I'm going to have to get me a .1 to maybe a .15% blood alcohol content to calm down!

http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20080827_Figure2.png

Eeek! That's pretty grim stuff right there. Basically the melt rate hasn't changed all summer, it looks like a plane about to barrel straight into the ground (the ground being last year's sea-ice levels). If things don't change drastically, and quickly, we're going to be falling below last year's ice levels sometime in the next week or so.

Of course, another interesting note- on August 1st, less than a month ago, this was the forecast prediction from the same web site:

http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20080801_Figure3.png

It appears that we are at least one standard deviation, if not more, away from their prediction that they made a mere 26 days ago.

Back on Aug 1st they only gave the ice an 8% chance to hit a new record low...I believe it will come out of the nosedive soon...come on baby..pull up!! All the temps around the edge of the ice have been in the upper 20's to low 30's the last couple of days so I'm keeping my fingers x'ed.

I read a report that at the pace we are going 2008 will be the coolest year this decade...thats the good news..the bad news is that we are only 8 years into the decade ..& the fact that it will still be the 10th warmest year since 1850

Conclussion--We have bottomed out on GW

I'm just curious with the last several years being obviously warmer that if the earth has absorbed the warmth and the sea ice melting now even though this will be one of the coldest years on record? In the same sense that it may take 3-4 years for it to effectively cool down and more sea ice to grow in larger amounts during the summer?

Wasn't there a recent report indicating that they'd discovered underwater heat vents in the arctic? I don't know exactly where the info was, or I'd link to it... If I can dig it up, I'll pass it along...


aaron

This might just be the year they find HMS EREBUS and HMS TERROR

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/08/18/franklin-ships.html
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080827.FRANKLIN27/TPStory/National

That sort has been the way I've been thinking Brad..a delayed type of reaction. The shortest day of the year is dec 21st but it takes a few weeks for us to hit our minimum low temps..

What I find interesting about those articles you found Comprex is the fact that there were folks trying to find the NW passage way back when...I thought it was such a big deal that the NW passage has even opened up in the last couple of years??!...For that passage to be navigable you have to have a very low Ice year!

Folks have been trying to find the NW passage at least as far back as the Treaty of Tordesillas; they didn't know a navigable one didn't exist.

What I find interesting is that everyone seems to take the new "Find Franklin's ships!" expedition at face value, in spite of all the other "Find Franklin!" expeditions since the time of John Rae, and in spite of Stephen Harper's explicit "use it or lose it" statements.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8S4RN3RUjE

Possibly, but remember that sea ice recovered very quickly this winter. If your hypothesis was correct, I would have expected to see slower sea ice growth than we saw last year, instead of returning so quickly to near-average. I think the write-up on the "arctic sea ice news and analysis" makes a lot of sense: first year ice melts faster than pack ice.

There's probably a few things going on. Most importantly, sea ice doesn't freeze until about 28F due to the higher salt content. So it needs to get colder for it to freeze. Then, first year ice is more likely to be pure sea water, as opposed to having some mix of snow and rain melt in it as well. This means the salt content is higher, so again it melts more quickly than ice that has a higher freshwater content. On top of that, first year ice tends to be thinner, though this year wasn't really the case.

If the first year ice is pretty much all gone now, though (I don't know if it is, just wondering), then that just goes to show how much cooler it has to be in the summer to get the first-year ice to last long enough to reverse any long-term deterioration. It's not an encouraging prospect.

The temp in Denver,Co was about 9 degrees below norm today..with sunny skies & I just watched Al Gores speech at the DNC convention where he is still preaching a fiery end to the world..Hope he doesn't catch a cold this eve..

Having not seen him since he shaved his beard after he won the election... he looked good. Even grew some hair . Let's hope the gloom and doom he's predicting doesn't happen. Who will run the ski lifts ?????

Andy - The reason I mention that is in all of my science classes going back through elementary school always taught that the peak of summer and the heat emmitted from the sun is the hottest during that peak period. I remember being asked one time in class why does the oceans/beaches stay warm through November when air temp and heat emmitted by the sun is far less. The answer was that it is a delayed reaction that the ocean and ground absorb the heat and continue to stay warm as it takes heat time to disapate.

Quote from the Whitegrass Web site....."Our cold mornings remind us that summer is yielding away & we are living through one of the coolest seasons on memory (This with the lowest sea ice on record) & now the predictions of a snowy winter are rushing in...Apple trees are almost falling again under the weight of so much fruit..hornet nests are close to the ground (do they make honey?) once the rivers are full again & later this fall the snow will begin to fly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Quote from Al Gore...We'll never make it...we are Doomed...We will be Shrimps on a Barbie!!!

The arctic News & Stuff is a little slow with updates..."Pull up Baby"..I said. I got more pull than Barrack Obama..Ck out the latest Graph...Got a slight edge upward..Don't it?!!

PS..Ck out page one to ck out the the Graph

ps..what the hell does PS mean?..I use it but have 0 understanding of it..

PS ...I will have no further comment untill wed nite or thur since i'm heading for the hills..In case someone wants to jump me for my Gore remarks..I Have never Dodged a response for any subject on this forum..

Post scriptum



Are you kidding? I don't think Owl's very own mother likes him.

Here is an update on artic ice

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/26/AR2008082603014.html

Ck out the gragh on page 1..looks like Mamma nature has pulled it out of the nose dive & it should be on the way back up in a few. Looking at the northern Hemisphere snow cover it also looks like we have started a little faster than last year...still a little early, but there are some positive signs.

As we approach the $100 a barrel mark once again I researched the price of gas at the pumps the last time it hit that mark early last year...It was $3.05 which went up to about $3.10---3.15 soon after...the Nat ave is about $3.65 right now with oil at $105 a barrel....somthing is fishy....Any thoughts?

Yes Andy look here-

http://www.wtrg.com/daily/rbobgasolineprice.html

That's the NYMEX spot gas price. You can see it was a lot lower back in late 2007, even though oil was close to $100 a barrel. Heating oil tends to drive winter prices, so the crack spread between oil and refined gas tends to be tighter. As it is, the crack spread was remarkably tight most of the summer (which is one reason that inventory build lagged- there was no money to be made in refining) and is only now getting some cushion back, so the refineries are probably seeing a little margin.

As a rule of thumb, I add 50-70 cents on the spot market gas price to figure out what it should be at the pump (probably 80-90 cents in high tax states like CA, OR and WA). It was close to 40 cents this summer, which told me that most gas stations were probably losing money.

So, on Monday gas prices closed on spot at 2.75. Using my "rule of thumb" I'd say prices should be 3.25-3.45. They're at 3.65 right now, nationally. Probably NYMEX spot gas prices could- conceivably- rise another 10-20 cents without affecting pump prices. If Ike roars into the Gulf, 10-20 cents will be covered in about a day. If Ike dies, we could see pump prices fall further, even if spot market prices stay about the same as they currently are.

The grand conspiracy theory? I think gas stations are dropping their prices slowly to try to recoup some of the losses they dealt with this summer. Maybe. Who knows.

Yeh..I read on yesterday after I posted & it seems that its the refineries that are trying to make up lost revinue at this time. Gas Stations mostly just use the pumps as a draw for their convenience items..not much made on gas anytime...anyway..I didn't know what "Spot gas price" was till your post..gettin edumacated at dcski!....

Now ..Splain why 3.5 years ago when I purhased a new truck & during the 8 week time period it took for the TK to be delivered Diesel went from being way cheaper than gas to way more??!...Murphys law that I decided on a diesel??...Or is it the Dang Chinese again?

PS..If roger doesn't feel like playing anyone can answer

- $3.37 last Sunday @ the Wawa in Woodbridge on Neabsco Rd.

Rilly suprised u missed this Crush




Sorry to hear that RogerZ, it has been a pretty normal summer for me. Maybe it's that bi-national thingy u % S got goin on .......

It is always interesting to listen to the misinformed on this forum. The reason for the temporary drop in gasoline prices is that demand and travel has dropped by 3 - 4 %. Now, why did demand drop...because the price went up. Imagine that! Given that we only have an eleven year supply of oil reserves in this country based on current demand and given that China, India and Africa are increasing demand exponentially for Mid-east oil, the price drop is only a temporary aberation. This recent push by some folks to open up more areas for drilling in the US is a necessary idea, but our oil production peaked 38 years ago in the USA and has dropped ever since. If there was oil out there, they would have drilled for it. We were at one time the Saudi Arabia of oil. We used it. The US Dept of Enery estimates that by drilling for more USA oil,we can increase our YEARLY production by 73 million gallons. That is less than we use in day!
As demand again catches up to supply, the price will again rise again. There just is not enough oil on this planet to sustain the current world demand. You can all pretend that is not a fact if you want, but, pretending ain't going to change the facts.

Like Gov Palin said....DUH!.....& like T-Boone pickens says...Drill,Drill,DRILL..& in the meantime get everything else going including the massive amounts of natural gas we have. I don't know where you get your figures Snowsmith but there is a whole lot more oil out there than you say...In the Meantime, isn't the free Mkt grand?..Oil is down to $103 a barrel!

PS you can put lipstick on a liberal...But a pitbull will still want to bite em!

Fishnski - I'd be glad to hear your figures if you have any. I am an engineer and I have to deal in reality, facts, science, physics, etc, not idealogy, not the hot air from some polititian (liberal or conservative) and especially not some ametuer politician who's own state will benefit greatly from any outcome on the decision to drill in ANWR or elsewhere in that state.
The figures that I quote here are not something I make up. I am not happy about them. I wish they weren't true...believe me. I only became aware about the situation about a year ago. And I have been trying to warn everyone I can about what we face. THIS IS THE MOST CRITICAL ISSUE WE FACE. If you don't believe me, I suggest you check out the link I am providing to Rep. Roscoe Bartlett's website. He is a conservative Republican and one of the most knowledgable members of the US Congress on the engery issue.

http://bartlett.house.gov/Issues/Issue/?IssueID=2057

Hey leave Murphy out of this, he had nothing to do with it!

Interesting graph from Factcheck.org:

http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/why_does_diesel_fuel_cost_more_than.html

Other than that, I'd say diesel went up right after you bought your truck for the same reason that the housing market imploded right after I bought my first home. THEY ARE OUT TO GET US ANDY!!! You know who THEY are... THEM! The ones. The Man. The same ones that make it rain every time I want to do something outside. Damn them all, damn them all to hell!!! (we need a Charlton Heston "Planet of the Apes" smiley face to insert here)

Man!..After watching 4 hours of different news broadcasts & only hearing about "The Lipgate" I'm sorry I had to add insult to injury with my "Libstick" joke

I guess you hear what you want to hear Mr. Smith & I've been hearing Different figures than yours from multible sources That I have no intention of tracing ...I might be wrong but common sense tells me that we really don't know how much is out there.. but you lay down such absolute figures...thats what scares me about your thought process...but what do I know, I'm certainly no engineer..10-4 good buddy?! (no disrespect..i just don't know)

I was just waiting for you to make that Murphy's law remark Roger...I had faith in you from the time I posted it!....Yeh..My Ole lady will not let me forget the fact that I wouldn't let her sell her house in Damascus,md during the BOOM...$1400 a month rent out of the place & she still B---
Hold on to your investment as long as you can...if we start drilling everywhere, you watch how fast the money comes back!!

Yo Smitty i wanna ski with you this winter BUT DOOD take the box off you head and looka round. This price demand supply thingy well i don't nonthey aouuttaa make alaw.... while i'M tryING to figgur aout what misingINformation you are talking about i must remind you that the market and american ingenuity WILL SOLVE THIS PROBLEM, WUT u need to be concerned with is how much POWPOW u will get to ski this winter..... I repeat, how much POWPOW, no diesal for teh groomers we want POWPOW. We will do this...?? are you a scientist or an engineer??? if we tell engineer jokes surly sumwon will take another of my stars so no joking, burn teh box,

Jimmy

I agree that this forum is supposed to be about skiing.POW! POW! That said, it is not difficult to find information about how much oil and gas is out there. As usual, the government has a web site for just about everything. Your tax dollars at work. Here it is:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/
The Energy Information Agency seems to confirm the numbers that Snowsmith quotes. I hope we solve the problem before it impacts my ski trips.

Yes Jimmy!!! Pow pow. And on that note... there are some leaves changing out here already. I think it's the sick trees, the smaller bushes, the usual suspects. But it seems early this year.

Although I've said only one trip out west this winter, I'll need to tell my lovely bride (already and to-be, we're having the religious ceremony in El Salvador this November ) that I do reserve the right to make a long weekend trip to CO should the snow come down, once again, epicly this winter.

Roger,

Once you're married, you're entitled to take guys only trips.

The Chukchi sea is cooler than last year..from what I'm Reading..& there is some multi year ice that will hang around the Alaska coast. This will lead to a 10 to 14 day earlier formation of ice than last year along the AK & CA border....Good news so far ..BUT this is only a report on the AK, CA side of the Arctic

Cking out the Russian side..It seems like things are normal with snow & Fog with temps in the upper 20's to low 30's

Farmers Almanac says we are going into a cool faze for the next 10 to 50 years...Stay Tuned!

PS. Mr Smith..I just saw a Commercial on TV that was using Info from the Dept of Energy that says with drilling we will be able to get 60 more years of home heating & auto driving...& thats just a conservative est....I'm sure "Moveon.org" disagrees...

Noted, and already received approval. You see, she wants to take trips to New York City and Chicago and other places I'd prefer to see on a postcard (I've been to NYC twice, might consider a trip to Chicago but would prefer not to). So I've suggested maybe she could do a girl's weekend to these big towns and I could do a guy's weekend to a ski resort. Let's say she's partially amenable. She wants me to be "cultured," so I suggested Austin and Greene Hall. Fortunately she's not from around here so she doesn't understand what Austin is for C&W fans.

Don't bow down to any "Hang out with the guys" peer presure....YET...Love is still in the air..enjoy it while you can....its only the lonely guys & the ones that have been married for years that want to lure you away from your lady. This is a special time...enjoy it while it lasts & may it last forever...

Man!..I'm losin it

Yeah, I agree. You must be coming down with something. That was so beautifully poetic. Makes me wonder....

Well, not quite. She's in El Salvador for another year yet. The special time is a ways off, I hope this current situation doesn't last forever!

Hey our ice melt is slowing down, but it looks like the 1979-2000 average ice tends to start thickening about this time of year. We're still dropping right now. It'll be interesting to see if it starts getting thicker any earlier than it did last year- which was about Oct 1. Very late!

I just smacked my girl around David..I am the man!..She is getting me another beer as I write..
El salvodor or not ..I'm sure you have these little tingley thoughts all the time Roger & these plans & fantasies about you'alls future make your life just a little more thrilling than us regular Joe's....if not....dump the B.. Word!

Yeh..I was CKing out the 29 year ave & figured that the best GW could throw at us so far is a 7 to 9 day lag in reformation of the ice....I'm starting to try to figure out what kind of winter we would have with a zero ice mass to start off the season. With the onset of 0 daylite i'm figuring that there will always be a decent size ice cap & winter, but the season will be much shorter...kind of like our late starts latley.

Life sucks when your outboard sucks...

Andy,

I think you need to change your password, your wife has been posting under your account when you're not home.

Now, that there's funny!

Just got back from trying out my new older folk user friendly Soft longboard....the water is in the mid 80's..The air in the upper 80's..The beach was B-u-tifull..The Eye candy was Suberb...The waves were great....I Still Suck...

I've seen this same commercial and it does not mention anything about the Dept of Energy nor does it say that it is a conservative estimate. Note that it is an advertisement by the oil and gas industry.
Rather than get your information from commercials, why don't you actually go to the web site that I mentioned above (http://www.eia.doe.gov/ provide here for your convenience) or read some of the numerous publications that are available on this subject. Knowledge is power!
We don't have the oil reserves here that's why we import 75% of our oil. We do have a fair amount of natural gas from what I understand that is why people like T. Boone Pickens ( he's not a Moveon.org member) are proposing using natural gas and wind energy until we develop other fuels such as hydrogen.

Drill here and Drill now! *waves my american flag around while chanting that*

How is this hydrogen to be generated?

Nuclear NOW!

http://bartlett.house.gov/Issues/Issue/?IssueID=2057

You miss the point BIG TIME. Oil production peaked in the USA 38 years ago and has been dropping ever since. You could make the place look like swiss cheese, but we only have 3% of the worlds oil reserves and use 25% of the worlds oil. Now we many find some new modest reserves but the biggest one we have on the horizon is ANWR and that is only 1.6 billion barrels...a two month supply.
You can wave the flag all you want, but that ain't going to make us energy independent. We need to:
- Stop driving these huge gas guzzler cars ( I too am somewhat guilty)
- develop our own home grown, USA energy supplies such as natural gas, solar, wind, nuclear (note that the worlds supply of uranium is also limited as are the reserves we have here in the USA).
- we need oil for other things than producing gasoline to power our automobiles. There are substitutes for that. There are no substitutes for jet fuel, petroleum based fertilizers, petroleum based plastics, etc.

I again have listed a web site for a conservative Republican who is very much in tune with this issue. I am hoping that one day you guys will actually check out some facts so you know what your talking about before you jump on the "drill, drill, drill" bandwagon. Yes we need to drill, drill drill, but it will not come close to addressing the problem. That, IS the point. Please wakeup!

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/essential-report-future-hydrogen-automotive/story.aspx?guid=%7BEC078DE0-7A05-4F10-97CE-10A84C7F4BF4%7D&dist=hppr
Here is a link to one of those leftist, liberal publications, the Wall Street Journal that some you will scoff at concerning hydrogen. Must be a vast conspiracy tied to global warming.


http://www.hydrogenassociation.org/
And here is a link to an organization that is promoting the use of hydrogen (obviously they have a vested interest).

As far as nuclear, France (yes those horible people who invented "freedom fries") produces 85% of their electricity using nuclear. In fact there are several proposed projects here in the USA using French designed reactors (horrors )Next thing you know we'll be speaking French and eating croissants! God bless America!

As I thought, hydrogen is not an energy source, but merely a temporary storage of energy generated elsewhere.

Totally unnecessary. Boondoggle. Waste of capital that could be used for improving nuclear capacity and getting a new distribution grid. Here is an example of why:

Compressed air car

What you're proposing is the development of a complete hydrogen infrastructure just because we can't make a decent battery. One that would be on the same scale as current petro distribution networks, one that still has sufficient technological challenge, and one that would be made completely obsolete the moment better energy storage comes on market.

The air car above shows that there are technically achievable solutions to the energy storage problem that do -NOT- require limited-life infrastructure investment.



I'm OK with that if I can still have California Zinfandels.


BTW the reported "Wall Street Journal" link is merely an indexing abstract of an Irish journal that, at present is only available as a series of bulleted Table of Contents headings without separate purchase of the article.
link here

I do not consider the alleged affiliation with WSJ as proven or somehow 'conservatizing'. Further, the article doesn't really do much for our debate here in its current form. Do you have access to a more detailed version and could you provide the information here to sustain the debate?

Thanks for the info. Comprex. I read about the "air car" some time ago. Isn't it amazing that it would take an Indian company to come up witht this innovative solution.

From what I have read about hydrogen, and I have limited knowledge on this subject, it takes more energy to produce the hydrogen then the energy you get out. It also creates a distribution problem in that it is a very light gas and even compressed you can't squeeze much in a tank.

Our car companies are loosing money hand over fist and do not have the money to invest in the research. I am afraid that we will be beaten out by the Japanese and Europeans in developing these new technologies. Obama has proposed lending the car companies money to perform the research needed to keep them competitive. They are after all one of the last things that we actually manufacture in this country. They are saddled with large pension obligations and the competition is producing cars that Americans want. This weekend, the Sunpaper had an article about the hybrid SUV being produced by Chrysler. It gets 18 miles per gallon on the highway without the hybrid gizmo and 19 on the highway with the hybrid gizmo. Why bother producing this huge gas guzzler with the added cost of hybrid power if it's only going to increase mileage by 1 mpg!!??.No wonder they are loosing money. In fact, I wonder if Chrysler will survive since they produce such crap.
How we power our personnal transportation is going to be an important issue as oil becomes more and more scarce. If you look at what is available, the infrastructure is available to provide electricity and natural gas, so it would seem in the short term that natural gas fired cars, electric cars or a combination of those two may be necessary until the either hydrogen or the fuel cell is perfected (or maybe the compressed air car!). Gasoline is going to be around for at least another 7 - 10 years (I hope) in enough quantity to maintain our current fleet of combustion engines. Hopefully that will give us enough time to transition to these other technologies.
Comprex - Nice to know there are some thinking people who are aware of the situation and don't think it is some idealogical issue. I am so tired of the useless debate over "drill, drill, drill" which won't come close to solving our problem. I can't believe Americans are so misinformed on this issue. There has been no leadership on this issue coming from Washington from either party. And our "free press" thinks that "lip stick on pig" is more important to talk about than real issues.
I will try and find some more info about hydrogen and post it.
Thanks

Ok, we can understand the frustrations of some of us that cannot stand the thought of holding on to this stinky filthy Oil thing. MAN..Can't we just Grow up & forget the rude crude!..there isn't enough out there to worry about anyway...."There are only 1.6 billion barrels in Anwar"..WRONG!..The fact of the matter is that the facts are old & obsolete & as frusterated as some of you are, there are some of us just as frusterated especially when you study it further & find that there could be as much as 18 billion barrels up there! Back in 1987 there was a study saying that there were only 9 billion barrels of Oil in the Gulf..Today they will tell you about 50 to 60 billion could be out there with more being found all the time. A lot of "Facts" are misleading & are just put out in a way to suit whoevers purpose it was to put them out in the 1st place.

In 2003 the lastest thinking was that there was 18 billion barrels of oil off of California, the coast of Florida & offshore of the east coast(Mid Atlantic)...With 90 billion up at the Arctic Circle. Lately they are allready trying to say that just offshore California there could be that much by itself.

Now the main reason why it is WAYYYY premature to give up on oil....The estimated Shale reserves out west could be 2 to perhaps 3....TRILLION Barrels!! That would be 7 to 10 times the Stated reserves of Saudi Arabia...It would make the US the worlds largest Oil Producer!.....& its getting closer to reality Folks...New Technology is making this a more sure bet as time goes on.

I think Down the road when this Country is in the middle of an Oil BOOM...Did I mention all the oil up in the Dakotas?..I am going to take my 1st US GOVT Profit sharing CK & I am going to go hunting the abundant Caribou that like to hang around all the Pipelines in AK & take a tour of the drilling sites..then I'm going to head offshore NC & fish some of those oil Rigs that make the best artificial Reefs..& at no costs to us fisherman..& then I Still Hope to ski MPC & "Almost Heaven" West Virginia!

Sorry to interrupt the oil wrestling match... if y'all were cute girls I wouldn't interrupt but hey. Arctic sea ice- it may have finally bottomed out. We've still got 10 days or so to go to be sure, and last year it gave a head fake about this time of year like it was going to start increasing but it didn't, so things could still get worse.

Although this is the second lowest ice count ever in the arctic, the difference between this year and last year is an ice area the size of Spain. That's not bad, but we'll have to see how next summer goes.

In the meantime... winter may be edging it's way back into our hemisphere. Any cheers? Anyone?

I'll chime in to praise the cool weather and the hope we have an early and strong winter with lots of snow.

Having said that, many of us are working to have as few cars in DC as possible. It would be great to have the same restrictions as in most of the civilized world, such as Singapore, where cars entering downtown have to pay a daily fine/tax. We have way too many cars in the DC area. The city of Bogota outlawed cars from an entire freeway and now it is a mass transit and bicycle route. It has changed the city for the better. And the "ciclovia" has become a world standard. That's when over 100 miles of city avenues are closed to car traffic on the weekends and given back to the people. Change is slow but it is coming. Go ahead, throw stones...

Fishnski - you suggest some interesting numbers which I cannot find. Can you enlighten us as to where we may we can check these out. They would certainly be good news. I don't think oil is dirty or stinky. It is a naturally occurring product after all. I was hoping the oil would never run out. If we have all of this oil, why do we import 75% of our oil from other countries? Everything I have read does not make mention of these optimistic numbers that you suggest.
I would also like to note that oil shale is oil that is bound to the shale rock. Thus under the current technology, vast areas of shale would have to be mined, and the rock cooked to remove the oil.
I would also like to note that according the the EIA website that I previously mention, the known, recoverable world oil reserves are estimated to be 1.2 trillion barrels. At the current world consumption rate of approximately 90 million barrels a day (assuming that consumption does not increase), we will have completely exhausted the worlds oil supply in 37 years.

I thought the oil wrestling joke was great.

Ask Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats that one. They seem to want to play with cars tires and go on vacation early before allowing discussion on lifting drilling restrictions...

What ARE you talking about? Here we go again making this a liberal/conservative issue. I repeat this again for you folks who like avoiding facts in the discussion. Oil production peaked in the country 38 years ago, as was predicted by Hubbert's curve, now widely recognized as a means for predicting oil peaks. We use 25% of the worlds oil and we only have 3% of the worlds oil reserves. Here again is a link ( I know it is difficult for you to click on this because you then may have to question your own preconceived notions, but go ahead, take that leap and actually get informed on the subject)
to conservative REPUBLICAN Rep Roscoe Barlet's website. He knows more about this subject than Nancy Pellossi, I guarantee it.
http://bartlett.house.gov/Issues/Issue/?IssueID=2057

Can't we all just get along??? I am tired of all this hostility around here. This thread is supposed to be about SAUSAGE!!! Speaking of sausage, I just canned about 2 dozen quarts of hot peppers in sauce. Nothing makes Italian sausage better than peppers and sauce...MMMmmmmm.... BTW, I built a nice little fire last for me and my hunny to keep warm. Do you know why???? It was 50 degrees outside my house!! Winter is coming, regardless of what that sea ice is doing....

It is a liberal/conservative issue at the very heart of how our country approaches this. Liberals try to scare the public into thinking that oil use is creating GW which if we don't stop now will end all in the next few generals. The evidence that keeps coming to light consistently refutes that. Liberals also want to tax the oil companies right out of existence or play peter pan, rob the evil rich oil company and give to the poor financially unstable American citizen who has no fiscal responsibility to begin with.

While I agree to get away from importing oil from from nations that want to blow us off the map, wind, solar, ethanol and other such sources are complimentary, and that's all they'll ever be. God put more oil down there than any of us will ever know about. We just need to go get it and using our technological prowess, find better ways to drill deeper, further, etc. Being that the outer layer of earths crust is something like several hundred miles deep, who knows maybe the second layer of the planet is liquid oil. We'll never know unless we get started and keep drilling.

Oh and I have read that website... there isn't hard evidence on there. The Hubbert's page seems to be more propaganda with nice scary charts to indicate we are running out. Being that fishinski pointed out numbers are very contradictory by the day, I'm taking what was listed on that page with a grain of salt.

I know, I know... It is those clean, pure hearted neocons with squeaky clean ethics that give Alaska 500 million in pork for a bridge to nowhere, then of course, the nice clean conservative Ted Stevens indicted by a vast liberal conspiracy... Of course, the Abramoff scandal and a war to take over a country for no purpose whatsoever is a true demonstration of the clean heart of the conservative movement in energy resources. Sounds like you've been listening to a senator from Idaho way too long. Your stance must be way too wide. Coming from a state which is the second largest per capita recipient of federal dole, you sure have some nerve...

Stop the nonsense. Stop drilling. If you need to take a bicycle to Walmart, so be it.

Gang, this is not a liberal, conservative, Hindu or Zoroastrian issue. Drilling irresponsibly won't solve the problem. Stopping our way of life drastically won't solve it either.

I don't believe in drilling forever, sorry BW. We must wean away from oil, period. If it takes wind power speckled in urban, suburban, exurban and rural areas, combined with photovoltaic and a strategized phaseout of fossils, it seems way more responsible than either of the two extremes. And no, I'm no Paris Hilton fan...

The way of life that cheap oil and government policy generated is a luxury we can ill afford nowadays. BW, do you mean that the Government should devote more moneys from the treasury just so that you can maintain your standard of living, even though it may no longer be maintainable in the long run?

And as much as like snowsledding, stopping oil dead in its tracks will create so much hardship and economic depression that it will sink our economy. But we can't live like we are for much longer. Drilling like there's no end may be a nice emotional issue for BW, but frankly, doesn't make much sense.

And why not allow ski areas to install wind turbines to move the lifts and power the infrastructure? Sounds like good policy.

Fishnski - you are correct, I am wrong about ANWR. Here are some numbers that I recently researched.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Refuge_drilling_controversy#Estimates_of_oil_reserves
These reports indicate that there are supposedly somewhere between 6 and 16 billion barrel. Thus is would appear that my decimal point was off. Now I would prefer it if we didn't have to drill there since I see it as kind of a sacred area. In the same way, you may consider Canaan sacred. How about if they filled the valley with Walmarts and Jiffy Lubes. You wouldn't be happy, would you. That said, if we need the oil, we have to get it from somewhere.
Never the less, we use more than 8 billion barrels of oil in the USA every year. So you can see that it wouldn't take long to exhaust the numbers you quote.
And finally, I am sure you'll be glad to hear that I am sick and tired of this subject. I come to this site to escape reality. But when I see someone publishing some absolute bull [censored] I get incensed and then go on my extensive tirades. It's that time a year when we can move onto skiing. Whether your a liberal or conservative, skiing is skiing. So unless someone publishes some absolute rubbish on this subject, I will now gladly shut up and move on. However, I would like to know the source of your numbers if you would share it with us.
POW! POW!

POW POW AND SAUSAGE finally, I will be filing a formal complaint with the head Slime Ball if anyone makes another post in this thread that doesn't refer to Artic Ice, sausage or POW POW! There are plenty of BLOGS out there for insulting other pipples politcal beliefs, i participated in this thread because it was fun, i've learned some stuff but this nah nah name calling gotsa stop.


Death to the grooming machines.

I had my big sausage and beer party over the weekend. I'd say the sausage-making practice helped, and we'll have good eats at BK this winter. When was that date again?


aaron

Brad, please stop talking. Are you even paying attention to what you are saying? I am biologist not a geologist and I could tell you that the Earth's crust is NOT several hundred miles thick (It is actually ~3 miles at its thinnest, i.e. oceanic, and ~45 at its thickest, i.e. continental). You aren't helping your case any by just spouting off random things and counting them as fact. And the second layer? I learned in elementary school that the next layer is called the mantle. Not the "liquid oil" layer.

Here is a great diagram:

Sorry about that last post. I just couldn't stand by on that one....

Back to the good stuff!!!

I think he was trying to say something about the largely defunct theory of an abiotic origin to oil which says -- "The hypothesis of abiogenic petroleum origin is an alternative hypothesis to the biological origin theory which was popular in Russia and Ukraine between the 1950s and 1980s..." (wikipedia)

You know, whatever, dream on I guess if it makes you feel better.

Has anyone been to the DiBruno Brothers' original store in the Italian Market in Philly? Looks exactly like that picture. Gobs and gobs of stuff on the shelves, provolone hanging so low that even someone like me at 5'6" gets clobbered, and store personnel who still speak Calabrese and Sicilian. And the espresso aroma is everywhere.... OMG!!!

And for the faint of heart who can't stomach chickens being slaughtered or pork sausage being made on the premises (sort of like politics, eh?) they have a totally yuppified DiBrunos in Chestnut and 17th, right in the midst of the Rittenhouse Square area, serving the middle class in their 5 million dollar condos.

Come on ya wienies!..Healthy energized debate is the American way...Yes ,it must be done with respect but the debater must muscle some facts in at times. I still cannot figure out why DC folks just can't ignore a particular subject & move on to your other threads without having to throw some dirty Snow on the subject matter....move on..get out of here...This is not just about Sausage (A Hijack on my thread) or the sea ice..Which is in way better shape than last year when you factor in a few things..But it is about SOME MORE [censored]!!!!...I loved Ibottas comment.."Go ahead, throw some stones!"..Thats the attitude..he is bad enough to throw out some of his beliefs & then is ready to recieve the bombarment..I still don't like him though..

I have more respect for..lets say ..Snowsmith for correcting a minor flaw in his post than a wienie that has no other thoughts on one of this countries biggest problems so he justs crys fowl so he or she looks like some kind of Nerdy goody 2 shoe that wants a few easy Brownie points...I still don't like Snowsmith either....Respect your enemies...Better watch out whoe's in your foxhole!

One more thing Mr Ibotta...You propose Windmills all over Gods Last pristine lanscapes..up & down the ski slopes ect...I guess if you had your way there would also be a huge Paddle wheel attached to Blackwater falls ruining one of the most B-U-tiful sites in WV...But you wouldn't want a drill site in Anwar that would be the size of a pinprick on Snowsmiths rearend...Go figure......With all due respect!

Where's the love man? I even admitted I was wrong. I even have you admitting it is a big problem.

You Know what I love about your post Mr. Smith?....It was Short & Sweet!

Not to interrupt the oil fight, but there's a freeze watch posted for northern New England Friday night.

I want to see more oil drilling in the U.S. but I agree with Lou about one thing: our current oil in the U.S. is unsustainable (I guess that's a big thing to agree on). Not from our own perpsective- if we were the only country on earth that chugged oil like we did- which we currently are (22 barrels a year per person, compared to about 11 barrels a year per person in Great Britain)- probably we could keep going like this for a long time.

My premise- the moral behind that conclusion- is that we ought to desire that the rest of the world attained a standard of living equal to our own (I'm not talking Germany or Japan here, but rather places like Bolivia, Philipines (sp), India, China, etc). But if the entire world consumed oil at the same rate we did- that is, if you needed to consume 22 barrels of oil per person per year to obtain a United States' level quality-of-life- that would require drilling 275 million barrels a day of oil, a number that is 2.25 times higher than the most optimistic drilling forecasts I've seen.

On top of that, if you took the optimistic amount of oil remaining in the ground, and added on non-conventional resorces (tar sands, shale, etc), we would have, at that consumption rate, 30 years of oil left in the earth. If people consumed at Britain's rate, we'd have 60 years of oil left. That's it.

So... what I believe is: 1) we need to move away from oil; but 2) we need to keep commodity prices inexpensive to continue global economic growth; which since alternative sources of energy remain more expensive than oil (and nuclear remains problematic from a security perspective for some countries) 3) increased drilling and other carbon-based fuel exploration is necessary in the near-term.

Anyway, there's a freeze watch in New England. WAX THE SKIS!!!

I think he's got you blocked, he won't hear your rantings. You don't like him? I know him first hand, and say that you're the losing party. He dedicated his life to protect all Americans you included, first in the military and then in homeland security. There are tens of thousands of people in west virginia who owe him a warm home and a bed to sleep on. What have you done?

I really hate to step in, but have to remind everyone that DCSki is a snowsports web site and rants and raves about politics, oil drilling, global warming, etc. drive away readers who come here to discuss or learn about skiing and snowboarding. There are lots of forums available for these kinds of debates, so I would rather they not occur on DCSki. New visitors to DCSki see this kind of discussion and flee, and that's not in the community's interest as a whole.

(I should just automatically post this warning at this time each year -- folks seem to get restless by late summer and this type of debate always seems to rise like a phoenix!)

But really -- put yourselves in the shoes of a new DCSki visitor. I think you can all see that some of the messages in this thread would drive people away.

I see where you're coming from, Scott. I also understand the philosophical discussion of GW, oil, alternative energy, etc.... It's all related and the consequences of energy and cost impacts snow sports to a great extent. Perhaps if some of these, uh, er, "gentlemen" would keep it non-personal, it could be enlightening. I have learned much by just lurking on this post. Some of what I have learned good, some not so good.

Fishnski - The feelings are mutual. You just can't stand any body to disagree with you and that's what I do. I haven't met you, but I can't figure out if your an old fart or a young guy who is wet behind the ears. Me, i'm just an old fart.

RogerZ - I could not have said it any better. That is what I have been trying to get accross.

My last post on this subject. It's time to talk skiing.

Or half of you are just one of Scott's many alter-egos...

;-)

Dear Snowsmith...I kinda figured after I made my last post that you would take me wrong I showed you some Love by saying that I respected you more than the Wienies that hit & ran..you posted back with what I thought was a friendly acknowledgement of my post..I posted back with a smiley face, a blush face & a confused face.. I'm sorry you took that wrong ...I did the same with Fartens Idol & boyfriend Ibotta...By the Way..I could care less what any of you all think of me..I'm just having fun!

Ck out the chart on page 1..Ice is coming back & the snow cover is a good bit ahead of last year this time!

By the way Roger..Who the heck was talking about sustainable oil? Its amazing how some of the most simplist of gameplans can get so missmashed in mumbo jumbo...Like our future Vice president said.."Like we needed someone to inform us of that"..

This country needs a Great Leader...a temporary Dictator for 8 years...we need to fire everyone up at Capitol Hill...& I'm willing to take the Job ..The 1st thing I would do is get MPC up & running!!

PS.. Global cooling began in 2002...Just had a few hiccupps here & there

Speaking of farts, where's the matches at???

It's OK! I was not offended and I was just makin' fun. I called myself an old fart. It's so odd having these conversations with people you haven't met. People don't talk face to face this way.

Yes, Andy, we DO need a great leader. Oh, heck with it, I've been silent long enough, it's time to let everyone know who I want for president...

...Glen Plake.

Any man who can ski a mogul field on 217 cm straight edges has all the skills necessary to crush Al Qaeda, tear Putin a new one and straighten up the financial markets. And he could do it with a mohawk. And he would declare every powder day at Heavenly a national holiday ("Today is '2 Feet and Still Pukin' Day!!!!'").

Glen Plake: Change we can believe in. The original maverick. A true Washington outsider.

You and Larry Craig have fun in Minneapolis on the way to your ski outings. Well done

Thanks Mr Smith...To tell you the truth I respect you & most members of DC Ski a Whole lot more than I seem. Sometimes I Wonder how I'm even conversing with some of you all...I'm Not Worthy!!..But do you have a choice??...Yes you do..Ibotta for instance,under the strict insistence & guidence of Fart Man...(Thank you Baywalker)...has decided to remain silent when I post..BUT! I bet he is thanking his lucky stars that he has an excuse not to respond to his last ridiculous post!

You took my last post well roger..I'd vote for you President/Dictator & G. Plake for the running mate..Allthough Gov Palin would still get my vote for Sexytary of State..5 kids & still looking Good!

Bah I know you didn't mean anything by it Andy.

Say, since the other topic of conversation on this thread- ice, oil, and sausage- is sausage, guess what was on tonight? Beerfest. For those who know, you'll know. Dang that movie is underrated. The part where he wakes up next to the deer... wow. I almost fell off the chair laughing. It helps to be three or four beers in to truly appreciate it.

That reminds me... it's almost October. What's on tap this time of year guys??? I'm really diggin' the Porter this year, but it might be too early to break into it. I dunno.

On the topic of Arctic and ice modeling.

Any one here read

The Whale and the Supercomputer?

Comprex have u read about Pirates and Teh Global Warmings?

No.

Ms. C does own Elan Black Pearls tho.

anyways, seems they've found an inverse correlation between the average temperature and the number of pirates plying their trade. Never realized there are less than 100 pirates left, down from tens of thousands 400 years ago.

Why do I need to respond to my own sarcasm?

Interesting.

We need more pirates to stave off teh Global Warmings?

I see.

Brad, That quote was not for you...the thanks I gave you was for the "Light the Fartman up " comment..None of your Comments were Rediculous ...what am I missing here?

I'm the Last Pirate in the Cape Fear Coast...hangin out with some rebel yellers....The South will rise Again!

As long as there's a Beaufort, NC Andy I highly doubt that claim.

OOOOH I thought it was in reference to the post a page or two back. Speaking of light it up...

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/1195

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWsElV3tD_E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LNIly_Xato

Ouch... Toxicfishnski's face must have hurt after that stunt. Did it fish? At least it was nice for you to show your cheeks in public

It kind of brought me back to reality when I noticed that a 12 year old was posting here...Soo I love you too Mr [censored] & Farten.

Beaufort is an hour & a half north of here Mr Z..Home of Blackbeards Shipwreck the "Queen Annes Revenge"...Blackbeard ran out of Luck up at Okracoke Island a few barrier Islands north of there..They Beheaded him & I think they Displayed his head up in Norfolk,VA...SOOOoooo I Am still the last Pirate here in the Cape fear Region.

We have an Island here that is named "Topsail" Because when the merchant ships would sail up the coast they would CK out the Sandunes to make sure they didn't see any of the upper sails..cuz if they did they would know there was a Pirate ship ready to come out of the Inlet & pounce on em!

Back to Blackbeard...He was the master of Terror..He would do all kind of crazy things to intimadate his prey like putting gunpowder in his beard & lighting it up...& also putting some stuff under his hat that he would ignite to create a lot of smoke that would freak his victims out enough that he wouldn't have to even hurt anyone...they would just give up!

Ive got a few of my own tricks that would scare the Schlitten out of the Farten if he dared coming down to my Camp!

About the only good news worth mentioning today- the ice in the arctic appears to be expanding. This is when the ice did a "head fake" last year though, so we'll have to see if this is permanent. But after several days of holding it's own, winter might be finally on the march again.

The webcam at Whistler certainly suggested it was!!!

Yeah visiting you, I believe it. Do I have to wear the white sheets and hood or is the pointy hood enough?

I think this time its real Roger..The Chukchi & Beaufort Seas are running 2 to 8 degrees Celsius lower than this time last year! (Thats what it reads, seems like 2 to 8 F would be alot on its own!)..& there is a lot colder air coming in with significant ice formation F-Cast for the next 14 days. If they ever get the barrow Ice cam back up I would be willing to bet that we could see coastal ice as soon as the 1st week in Oct. Last year I remember ice showing up on the cam around Oct 16 to the 19th.

The land snow cover this year started earlier & more extensive than this time last year...so let it snow..Blow..& Grow!

Yes it's beginning to seem like... Houston, we have liftoff!!!

There is WAYYYYYY too much optimism here. I'll believe it when it happens.

No no this isn't optimism, this is facts. Ice was up 30,000 square miles from last week:

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

It appears to be rebuilding, it's blowing right through last year's "head fake."

Greenhouse Gas emissions continue rise

From LA Times September 26
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-na-warming26-2008sep26,0,6690604.story

If you pay attention to the LA times (Losers Annonomus) you are are sadly propogandized.
Sept saw record breaking Cold & Snow in South Africa..Along with the coolest Summer (Record?) in many moons for australia. Just in the last couple of days there have been 2 record lows in central west Florida...Broken by 3 to 4 degrees!
The Arctic continues to see Ice growth at at least normal amounts for this time period.. & with a very good snow ground cover.
Solar winds have lowered to record lows which means Stronger Solar Radiation here on earth & we still are beating the odds....You worried about a little emisions?...There are stronger forces at work than some of the BS we read & Hear!

PS...About 90 below at the Vostuk station on Antarctica right now....its spring there...

Carbon is building up faster than predicted

http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapita...n-a-decade-ago/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/25/AR2008092503989.html

I still stand by my belief that we fully underestimate this planet's capabilities to handle emissions and that the amount of emissions we humans put out is miniscule in the grand scheme of things. In 25 years when we start seeing ice on the Potomac in January again and carbon emissions are 1000x higher than they were in the 90s, that should be enough evidence to debunk those articles. Plus I'll be laughing and snowboarding at the new ski resorts in Wardensville with state of the art snowmaking.

The operative word here being BELIEF... What happened to the empirical analysis of the available data, leading to a conclusion until possibly contradicted by new information?

Too boring? Too Spock-like? Too painful? Not enough fun? Slept thru science class? What?

Inquiring minds want to know!

That scientific model I use is called getting one wooden spoon, sticking mentioned spoon in pot placed before person with the hand, and stirring pot in counter clockwise motion.

Kevin - you can present facts to these people that are more obvious than the nose on their face and because they "believe", facts just don't have any impact. They make decision on an emotional level based on their core beliefs, you could say they are "idealogues" . They don't want to make an effort to check out the facts since it may actually debunk their beliefs. Then they would question the meaning of their existence. Note that they can never admit that they are wrong.
Note also that the solar radiation increase theory presented by you know who above seems to be debunked by the the recent DCSKI article indicating minimum sun spots thus less solar radiation.

It got swamped by too much raw data, interacting in ways beyond computational analysis, back in the 1960s.


So people wanted to know. And built a model. Then they had two things they didn't understand.*

*statement originally attributed to Gerard Roe
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/318/5850/629

The you know who above person mentioned Solar WIND was at a min..thats apples & Oranges to Sun SPOTS....By the way, the Spots are running down here..Anyone heading to the Hampstead Spot festival?


PS..Solar wind restricts the solar rays from escaping the sun to an extent...Low winds release more rays down to earth....You get the winds to pick up on the sun along with low sunspot activity (Which I have brought up a # of times) & we will be thanking our lucky stars for the C02 we have!

...The Pot Calling the Kettle Black..Word!

I apologiize for the my post above. I deleted it after writing it but apparently it didn't get deleted. I have decided that I am tired of the partisan bickering, so my posts will no longer have that kind of tone. This is a waste of time and energy and produces nothing. There are other sites which are more appropriate for discussing issues. I invite you to do the same...keep your political views off of this site, no matter how tempted you are. I'd bet a case of your favorite beer that you can't do it.

snowsmith, deal. And Magic Hat please.

Anyone on this board (or in this thread) live near or drive by Accokeek?


I was looking to get some boerewors again and Cape Dutch Bakery's website is just plain gone?

Anyone know what's going on?

Sorry Comprex. I am of limited means and cannot afford to bet the entire DCSKI forum participants. The bet was directed to one of the more (or most) opinionated participants. Magic Hat?..never tried that one.Hopefully a little snow on the ground will take our minds off politics, especially after November 4. My fear is that someone is going to publish some stupid partisan rubbish that has no basis in facts and that will make my blood boil and I won't be able to resist.

November 4th huh?? The biggest thing happening that day is this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpeVwgPzt-8

Ok..It was fun for awhile. I never sau-sage a bad reaction to some of my posts..I have enjoyed years of adulating Hero Worshiping & total agreement to my posts here at DCSKI...& then I run into the likes of the liberal Mafia...Sigh..Soooo..How do we get to SS? Any bargains out there?..I love my new Ski's..wish I knew what brand they were, I really should take my skiing more seriously.....

Is there a statute of limitations on this truce?

snowsmith, don't you know by now to bundle all the bets and sell beer & sausage payoff futures on a sliding scale based on who gets beer first, then pay yourself in sausages for shifting the bad beer to a storage facility?

So long as beers are continued to be appreciated, the scheme can't fail; you shouldn't limit yourself to the mere leverage of a bottle opener.

PS if anyone knows an alternate local source for boerewors, LMK.

By George...you've come up with a solution to the financial bail out! Sausage and beer! It works in Poland, why not here in the good ole USA. We need to get you on CNN, Fox News, etc. with the revelation. Our economy will hum like a V8 fueled with sausage and beer. Ice will form on what ever this place Fishnski keep talking about! Ski resorts will open by the end of October. Mt. Port Crayon will open as a new 50 trail ski resort and...
Whoops, sorry I dozed off their for a second. Got any sausage?

Is all this talk of Pork coded political talk?..maybe we should just drop the subject since it may offend our Conservative Muslim friends here at DCSki..we need to be friendlier & kinder & to be careful not to upset anyone...enough damage has been done...I love you all...

"By George"......can I get a bush light?..(I'm not talkin Mcain )

Good thing I don't touch or drink alcoholic beverages!!

I'd be willing to offer up my services to pick the case of Magic Hat for the winner/loser. The loser would have to throw in a little gas $ and the only one other stipulation is that the case could only be picked up between mid-December and late April.

BEER RUN, I call shotgun, can we get sum #9 for the trip back?? OK ski related question.......so you are on ski trip and have plenty of sausage but you discover there is no beer. What is the longest beer run you have made?

While you guys are drinking away (and maybe this is just the best thing now!?), you mised that oil marched down toward 94$ a a barrel in the last few weeks.

I'd like to think that'll show up at the pump soon ($2 buck gas coming soon?) and as we head into the cold season, might make it a little less painful to drive to your favorite ski resort ...

Then again, what happens if some don't open? Does anyone know if of the financial health of some of these places? Do they have to get a big loan to kick the season off to make all the snow and then pay it off and take profits at the end in March/Spring? And then of course this ties into the frozen (no pun intended) credit markets everyone is talking about ...

How does the ski resort business system work?

$3.30 maybe but never $2. Dollar ain't near strong enough.

If we were smart enough to stop driving giant gas guzzling cars and significantly reduce our consumption, the price could drop below $3.00 a gallon. Since we use twice the amount of energy per capita than anyone else on the planet, I doubt that will happen soon. That would actually involve effort and thinking at the same time!
The previous poster made a good point about obtaining credit for start up of the season. It costs alot of money to make enough snow to get the resort open and the real revenue doesn't start comming in until Christmas, MLK weekend and Presidents week around here. I wonder if say Timberline would be affected since the owner doesn't have deep pockets. I sure hope not. With the sunspot or lack of sunspots potentially giving us a colder winter, I wouldn't want the economic climate to affect a good ski season. I am very much looking forward to skiing with the new snowmaking, lifts and terrain at Hidden Valley.

Snowsmith...I respectfully disagree with your figures on per capita energy usage. You can look up the figures from the international energy agency. If you compare us to rich or developed countries the figure runs around 25%. This is the figure most often quoted by the media. If you compare us to Western Europe we use marginally more than some countries and we use less than others.

Hopefully, we can both agree however, that is not an excuse for pouring resources down the toilet for no good reason other than we do not have the national will to develop effective solutions.

...Hows that upswing on the graph for CO2 busting!

According to this image which is referenced to the 'international energy agency', we use more than twice as much energy per capita than most of the rest of the world. only a few countries come close, notably Canada, which uses a little more but produces (GDP/capita) much less.

[img]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Energy_consumption_versus_GDP.png [/img]

Clicking through to the actual references provides a lot more details. One surprising item is that we already are by far the largest nuclear energy producer at over 29% of world capacity. Also by far the largest 'petroleum products' producer and importer.

Err, pags, on that image the line from the origin passing through spain, france and the world average is actually par.

China, South Africa, Russia, Canada, Australia, South Korea are clearly sub-par because they waste too much energy for too little GDP. The US is actually right about average for GDP/KW, and a hell of a lot more productive than most. In fact, the ONLY country remotely to be taken as an exemplar from that graph is Japan. That's it. Nobody else does it better.

And I find the nuclear stat not one bit surprising. Who else has a big bad nuclear navy at sea?

Pagamony

That is an interesting graph. I have seen it before and wondered about it. I think energy usage vs GDP is a very good measure. Something in common between US, Australia (I believe they are on the high side as well) and Canada, big countries, wealthy, relatively low population density, and lots of mineral mining and refining which are very energy intensive industries. I had not drilled through to the nuclear stat before. I would never have guessed that.

GRK

Australia and Canada are not nearly as efficient as the US on that graph. I would agree, fewer white collar jobs per capita is likely the cause.

That graph is actually extremely flattering to the US, if one takes productivity to actually be important.

The only problem I would have with it is that it was computed during a strong dollar valuation, which would skew GDP numbers downwards for every other country.

Gas prices in the twos? I saw 3.09 here yesterday. With NYMEX oil at 2.28 and the dollar fetching 1.38 on the Euro, we could very easily be below 3.00 out here soon. Whether you want to count 2.95 as a "two" or "three" dollar gas, that's another story!

That chart was interesting- does it account for purchasing power parity? If it does, there's not as much need to worry about the value of the dollar at the time it was made. If it doesn't, it might need to be revised. Either way, we should come out pretty good- energy consumption per gdp has always looked favorable for us.

Energy economics has a very famous "kuznets curve" in it. Effectively- a poor country increases its energy consumption quickly. As it becomes wealtier, it's growth in energy consumption slows down. Theoretically, at a certain point of growth energy consumption increases stop and might actually reverse. I believe the theory applies to per capita. However, I've played around with the numbers from 1995-2005 for 183 countries and, apart from recessions, havent' found any "inverse" consumption per capita.

Latitude is important for energy consumption. All other things equal, countries in the tropics would burn less energy than countries at the 50th Parallel, because of winter.

Something I realized when visiting El Salvador, too- I'm not sure the official energy consumption numbers count for what I'd call the "informal" energy consumption sector: wood burning in the countryside and other sources of energy that don't come from powerplants. If it doesn't, the numbers for developing countries on that chart would look worse, however the kuznets curve would not be nearly as pronounced, either. I'm curious if anyone has ever studied energy consumption per capita as a society transfers from a subsistence/agrarian economy to an industrial one, accounting for this "informal" factor.

Oil consumption per capita

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_con_percap-energy-oil-consumption-per-capita

The web site above actually lists the USA as #15 actually beaten out by such giants as the Faroe Islands, and four Arabian oil prodicers of note. Interestingly France, Austria, Germany and Italy use less than 1/2 the oil per capita that we do and Japan and Australia use 60%

Fishnski - what is the significance of the upswing in the curve. It mirrors the other curves for this time of year? Yes, as winter approaches one would expect the ice to increase.

The whole purpose of watching the sea ice is to moniter the effects of global warming.With a pretty good upswing on the Graph it shows that..yes it is becoming winter..& yes the Ice is responding nicely. If we didn't have an upswing or if the upswing wasn't that dramatic then we would have more reason to worry about GW...Life is still good in the Eskimo hood!

PS..you can see that the upswing is a little stronger than the 30 year ave...can anyone tell us why that would be?...I think I have an answer but am curious about what you all think the main reason is.

It depends on what story you want to tell, which is likely derived from your political stripes. If you want to brag about output then use the vertical axis and are doing very well. If you want to talk about efficiency then you use the diaganol and we are doing ok. If you want to talk about global impact, then you use the horizontal axis and we are not doing very well.

There are several potential issues. First, the plot is only useful if you think that GDPc and KWHc are useful measures. For instance, KWH is not measured in global impact. We don't know how efficiently those KW were produced.

One of the obvious problems going on is other countries that have the audacity to try to reach our levels of consumption are driving up demand for important resources like Oil and Water. Living efficiently should be encouraged regardless of political stripe.

Ok, Pags out..He decided to beat around the Bush..next!

you can beat your own Bush, I'll stay out of it. the point is the report has a lot of interesting information, but it can be misused. In many respects, both GDPc and KWHc are poor measures of efficiency or impact. They don't measure the value of what you're producing, the impact of what you are consuming, the utility curve of cost vs. benefit, nor the marginal decreasing benefit of additional production.

well, the gutters are clean now and its time for a refrigerated reward.

I was just playin with you Pagamony..You responded to me about a subject that I didn't start..I had asked the Question about why the Sea ice seems to be growing faster than the 30 year Ave..Even during these GW times.

sorry dude, was not responding to you at all, rather the subthread about the 'international energy agency' - which sounds like something out of Get Smart, so I had to look it up.

per the sea ice, it was a colder winter and milder summer here in the northern hemi. Let's all hope for another year or two or 50 like that.

Pagamony

My point is not that things are just fine and we should continue to use resources without care for the future. I was responding to something someone said earlier in the thread. That 'we' use twice as much energy than anyone else. That means we are alone at the top of the energy curve and the next country in the list uses less than half as much. Not adjusted for anything just raw data...all countries considered. Someone, maybe you, noted that the numbers can be used for all sorts of political agendas. I agree and that was part of my point. I am going back to sticking to skiing related posts. Meanwhile, if we ever cross paths I would be happy to share a few cold ones.

GRK - I'll buy the first pint or four.

I try to stick to the ski posts, but every now and then some numerical abuse catches my eye, and then I learn my lesson. We should soon have lots of threads about skiing.

You are correct that my post contained the hyperbole "anyone" which is not entirely correct. As someone else point out with a website link, the Faroe Islands do use more oil per capita than we do (as well as 14 other minor countries). We are an industrialized nation and a consumer nation, so you would expect us to use more than some others. But why do industrial power houses like Japan and Germany use approximately 1/2 of what we use. Additionally we use 75% of our oil on personnal transportation. That means if we increase the efficiency of our cars, change our behavior a little, we could drastically alter the huge transfer of wealth from the good ole USofA to some countries that don't really like us very much. As been pointed our numerous times - we use 25% of the worlds oil yet we are only 1 in 22 people on the planet. So maybe you can inform us all on how efficient we are here.

Japan is 339 people per square km and Germany is 232 per square km. They are hives compared to the US at 31 people per square km.


We could solve the personal transportation problem overnight.

By allowing in 9 immigrants per current citizen and educating them to, oh, let's say high school standards or better.

Tryin PJ but one finds it in teh strangest places, anchovies for instance. I could live without anchovies, but adult beverages seems to raise the levels too. Gotta remember to hydrate

Yeh, Yeh..Thats right Comprex...Lets get Denser

I have two comments..
1)"What?"
2) I agree that we're more spread out. That is one problem that is not easy to resolve. Never the less we use 25% of the world's oil and we have 1 person for every 22 people globally.
2) Not sure I understand your comment about educating immigrants. What are you implying about immigrants.
3) I assume you support transfering our wealth to countries that don't like us?
Whoops..that's four comments.

If your job was 1.5 mile from your house you wouldn't drive.

More people per square mile and chances are you'd either find an equivalent job closer to home or move closer to work.

Neither would you drive if the roadways were completely clogged for anything but public transport. And all of a sudden public transport could diversify into more routes and more coverage.



I am stating that if they have education levels of US high school level or higher then they can create jobs as well as requiring them.



I state that this 'wealth transfer' is a complete boondoggle and red herring. Total BS.

a) the mass of the US population doesn't have 'wealth'. In fact 80% of the population only has under 10% of the wealth. They are limited to low expenditure options. They have no choice. Their 'wealth transfer' is irrelevant because it represents less than 10% of the country's wealth.

b) the 20% or less of the US population that owns 90% of the 'wealth' can transfer it wherever they well please, regardless of the oil consumption or anything else of the other 80%. We live in a society of free capital mobility. Right now that transfer is to wherever that wealth can gain most of itself.

c) buying products from offshore means they can buy our products. Except we're not making them. Why is that? Oh, wait, all that free capital went elsewhere instead of domestic production.

This may float your boat, Fishnski. Good news, for us skiers.
http://www.accuweather.com/news-top-headline.asp?partner=accuweather
It's those sunspots!

From Accuweather this morning........It's coming

Recent chilly mornings have forced many residents across the Northeast to start heating their homes. Temperatures dipped to their lowest levels of the season on Tuesday morning. Bradford, Pa., endured a frigid 24

My boat has been floating very well..thank you Mr. smith...its time for my ski's to float!! Isn't Accuweather supposed to be predicting a warmer than normal winter? In any case, lets not get to excited about this cold shot my fellow Whitegrasshoppers because its way to early. We need the cold to stay up north building up frost & snowcover like its doing up in Fairbanks,Ak where they are seeing the coldest start to winter in 16 years....& then Swoop down on us just in time for a Thanksgiving Snow feast!

The way I look at it..if its cold in the midatlantic & I have major heating bills,I'm saving money by skiing locally....If its warm I'll take my heating bill savings & head up to Whiteface mtn to complete my tour of New England...Its all Good!

http://www.accuweather.com/news-story.as...1&article=7
Good news for eastern skiing; bad news for the heat bill.
I've stocked up on firewood for my woodstove so I am ready. Inaccuweather says winter will come early. See you on Turkey Day on the slopes.

Actually Comprex as a nation we are very spread out, but where many of us live is as dense as Europe. I was surprised to find this out- just read about it a couple of weeks ago from a couple of my old profs at VT:

http://www.surdna.org/usr_doc/The_Rise_of_the_Megapolitans.pdf

It suggests there's more room for mass transit as a regional option than we realize, if the sole argument against railways is "we need density like Europe." Well, most of us have it. I'm not writing this to say "yay transit" or anything, I'm just sayin'...

Also, as far as the "transfer of wealth" argument goes: it's only a transfer of wealth if we're getting nothing for something. I assume since trade is free we buy the oil because we can put it to a higher use here. One can argue that the real transfer of wealth is from the low-value added, commodity producing Middle East to the innovative center of service-based, high tech growth here in the United States. Rich getting richer, poor getting poorer, blah blah blah. It's all in how you look at it. Personally, I look at it as "we got a barrel of oil that we valued at the market price, or we wouldn't have paid it." Net wealth transfer: zero. Anyway the majority of our oil comes from Canada and Mexico, and even if we were "transferring wealth" to those two countries, I don't particularly mind. Neither of them is looking to blow us up.

The greyfield and infill concepts are quite interesting.

Rich getting richer, poor getting poorer, blah blah blah. It's all in how you look at it. Personally, I look at it as "we got a barrel of wealth transfer: zero. Anyway the majority of our oil comes from Canada and Mexico, and even if we were "transferring wealth" to those two countries, I don't particularly mind. Neither of them is looking to blow us up. Also, as far as the "transfer of wealth" argument goes: it's only a transfer of wealth if we're getting nothing for something. I assume since trade is free we buy the oil because we can put it to a higher use here. One can argue that the real transfer of wealth is from the low-value added, commodity producing Middle East to the innovative center of service-based, high tech growth here in the United States.oil that we valued at the market price, or we wouldn't have paid it." [/quote]


.....Now, thats an arguement I havn't heard before...like Arsinio Hall used to say...Makes you want to go HMMMMmmmmmmmmm...

I agree with RogerZ -- the term transfer of wealth is a misnomer because whether it be oil imports, or any imports -- those dollars go sompelace eventually -- usually they come back in some form to us. What we've been EXPORTING BIG TIME is OUR DEBT! It sounds funny to think of like that but that's our #1 export to all these countries. If we buy oil from Saudi Arabia, more often than not they turn around and buy govt bonds/treasuries -- that's our debt or at least our federal debt. And I don't doubt they have there hands all over these mortgage backed debts and other forms of US corporate debt -- not just them but China, every country we have trade deficit with... So you know -- it all wrapped up together -- not that's bad, because if your #1 export is debt you don't want folks to suddenly get tired of the stuff -- that'd be really really really bad if happened quickly.

Also a word on population density -- the US has a lot of land folks don't live on much because there isn't a enough water. Go out to Utah and get outside of SLC and its empty... there's not enough water to support much population, that's the problem. So again, I think Rogerz is right in that you really need to compare apples to apples -- you need to compare where folks live basically between these various countries.

Heck I've been to verdunt countryside in Germany where there wasn't a soul for miles and miles... so you know, there's open space (almost) everywhere...

Let's say that instead of buying $700,000,000,000 worth of oil from these other countries, a portion of that went directly back to buy home grown energy. Energy produced by Americans for Americans. Thus instead of the money we pay for oil going to a Saudi Arabian worker to drill the well, pump the oil, build the pipeline, load the oil into a Saudi Arabian tanker staffed by a Saudi Arabian crew, profits going to SA's etc. etc. The money would instead go to an American guy drilling the well, pumping the oil, or the American guy building a nuke plant, an American guy running the nuke plant, an American guy design, building/installing the wind turbine, profits going to American companies etc.
I think we get far less in wealth for the oil we buy than what we pay. Additionally, we could actually be producing something that actually has real net worth than the paper pushing, 'service' economy based on huge commercial debt we now depend on that has no real substance. 15% of China's exports are Wal Mart products...there ain't much in the store that is not made in China. The point being producing our own energy would have fantastic economic benefit.
I agree on the population density issue. We are clustered here for example on the east coast. However, suburban sprawl makes it difficult to serve the outer subburbs.The population density in the some of these sprawl areas would not make public transportation in those areas cost effective. The folks in McMansion land most likely won't ride mass transit anyway.

Does the CEO of Mcdonalds live in a McMansion?

Good question fish! Anyway, if we redirected that imported oil money to local home grown technologies, and managed those technologies here, and then built the infrastructure up here and the service sector to make it go here and all that -- why we'd be creating those kind of jobs here VERSUS what we've been creating, the type person that knows how to sell that debt off and bring in investors...

I'd support it myself -- you know I like the idea overall. The middle class here has been living with flattish wages since the 70s and we've been exporting tons of manufacturing and some service sector jobs to lower wage economies for years...

So it'd be good to have it here -- of course it would be really really helpful if: A) the huge investment panned out and wasn't just a boondogle, and B) the result is competively priced with oil ...


I think it would also encourage those one horse economies (i.e. those that basically export oil) to branch out- in other ways. Not that we'd stop using oil to make all sorts of stuff but if we drammatically cut our domestic needs... and could do that through homegrown technologies -- i think we'd be better off.

just to add another cents worth...Being in the freight buis, I see a whole hell of a lot of US goods being shipped to Saudi even out our small port here in Wilmington,NC..Just the other day I saw a whole line of brand new Boxcars with Saudi writing on them getting loaded onto a ship.
....& we get cheap labor from mexico for their oil..& what do we get from Canada?....Cold friggin Air!!!! hell of a bargain!

Andy, that cold friggin air allows us to ski in the winter. I think we get more of a deal from the canucks than we do from the mexicans..... then again, cheap labor? Doesn't that tend to deflate wages here for the blue collar worker? Just a thought.

Snowsmith, I wouldn't mind in the least seeing more energy produced here, but economic benefit (for which you are more than likely right, depending of course on comparative advantage) is different than wealth transfer. Wealth transfer again implies an unequal exchange of goods. That said, it sounds like you get that and we can agree to disagree about whether the net benefit is greater than the cost- I see where you're coming from.

Hey speaking of wealth transfer... anyone following the Icelandic banking saga? Basically the country is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Yikes.

Yes, this situation is getting scary. How can we not have a significant recessioin at this point. 2009 does not look good. There just isn't going to be any money to spend. General Motors stock is down to $ 4 something. Legg Mason is on the verge of bankruptcy and banking systems around the world are failing. I don't know what age you are, but I am approaching (or I thought I was approaching )retirement. My 401k is now a 101k. Thank God that we didn't turn the social security system over to Wall Street. Other wise my in laws wouldn't be able to afford to live.
All I can do at this point is divert my attention to skiing and not think about this situation.

Yep, Roger. Saw that. The country has taken over all the banks to retain citizen confidence.... wonder how long until that type of thing happens here moreso than it has. I think of the corrections of the DOW and other exchanges in the 90s and early in this decade and those were minor compared to what's happening today. It's almost a mirror of the 30's banking blowup which the government said couldn't happen again. I keep telling myself that my investments were only on paper, but when I consider that I was depending on them for my retirement, it hurts. All things considered, retirement will not be an option for awhile.

I have a question. If we go into full out recession how will that affect land prices? Such as undeveloped farm/forrest land that developers have for sale? With getting out of debt and new money from a new job I'd like to buy land for a future homeplace far cheaper than what developers are asking for it. In wardensville a realtor is asking $94,000 for 3.5 acres of land along 259 that is sloped and boulders the size of cars!!!

There is going to be some good pickens coming up...a lot of bargains..& chances for new buis & various other Hustles. This major crises will present a whole new goody box of opportunity down the road. Heck..We might even Convince the Family that owns MPC to rethink their stance on selling the MTN. We are entering a new zone & anything could happen!

That Ice Graph is SOARING upwards..Some good news on the GW Front at least..we don't have any money to fix it anyway....Al will have to curtail his travel expenses.

My step-dad is nearing retirement. I'm 33- old enough that I've been investing for 11 years, so this hurts, but it's not debilitating. Yet. But for folks nearing or just in retirement, it's hard to describe- I don't "feel bad," that's just not an apt description for how I feel for folks in your shoes. I've sold one stock- which has saved me $600 thus far- and will probably shift my 401(k) a little heavier into bonds and money markets next week, but am working on it incrementally. I don't want to bull rush the exit.

Land prices should be wiped out, Brad. If you can find credit to make the purchase, good luck. I'm kind of fishing around for land, too. Thinking about property in El Salvador, actually.

Andy- arctic sea ice. Have you noticed, the stuff is on a near vertical slope right now? Today was the first day I thought "gee, you know, this winter is probably one winter that wouldn't be so bad if it was warmer than normal." Anyway, my guess as to why it's reforming so fast- when ice is unusually low, open water extends very far into high latitudes enabling a quick refreeze. If that's true, the refreeze will slow down as the ice marches south.

Verdict?

That's what I'm kind of hoping for. I'd like to grab land in or around Wardensville (sentimental home) and with tons and TONS of un-developed land purchased by relators and developers with pie in the sky dreams, it's sitting there empty. Not that I would get that but it's realistically showing that almost no one is purchasing and hopefully once the right plot comes up I'll snag it.

Good Luck to everybody!...Yeh, You answered the Question Roger..You get a pat on the head from the teacher!...I was trying to hide that fact so I could keep bashing GW & to keep hope alive...BUTtt you still have to have a good source of cold to get that gragh soaring the way it is doing now...

Yay me!

What got me thinking about it was the way last year's ice resurgence moved- steep up front then levelled off later in the fall. What could cause that??? I wondered.

Of course- we could both be dead wrong, ya know! So keep on bashing poor George Washington if you want, I don't know what you've got against him. Are you a closet commie, Andy?

Speaking of bashing GW (global warming that is), I just finished reading Michael Crichton's "State of Fear". I'd highly recommend that everyone check it out if they haven't read it yet. Definitely makes you think....

DCski makes me think:

I'm thinking about the economy.

I'm thinking about sausages.

I'm thinking about RogerZ's signature.

Soo, RZ, anyone put prarie dog in bun ready form yet?

Boise Idaho just had the earliest snow....ON RECORD!..Lets temper that with the fact that the Northern Hemisphere Snow cover..even though starting out fast...has proved to be below ave..for now!..Fairbanks Ak is still Kicking strong on a very Cold start..But Barrow,AK has been Above Ave the whole month, Although they are getting Snow which could be swinging the temps higher....David thinks all this Info is for Geeks..& He is right!!!

PS..This Info would be DULL & Void if it wasn't for the fact that we are "Presumably" in a global warming Crises...

Gettin' there. I was hiking in the Flint Hills a couple weeks ago and saw next summer's steaks about to head off to the feed lots. They should be out in Garden City right now, thinking "wow all this wheat, these owners sure are nice to us!"

If a house is burning down does it mean it's not raining out?

Thanks for pointing out my misspell of Crisis, there Comprex ...Caught 3 flounder in my crabpots today..I might be losing thousands of Dollars but I'll still eat good!..HMMMmmm Crabmeat stuffed Flounder..Can you'all Smell it?

http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test...=14&sy=2008

Oct 14, 2001 had ave to above ave sea ice...this led to the worst snow season in recent memory for the WV Alpps, so keep hope alive for this season...right now its 93 below at vostok station Antartica..-4 at Verhojansk,Russia..-53 at summit,Greenland..& 10 degrees at Barrow,Ak which I predict will have a solid ocean front Ice cover by tommorow Morn which will mean that event came 4 days earlier than last year.

PS..all those temps are at or below norm. Ice is forming at a good clip yet it is actually better to form a little slower for long term benifits....JUST SAY NO TO GLOBAL WARMING!!

Sheesh, feesh.

You got you an ice fishin' hut yet?

Ice is nice..but a little will suffice. I got ahead of myself on that last post..this year compares to 2005 & is more than 2007..both of those years saw a little above snowfall for the Canaan area. 2005 had the snowiest Oct since 1945.

Yeh Comprex..All this Ice talk out of me you'd think I'd be reserving my Hut on Deep Creek Lake...OK ..I'm a little obssesed...I got an addictive personality..I am powerless over Ice & Snow!

I'm most interested in 1993/1994, the year of the 5-week road ice.

http://www.adn.com/news/environment/story/555283.html

Its a must for a good winter & Mamma Nature looks like she is fighting back from all that evil man made warmth...for now! Compared to the 30 year ave we don't look too bad up at Santas cold factory.

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_extent_hires.png

wow dave, great find. I did multiple research papers on glacier retreat in HS so its great to hear of a tiny progress. Big news would be if this were to continue for an extended period.
Its a slight possibility that this is a side effect of GW (please please no debate). It has been theorized that the atmosphere will counter GW with its own techniques and stabilize, regardless of human input, for at least a short period of time.

Just spent the weekend at the Shoe. Will post pix later today. Watching the entire top just about skiable in early November got me itchy feet and I made a mess of the carpet waxing the skiis... Whatever Mother Nature brings, I hope is an early and loooong winter

I'm thinking we get a lot of snow up in the highlands the next couple of weeks -- starting on Saturday.

Hey Andy did you notice that this year's inflection point occurred at roughly the same square kilometers as last year:

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png

Just two weeks earlier. I think that lends some credence to your idea that ice freeze-up occurs so rapidly because of latitude. Once it's far enough south- maybe pressing against the shore?- the freeze-up slows down. Looks to be around the 8.5-9 million square kilometer range.

Once the ice expands to the mouth or opening to the pacific it runs into the warmer currents or influence of the mighty pacific...Same as the other side with the leftover influence of the gulf stream current even with whatever small amount was able to creep up that far north.

L-skier posted earlier about GW effects that have actually increased a few glaciers...Did you read from the site where they are now saying the rapid increase in ice is actually another GW phenom...Something to do with all the increased heat in the Arctic ocean causing evaperation which aids in ice formation?...I sound vague on the info because I just brushed over the report feeling that the site & many others are GW Biased & will come up with all kind of excuses as to why the ice meltdown isn't going as fast as they have predicted. It seems that when the ice was in a rapid meltdown they would update the site everyday & post numerous reports to the effect...but when the ice was growing fast there were 2 to 5 day periods that they would not update the graphs & the reports took twice as long to be posted...Just a thought..