Will someone please give me a logical explination

[Liberal Genius]

Hmm, ever been to a popular snowmobiling area in the summer? Beyond all the trash left behind, the beautiful rainbow colored slicks flowing down the streams and on top of the ponds is definitely one way. Maybe the noxious fumes you breath when there's a lot of those machines around. But I guess that's not really pollution, because you're out enjoying nature.

It should definitely be taxed. Why should I pay for your excess?

Slicks flowing through streams? Quit making shit up to try and prove your point.

Why are you hiking/skinning in areas designated for sleds? Maybe if you like those areas so much, it's time to get your sled back.

So you have no excess in your life? Do you live in a makeshift hut in the woods and only eat twice a week in order to not be excessive?
Do you waste water washing your clothes and dishes all of the time? Do you have a brick in your toilet?
Seriously, quit being such a hypocritical treehugger wannabe.

[lemon boy]

At least around Whistler the standard is 2 sleds on a sled deck... just try accessing many of these trail heads with a trailer, especially in gnarly conditions. Not going to make it. At least with a truck you can get 2-4 sleds on or behind your vehicle which is better than 1 towed behind your jetta, that wont actually make it to the trailhead.

I'm not exactly sure why you're quoting me and talking as if I'm trying to be a downer. Although, I think you and powslut are at almost the same place, you agree that it's your lifestyle choices that lead you to your consumption level and you've both justified to yourselves that level.

That said- I would contend that while certainly a biggish PITA to deal with, a trailer built with an eye toward wheeling will go some pretty fucking crazy places. Perhaps you've never seen a trailer built for off road but I can assure you that if you can drive a chevy pickup with two sleds on the deck there you could drive a properly set up trailer with two sleds behind a 4wd transit/sprinter (or an SUV).

[Viva]

...or maybe it's just boiled down to the finals.

No, next round will be on how ski photography further contributes to the depletion of Earth's resources by enabling the publication of worthless magazines.

[corn dog]

I hate sleds. Guess there is an upside to gas prices going up

[lemon boy]

at least the world photographic industry is no longer contributing to the depletion of our precious silver resources.

[philippeR]

What's wrong with 4 strokes snowmobiles ?
I know nothing about sleds, but I know bikes. And I know a 2 strokes has more hp / lbs than a 4 strokes, but not that much nowadays. 2 strokes is dead, but for cheap moped, or dying, even for motoX or enduros. Why is a snowmobile different ?
(This is a serious question, BTW)

I'm also glad to see that B11 is done with poker. Nice to have you back.

[FrankZappa]

No, next round will be on how ski photography further contributes to the depletion of Earth's resources by enabling the publication of worthless magazines.

ahhh. So, will there be potential for some sort of commodities market for "Photographic memory?"

[Gunder]

I rip on it because I've made a conscious decision a few years ago to sell my sled and to not use them anymore. The ski industry existed for 100 years before snowmobiles became popular and I guarantee if you took them away tomorrow it would continue to exist. I enjoy skiing more now than I did at any point in the past. Anyway you turn it around snowmobiles are inefficient, noisy and more cause pollution than any vehicle on the road. Older sleds emit up to 30% of their fuel and oil unburned. Talk about wastage.

You're no different than the commuters in Vancouver. Instead of idling through traffic on the highway you rip up to the alpine going 90km/h while spitting out gas, exhaust and noise. Is that your choice? Yes. But it is also my right to be a bastard when people like you whine and complain that they are paying to much to destroy OUR environment.

IMO they should levee massive environmental surcharges on all two stroke engines to make the users pay for their waste. Even better will be the day when they outright ban two stroke engines.

Good on you for selling your sled and only ski touring. If I had a choice I would still not have a sled. But hey fact is there is more and more idiots in the backcountry now, and in order to get out to the terrain we want to film in, and in order to film safely we need to use sleds to get away from every weekend warrior skinning around thinking there joe expert in the backcountry.

Lets look at a few things.

My new Summit XP is the most efficient sled in its class FACT
My Sled has comparable efficacy and in some cases better than the 4 strokes FACT
My new sled pollutes less than your old POS FACT
My new sled is quieter than your old POS FACT
My new sled does not scare away animals FACT (and I got pics to prove it )
Most snowmobilers are environmental cautions FACT
My pictures help create awareness of cool places, and create appreciation for our mountains FACT
I spent more days ski touring than sledding FACT

[Viva]

ahhh. So, will there be potential for some sort of commodities market for "Photographic memory?"

I prefer "Photogenic mammaries", myself.

[wcf3]

While it is mostly true what yo say about Finland, it ain't true about Norway, which has it's population pretty evenly spaced.

If we were to "move" each finnish citizen to the populated south (let's say that we neglect 2/3's of Finlands land and move everyone in the populated southern 1/3), the average population densite would be around 120 per sq mile. Which would be a tad less than the population density of South Carolina. Still, there the average consumption was 578 gallons, yet the Finnish consumption is the same, ~120 gallons.

By area, 1/3 of Finlands land is ~43.500 sq miles, which would be about the same as for Virginia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...states_by_area). Still, again consumption of VA is ~527 gallons. And population density for VA is 178.8 persons per sq mile...

And the cut of 2/3's of Finlands area is too drastic.

Sin short, in VA they use about 5 times as much fuel, have about the same area is the "imagined Finland", and still have a higher population density. Care to explain these small facts .

Finn's certainly use less gas than Americans, but do they use less energy? According to Statistics Finland, total energy use in 2006 (the last year for which data was available) total usage was 1,492 petajoules (<=> 1.492 exajoules). See (http://www.stat.fi/til/ekul/index_en.html).

The energy usage in the US as a whole in 2005 was 105,000 terajoules (<=> 105 exajoules). See (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_..._United_States).


With a US population of 300 million and a Finland population of around 5 million this translates into 350 petajoules per million for the US, and 298 petajoules per million for Finland. As such a 'typical' American uses roughly 17% more energy than a 'typical' Finn.

The closest comparable in the US to a state having a European style transportation infrastructure and population distribution to something like Finland would be New York. (Densely populated costal area with large sparsely populated hinterland, well developed mass transit in the urban areas). Admittedly the climate in New York isn't as bad as Finland's, but much of the state’s climate is no better (and in many cases worse) than Finland’s costal regions where the majority of the population lives.

Total energy use per capita in New York state is roughly 60% of the median among US states and about 70% of the average for Finland. See
(http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/states/s...e_per_cap.html) . This is in spite of the fact that energy prices in the US (and in particular, New York) both historically and currently were and are much lower than in Europe.

Further, fuel usage can be better explained not as much by the population density, but rather by the 'effective urbanization'. Essentially what proportion of the population lives in a dense urban setting. You may note in the previous table that the state with by far the lowest density, Alaska, doesn't have the highest rate of petroleum use. This is because the majority of Alaska's population lives in a two small cities and the remainder, in many cases, have nowhere to drive to (no roads).

Finally, comparing US 'gasoline' use against Europe as a way to measure personal vehicle fuel use is always going to produce misleading statistics, since roughly half of the cars in Europe use diesel engines, while in the US diesel cars are very rare. As such, to make European fuel use for personal transport comparable to US usage, take the European gasoline number and multiply by 2.

So add up the fact that in Finland and Sweden you have a high degree of effective urbanization and in non-urbanized parts of Norway you can't drive out of the fjord, then take the gasoline usage numbers and multiply by 2 and pretty quickly you are at fuel usage numbers comparable to similar parts of the US and total energy usage numbers that are in many cases worse.

[FrankZappa]

Well Gunder, as for your original question

Will someone please give me a logical explination

I hate to say it, but...


maybe


it


would've


been


easier


to


ask

[d_ski]

why discuss such a depressing topic. let's talk about how the increase in gas price and consumption leads to global warming which decreases snowfall which ends skiing which makes tgr a thing of the past.

"i remember when TGR accounts were free!"

[Ema Goldman]

You guys doing renovations on Auschwitz? Don't make us come over there and bitch slap you again.

Just occasionally you put together a half coherent thread of logic. But when you spew offensive or nationalistic or racist bile you just make yourself look like an ignorant fool. Suggest that you travel see the world a bit more, read more, open your mind.

[AsheanMT]

Well Gunder, as for your original question





I hate to say it, but...


maybe


it


would've


been


easier


to


ask

Shit! You weren't kidding!!

[Viva]

Just occasionally you put together a half coherent thread of logic. But when you spew offensive or nationalistic or racist bile you just make yourself look like an ignorant fool. Suggest that you travel see the world a bit more, read more, open your mind.

This 'ill get us somewhere.

[powslut]

Slicks flowing through streams? Quit making shit up to try and prove your point.

Case Point 1 - Boulder Mountain, Revelstoke. Been there biking and hiking in the summer and the streams running down next to the roads don't look so clean. Pretty colours though.

Why are you hiking/skinning in areas designated for sleds? Maybe if you like those areas so much, it's time to get your sled back.

You missed the part that stated I sold my sled for ethical reasons. That's not where I skin.

So you have no excess in your life? Do you live in a makeshift hut in the woods and only eat twice a week in order to not be excessive?
Do you waste water washing your clothes and dishes all of the time? Do you have a brick in your toilet?
Seriously, quit being such a hypocritical treehugger wannabe.

No, but I try to minimize my impact. I have low flow toilets; never raise my thermostat above 15; am installing energy efficient windows; recycle everything I can to the point where I only throw out one bag of garbage every two weeks; bike or walk to work; grow whatever food I can in this less than ideal growing climate and when possible buy local produce; starting to collect rain water to water my garden; am selling our 4runner and buying a smaller, more efficient vehicle; spearheaded an organics recycling program for local business's and restaurants; never use my dryer, only wash my cloths cold and only one load every two weeks.

So unless you know me please stop making broad assumptions.

[pappag]

Thread summary:

North American maggots complain about fuel prices, European and Scandinavian maggots trash their complaining, North American maggots say they have the gnarliest conditions in the world(Baker), European maggots say no, North American maggots say European maggots have smaller, more fuel efficient cars because of higher population density in Yurp, European maggots prove them wrong, then maggots started talking about bikes and commuting, and maggots are hopefully all friends again.

My opinion: You had it coming.

Thanks. That was very informative and humourous.

[Gunder]

So unless you know me please stop making broad assumptions.

Ever thought of heading your own advice?

[powslut]

Ever thought of heading your own advice?

You're the one who started bitching about gas and backed it up by saying you drove a truck and rode a sled. Easy to make an assumption about that.

[BakerBunny]

of why gas is FOUR FUCKING DOLLARS A GALLON?

Seriously this is just fucking stupid.

A logical explanation? Well. start by getting rid of the assumption that the Arabs have an endless supply of oil and that all we need it to have someone turn the spiggot up:

http://books.google.com/books?id=rsmRY6SfpvUC

[TROLL-HOLE-E-O]

So tired of the "drill the US" and "build refineries" BS.
The US has 3% of world oil reserves and uses 25% of world oil production. US oil production peaked 20 years ago. Drilling the last few drops out of the exhaused US reservoirs will make no difference at all to world oil prices, literally ANWR is a drop in the bucket.
Oil companies are not building refineries because they know that global oil production is peaking, so that a multi-billion refinery with a 30 year life is a bad investment. Blaming lack of refinery construction on enviros is SO stupid. If there was money to be made, refineries would be built in Mexico, where enviros have no voice, and the gas would be piped to the US. The fact that this has not occurred shows that the business conditions are preventing refinery construction, not enviros. Anybody who thinks Mexico has environmental protections has not been there.

The bottom line is that markets work, and supply and demand will balance at some price, depending on the short and long term oil market elasticity. Which means that oil prices will increase to whatever level is required to force US consumers to conserve, whether that is $5/gallon or $20/gallon. 5% of world population will not continue consuming 25% of world oil production, although I suspect that we will bankrupt ourselves both individually and as a society before we accept reality.

WOW. The only correct thing in that mess is that supply and demand does set the price. The supply is artificially low, so the price is artificially high. Why does it take laws to keep drilling out of ANWAR? If it were a drop in the bucket it wouldn't be worth the investment and no one freely participating in the free market system would want to bother. That is obviously not the case.
AND, population percentage has nothing to do with how much oil a county should get....it's production. We produce the most good and services,so we need the most oil. Better we burn it than the Chineese. They create far more pollution per unit of production than we do.

[hop]

This thread is awesome!

As a marine biologist working for the USFS (huh?), I burn an average of 10 gals of unleaded a day in my 17' Boston Whaler. Looking back through our log books had our daily fuel costs at about $22 in 1999. Now we are spending $50 a day. Luckily these costs are coming from all of our collective pockets and not just my own, so my personal expenditure is actually quite low ($50 per day / ~300,000,000 people = $1.67e-7 per person per day). Of course I know that not everyone in the US is actually paying taxes so it is probably a bit higher than that, but I figure if I find a penny on the ground each day I'm more than covered.

Plus, I'm doing my part to save the world while I'm burning this gas, so that's gotta count for something. Hell, today we even picked up a plastic bucket that was floating around while we were surveying! We're the greenest Federales out there!

Edit: I did have reservations about picking up that bucket, as it was providing habitat for a bunch of algae and a few crustaceans that are now dying a slow miserable death in my backyard. Oh well. Maybe we're not so green after all.

[Patches]

Seems like gas should cost more than milk.

[TROLL-HOLE-E-O]

At least there are a few people here who understand what is going on.
Unfortunately and fortunately I get info straight from the horses mouth.
My dad worked for Mobil his whole carreer. A colleague is an exec at Exxon Mobil.

A few comments from the exec the other day with just a hint of sarcasim:

Who caused all this rise in crude oil & gasoline prices? Those mean ole' obscene oil companies, that's who! Yep, they all met in secret and agreed to set the price at $126.00/ barrel to deliberately raise the prices on the open market and then sell only to China and India so to starve the US of cheap oil and gasoline and make everybody in the US mad as hell! They also deliberately refused to build anymore refineries for over 10 years ago so as to develop more demand on produced gasoline and make US people suffer, cause higher diesel prices for truckers, higher jet fuel prices for airlines so the oil companies can make so much more money --- a whole 8 cents profit on every dollar earned. Although the banking industry makes about 18 cents on every dollar earned, the oil companies decided that searching literally all over the world (i.e., Nigeria, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, North Sea, Bearin Sea, Shakiland island in Russia, etc.) was better than going into the banking business. Yea, they have been so pleased to look all over the world rather than explore for cheap oil in our own backyard where known oil & gas reserves exist (i.e., Off the East & West Coasts, offshore Florida, massive reserves in Alaska, our Nalt. Parks, etc.) Yep, that's exactly what they have done to us, those obscene profit hungry bastards. Gee, maybe Wal-Mart will give some of their profits to the government or oil companies so they can reduce the prices at the gas pump for us citizens. Maybe Canada, Mexico, Saudia Arabia, Iraq, Russia, Indonesia, Iran, Venezuela, etc. will reduce their crude oil prices so we will be able to produce gasoline at a cheaper price, or maybe the oil companies will go in the "RED" and produce gasoline at a lower cost than what it takes to refine and transport the gasoline to the service stations. That way, the oil companies can eventually eliminate their profits, stop anymore exploration for oil and eventually go bankrupt. Sure, that will do it! Then we can buy direct from foreign oil companies and I'm sure they'll sell their gasoline and a lower cost, because they are our friends. Yea, that's the solution! Now we got it!

Another comment from inside the business:

We (America) need to recognize the problems we have put ourselves in by not allowing drilling of our own oil reserves and not allowing the building of refineries. The last numbers I heard is that it costs $2-4 Billion to build a refinery...and the time to completion (with all the environmental permitting) is about 10 years. Also, an offshore oil well in deep waters used to be in the $1-2 Billion range...who knows where it is now. Oil companies just won't invest like that in America until we (the people) finally change our minds and invite them back.

We have done ourselves in during my lifetime. Our kids and grandchildren will not have a chance of experiencing the wonders that many of us have had during our generation. Many of them will likely spend their years "stuck" close to home...will little chance of traveling and living in different parts of the USA and even less chance of seening different parts of the world. It will be like going back a 100 years or so.

Quite frankly, I don't even know if it can be turned around...and it really never had to be that way.

BUZZWORTHY FOR PRESIDENT !!!

[freshie247]

My buddy has a Ducati, he calls it his "Italian Bitch". He says she's expensive, but worth it cause he gets to ride her anytime he likes! [QUOTE=alias;1856785]