National park | Grumpa Joe's Place

A Suitable Green Job For POTUS

Posted on 10/06/2011 by Grumpa Joe

There are a number of green jobs that Obama left off his list of high paying positions which would make an investment in the country. Instead, he insists on promoting ridiculous electric cars, windmills, and solar power as the answer. Yes, these are definitely ways to “green.” The problem lies in the fact that none of these technologies are even remotely close to being capable of meeting even the least of our energy demands. A few days ago, I published a graph showing where the gallons go in the transportation scheme. Hitting on cars does not make any sense at all. The single largest opportunity for saving oil and reducing green house gases is in shipping by boat. My calculations did not include the boats used for shipping “stuff” from China to the rest of the world. My graph only includes the oil burned in shipping oil to the U.S. The graph is below for reference.

Chart by Grumpa Joe May 18, 2011, Data from various Internet sources

This week, I learned from a very reliable source that the cursed “green” nemesis of the liberal world is in trouble. The Alaskan pipeline is running at only thirty percent capacity. Why? Because the oil field it serves is running dry. In a short time the cost of operating the line will exceed the value of oil coming through. When it finally shuts down, conservationists will dismantle it. Once that happens, any chance of drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), only seventy-five miles away from the pipeline, will be slim to none.

The Alaskan pipeline began operation in 1977, and the greenies have been bitching about the negative effect it has on the environment ever since. The opposite is true, wildlife has adapted to the pipeline and the countryside remains pristine. Conservationists should concentrate on picking up liter in trashy U.S. cities before they hit on the pipeline.

It is clear to me that Obama wants to sink the country with his “green ” policy. He does not have a single rational concept for keeping the country moving while making it more green except to increase the cost of energy to the point of bankruptcy. He doesn’t want to bankrupt the government, he wants to bankrupt the citizenry. He lovingly refers to it as “redistribution of wealth.” I call it white slavery. He wants the working stiffs to feed his poor. If you have a job, you are also feeding a shadow family the size of your own.

If Obama is serious about anything, he will work a compromise and allow drilling in ANWR immediately. He will encourage a short pipeline be built to connect ANWR to the Alaskan line. If he knew anything at all, he would want to light a fire under the economy to increase the flow of taxes into the coffers. The increases could then fuel his dream to power the world with windmills. What is his problem? His dreams are too large for one term as president. His capability lacks the leadership required for the job of transforming America into socialized medicine, green energy, and a muslim nation. The job is too large. It will take a hundred years to make all that happen. In order to fulfill that dream he must eliminate every conservative from the face of the planet. Don’t get me wrong, he is working on that too. His fantastic ability to multi-task is turning him into the huge failure he is.

The trillion dollars he wasted went to buy votes, to shore up state governments, payback unions, take over banks, buy car companies, and to nationalize student loans. During the Great Depression of the nineteen thirties, FDR at least got us some infrastructure for the money he spent. The projects didn’t have any effect on ending the Depression, but they did yield benefits. Have you ever visited a National Park to see brass plaques designating features within the park as a CCC effort? Have you wondered where Hoover dam came from, or the TVA? What is Obama’s lasting legacy: Obamacare, General Motors, Chrysler, Student Loans, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac? I’ve included Obamacare even though it is not bearing fruit for you and me. It needs a four-year head start to collect money to get is jump started. Once it gets started, the money it took four years to collect will run out, and the system will be bankrupt in eight years. Meanwhile, Medicare, a system invented in the sixties, will also be run out of money.

Big government as seen by liberals and Obama only feeds off itself. Systems get fatter, efficiency of systems drop, and we the people suffer more. Meanwhile the Fat Cat Bureaucrats continue to whip the white slaves to extract more.

‘Bumps on the Road to Recovery’ + More (papundits.wordpress.com)
Response #12: And the Battle For ANWR Continues to Rage. (envirowriters.wordpress.com)
‘Atlas Skulks’ (atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com)
Rants, Lies, Subsidies and Job-Killing Policies (papundits.wordpress.com)

Filed under: Cartoons, Conservative, economy, Government | Tagged: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Barack Obama, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Great Depression, National park, Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, United States | 3 Comments »

Burning Gas-Lake Louise

Posted on 08/04/2011 by Grumpa Joe

We left Calgary on a sunny warm morning for Banff National Park. I expected Banff to be similar to the National Parks in the USA. It isn’t, yet it is. The place is huge, and it is beautiful, but Banff is a city within a national park called Banff. The QEW-1(Queen Elizabeth Way), the transnational Canada highway runs right through the park on the way to Vancouver. The city of Banff population is eight thousand souls. The economy is dependent on tourism in the summer and skiing in winter. The main drag through town has a distinct European look with Swiss style buildings side by side. Shops of all kinds abound and cater to the tourist. Every street has great eating places. We stayed in a small hotel near the central district. It was ninety degrees when we arrived.

Grandma Peggy and I settled into the room, and looked around for the air conditioner switch. We were wilting and needed some cool. I called the desk for help. A nice woman knocked on the door and proceeded to pull a large fan from the closet, and plugged it in. “Banff has about three days like this every year. We don’t have air-conditioning,” she explained as she opened the slider.

Early the next morning I sat on the balcony drinking coffee while watching people going about their business. It was a joy to see kids walking to school with book bags on their backs. I don’t think anyone lives more than a mile from the school, or for that matter from anyplace within the town. A strange quiet envelops Banff. Other than the birds singing, there are few motor noises to pollute the atmosphere of the town.

We left town to see the park, there were no overlooks like there are in the states. We tooled along on the QEW-1 at one hundred km per hour. A curious cyclone fence borders the road along each side of the divided highway. The fences occasionally dipped toward a culvert, or up to an overpass. We learned that animals migrate from the mountains across the highway to the lakes at lower levels. Every year there is a huge road kill. The government built the fence to direct the animals toward underpasses or overpasses to keep them off the roads, Conservationists like to think that the Canadian government is on the same page as they are, but the simple fact is that when a car or truck hits an eight hundred pound animal on the road, death occurs; both human and animals with an enormous dollar cost to freight and transportation. Between Banff and Lake Louise, our destination there were at least six of these crossings with several more in construction.

Lake Louise is what we came to see. Banff is a cutesy town, but Lake Louise is nature in all its splendor. This glacial lake is at the foot of mountain top glacier feeding it. The water is crystal clear, but has a gray cast to it. It is not as clear as I thought. The color is the result of glacial till. The till is a very fine powder of granite rock ground off the mountain by moving glacial ice. The particles of powder are so fine they become suspended in the water. The result is the beautiful blue-gray color.

Several months before we left on this trip, the Chicago Tribune travel section featured a story on Lake Louise. The leading photograph showed a couple sitting in the Fairmont hotel having lunch while looking out on the view. What a great view, I thought. I never imagined seeing that same view for myself. In fact, we sat one table away from the couple in the Trib photo.

Banff National Park is beautiful, and compares to our own Glacier National Park in Montana. They are adjacent too each other. Banff the town is a fun tourist town worth the visit, but Lake Louise is a “do not miss” scene of splendorific nature.