NO SNOW!!

Well if it be I'll just use my regular name.  I'll be retiring the use of these other names, especially Ratboy.

<br><br>Awesome! <br>Pleased to meet you, Donnelly.

<br><br>Awesome! <br>Pleased to meet you, Donnelly.

<br>Thank you. <br><br>And for all of you who ski Alpental and who know me as Ratboy, you now know my real name.  <br><br>btw:  I did sell my car.  I was the proud owner of a 1990 Toyota Terdcel, banged up on the side, leaked a quart of oil every 100 miles, no muffler but surely at 40+ miles to the gallon, someone was willing to give a whopping $30.  Although miniscule, leaking a quart of oil every 100 miles is not helping our envirenment.  I did my part.  It's not mine anymore!!!!  <br>

Yeah but just think of how much greenhouse gas pollution is avoided each and every day that diesel ski-lift generators don't run, and that people don't flock to the mountains in their 'auto'mobiles. In fact if we ourselves were truly auto-mobile, we would cease to felate the fossil fuel pipeline for unearned kilojoules. Some say humans are the dominant species because we are the smartest, I say it's because we burn the most energy. It's thermodynamics; we are nature's proudest entropy.

Have any of you scientists done the math to figure out how far you'd have to drive an average car to equate to one unearned run on Internationale (obviously you have to make some sort of assumption on how full the lift is - let's say half full as a rough average across a week)?

Jim, you bring up a point that I have thought about for a long time, which is that it is difficult for us to decide how to "spend" our energy wisely when we don't know how much energy each of our activities really costs. The dollar cost is obviously not a good guideline, given that some forms of energy are massively subsidized and the subsidization is largely hidden. An obvious example of this, of course, is the price of gasoline, which seems to largely fail to include 100s of military $billions we spend on protecting our access to oil. And oil is clearly not the only energy source with large hidden subsidies.<br><br>Even though I have had to fly recently due to my parent's situation, I typically try not to fly unless absolutely necessary, because my guess has been that one round-trip flight across the country debits to my "personal energy use account" more credit that I could accrue in an entire year by not driving to the mountains. In fact, I sometimes wonder if an individual's frequent flyer miles could provide a good indication of overall personal energy use.<br><br>The thing is, I just haven't been able to find any consolidated source of the statistics that would be needed to answer questions like these. Back when I was doing some teaching (over 10 years ago), I remember reading about some software which was designed to enable one to track their personal energy budget, but I didn't have a computer to run it at the time. Does anyone know if something like this exists now? Alternatively, maybe someone has links for sources of energy consumption statistics which could be used to do such an accounting manually?

Yes but jets run on Kerosene not aviation gas so once again the subject is more complicated then merely saying I sold my car, rode my bike, didn't fly today, etc and therefore I have done something good. In reality the amount of fossil fuel byproducts being put into the atmosphere everyday by eastern European countries far out strips what we produce in this country with our cars. I cringe to think how much pollutants are pumped into the air and ground water by a 40 mile per gallon oil burning econo car.<br><br>One way put a dent in fossil usage, is to quit buying the slick techno-gear we all buy. It's all plastic folks, and plastic is largely fossil fuel based. But it's much easier to blame our dependence on something else. Like government policy. But we all want our cake and eat it too. The government that supplies our oil dependency is just the tool of our desires. You want that new coat, computer, ride to the ski mountain? Well their gonna give it to you.<br><br>Most ski areas today run on electricity which is largely hydroelectric in the NW at least and therefore are nonpolluting. But the dams the produce the power tax the environment in other ways. Namely fish. Which brings up another point, lately the so called environmentalists have extrolled the idea that to buy wild fish is good and farmed fish bad. Unfortunately this ignores the added pressure that already weak fish stocks must undergo to supply this ever increasing demand. Farming fish was never a bad idea. It just needs better a method then is currently being used.<br><br>I don't want to imply that what I see in this thread are bad ideas, but it would be nice if the world was so simple. It would really be nice if we just could quit doing something and all would be well. Instead the answer and the world at large is far more complex.<br>