BO sled plan

[Anti-Hero]

from the liberal Denver post:

Sorry if it is a re-post.

A bit of sanity finally has been injected back into the longtime saga of snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park. Hopefully, it will restore the wintertime peace at one of America's most special places.

The only noise more grating than hundreds of snowmobiles whizzing through Yellowstone has been the decade-long bickering over the issue.

The Obama administration now says it wants to allow up to 318 snowmobiles per day into Yellowstone for the next two winters. It effectively restores a plan that Bush officials scrapped late last year, when they instead reinstated a 720-per-day rule.

Before President George W. Bush took office, snowmobiles were on their way out of the park permanently.

Dismissing years of scientific study — sound familiar? — Bush reversed the impending ban, forcing the issue into the courts.

Yellowstone scientists earlier concluded that too many snow machines create "major adverse impacts" in the park. The high-polluting machines undermine the wildlife, air quality and, of course, tranquility during winter in Yellowstone.

Meanwhile, there are hundreds of miles of snowmobile routes just outside the park. During summer months, all-terrain vehicles aren't even allowed at Yellowstone.

The National Park Service plans on using the next two years to come up with a long-term solution, and will allow for public comment.

We understand that recent improvements in snowmobiles used in the park have reduced the amount of pollution the machines emit and the noise they make. That's a good step forward.

However, the totality of factors makes it clear they have no place in Yellowstone, or at least should be severely limited.

 

[94fordguy]

from the liberal Denver post:

Sorry if it is a re-post.

A bit of sanity finally has been injected back into the longtime saga of snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park. Hopefully, it will restore the wintertime peace at one of America's most special places.

The only noise more grating than hundreds of snowmobiles whizzing through Yellowstone has been the decade-long bickering over the issue.

The Obama administration now says it wants to allow up to 318 snowmobiles per day into Yellowstone for the next two winters. It effectively restores a plan that Bush officials scrapped late last year, when they instead reinstated a 720-per-day rule.

Before President George W. Bush took office, snowmobiles were on their way out of the park permanently.

Dismissing years of scientific study — sound familiar? — Bush reversed the impending ban, forcing the issue into the courts.

Yellowstone scientists earlier concluded that too many snow machines create "major adverse impacts" in the park. The high-polluting machines undermine the wildlife, air quality and, of course, tranquility during winter in Yellowstone.

Meanwhile, there are hundreds of miles of snowmobile routes just outside the park. During summer months, all-terrain vehicles aren't even allowed at Yellowstone.

The National Park Service plans on using the next two years to come up with a long-term solution, and will allow for public comment.

We understand that recent improvements in snowmobiles used in the park have reduced the amount of pollution the machines emit and the noise they make. That's a good step forward.

However, the totality of factors makes it clear they have no place in Yellowstone, or at least should be severely limited.

Nice to see people reporting the facts and not their opinions!

 

[Rob1334]

Fawk that opinion article. It doesn't matter how many miles of trails are outside the park, the sleds run on the ROADS during the winter, the same one's that Diesel pickups pulling 40ft 5th wheels, motorhomes, tour buses, harleys, cars, etc. are allowed to travel during the summer months when the animals are actually active. You tell me a guided, 4-stroke, 2-up yamaha trail sled in a group of 20 or so makes a bigger impact on the environment than the unrestricted lines of summer motorists I have some mountain real estate for sale in ND, no really..... and I'm not even talking about our groomed trails that will melt away off the structurally engineered with sub-surface/surfacing that the enviro nazi's race their llittle Subaru's on eating granola and wearing hemp. Sorry rant over.

 

[Ollie]

I am done with the whole widerness thing.
Just ride it anyway.
If enough people just say the heck with it and ride anyway, they will get to the point where they HAVE to deal with us and give us some areas back or we will just take them all.

 

[Ex-Member]

hahahaha, and all the cars and RVs passing through there all summer long with exhaust that smells like daisies...

assgerbils

 

[B C]

I am done with the whole widerness thing.
Just ride it anyway.
If enough people just say the heck with it and ride anyway, they will get to the point where they HAVE to deal with us and give us some areas back or we will just take them all.

I used to think that was the wrong way to approach the issue. However after attending countless meetings and voicing opinions and writing countless letters and voicing opinions, that may be the only way to be heard. I too am adopting the ride where ya want rule.

 

[justadude]

The summer crowds and resulting noise, polution and general insanity brings in lots and lots of money to the parks system. Therefore the over all cost benefit allows them to ingore the obvious!! No logic MF'ers!!

 

[Dogmeat]

hahahaha, and all the cars and RVs passing through there all summer long with exhaust that smells like daisies...

assgerbils

This whole thing is so f-ing stupid in that respect I am at loss for words.

Even before snowmobiling was restricted in the park, there is absolutley no possible way whatsoever that they had as adverse of effects on the park as the MILLIONS of idiot tourists driving through there in the summer time do.

I mean that in and of itself is what is so assinine about this whole argument.

And "scientific study" my ***

 

[winter brew]

That place is like friggin Disneyland in the summer.....bumper to bumper rush hour like traffic, people wandering off the roads into field to hold their babies up next to a buffalo for a picture (yes, I have seen this!). THIS is what is wrong with tourism in the park....NOT the sledders. There is the occasional sledder that would stray off road and that is unfortunate, but the animals never seemed bothered by the sleds and EVERY impartial study supported this, they would stand in the road and casually wander off.
And the park is so much more beautiful and peaceful in the winter, it's a shame they don't want people to be able to experience this....I'm glad I got to ride there back in the 1980's before the restrictions and controversy.

 

[ccoleman77]

It's a freaken joke. I am so tired of being screwed being cuz some flipping tool with no clue of what happens in the real world sits on the other side of the country and makes rules for a place they have never even visited. GFYS you POS politicians!

 

[POLZIN]

I am done with the whole widerness thing.
Just ride it anyway.
If enough people just say the heck with it and ride anyway, they will get to the point where they HAVE to deal with us and give us some areas back or we will just take them all.

I'm With ya Ollie! How about a wilderness protest ride!

 

[Rprecision]

I used to think that was the wrong way to approach the issue. However after attending countless meetings and voicing opinions and writing countless letters and voicing opinions, that may be the only way to be heard. I too am adopting the ride where ya want rule.

I am begining to see things in the same light............

In many ways its not thiers to take away.............think about it

 

[Snowizard]

Yellowstone geothermals emit millions of tons of gasses naturally.

I like this site to debunk pseudo-science. Here's a study done back in the 90's that details the thousands of tons of Carbon Dioxide, Sulphur, and other gasses from the NATURAL geo-thermals in Yellowstone.
http://www.junkscience.com/news/yellow.html

I've posted this before, but its been a while so new people will find this interesting, and it also makes good ammo for argument rebuttals.
............................................................................
Yellowstone Park Emits Tons of Carbon Dioxide,
Study Finds
By the Associated Press
Copyright 1997 The New York Times
Reprinted withe permission of The New York Times (December 26, 1997)


YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. -- Hot springs and other thermal features at Yellowstone National Park vent millions of tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide each year, more than a typical industrial power plant, researchers from Pennsylvania State University have found.

Industrial smokestacks are normally seen as the prime suspects for the increase of carbon dioxide levels, but hot spring systems like Yellowstone's produce enough carbon dioxide that they, too, should be considered when the world tallies its carbon dioxide emissions, the researchers said.

Cindy Werner, a geoscience graduate student at Penn State, spent much of last summer sampling gases emerging from thermal vents, mud pots and adjacent ground in Yellowstone's Mud Volcano area. Much of the carbon dioxide appeared to escape along fault lines running through the area.

Ms. Werner and Prof. Susan Brantley of Penn State calculate that Yellowstone's thermal regions annually vent millions of tons of carbon dioxide.

They presented their results last week in a special session on Yellowstone at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

Ms. Werner and her colleagues found that Yellowstone's Mud Volcano area produced about 176,300 tons of carbon dioxide each year.

Loosely expanding those figures based on the park's underlying geology, they suggest that each year the entire park may emit about 44 million tons of carbon dioxide, a colorless, odorless and incombustible gas.

By contrast, a medium-sized power plant that burns fossil fuels is estimated to release 4.4 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year.

"We believe that geothermal systems are significant contributors to global estimates" of carbon dioxide, Ms. Werner said.

Carbon dioxide levels in Earth's atmosphere have increased to more than 350 parts per million today from 290 parts per million in 1890. Most of the blame for the increase has focused on the burning of fossil fuels and a widespread loss of tropical forests that, when healthy, recycle the gas into oxygen.

Many scientists believe that global temperatures will rise because increasing levels of carbon dioxide will trap and retain heat from the Sun in a process similar to what happens in a greenhouse. Such a warming trend could lead to rising sea levels, cause severe drought and storms and severely disrupt Earth's biological systems.

Scientists have long known that volcanic systems like the one that drives Yellowstone emit large amounts of carbon dioxide along with their heat. But there have been few efforts to measure the gas emissions of geothermal systems not associated with volcanoes that have erupted in modern times.

The Penn State scientists focused on the Mud Volcano area because its features are primarily gas-driven. They do not produce the prodigious amounts of water that flow from the park's main hot-spring basins.

Gases emerging from vents in the area also include high levels of helium-3, a helium isotope present in Earth's mantle but not its atmosphere.

The helium-3 at Mud Volcano suggests that the heat that keeps the area simmering has taken a relatively direct course from the mantle to the surface.




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Material presented on this home page constitutes opinion of the author.
Copyright © 1997 Steven J. Milloy. All rights reserved. Site developed and hosted by WestLake Solutions, Inc.

 

[Interceptor]

Does anyone have (or can get) a picture or video of a line of busses and RVs and people standing around on a stretch of road in the summer and then contrast that with a pic of a couple of snowmobilers on the same road in the winter? The contrast might be newsworthy as people dont seem to have time to read or think about facts. Pictures like that with a caption of "are snowmobiles really the problem?" might hit home alot harder for people.
Just a thought