sayjay

I found a great pair of durable pants and a pile shirt at Value Village that I climb in. Total damage: $10. Both so far are holding up great to all the flailing I've been doing in cracks lately...including at Joshua Tree, home of the sharpest rock on the planet. But even if they do get ripped to shreds, no great loss!

I found a great pair of durable pants and a pile shirt at Value Village that I climb in. Total damage: $10. Both so far are holding up great to all the flailing I've been doing in cracks lately...including at Joshua Tree, home of the sharpest rock on the planet. But even if they do get ripped to shreds, no great loss!

quote: Originally posted by Dru: I will bolt a giant bong to Muir Hut. DRU YOU ARE THE FUNNIEST HUMAN BEING ON THE FACE OF THIS PLANET!

baseball is boring. can we get back to the bolting wars please?

quote: WHEREVER YOU GO THERE YOU ARE hey, i once did a climb by that name...

I fought w/ IT band problems for 3+ years after a ski injury. The thing that finally got me to the point of recovery was *strengthening*. This is the specific exercise that I think worked magic for me: Do one-leg squats, looking down and making sure that your knee does not cross in front of the tip of your toes and making sure your leg doesn't wobble to one side or the other. If you need to, hold on to a door jamb or whatever for balance. *FOCUS ON THE MUSCLE ON THE INSIDE OF YOUR LEG JUST ABOVE YOUR KNEECAP*. That's the key. Focus on building that "eye-drop" shaped muscle that's so awesome on bicyclists... IMO (and I'm not a PT or anything, just from my own experience) strengthening the IT band itself, at least initially, only lead to more irritation. This squatting exercise helps strengthen the muscles that will take the stress off your IT band. Oh, and ICE LOTS. Good luck! This is a bitch of an injury...

yeah, what erik & b-rock said. not funny.

hey, yah! and pound pitons into the bar wall and hang portaledges so we can crash for the night too! hale's might be a good place for this... s'got some height, and lots of corners for folks to get lost in...

hey! i wanna new poll! ray or fb?

Idea: Compile a list of suggested venues in Tacoma, Seattle and the East Side (am I missing anywhere?). Take one big vote to decide the top 5 or so venues in each place to establish a master-list. Then each week, when a region's time comes up, let a random-number-generator pick the specific location in the area. No more weekly controversy -- just one big arguement in establishing the master list.... Like i said, just an idea, not necessarily a good one. Maybe I've just been crunching numbers too much lately. Feedback?

hey, don't mind erik. he's just going through withdrawl from his weekend...

I'm convinced! double 8.5's it is... thanks, guys.

now THAT'S democracy!

quote: C. 5-8-77 Either you know or you don't. erik's birthday? [ 04-15-2002, 01:48 PM: Message edited by: sayjay ]

I'm also going to be at JTree this Thurs-Sunday and am trying to decide whether to bring my single 10.5 55m rope or my double 8.5 55m ropes. Usually I only use the latter for alpine, but sounds like it might save me some hassle at JTree to be able to wrap off the double 8.5's. Votes? (Would I be a total dork for bringing doubles to this crag?)

Hey Country Jake, There are endless papers out there showing how mother earth is doing a great job, and about flourishing systems. It's not that scientists aren't looking at this stuff -- they have to to establish baselines and determine sensitivities. The thing is that papers of this sort are pretty ho-hum news, so the press doesn't cover them. As for enviro's, you only hear from them about what we're doing wrong because the whole point of their job is to try and right things they feel are being done wrong! I mean, you don't write to the city to tell them about how the street pavement in front of your house is in great shape -- you call them up and get on their case when it's full of potholes... right?

hey max, I think the distinction he's making is between clipping pieces with quick-draws (shorter and sewn along the length between the 'biners) and clipping pieces with slings (longer, and the loop is left open)-- not between clipping the piece directly vs using any sort of sling/draw.

for anyone who's interested in the scientific concensus, there's a downloadable pdf available at: http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/reports.htm

quote: Looks like you are one of those scientists who think that anthropogenic causes for global warming are the problem. Yes, I do believe that anthropogenic climate change is a problem. Because that's what the evidence tells me. quote: For every one of you there is another who does not think what you think. Bullshit -- assuming "one of you" means people who have actually looked at the evidence. Maybe there's a balance of commentators/politicians but not scientists. You give me a list of scientists who think global warming is not a real and significant problem I'll give you back a list that is at least 100 times as long. What is it that makes you think there are an equal number of scientists on either side of the fence? Simply that you've heard this said so many times? quote: I personally don't know what I think and I said this in my original post on the top of page 5. You seem to have assumed that I don't think global warming is being caused by human hands. All I did was offer counter quotes from my ME Reference Manual, whose text is just as reasonable to take as gospel as what you say. Not if the ME Ref Manual can't back up its statements w/ relevant facts. (orange growing latitudes is not, by itself, a relevant fact). I base my arguments on large collections of evidence -- not all of which points in one direction, but the overwhelming majority of which points in that direction. quote: When I said there was no proof that global warming is actually taking place, I should have been more specific and emphatic. What I should have said is there is no DEFINITIVE proof that global warming is ACTUALLY taking place and/or is the result of anthropogenic mechanisms. It could be taking place, but not by anthropogenic means, or it could not be taking place at all period. True, we cannot state with 100% confidence that g.w. is ACTUALLY taking place right now, though we can say it with very high confidence. How many things can you say with 100% confidence? Can you say with 100% confidence that if you jump out in the middle of I-5 at 5:00pm you'll get hit by a car? The concencus of the scientific community is that there is very very very small chance that nothing will happen (<5%), a very very big chance (>90%) that something will happen that will have a significant negative impact on the environment, people and the economy, and the possibility (likelihood unknown) that something really really bad will happen. I'm just not enough of a gambler to like those statistics -- and I think it's irresponsible for us to be running this experiment on the globe. quote: Scientists do research and seek data to support their arguments. If they know where to look, they know how to find supportive arguments. Likewise, they can ignore unsupportive arguments. Ignoring unsupportive arguments or not looking at ALL the data available is what happens a lot in this world. Scientists want to look good and show that their intellectual hypothesis expounded upon in erudite circles was correct so they only seek supportive data. This happens quite a lot in the scientific community, I'm afraid (maybe 20 percent of them). Even scientists are shackled by the all-mighty dollar. I disagree with your level of scepticism about the objectivity of the scientific process, but that aside there are safeguards built into the system to keep scientists from presenting biased information. Publications have to go through a rigorous review process by other scientists, including those who don't agree with their starting premise. (This is true of journal publications; texts such as your ME book do not have to go through such a review process). The collection of resulting papers gives a pretty broad set of evidence that point in many directions. Every 5 years a large international panel of scientists gets together and reviews the full suite of reviewed journal articles and draws conclusions based on the collection of evidence. Counter to public opinion, the skeptics are included in this process, and the panel is not full of biased scientists. I personally know several who 10 yrs ago would have told you global warming was being blown way out of proportion and who now believe it is a problem, based on the evidence that has emerged.Oh, and scientist's primary goal is to find the truth; the fossil fuel's primary goal is to make money. And I've seen no evidence that scientists have a better chance of getting research funding if their research aims to show global warming is real than if it aims to show it is not. quote: A note about cows: though I couldn't quote statistics, I'm thinking a great majority of cows in this world are used for dairy use not meat or leather, etc. True enough, though, we do eat them (but not in India where there are boat loads of them). We also eat snails. Right. I stand corrected. My point was only that there are so many cows cause there are so many people.

"Well-behaved women rarely make history." - someone I would have like to have hung out with...

Couldn't agree with you more, Mtn Goat. And the evidence is that it is a real and it's a problem. What sucks is that I hear this all the time: "oh, it's still up for debate, cause look, there are just as many scientists that say it's real as say it's not." which simply is not even remotely true. Also, people who believed the earth was flat didn't really have any scientific reason to believe otherwise. It was when people started to see reasons why it probably wasn't flat and then persue confirmation of this hypothesis that they discovered otherwise.There *is* something to be said for the fact that the overwhelming majority of the scientists who have looked at the evidence believe it is a problem. This is not simple gang-mentality we're talking about here.

Bio-diesel is what I was talking about. bio-diesel=diesel produced from plant waste.They're about to build a plant in eastern Washington to produce it.Unfortunately it is more $$ per gallon than regular diesel or gas, and is not yet widely available. I know of one distributor in Seattle and he says he has lots of customers who drive the new VW diesels, which he thinks are the cat's meow. Great mileage, and burn much cleaner than old diesels. Get ~60mpg on biodiesel. I don't know about trucks. If you really are interested, PM me and I'll give you his name/#. (He's a car mechanic, btw). Yeah, the options for fuel-efficient vehicles are not great. That's why the gov't needs to be pushed to get the alternative fuels technology more advanced. If we subsidized alternatives the way we subsidize fossil fuel there would be a lot more options-- Guess everyone's gotta make this choice for themselves; I just think people should be making the choice w/ a full set of information about the impacts of their choices.

unfortunately most plant growth is not limited by availability of CO2. some studies show increases in plant growth with higher concentrations of CO2, but only if you also add more fertilizer and plenty of water, and only for certain plant types. overall, the negative impacts of climate change will overwhelm any gains due to CO2 fertilization. warmer weather would be good for agriculture in some places (like northern Russia; there are scientists there who believe fully in global warming and are advising their gov't that it is a good thing!) but most 3rd world countries are in parts of the world that are already plenty warm. as for rainfall, we can't accurately predict what the exact changes would be, but we do expect that rainfall will become more episodic -- i.e. longer, more intense drought periods, then really heavy precip. and large regions -- like the central U.S. -- are likely to experience more frequent and more extreme droughts that can result in things like the 1930's dustbowl. Not pretty. the other factor is that the climate changes are expected to be *rapid* enough that in many cases neither nature or mankind will be able to adapt to the changes, especially in 3rd world countries. So if you want to play in your truck, buy a diesel and run it on bio-fuel and you will be producing zero net CO2 emissions.

Ya know Jake, there's a part of me that agrees with you. The earth would definitely be better off with fewer people. The trouble for me w/ this argument is that the people who caused the problem are not the ones who will suffer. We as Americans will have a much greater ability to adapt to a rapidly changing climate than will people in poorer countries who are currently (and have so far) done little to add to global warming. And they do not have nearly the resources that we have to do mitigate future emissions. Just look a the havoc that you get in developing countries when a hurricaine or earthquake hits versus the damages here. I lived in the Maldives for a couple of months and those people aren't doing shit to add to the g.w. problem yet they are unlikely to have a country left in 100 yrs. This is a people with a separate culture, language, history, who will lose their home -- and probably be dumped on the Indian subcontinent to survive among the masses there -- because we think we have some inherent right as Americans to the biggest gas-hog we want, and to fill it with heavily subsidized fuel no less. Damn, keep this crap up and we're going to catch up with Muir on Saturday in no time...

quote: Any body have any Idea how warm this earth was when our great cascades where formed... Oh thats rightwe weren't around back then... how the F@$% do we know whats a good climate change.... Yeah, there's nothing inherently superior about our current climate versus an ice age or versus the days of the dinosaurs, but the earth didn't have to support 6 billion people back then. Heck, Venus has a really amazing climate but I wouldn't want to live there. quote: The water has to melt out of the glacies before it can be evaperated in higher amounts.... right???? so wouldn't that mean that we could be causing warming only to cause another Iceage... HUH??????? more water = iceage ???go smoke another one, dude.