j_b

many things could have provided a small trigger once the block was wedged far enough from the wall. You are likely right that water, veg and dirt is all that could be needed, but I'd guess that Index has the right climate during winter for lots of temperature cycling events about the freezing point.

I don't think you can exclude that the block was wedged off its base by frost over time. The post-rockfall pic posted by someone on page one of this thread shows that the base of the block wasn't rectangular (considerably thinner at its western end) and there was probably already a great amount of dirt accumulated at the bottom of the crack. The dirt mixed in with rock debris could have provided a good porous medium for frost wedging to occur and could have raveled further down the crack when melting, thereby preventing the block from settling back into its unwedged state. [/armchair hand waving]

And you were probably right, although there was much more ice flowing down Howe Sound than down the Sky (to 1st order, glacial erosion scales with sliding ice flux). Howe Sound was likely glaciated more recently as well.

Witch Doctor Wall side has loads of steep climbing. Cracks are filled with dirt so a little cleaning is necessary.

Damn! When I read the ledge came off I was really hoping the tall cheats couldn't reach beyond the thin moves to get off the ledge.

Spare us the posturing. Empty rhetoric while refusing the means of an effective alternative energy policy is sure to lead us to a coal fueled future, after we have burnt all the oil, of course.

of course, but you can't say they appear to have learned anything.

Yes, indeed, the nitwits on this board have been doing it for many years now. They have lots of experience at mis-direction. As for my carbon footprint, it is quite small but as you say it has no relevance to holding the oil industry shills accountable.

Can't be too enterprising with the slow (NO)-learning class.

No. The irony is that just as the neoliberal model has proven once again how much of a failure it is by taking us once more to the edge of ruin, neoliberal propaganda is trying to have us believe that Greece is going down because of its social programs. It's like regressives claiming that California is bankrupt because of illegals and state employee compensation when everybody knows the combination of revenue shortfall after the financial/real economic crisis and a long-standing regressive tax policy has bankrupted California.

more ad-hominem drivel.

Am i also supposed to kill myself to have no carbon footprint? moron.

Just for you, here's a dictionary: It is seriously twisted (or more likely stupid) to claim that people who blow themselves up with their victims on another continent are worse evil than those going around chopping limbs and bellies a few countries over (let's not mention any of the other methods of achieving 'collateral damage'). To claim that it is a worse evil because the perpetrators are muslims makes it islamophobic. Red-baits about 'soshalists', refuses to discuss his extensive cherry picking of facts and data, never responds directly to an argument, extensive straw man building, etc Wants to destroy the social safety net. Refuses any environmental constraint on industry. Espouses "a good government is a dead one". Hasn't found a war he didn't like. A picture perfect dead-ender despite the free maryjane rhetoric. Always sides for the interests of big business. Pushes policies directly leading to consolidations, monopolies, corporatocracy. Pays occasional lip service to subsidies but never calls it corporate welfare despite its widespread and longstanding economic importance or never acknowledges its necessary role for development.

Are you drunk? No, but my epithets about you aren't ad-hominem. I am only calling out the fuckwits responsible for this disaster and who won't acknowledge their calling for expansion of offshore drilling while they fought for systematic deregulation of industry like they would for a religious creed, and to add insult to injury blamed the victims and prisoners of their policies. In the meantime, neanderthals make up stuff about my owning a car, or some other crap. You'll note that the descriptive 'neanderthal' directly qualifies the lack of any intelligible response.

JayB is in fine company: The Dirty Dozen Who's who among America's leading Islamophobes Bigots aren’t born, and hate doesn’t spring up on its own; as the song says, “You’ve got to be carefully taught.” The following list includes some of the media’s leading teachers of anti-Muslim bigotry, serving various roles in the Islamophobic movement. Some write the books that serve as intellectual fodder, others serve as promoters, others play the roles of provocateurs and rabble-rousers. Some ply their bigotry in the media’s mainstream, others in the Internet’s tributaries, while still others work talk radio’s backwaters. Together with uncounted smaller players, they form a network that teaches Americans to see Islam in fearful terms and their Muslim neighbors as suspects. [...] Article here: The Dirty Dozen

It'd be much more productive to get rid of the militari-industrial complex.

Why won't we won't stand for your bigoted claim that the Muslim religion is somehow the cause of all these atrocities? I think it's pretty obvious why considering your bloody record against Muslim people.

In other words, beside ad-hominem attacks, the knuckle-draggers have nothing to counter to anything I say, which is plenty. You guys are worthy of all the epithets I also hurl at you. Bill: after you once again ran like a little girl rather than face your cheer-leading for data manipulator JayB (remember the "per unit GDP" slimy move of a couple pages ago?), here you are, exchanging back-slaps with the pillagers. Kudos, slithering one.

in other words, the claim that you support clean energy is purely rhetorical, i.e. it's an empty commitment. You'd let emerging renewables develop their infrastructure and compete with entrenched form of energy that have seen their infrastructure paid by the taxpayer over decades of direct and indirect subsidy. Since you'd ignore external cost, teh end result would be predictable: coal would be our entire future. what nonsensical babbling. Comparing subsidies is a huge job that isn't even done properly by the federal government. very simple, corporatists like yourself ignored what scientists said about biofuels (they aren't sustainable) because they saw an opportunity for corporate welfare. our economy is no better than Europe's

what the fuck does this have anything to do with what has been discussed? beside, having the red-baiter in you wanting to insinuate that some of us are the equivalent of Lysenko?

Anatomy of an Oil Disaster: Heckuva Job, Kenny! Commentary by Nikolas Kozloff Who is responsible for the great environmental disaster arising from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? As the country reels from the sheer magnitude of the accident, the media has rightly pointed the finger at BP. Yet, not nearly enough attention has been paid to the role of Ken Salazar and his derelict Department of Interior, a government entity which, in theory, regulates offshore oil drilling. [...] Western Cowboy Rides into Town The ascendance of Ken Salazar at Interior was supposed to change the oily nature of politics at Interior. A westerner whose roots stretched back to the 16th century, Salazar was rarely seen without his trademark cowboy boots and hat. Obama’s nomination of Salazar to head Interior cheered some groups which had fought to protect remote backcountry and pristine watersheds from oil and gas drilling. Before becoming a Democratic Senator from Colorado, Salazar served as the state’s director of Department of Natural Resources. He also worked as an environmental and water attorney in private practice. As Secretary of Interior, Salazar pledged to clean up the sleaze. During his confirmation hearings, he said he said there might be certain areas that could be off limits to offshore oil production. Overall, some groups said, Salazar had a pretty strong environmental record as Senator. To his credit, he clashed with the Bush administration over oil and gas drilling on public lands and promoted his home state of Colorado as a renewable energy leader. Sounds all fine and good, but look beneath the surface and there was more than enough to give one pause. A politician with ties to old time western extractive industries like ranching and mining, Salazar joined with Republicans in actually threatening to sue the federal government if the black-tailed prairie dog was declared endangered. Even more ominously, he also sided with Republicans in proposing an energy policy which included relaxing restrictions on offshore oil drilling. Indeed, in 2006 Salazar voted yes on the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, which ended protections for Florida’s Gulf Coast and opened up 8 million acres off the coasts of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana for oil and gas drilling. Believing that Obama had betrayed his campaign promises to bring about change, outraged wildlife advocacy groups sent a letter to the president protesting Salazar’s nomination as Secretary of the Interior. A better choice, they argued, would have been Democratic representative Raul Grijalva of Arizona who had ultra green credentials. Writing in the New Mexico Independent, environmentalist and former oil and gas man Jim O’Donnell remarked “Mr. Salazar is not a visionary. He is not a change agent. Mr. Salazar has a very interesting and compelling story as a fellow Westerner. However, from my viewpoint, he has little interest in protecting biodiversity and even less interest in a fossil fuel-free economy. This is not the change we need.” The Waffler “The word on Ken Salazar,” opined the New York Times in January, 2009, “…is that he is friendly, approachable, a good listener, a genial compromiser and a skillful broker of deals.” But, the paper added, “That is also the rap on Ken Salazar.” Fundamentally, the Times argued, “What the Interior Department needs right now is someone willing to bust heads when necessary and draw the line against the powerful commercial groups — developers, ranchers, oil and gas companies, the off-road vehicle industry — that have long treated the department as a public extension of their private interests.” Over the next year and a half, Salazar did little to challenge the Times’ mild depiction of his character. At issue for the new secretary was the hot button issue of offshore oil drilling. In the final days of the Bush presidency, both Congress and the White House allowed a federal ban on offshore oil drilling to expire which stood to open new areas along the U.S. coastline to exploration. Faced with some difficult political and moral choices, Salazar delayed. The secretary declared that new offshore oil drilling would be put on hold and in the meantime the government would hold a six-month public comment period. Environmentalists were somewhat encouraged, but they noted that the move failed to stop offshore oil development per se. In April, 2009 Salazar went personally to Alaska where fishermen pleaded with him not to go ahead with new Outer Continental Shelf oil development in Bristol Bay. Rebecca Noblin, an Anchorage-based attorney for the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, a group that sued to list polar bears under the Endangered Species Act, told the Anchorage Press that she was disappointed Salazar didn’t call upon scientists and environmentalists during the hearing. “It’s difficult to know what impressions the event may’ve left with Secretary Salazar,” the Anchorage Press noted. “Shortly after Noblin’s testimony, he gave some informal closing remarks that indicated that he’d heard the comments, but little else,” the paper added. “In a subsequent briefing for reporters just before departing, he was noncommittal.” Salazar continued his travels, heading on to another hearing in New Orleans. There, he was confronted once again by concerned environmentalists who took the microphone to explain that expanding offshore oil development would do great damage to sensitive ocean ecosystems. Darryl Malek-Wiley of the Sierra Club called for a detailed analysis of oil spills, declaring that hundreds of millions of gallons of crude had leaked in recent hurricanes, in part due to aging oil and gas infrastructure. If Salazar was moved by the environmentalists’ entreaties, he made no mention. The nation needed a “comprehensive energy plan,” he said, though he wouldn’t specify whether such an approach ought to include more offshore oil drilling along the U.S. coastline. The Future of Offshore Oil Exploration Perhaps the hearings were all just a smoke screen for Salazar and a mere public façade. As we now know, Interior ignored the warnings put forth by the NOAA while Salazar quietly crafted a horrible offshore oil plan with the White House. In March of this year Obama, much to the chagrin of environmentalists, finally announced that he would conduct a major expansion of offshore oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico amongst other areas. In the wake of BP’s massive oil spill off Louisiana, the White House announced that it would put a hold on new offshore oil exploration. But what is really needed now is a complete and total moratorium on ALL offshore oil exploration. In light of his track record, Ken Salazar is hardly the most appropriate bureaucrat to carry out such an ambitious agenda which would necessarily entail a switch from fossil fuels to alternative energy. http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0505-oil_kozloff.html

Clearly, over one million Iraqi dead to bring "democracy" to Iraq isn't enough for JayB. Now he is going after the religious fanatics with the very same warlords who have been the cause of much terrifying violence in Afghanistan over the last 30 years, then he'll wonder why they hate his guts. It'd be funny if it wasn't so tragic.

Let's face it, beneath the smooth talking veneer you have never been much more than a knuckle-dragging red-baiter. I'll leave it to you to mount a passionate defense of Lysenkoism, comrade! Have at it. thank you for making my point, again.

don't you support the policies of Bush and Reagan (retroactively I suspect fo rthe later) when they used the warlords (like Karzai's brother) to fight our enemies of the moment. What do you think warlords do to people? DO you think they are against stoning , against performing female circumcision? YOU are truly clueless

Well, you are really outdoing yourself these days. Seriously, my jaw dropped when I read your answer. I didn't think you could come up with a rhetorical pirouette as stupid as you did. Congratulations. as if We had waited for your rotten kind to condemn the dark age fanatics that your political current has always supported when it has been expedient, like throughout the 80's when they murdered and mutilated Afghan women that wanted to go to school. They are the same bloody warlords you are de facto supporting today by the way. Spare us your crocodile tears, hypocrite.