Yellowstoned

The Wall Street Journal ^ | Thursday, December 18, 2003

[TroutStalker]

Americans, dust off your snowshoes. Thanks to the real powers behind environmental policy today -- green lawyers and sympathetic judges -- that's about the only way anyone will be visiting Yellowstone National Park in winter.

In a decision that surprised no one, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan on Tuesday scrapped a carefully crafted Bush snowmobile plan for the park. The Administration had worked out a compromise, permitting snowmobiling (over the same roads that millions of cars and trucks travel in summer) while also capping daily visits and requiring cleaner vehicles. But the judge, a favorite with environmental groups, reinstated a Clinton-era ban.

[UCANSEE2]

I wonder how many people on either side realize the Yellowstone Park sits right on top of a massive volcanic caldera.

True, but if the caldera erupts, it won't matter if you are on a snowmobile inside Yellowstone Park, or at home watching TV in California, Missouri, or Texas. Predictions are that a layer of ash could cover everything going to a low of 2 feet of ash as far away as Arkansas.

Since this would effectively kill off most of our food sources, uh, we would be up the proverbial creek, all of us.

[UCANSEE2]

I think if we could end rude behavior we could repeal 90% of the laws off the books in this country.

What is that saying, "An armed society is a very polite society."

Precisely why the lawmakers, law interpreters, law enforcers, law dispensers do not want a public that is armed.

Job protection.

[11Bush]

Legal basis? We don't need no stinkin' legal basis!

[JasonC]

I think the point was, there is not a whole lot of sense in trying to preserve for the ages what in the long run is going to be a smoking hole in the ground. Enjoy it while it is there.

[SevenDaysInMay]

Forget your brother. Go with your lover. Snowed in time is best spent suggled under down and furs. Any 4x4 can get overwhelmed by Northern Rockies' weather.

Only 54 y.o., most of what I did in my youth on camping trips is now in violation of some statute, regulation, or court order. The watermellon agenda is clear: common people must not have access to what they define as natural.

Incresing human popluation pressure is the logic to protect our National Park System from We the People. Nearly all of America's increase in population is from immigration and criminal invasion. So by Executive Orders and orders of the court, we lose our rights and privileges?

Just wait until we have 50,000,000 criminal aliens swarming west of the Missouri River. Our natural environment will be degraded along with our rights to our private property. Should we buy up all land along our southern border and establish a national park - enforcing "trespass" regs as the Park Service is so silling to do against American citizens deep inside our Republic?

Most problems in our society have clear causes, and elite's answers, under penalty of law.

A quadroplegic needs to sue this ban as a violation of his/her rights to "access" the national park.

[archy]

Americans, dust off your snowshoes. Thanks to the real powers behind environmental policy today -- green lawyers and sympathetic judges -- that's about the only way anyone will be visiting Yellowstone National Park in winter.

Unless it burns.

-archy-/-

[archy]

Now its the Judge and the greens who snarl at our rights to enjoy the outdoors in a responsible way. They want a pristine wilderness for the elite to enjoy by helicopter luxury tours with nary a peasant in sight.

Indeed. And with any luck, they won't see them at all.

[conserv13]

Booze, horsepower, and bad judgement dominate the snowmobile community

I hate to say it but I have found this to be the case as well.

[thoughtomator]

Is this issue different from the way the judiciary has come to legislate in general? Or is this just another straw in the bale of tyranny that Americans have learned to bear silently?

[Elsie]

...had his head ripped off by a wire fence ...

---

What has CAUSED this fence to be so VIOLENT!?!?!

Was it a depraved (or deprived) childhood?

Hanging around with bad companions?

Exposed to vicious barbs all his life?

What!!!???

Picket envy?

Chain-link obsession?

[Elsie]

Anyone have any idea what legal basis he used?

POWER!!!

(You remember: that corrupting thingy.....)

[blackdog]

Elsie, since he left two small toddlers, a wife, and his relations surround the flat landscape for miles in every direction, I will refuse to comment on a sad event.

I do however appreciate your wit. I just reserve my playspot for a different topic.

[Elsie]

I've never been on one of these machines, but they DO sound like fun, if used properly, just like anything else with a gas engine.

Since a wise person would have a roll bar on a Quad, it would seem logical to have something similar on a sno-mobile.

(I managed, with no power other than my own, to clothesline myself as a kid.

This tends to make one VERY cautious of these potential things in the future)

[Darksheare]

There are also those who want it preserved only for their elite chosen to visit.
To be visited only by those 'enlightened' who would 'enjoy it so much more than the uneducated philistines' they see us as.
So the historic buildings at Yellowstone must be destroyed in their view, and every gas station within a good day's drive must be shutdown to further this goal.

[Darksheare]

Well, the few envirowusses I told it too went nuts trying to think of how to keep a supervolcano from blowing up.
The volcano that created the caldera there is a class of terrazit that dwarfs every known volcano in history.
And many have said flat out, "We do not know what it will do or when it will do it. None have blown in written history. We know what the aftermath looks like, half a foot of ash from Yellowstone to the Mississippi, but we don't know all that much about it."

Should have heard the weeping and wailing from the environuts then.
Their proposed (to me) solution: stop funding space exploration and the military and study how to stop a supervolcano.
They truly are delusional types.

[Darksheare]

Is it me, or do his eyes go in opposite directions?

[Montana4Jesus]

If your coming in from the south you'll want to drive in through Jackson Hole, over to Idaho and up to West Yellowstone. You can't drive into the park from the West entrance but you can take a snow coach or, now, because of the aforementioned judge's ruling yo can now hire a guide to take you into the park on a snowmobile. You can go directly to Old Faithful for a day trip or you can also stay overnight at Snow Lodge in Old Faithful.

[doodad]

Have you ever looked at a topo map of the northwestern quad of the US and seen the burn path that hotspot has cooked across the county? Incredible. Mt. Mazama was nothing compared to the event that eventually will happen in Yellowstone.

[Darksheare]

Yeah.
It's had at least two good blowouts in two opposite directions, and there's a smaller caldera next to it that blew out at one point as well.
There's a website somewhere about supervolcanos
I don't have it bookmarked, like a dunce, but it was an interesting read.

[2nd Amendment]

The Caldera cannot erupt because it has not completed the proper paperwork for the EPA. It is also illegal for the caldera to erupt and cover the US with ash, posing environmental hazards.