Posted on 03/08/2010 9:25:50 PM PST by JLS
Zamboni make the ice resurfacing carts that are a familiar sight at any hockey game, and also at any number of Winter Olympics – Turin, Salt Lake, Nagano and way back into the past. But the company has been frosted out at Vancouver. Instead, the ice resurfacing is being done by what are called “electric Zambonis”. Zamboni is a bit like Hoover and Aspirin - it’s become a generic term – and it turns out the “electric Zambonis” are not Zambonis at all, but manufactured by a company called Olympia that landed the contract because the Vancouver organizers were determined that 2010 should be the “Green Olympics”.
In the men’s 500-meter speed-skating at Richmond, all three of Olympia’s “electric Zambonis” brought on to smooth out the ice failed. If anything, they made the ruts and bumps worse. It looked like one of those Obama-stimulus scarified repaving jobs out there. Those of us who do a little backwoods skating on North Country ponds and lakes know the damage you can do to yourself hitting a ridge even at low speed. So you don’t want to run into one at 40 miles per hour. The cameras and microphones caught furious coaches from the Netherlands to China expressing their disgust to officials at the amateurishness of the Vancouver organizers. The event was delayed, and the American skater Shani Davis eventually withdrew, not wanting to jeopardize his chances of a Gold in the thousand meters by taking a spill on the 500 meters’ scarified ice. You train for years, you build your entire life to this one moment, and then the politically correct eco-gimmick screws you over. Officials attempted to reassure coaches and skaters that a non-electric Zamboni would be flown in from Calgary to prevent further delays.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
Steyn writes again.
The extension cord wasn’t fat enough.
Green scam ping.
Excellent as usual. Only Zamboni makes a Zamboni.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_resurfacer
During the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, serious problems developed with the three battery-powered “green” resurfacers used to maintain the speed skating oval, products of Canadian-owned Resurfice. Malfunctions included ineffective waste-ice storage and significant tire gouging; in order to improve the ice a propane-powered Zamboni brand machine was brought in from Calgary’s two-decades old speed skating facility, site of Canada’s last Winter Olympics.[2] Speed skating figures from outside Canada speculated such widespread mechanical issues might be due to the restrictive international access policy since the Richmond Olympic Oval was constructed 18 months ago, with the resurfacers unable to complete their break-in process due to relatively infrequent usage.[3]
The Germans subsidize “green jobs” in the wind-power industry to just shy of a quarter-million dollars per worker per year. The Spanish government pays $800,000 for every “green job” on a solar-panel assembly line. This money is taken from real workers with real jobs at real businesses whose growth is being squashed to divert funds to endeavors that have no rationale other than their government subsidies. As the Spanish are discovering, this model is not (le mot juste) sustainable...
Of course, there is no money to be made in that, so green products are more costly. Either they use more energy and are [supposedly] more detrimental to the environment, or they are a rip-off, with the flim-flam man walking away with your hard earned dollars.
Looking at the horror story from Australia about how their energy efficient roof foil insulation program gets the foil electrified. Trouble is, the foil isn’t supposed to be electrified. Houses have burned down and people have gotten badly shocked or electrocuted. I would guess that nails are sometimes getting shot into electric cables by careless installers.
It was not all that long ago that propane would have been considered very green. But now with globull warming, the story has changed. As for those batteries, it isn’t all that green an undertaking to make them.
Green is the color of failure.
It is universally assumed that insulation and caulking will make a home more energy efficient without any negative side effects.
In actual fact various moisture and rot/decay problems often arise after insulation and tightening. Exactly what and where depends on the climate and how the work is done.
Since my line of work involves dealing with these types of problems, it’s a plus for me, but I’m continually amazed by those who think you can change the way a structure functions so dramatically without possible unintended consequences.
More like fraud and incompetence. These greening schemes are not being thought through very well.
One of the parishioners in my church had a roof get sopping wet and rot after vapor barriers were put into half the attic. Seems the installers didn’t bother with the requisite ventilation.
bfl
Yup. Propane does not have a mercury or other residue those batteries have.
Sad for the athletes that these green icers were junk. The Zambonis are so cool. You would have though the freaking Canadians would know ice from their obsession with hockey. Incredible.
If I can generalize your line of reasoning a bit, when one gets too focused on the means, and forgets about the ultimate goal, bad things can happen. We see it in the Greenies and, sadly, we see it in how Obama is [mis] handling the ecomomy.
Sorry, I forgot that it was a secret.
Ha. Well if not a secret very upsetting to certain type of anti-trade, anti-capitalist.
Essentially, you can be sealing in the moisture, preventing it from escaping. And I understand that radon gas poses a far greater risk in houses that are well sealed and insulated, because the gas can't disperse as it does in "leaky" houses.
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