Skyline 10k @ 10k

Jessica and I participated in the annual Skyline 10k @ 10k for the second year. The name tells you that the race is a 10k at an elevation of 10,000 feet. It is a pretty tough race. I finished in 59min 51sec and Jessica finished in 1hr 1min 50sec. The pain this year was much worse than last year but I cut off one minute from last years time. It was a lot of fun and in the raffle I won a backpack so that made it totally worth it. We also ran the Fairview 5k on July 24th; Jessica beat me in that race.

Enjoy the picture of the following from left to right (Jessica Belcher, Austin Belcher, Gregg Galecki who is my co-worker, Elliot Anderson and his wife). The picture was taken at the end of the race.

The Truth about CAP and TRADE

This is a letter from my congressman in response to a letter that I sent him asking him not to vote for the Cap-and-Trade bill. Please Enjoy!

June 26, 2009

Dear Mr. Belcher,

I will not support the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, more commonly referred to as the "cap and trade" bill. The stated objectives of this bill are to create clean energy jobs, reduce global warming pollution, achieve energy independence, and transition to a clean energy economy.

Unfortunately, the bill will have economically catastrophic consequences. It will kill an estimated 3 to 4 million jobs according to the National Association of Manufacturers. In exchange, it will only reduce temperatures by nine-hundredths of 1 degree Fahrenheit (assuming carbon emissions are reduced 83 percent) by the year 2050. Meanwhile the bill's impact would reduce aggregate gross domestic product (GDP) by $9.6 trillion.

For average Americans, the impact will be dramatic. According to Peter Orszag, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the average American can expect "persistently higher prices for.electricity and gasoline." This will be especially evident in Utah, where each person is estimated to be hit with $1,115.47 in new taxes on their electricity bill alone. That means the average Utah family's (3.08 people/household) annual electricity bill will increase by $3,435.65. That's nearly $290 per month on top of what they already pay for electricity. I do not believe this colossal tax increase on the American people is worth nine-hundredths of 1 degree.

The authors of this legislation cite global warming as the driving force behind the bill. I do not believe human activity drives the earth's warming and cooling cycles. The doomsday warming scenarios stem from a 2001 study performed by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In this study, 245 potential scenarios were offered. The media and politicians all over the world have adopted the worst-case scenario as fact and have in turn imposed panic-stricken fears amongst Americans and the entire world.

Emma Brindal of Friends of the Earth said in December 2007, "A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources." This is similar to Senator Ben Cardin's (D-MD) explanation of cap-and-trade, "[cap and trade is] the most significant revenue-generating proposal of our time." Cap and Tax is nothing more than a massive expansion of government that will punish business, expand entitlement programs, and raise taxes for 100% of American energy users. Leave it to the Congress to offer a non-solution to a problem that does not even exist.

Instead of imposing a massive top-down government mandate on to the economy and the American people, I support the American Energy and Innovation Act. This bill stands on three pillars: Innovation, Conservation, and Production. These three pillars will:

w Promote innovation within the energy market through entrepreneurship while reducing financial, regulatory, and legal burdens.

w Provide incentives to reduce demand and increase domestic energy security by promoting greater conservation and efficiency.

w Encourage the production of more American energy from all available resources and technologies (expanding both onshore and offshore oil/natural gas drilling and encouraging the use and development of alternative energy sources)

To learn more about the American Energy Innovation Act, please visit my website at http://chaffetz.house.gov.

Sincerely,

Jason Chaffetz
Member of Congress

Energy Independence : FAST FACTS

With Energy Independence being a hot topic right now, and the House voting on CO2 regulations, I am going to start a series of posts that I hope will be interesting and thought provoking. Some of what I will write may focus on Coal but that is because I work at a Coal Mine.

Q: What percent of U.S. energy comes from Coal?
A: 50%

Q: What percent of Utah energy comes from Coal?
A: Over 90%

Q: On average, how many pounds of coal does each American use everyday?
A: 20 pounds

- 1/4 of the worlds coal reserves are found in the United States
- Currently, Oil supplies 40% of the United States total energy
- More than 99% of fuel we use in our cars and trucks is from Oil
- Currently, Hydroelectric power is the leading form of renewable energy
- All renewable energy forms (biomass/biofuels, geothermal, hydroelectric, solar, and wind)
currently generate 10% of the United States energy.

(data gathered from the U.S. Department of Energy)

I guess the reason I am going to start these posts is because I see and hear a lot of people jumping for joy because we are 'GOING GREEN'. I am not against green energy but I (for lack of a better word) fear what it will cost, us as Americans, to go green. I also feel that it is unfair for our Federal Government to subsidize the Green Industry while choking out our current energy producers with regulations, fines and oversight. I also wonder how many people think about how a windmill is made; you need steel or other metals which come from a steel plant that needs fossil fuels to make the wind mill with the lowest cost possible.

I really just want all of us to think about the costs that come with going green and decide is it really worth the cost or should the Green Industry and Fossil Fuel Industry try to find a better solution.

One last comment; I was watching a documentary on Global Warming the other night and the were giving figures like, 'the levels of CO2 now are higher than they have ever been in the last 50 million years'; this sounded like a large number 50 million years; I decided to calculate what percent of all earth history is that, well it comes out to be 1% if you use the current age of the earth 4.6 billion years. After realizing that that is not very much, and I am sure they embellished the number a little bit, I thought, we need to see more data than we are and put it into a more realistic time frame.

Well, I hope I get some good comments from this post and the ones to follow.

My new favorite shows this summer

I found most hilarious shows to get addicted to this summer.

Dance Your A** Off




Make it or Break it

Where should we go?

Austin and I are thinking of getting out of town sometime. We would like to go somewhere different, new, and maybe a little quarky. We couldn't think of any place super cool so we thought we would get some ideas from our friends and family. So it's a contest!

Give us some ideas of places we could visit.
Destinations cannot go east of Colorado (so only these states: CA, WA, OR, UT, ID, MT, NV, AZ, NM, CO, WY).
You can submit any number of ideas.
The wining idea will receive a KICK-BUTT souvenir from our trip.

Be creative!!

Howdy.

Man, we are really bad at this blog thing lately.

Some updates:

• We hit an elk in the Neon -- and survived.

• In the same week Austin thought he could clear a boulder in the road. Instead, he blew out the transmission in the Rodeo.

• I got laid off. No more teaching for now.
• The cats got de-clawed.

• Austin jut accidentally cleaned the kitchen counters with Armorall.

• Our new favorite movie is "Be Kind Rewind".

We have real exciting lives.

Just a quick update --

I got a job! I am a math (yikes) and science teacher. It is a youth in custody facility for girls. I've been in a whirl-wind of lesson plans because I have to prep for a billion lessons everyday. I have about 8 different math lesson plans, ranging from basic math, algebra, and geomety. In biology I only have 3 students, but they are in all different places in the book. For Earth Science, they've also been working at their own pace in the book, but none of them have learned anything about Earth Science. And then I also teach a Finincial Literacy class, where we've been talking about the rule of 72, and saving vs. investing. Blah, I'm ready for a break already.

Austin's job is going great too. We are both so grateful we have work, especially when so many people are strugggling in the employment department. We are truly blessed.