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.

Confessions of a Superhero

Austin and I watched this movie the other day. It's pretty good -- and totally reminded us of Spring Break '04. I think that scary red bat guy that me and Kirsten got our picture with is in it for a split second. We highly recommend it.

watch the TRAILER

Murder in Park City

So, as you can see Jessica and I had some pretty sweet Halloween costumes. This story starts when my parents came down to Fairview to visit us and have dinner. We ate and had a jolly good time. After eating we decided to show my parents some of our recent pictures. After flipping through a few we got to the Halloween pics. My mom was looking at them and asked what was on my pants, I replied, 'Blood', she then began to tell us a hilarious story.

My parents were out of town during Halloween but Jessica and I went to their house to spend the night after having an amazing party with our friends. When we got there we decided to just throw our costumes in the dumpster at my parents. We left Park City not even thinking of what we had just instigated. After my parents got home my dad noticed the blood covered clothes in there garbage, fortunately he did not think anything of it. A week went by and my dad finally mentioned it to my mom who then told him to call the police. My dad called the police and told them what they had found (bloody clothes). The officer came over and pulled the clothes out of the garbage can and began looking them over trying to find clues as of who died. The officer was not confident enough to make a decision so he called over his Captain and now the both of them were looking at the blood covered clothes trying to figure out what happened and were they came from. After a few minutes of crime scene analysis the two of them told my parents that someone must have put their Halloween costumes in their dumpster while they were gone. Now that my mom was looking at the clothes Jessica and I wore to the Halloween party she connected the dots and we just started laughing like crazy.

My parents are hilarious!