Screw your salmon and your virgin wilderness, Alaska,

[Blue_In_AK]

America hungers for molybdenum.

Thank you, Wonkette. http://touch.wonkette.com/wonkette/#!/entry/screw-your-salmon-and-your-virgin-wilderness-alaska-america-hungers,51fc18b987443d6c8e5acedf

How is Congress wasting everyone’s time today, besides all of the usual ways? Oh, here’s a good one: “Congress pushes EPA on giant Pebble mine.” No, not giant pebbles, which are just normal-sided rocks, after all; they mean the proposed Pebble mine, in Alaska, which is going to be a fucking disaster! This is a particularly infuriating waste of time even by Congressional standards because 1) Congress doesn’t have the authority to force any particular decision on the EPA (thank Christmas), and 2) Congress (obviously) wants the mine to go ahead, because gold, and copper, and economy, and jerbs, even though VERY FEW PEOPLE who live around the proposed mine want it, the Indian tribes don’t want it, and if the fish and the curiously un-raped (sorry, non-non-consensually-sexed) ecosystem could talk we bet they would not want it either. But what does Rep. Paul “Science is a lie” Broun think of all this?

“A pre-emptive veto by EPA would set a dangerous precedent and could have a chilling effect on similar projects throughout the nation,” said Georgia Republican Rep. Paul Broun, who chaired the science and technology subcommittee hearing. “Investors would be wary of funding projects if they believed that a federal agency could just say no at any time prior to permit applications.”

Ha, we bet you were thinking he said something nutty, like “Almighty God put that metal in the earth and we won’t let Satan’s aquatic spawn keep us from it!” Well boo, he didn’t. Actually, we kind of like the sound of what he did say! Yes please, investors, be wary of investing in projects that will irrevocably ravage vast tracts of critical wildlife habitat!

<snip>

Do read up on this mine, it’s pretty scary — three miles wide, maybe 5,000 feet deep, acid seepage, vast amounts of toxic tailings and waste that will have to be retained behind earthen dams, and of course none of this has ever been done on this scale in this kind of environment. The peninsula upon which Pebble would sit is extremely seismically active, so it’s not at all hard to imagine one of these dams breaking and shit getting everywhere. Oh, and it’ll be smack in the middle of the Bristol Bay watershed, which happens to be the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world. But who needs fish when there are billions of dollars to be made, not a cent of which you’re ever likely to see?

<snip>

[pscot]

1. K&R

[Arctic Dave]

2. No pebble!!!

Salmon first!!!!

[Blue_In_AK]

3. What do congressmen from Georgia know about Alaska and salmon??

I was pretty appalled when I read about this hearing.

[SwankyXomb]

11. To be honest, Congressmen from Georgia

don't seem to know much about anything.

[jberryhill]

4. They spawn. They don't screw

How does one fuck a salmon?

[Blue_In_AK]

5. Are you being deliberately obtuse?

[jberryhill]

6. No, but I am kicking your thread

I'm sure everyone in Alaska and Washington know how to do it, but where I come from, we didn't have salmon, so I guess it's just something that wasn't part of my coming of age narrative.

[Blue_In_AK]

7. Thanks for the kick.

. Yes, if you lived here, you would know what a huge potential disaster this is and why it must be stopped now. If there were any justice in the world, the whole area would be protected, it's that important to the survival of wild Alaska salmon.

Not to mention the fact that if the earthen dam which is proposed to hold back the toxic waste (by some accounts to be taller than the Hoover Dam) were to collapse it could be really, really bad news for the Alaska Native villages downstream.

[jberryhill]

8. Yes, I got all that

It's the "screw your salmon" part that I don't get. They don't even mate that way.

[Blue_In_AK]

9. :).

Would you have preferred "fuck your salmon, Alaska"?

[jberryhill]

10. I ordered that at a restaurant once

The cream sauce was way too salty.

[Blue_In_AK]

14. You're a laugh a minute tonight.

[blkmusclmachine]

12. Jesus will take care of AK.

RIGHT?!?!

[Blue_In_AK]

13. I'm not so sure.

Contrary to popular belief, we're not all that religious up here. The latest figure I could find ranked us as 44th most church-going state in the union, so maybe Jesus couldn't care less about us. He might care about the salmon, though. If I remember my Bible correctly, he seemed to have a "thing" for fish and fishermen.

[MisterP]

16. they gotta map

[Blue_In_AK]

20. Nice map.

I guess that puts Alaska with such "churchy" states as Vermont and Nevada. I had no idea North Dakota was so religious. All Lutherans?

[MisterP]

21. ja--alle de lutherske svensker og nordmenn nt

[Blue_In_AK]

22. Funny, I don't know that language,

but somehow I can read it.

[MisterP]

23. Norwegian's just Danish anyway nt

[Enthusiast]

15. K&R!

This is so unnecessary.

[snagglepuss]

17. k & r

[AdHocSolver]

18. Corporations and Republicans promoting another ecological disaster.

Exxon-Valdez, BP and the Gulf of Mexico, Fukishima, and many more ecological disasters, which I can't think of right now, behind us, and these idiots want to create the conditions for new ones.

Some mining company wants to create new devastation in northern Wisconsin, and now a mining company wants to destroy the habitat of an important food source in Alaska.

I propose some experienced poster on DU create a group to contain threads of all the man-made disasters caused by corporate greed and incompetency in order to document how dangerous these corporations are to life on this planet. This group should contain threads that are researched and contain descriptions and data of the results of these disasters, ongoing effects, and what could have been done to mitigate the results.

This group might be called something like Man-Made Disasters and placed as a sub-group under Environment & Energy, and would serve to be a reference source for future posts commenting on corporate proposals like mines in Alaska and Wisconsin that would wreck the environment for the profit of a few.

K and R.

[bobthedrummer]

19. There is no more "Escape to Wisconsin" haven either Blue_In_AK