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Earth

Ski Resorts Battle For a Future as Snow Declines in Climate Crisis (theguardian.com) 255

After promising early dumps of snow in some areas of Europe this autumn, the pattern of recent years resumed and rain and sleet took over. From a report: In the ski resorts of Morzine and Les Gets in the French Alps, the heavy rainfall meant that full opening of resorts was delayed until two days before Christmas, leaving the industry and the millions of tourists planning trips to stare at the sky in hope. But no amount of wishing and hoping will overcome what is an existential threat to skiing in the Alps, an industry worth $30bn that provides the most popular ski destination in the world.

The science is clear, and is spelled out in carefully weighed-up peer reviewed reports. The most recent, this year, warned that at 2C of global heating above pre-industrial levels, 53% of the 28 European resorts examined would be at very high risk of a scarce amount of snow. Scarce snow has been defined as the poorest coverage seen on average every five years between 1961 and 1990. If the world were to hit 4C of heating, 98% of the resorts would be at very high risk of scarce snow cover. Another study has revealed the way in which snow cover in the Alps has had an "unprecedented" decline over the past 600 years, with the duration of the cover now shorter by 36 days.

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Ski Resorts Battle For a Future as Snow Declines in Climate Crisis

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  • Sweden and Finland joined, so there is enough snow in Europe now.
    • by skam240 ( 789197 )

      Your joke would actually make sense if it was the EU they were joining and not NATO which has never been exclusively European.

  • If this decline is over 600 years then is it reasonable to expect to reverse or halt it by changing our behaviour now? After all, for most of that 600 years it can't have been human activity making an impact.

    • Bad reporting, see my reply above. The decline is compared to 600 years ago, it has only occurred in the last 185 or so.

      • Thank you. I read The Guardian article and suspected it was wrong in some way but I don't have access to the paywalled Nature article to check.

  • Crisis! (Score:2, Funny)

    by groobly ( 6155920 )

    OMG, whatever will we do?

    • Vote for the second coming of Jesus in the next election of course. And in case Jesus isn't available, vote for whichever candidate is the most holy. Or sanctimonious.

      • Re: Crisis! (Score:5, Informative)

        by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @03:57PM (#64107031) Journal
        And in case Jesus isn't available, vote for whichever candidate is the most holy.

        Candidate A is a practicing Catholic, goes to church every Sunday, has been married to the same woman for 45 years (after his first wife was killed in a car accident), and hasn't raped anyone.

        Candidate B used a Sharpie to sign bibles, can't name a single commandment, has been married three times and cheated on all three wives, and has raped at least one woman.

        Clearly candidate B is the superior candidate.
        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Just ask yourself which of the two candidates more resembles a loud, primitive, scum tele-evangelist and you can easily see that candidate B is at least a much better cultural fit.

  • by tchetch ( 6418204 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @01:27PM (#64106681)

    Kill the rich is always a good solution. In that particular case, climate crisis, the richest 1% produce 16% of CO2. As guillotine is carbon neutral, we can save the earth ( https://www.oxfam.org/en/press... [oxfam.org] ).

    • Re:Kill the rich (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sonlas ( 10282912 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @02:29PM (#64106855)

      Kill the rich is always a good solution. In that particular case, climate crisis, the richest 1% produce 16% of CO2.

      Nice idea, but wrong analysis.

      The richest 1% emit 16% of the CO2. Interestingly, the poorest 66% also emit 16% of the CO2. Which means that all of them combined emit a mere 32% of the CO2.
      Simple math tells us that the average Joe and Jane (of which you are most likely a part of), which consists of the remaining 33% of the world population, emit ~67% of the CO2. Read again: 32% of the world population emit 67% of the CO2.

      What happens if you kill the 1% richest? You still emit 100-16=84% of the CO2: still too much.
      What happens if you klill the 66% poorest? You still emit 100-16=84% of the CO2: still too much.
      Here is an idea: what happens if you klill the 66% poorest AND the 1% richest? You still emit 100-16-16=68% of the CO2: STILL TOO MUCH.
      Oh wait, what happens if we kill the average 32% people (of which you are, again, most likely a part of): You emit only 100-67=33% of the CO2. I don't know about you, but from a pure mathematical perspective, this is the best solution to put in place if you insist on killing anyone. This solution means less killing and more impact on CO2 reductions.

      But hey, this is purely an imaginative scenario. Turns out that people who want to kill others as a mean to solve any crisis, tend to be quite shy when they realize they will be the ones having to die.

      • Yep but killing 77000 people is less of a deal than killing 7999923000 people.

        • But killing 77000 people (even if those are the top 1%) will have no noticeable effect.
          However, killing the middle 32%, which is ~2.5 billion people, will have a tredemendous effect (68% less CO2 emissions, enough to solve the climate crisis for the short/mid term).
          Killing the bottom 66%, which is ~5.5 billion people, is also useless: it will have no noticeable effect.

          If you insist on killing people, the most reasonable thing to do is really to kill the middle 32%. You can start with your own relatives, see

          • Re: Kill the rich (Score:4, Insightful)

            by sound+vision ( 884283 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @09:57PM (#64107931) Journal

            No, the most reasonable thing is still to start from the top and work downwards until you have reached your goal. Assuming your goal is to maximize emission reductions with the minimum amount of deaths. Did you fail math, or do you have a different goal than everyone else in the conversation? Serious question, but I don't expect an answer.

  • For decades, oil companies have been gaslighting everyone about emissions. Take it up with them. Sue them for loss of business.
    • Tax not sue.
      Big oil, ICE cars, airlines, meat.
      Tax the fuck out of them.

      Needs politicians with balls.

      So won't happen.
      • Tax not sue. Big oil, ICE cars, airlines, meat. Tax the fuck out of them. Needs politicians with balls. So won't happen.

        Politicians need to get elected. That is why it won't happen.

      • We live in a democracy, not a dictatorship. A politician can't impose an unpopular policy without losing his job sooner, rather than later.

        • by hey! ( 33014 )

          Except when it comes to presidents, in which case we live in a democratic-*ish* republic. If we elected presidents by popular vote we would almost certainly have had drastically different climimate policies since the turn of the century.

          • Maybe yes, maybe no.

            If we were to move to a popular vote system to elect the president, I would hope there would be a runoff or ranked choice system so that Bill Clinton in 92 can't squeek out a win with 43 pct cuz Bush and Perot each grabbed up less (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_presidential_election).

            In such a scenario, several things would be different to how 2000 went down:
            1. More campaign spending in lost-cause areas (blue parts of red states and red parts of blue states) that mak

            • by hey! ( 33014 )

              Well, the electoral college system gave the race to Clinton anyway, so the results weren't better from your perspective than a popular election.

              In any case political scientists now largely think Perot didn't throw the election to Clinton; based on exit polling Perot voters were actually pretty evenly split between Bush and Clinton as their second choice; only two states were swung by Perot, and in opposite directions: Arizona to Clinton and Nevada to Bush, resulting in a gain of only 4 EVs for Bush.

              Of cours

              • Indeed. Which is why I look askance at the claim that the electoral college system (or the apportionment of the Senate) or at-large voting (as opposed to defined districts) in city council elections are somehow less democratic than plausible alternatives.

                My own personal, subjective, opinion is that having a system that strongly protects minority rights and requires broad consensus for big shakeups is a better idea than a system that is more responsive to the whims of the moment or allows a small majority to

                • electoral college system

                  ok

                  or the apportionment of the Senate

                  Alright

                  are somehow less democratic than plausible alternatives

                  But they are, there's no two ways about it. You can like those things, you can argue for them and justify them but you cannot deny that they are undemocratic, especially the electoral college which the minority rights argument has absolutely zero to do with is the most red herring argument that ever gets brought up.

                  Me personally, I am aging into just the opposite. Blow up the state borders, expand the house, do all districting and state lines algorithmically. Is that a fantasy? Absolutely but th

  • This is nothing. The rich will get REALLY cranky when golf courses turn brown because it's too hot, and water is too expensive.

    • Nice thing about water is it rains down from the sky. No amount of global warming short of a killer asteroid boiling the oceans off clean is going to stop water from evaporating in the tropics and condensing at mid-latitudes.

    • by laughingskeptic ( 1004414 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @02:26PM (#64106851)
      The rich will not notice -- their exclusive courses will pay for the expensive water ... if we ever get around to making water expensive. In much of the US making water expensive for the rich requires discarding ridiculous "first to claim" historical water rights and there is no sign that our governments are ready to switch to a more rational approach to water rights such as basing them on the contribution of the land itself. California gets 58% of the Colorado River water, yet only has 8% of the river frontage and much less in relative watershed contribution. A rational allotment would give California a small fraction of what it gets via its ridiculous "First Claim" rights.

      Down in Cabo San Lucas the golf courses in the desert are irrigated with desalinized water created by the resorts. Expensive water has not put an end to golf there.
      • A rational allotment would give California a small fraction of what it gets via its ridiculous "First Claim" rights.

        If California were rational then they'd be building nuclear power plants and seawater desalination.

        • We could also start thinking about figuring out a rational economy that doesn't depend on eternal population growth.

          If a region can only sustain a human population by large-volume desalination and nuclear power plants, maybe it's not 'habitable' at the scale we're attempting.

  • Not the ever so important ski resorts! The world needs those! /s

  • by Daina.0 ( 7328506 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @02:33PM (#64106865)

    Many ski resorts in Utah opened early this year. Alta has more snow this early in the season than anytime I can remember. Weather in Europe != climate. Weather in Utah != climate either.

  • I’ve lived in Minnesota around 50 years now and this is the first time lakes froze completely over to about 4” and have now lost about half their ice and have open water with birds swimming in it. Three days of around 50 degrees and heavy rain and I’ve got green growing grass and weeds coming up and it’s almost January. The difference of just a few degrees pushes the jet stream and we get southern air which means 2-3 inches of rain instead of 1-3 feet of snow. I’ve seen the
    • by JBMcB ( 73720 )

      Great lakes region dweller here. I've seen balmy winters with zero snow accumulation, and dangerously early springs going back to the 80's. I've also seen winters that drop below freezing in late December and stays that way until April, as recently as eight years ago.

      • Sure, but when have you seen this low snow accumulations across the state combined with unfrozen ground throughout much of the central and southern areas this late? A few balmy days, a holiday without snow, maybe, but lakes frozen to 4” fully melted by the holidays and completely unfrozen ground isn’t normal. If the warmth keeps up like it is for the next week, I’ll have to mow my lawn in January.
  • ...that the end of the "global warming" is an Ice Age, right?

    I mean, they'll have millions of kilometers to snow on.

    Just wait for it.

    • by Ksevio ( 865461 )

      I'm guessing a lot of ski resorts can't afford to wait 10,000 years for the next ice age

  • by MacMann ( 7518492 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @03:17PM (#64106955)

    Is there any consideration for building nuclear power plants yet? No? Okay then, don't tell me that there is some climate crisis.

    The usual repay to any mention of the need for nuclear fission is that wind and solar power is cheaper and faster to build. Okay then, DO NOT TELL ME THERE IS A CLIMATE CRISIS!

    If the solution is to keep doing as we are doing, except maybe more quickly, then that is not a crisis. That is an inconvenience. It might suck that we aren't building solar PV and windmills fast enough but if these are already cheaper than coal, nuclear, natural gas, or whatever, then it is only a matter of sitting back and letting market forces do what they do. If wind and solar were cheaper than any fossil fuels then anybody stupid enough to drill for petroleum and natural gas would simply go out of business. But that is not what we are seeing, is it? As nuclear power plants close we see demand, and profits, rise on fossil fuels.

    To oppose nuclear fission in the middle of a "climate crisis" is to say nuclear power is a greater threat than any global warming that could come from not using nuclear fission. That tells me that global warming is nothing to fear, because nuclear fission is nothing to fear. Nuclear fission is as safe as wind and solar power. Don't believe me? Then tell me just how nuclear fission compares to wind and solar on safety. How many people were injured and killed from nuclear fission per unit of energy versus that of wind and solar? I already have a very good idea on the numbers but I want anyone opposing nuclear fission to give me their own sources. Can you make your case that global warming is preferable to nuclear fission? I doubt anyone can make a good case that solar is preferable to nuclear fission.

    I feel a need to specify "nuclear fission" every time I bring up something that turns uranium or thorium into useful energy because there will always be the usual two replies. One reply is how solar power is nuclear power, because we have this big glowing nuclear reactor above us in the sky. The other nonsense reply is how if we only figure out nuclear fusion then all of our problems would be solved. Nuclear fission provides today what nuclear fusion promises in the future.

    • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @05:18PM (#64107205) Homepage Journal

      It's not the environmentalists holding back nuclear power, it's the capitalists. When they figured out that nuclear power wasn't as profitable as coal, they build coal plants instead. When they figured out that coal wasn't as profitable as natural gas, they built natural gas plants instead of coal and gave themselves a big green pat on the back. But green, blue, or black, what gets built is what makes the greatest economic profit, which is why Texas with its deregulated grid is the leading state for *wind* power. The low financing costs of wind power makes it especially attractive if you don't factor in grid stability when you're licensing power plants.

      It's no accident that France, a country that gets almost 2/3 of its electricity from nuclear, built its nuclear fleet under a socialist government. The socialists didn't care if the plants they were building weren't going to make what economists call a "normal profit" (i.e., even if the plants made a small profit they'd be an *economic* loss when you count the financing costs). France built their nukes as a national security measure in response to the OPEC oil embargo. They no more expected those nukes to make an economic profit than the US expects a carrier battle group to pay for itself.

      So, short of electing a socialist government, what we really need to do to make nuclear competitive is to charge fossil fuel electric plants the cost of their pollution.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      How stupid and disconnected.

  • by PPH ( 736903 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @04:04PM (#64107045)

    ... the snow boarders for scraping all the snow to the bottom of the slope.

  • by ruddk ( 5153113 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @04:29PM (#64107089)

    I have been to a few ski resorts in Germany where they have mountain bike trails and downhill as well
    Some of the locals aren’t too happy and spits after you others welcome the new business opportunity.

  • Garbage reporting (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RogueWarrior65 ( 678876 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @04:39PM (#64107111)

    "The science is clear, and is spelled out in carefully weighed-up peer reviewed reports."
    Translation: The royal 'we' have deemed the 'science' 'clear' and don't you dare doubt it because it's "spelled out" (meaning: you're too stupid to comprehend it) in 'weighed-up' (I'm sorry, what?) reports (that we don't list so you can't read them for yourself). Just trust us because we know better than you, heathen.

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Just go on google scholar and search for review articles, for Pete's sake. It's not that hard [google.com].

    • And if they're speaking to you... their positioning is probably valid.

    • "The science is clear, and is spelled out in carefully weighed-up peer reviewed reports."
      Translation: The royal 'we' have deemed the 'science' 'clear' and don't you dare doubt it because it's "spelled out" (meaning: you're too stupid to comprehend it) in 'weighed-up' (I'm sorry, what?) reports (that we don't list so you can't read them for yourself). Just trust us because we know better than you, heathen.

      Translation: LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU! LALALA GLOBAL WARMING SO FAKE!

  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @04:39PM (#64107115)

    Who gives a fuck about some poor saps getting flooded, but won't someone think of the ski resorts?

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      It is called a "warning sign". The ressorts themselves are immaterial except in stupid journalism. The actual scientists looking at this are collecting indicators and this is a rather strong one. Will, of course, not convince the flat-earthers and anti-vaxxers.

  • Oh, no, where will all the rich WASPs go to spend the Winter weekends now?
  • I know something is up, and I don't have to look further than my driveway to observe it. I have not shoveled snow yet this season, and today it is 7 degrees C. I live in northern Canada.

    This ain't right. It's not just unseasonably warm - this is alarming. Next spring the fire season is going to make 2022 look meek. There's no end in sight. Usually it's a coin flip as to whether we have snow on Halloween. Now we're staring into a January of brown grass and a dustbowl summer. No pit fires, camp fires, or BBQs

  • Who needs to go skiing anyway? It's not exactly an activity that is absolutely necessary, although it does have some positive benefits, however. For example, it rid the world of that ass hat Sonny Bono. But seriously, would the apocalypse come that much sooner if wealthy people could no longer go skiing where or as often as they used to? In fact, that might actually be a net benefit to humanity. I thought the craziest thing I could do is ride a motorcycle, which is something I did for thirty-five years

    • I suppose you have a point... but it's kind of like having a pack of wolves laying siege to the house next door, and thinking. "That's fine. I don't like that guy anyway."

Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so that the pens will multiply instead of disappear.

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