While the squabbling continues on MSNBC (see Bill Nye here and Morano with the American Progress guy here, and by all means don’t miss this Olberman rant ) over whether the big Washington DC snow means anything, the venue of the argument is about to shift west. The argument may stop in Dallas, TX along the way west.
The Times reports: Too much snow forces Scottish resort to close
One of the low elevation Vancouver skiing venues (Cypress Mountain) is short on snow this year due to El Nino, and the Global Warming machine is soon going to saturate the news with this story. It has already started and is ramping up.
VANCOUVER, B.C. — One morning last week, environmentalist David Suzuki looked across English Bay from his Vancouver home to Cypress Mountain, usually covered in snow this time of year but now left all but bare by a warm winter.
“I’ve watched in horror as the snow has just melted away from Cypress Mountain,” Suzuki said, referring to the 2010 Olympic Games snowboarding and freestyle skiing venue. The view from Vancouver, Suzuki and others say, provides a glimpse into the future for the Winter Olympics.
Cypress Mountain (yellow insert) from NASA’s Earth Observatory
UPDATE: Image above and NASA Earth Observatory writes:
In early February 2010, organizers were putting the finishing touches on venues for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia. Two months earlier, on December 6, 2009, the Thematic Mapper Plus on NASA’s Landsat 7 satellite captured a detailed image of the area where the games will be held.
The image on the left provides a view of the area from Vancouver northward to the Whistler skiing village. Areas outlined in yellow delineate close-up views on the right. The top close-up shows venues near the village of Whistler, where Nordic and alpine skiing events will be held. The bottom close-up shows Cypress Mountain, the planned venue for freestyle skiing and snowboarding, among other events.
Throughout the scene, snow blankets the highest peaks, and low-angled sunlight illuminates south-facing slopes while leaving north-facing slopes in shadow. Valleys and lower slopes are lush green. The venues near Whistler appear as patchworks of green forest interrupted by long, thin trails of snowy white. Just north of the city of Vancouver, Cypress Mountain also holds snowy ski trails, but overall has far less snow.
After unusually warm conditions in January 2010, snow remained scarce on Cypress Mountain. The Los Angeles Times reported that snow was being trucked to Cypress Mountain from higher elevations, and Vancouver Now reported that organizers had placed tubes filled with dry ice on courses to keep surrounding snow from breaking down. A surprise snowstorm struck on February 10, just two days before the games opened, boosting the snowpack. The snowstorm did not, however, change the short-term forecast for rain.
Never mind that most of the ski areas in the world are having excellent seasons, including other Olympic venues like Whistler – which has already received over 1,000 cm of snow this winter. Arizona Snowbowl has received 238 inches of snow this winter! You read that correctly – Arizona.
Squaw Valley, California (site of the 1960 Winter Olympics) is reporting at least 10 feet of snow on the ground. Ski conditions around Salt Lake City (site of the 2002 Olympics) are excellent. Wolf Creek, Colorado is reporting close to ten feet on the ground. European ski areas are reporting excellent snow. Pajarito Mountain, New Mexico is reporting one of their best ski seasons ever. North Carolina ski areas are reporting some of their best conditions ever. Scotland is reporting the best ski conditions in 50 years. Washington DC is shut down due to snow.
Most of the ski areas in British Columbia have excellent snow, but be assured that the press will highlight the one area which doesn’t – and will not provide a sensible explanation for the cause. They will blame it on global warming, and will intentionally ignore ski conditions in most of the globe.
The glass is 10% empty, not 90% full.
Climate change blamed for Olympic snow shortage
Winter snow season has been slowly shrinking in past 50 years, says researcher
This graphic might help some people understand the winter weather patterns in an El Nino year. Same thing happened in 1998. Note where Vancouver is: in the warm pattern.
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You have to live in Vancouver to know that this is normal and even more so when there is an El Nino. I don’t know many people here in BC that take Suzuki seriously anyway… why now?
I’ve actually been surprised this hasn’t been trumpeted any sooner than now. Likely the ongoing snowstorm in D.C. is dampening the lack-of-snow-means-global-warming “news.”
El Nino’s are meant to give milder winters in the UK, this one has been anything but mild. Scotland has its coldest ever December-January pairing. Sorry, coldest ever on record.
The canal down’t road has been iced up since mid December.
So? Cypress Mountain isn’t one of the tallest peaks in the world
Top elevation: 1440 m / 4724 ft. Base elevation: 910 m / 2985 ft
and it is quite close to open water. Organizers should have had an alternative. Using helicopters to bring in snow is news worthy. The snow resorts with snow – that’s not alarming. And the media, mostly, and the AGW crowd will make of it what they can.
The thought about organizers having and alternative – they should have given the Goracle plane tickets and free passes.
David Suzuki is trapped by his ego. Too stupid to admit he may be wrong, he keeps on barking up the same tree. Within a few years he and his kind including Al Gore – the carbon Wh-re will start their back down.
Hopefully the silly Carbon trading market will have fallen flat on it’s face and left Gore and the other opportunists scrambling to fund their retirement pensions.
I can dream anyway.
Another good Whistler page is http://www.whistlerblackcomb.com/weather/stats/index.htm – new record snowfall for Nov/Dec/Jan over a rather short period. In 04/05 they only had 2.5m, this year they’ve had 9.9m.
If snowfall correlates with warming, that’s one heck of a warm up. 🙂 If it doesn’t, that’s one heck of an example of why one shouldn’t try to link climate with snowfall, it’s just too variable.
I’ve lived in New England for 35 years and still haven’t seen a normal winter. 🙂
The snows in decline,you cant hide it. It’s worse than we thought
When the average person can see the record cold and snow elsewhere the global warming machine only continues to destroy what little if any credibility they have left. Sickening thing is their media frenzy is often paid for by our taxes!
He might be trapped by his ego, but isn’t he the guy that wants to lock up and/or shoot sceptics ? Stupid can still be deadly.
So snow in DC and no snow in one area in BC are both signs of GW?
I wish these guys could get their stories right.
Step # 1: obtain soapbox. Step #2:stand on soapbox. Step # 3, …..
I just left this as comment #14 over at Climate Progress under his 11 February post about the winter olympics:
This is a pathetic portrayal of our climate. Having served as a state climatologist for 20 years I’m stunned to see what goes on here at Climate Progress. Global warmism is beginning to look much like McCarthyism in the 50s. Everything is exaggerated by a factor of 10. We will likely look back at this period of our history 10 to 20 years from now with considerable embarrassment.
I agree with twawki, they will do this (saw in Guardian that ‘Canada’ was exceptionally hot!), but it will fly back at them. Its like reading a media story on a subject you are familiar with, and seeing all the glaring errors/biases. The smart advocates will just try to balance it against the cold elsewhere (which is correct), but most aren’t that smart.
Suzuki whose Foundation’s chairman is green peddler extraordinaire Hoggan founder of… Desmogblog…
Last year the same area had about 3 ft of snow at sea level, a feast that did not happen for almost 40 years according to locals! And Suzuki was nowhere to clear driveways… LOL
Einstein spent the last 30 years of his life in a futile quest for a Theory of Everything. Global warming proponents have now succeeded where Einstein failed. Everything from heat to cold, rain or snow to drought, and sun to shade can now be explained by The Theory of Global Warming. Quite an accomplishment.
It just might make more sense to helicopter the contestants over the hill to where the snow is, eh? Wasn’t there an old tale told about bringing the mountain to Mohammed being the wrong solution? This seems a bit silly but I’d wager well that the problem has more to do with camera angles and hotel reservations than taking the athletes to where the snow is.
Cold is never due to an excess of energy, as Bill Nye claims. Cold is (by definition) the absence of energy.
Adjacent to the BC coast range in Washington and Oregon we have seen an increase in snowpack over the past 33 years back to 1976 as seen here for a composite of 83 snotel/survey sites in the Cascade Mtns as measured on 1 April of each year:
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/marka/swe.waor_west.1976-2008.gif
The cheapest trick in the Global Warming book: Report an unusual warm & dry place to everywhere but the place where it is happening.
You don’t want the people who actually live in Vancouver to tell the world that this happens during an El Nino, and it’s part of the deal.
You want as many places in the US to think that the big snow & cold they are experiencing is happening ONLY in thier neck of the woods, while the rest of the nation or whatever is broiling.
In 1986 Whistler hosted the World Cup skiing competition. They worried and sweated then too about conditions being too warm.
I’ve skied Cypress both in drizzle and at -10C (about the coldest it gets there). Cypress and Grouse (the other low elevation ski hill in Vancouver) are always a crap shoot for good snow. I can’t imagine why they would have chosen Cypress.
That’s why Whistler was developed an hour out of the city back in the 1970’s. The top of the runs at Whistler are almost 7,500 feet elevation and the village below is about 2,100 feet. Usually you go from powder at the peak to slush or ice at the base (the transition can be nasty if you get ice).
Hurry, hurry, move the olympics to Scotland !
I can attest to the snow in Dallas but I don’t know that we’re ready to host the Winter Olympics. It’s 1:10 a.m. and I just got finished towing my kids around our neighborhood using a Jeep, a rope and one of those round disc/sled thingies. It’s the Texas version of sledding since we don’t have much in the way of hills to speak of and rarely have snow deep enough to even think about something like this. Don’t worry, tomorrow’s a snow day and the kiddos (and I) will sleep in.
Man I love this global warming!
I’m confused. Global warming caused record snows on the East Coast, but not enough snow at low elevations on the West Coast, record rain in SoCal, and what else? And El Nino doesn’t count, or does it?
Global warming is causing increased tree growth, but the CRU crew had to hide the decline in tree growth. Which is it?
No matter what happens, global warming caused it. Why did the Saints win the Super Bowl? Easy, it was global warming. Why is Congress packed with numbskulls? Ditto.
Global warming is like a god. Good and evil, birth and death, whatever happens to mice and men, global warming did it. Why has the world gone stark raving mad? You know the answer.
The endless snarking about how recent cold and snow “disproves” the AGW hypothesis really does tend to undermine a properly reasoned skeptical critique and rebuttal of this “Cargo Cult Science” bilge.
There were periods of miserable (even killing) hot weather during the Little Ice Age in Europe and North America – of which anyone well-read in military history knows quite well; consider the temperatures prevalent on the field during the Battle of Monmouth (28 June 1778) as an example – and it understood that periods of extreme cold and heavy snowfall can occur even over relatively large areas during a sustained regime of warming.
Though to consider anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions as a forcing factor in “climate change” consisting of cooling is a helluva stretch.
Extraordinary assertions such as this one require extraordinary support, and insofar as I’ve been able to determine, the Watermelon warmists have got about as much support for this wowzer as did Jonathon Swift’s flying island of Laputa.
I think we need to stick to that instead of gloating about how the snow has paralyzed Mordor-on-the-Potomac.
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The New Zealand Ski industry is gearing up for bigger numbers. Fairly big investments in infrastructure and air connections.
Kiwis are a bunch of pragmatists who can see through the BS. There is some pandering to the political correct police for the media’ssake. My general feeling in NZ is that most feel that cap and trade is a pointless exercise and we can manage our own future without the help of some political scientists in another hemisphere. The major political parties can’t quite see this though.
I’d really like to ask any politician how they are going to measure the ROI of cap and trade and feed that back to the public in a transparent manner. Hell freezes over meantime…
OT, I don’t know if the Agitprop movie The Age of Stupid is on general release worldwide, http://www.ageofstupid.net
but I find the title somewhat titillating..