Olympic athletes just won’t know what snow is (with apologies to Dr. David Viner)
With the winter Olympics taking center stage of world media right now it of course becomes a potential on-camera political opportunity for anybody with an idea and a sandwich board. So, predictably, somebody tried to make the winter Olympics all about “climate change”….and failed. Nutty Bill McKibben gave his endorsement:
There’s only one teensy little problem…
Here’s the plea from an organization called protectourwinters.org
US SKI TEAM MEMBER ANDREW NEWELL & 105 WINTER OLYMPIANS CALL FOR CLIMATE ACTION
Today, US Ski Team member, 2014 Olympian Andrew Newell, 105 Olympians and Protect Our Winters released a statement calling on world leaders to take action on climate change and to prepare a commitment to a global agreement prior to the Paris climate talks in 2015.The letter has been signed by 105 Olympians from countries that include: The United States, Switzerland, Norway, Estonia, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Italy and Sweden. In addition to Newell, some of the 105 athletes include: US snowboarders Danny Davis and Arielle Gold, Switzerland’s Bettina Gruber, Norway’s Astrid Jacobsen and Italian ski jumper Elena Runggaldier.“Recognize climate change by reducing emissions, embracing clean energy and preparing a commitment to a global agreement at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris 2015.”
– See more at: http://protectourwinters.org/newell-2890#sthash.BxRf5tN0.dpuf
Among other things, it seems they are whining about the lack of snow at Sochi, a place where palm trees grow and climatically not that great of a place for a winter Olympics, but has been “geoengineered” as this news story tells us:
Freezing Sochi: how Russia turned a subtropical beach into a Winter Olympics wonderland
Sochi is not the most obvious place to host the Winter Olympics.
The Russian resort, on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, is humid and subtropical. Temperatures average out at about 52 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, and 75 degrees in the summer. Palm trees line the streets, and it’s the only part of Russia warm enough to grow tea leaves. In other words, it’s a lovely spot if you’re planning a beach holiday — Stalin had his favorite summer house there — but it wouldn’t be most people’s first choice for a ski trip.
…
So it shouldn’t come as much surprise that transforming Rosa Khutor into an Olympic venue has been a rapid, expensive process. It’s estimated that the cost of staging the Olympics in Sochi has been greater than the previous three Winter Games combined — ballooning to a whopping $51 billion. A sizable chunk of that money has gone to dealing with the “whims of the weather,” as a spokesperson for Sochi 2014 put it in an email to The Verge.
…
“There is almost no snow here — at the moment it’s raining,” says Olga Mironova, a local resident. That’s exactly the problem that derailed the last Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010 — buckets of snow had to be airlifted to top up the slushy covering on the hay bales that were being used to create artificial mounds in the tracks. Those emergency measures proved successful, but organizers admitted afterwards that they’d seriously underestimated the impact of climate change.
Apparently ‘climate change’ jumped in and made them choose a ridiculous venue at Sochi. Oy vey!
After McKibben made his tweet of support, a count of the list presented at http://protectourwinters.org was made, and summed up in this riposte:
105/2500 *100 = 4.2%
I can’t imagine why any athlete would want to be concerned with a political agenda that might deflect their concentration from the greatest moment of their lives. I’m surprised that even 4.2% of the winter Olympic athletes bothered.
Meanwhile, back in la-la land, we have this plea from Olympian organizer Andrew Newell
This year, while preparing for my third Olympic games in Sochi I had to ask myself: what’s changed? What has changed since that day in 1985 when I first experienced that thrill and came to love this sport? Thankfully, much is the same except there is no escaping that the once-consistent winters that I saw as a young kid are no more, especially near my home in Vermont.
Of course most of us know that athletes generally aren’t very smart when it comes to things outside their narrow field of expertise and training, but you’d think this “climatic community organizer” who says we have to “protect our winters” would at lease be able to do these two things:
1. Check the expected climatic conditions of Sochi
From Capital Weather Gang: The Games are being held during a stretch of the coastal city’s coldest winter stretch, with a daily average high of 49 degrees and low of 36 degrees Fahrenheit. Remarkably, Sochi’s daily average temperature values never drop below freezing at any time of the year. According to NASA, it’s the warmest host city for any winter Olympic games.
The daily average low (blue) and high (red) temperature with percentile bands (inner band from 25th to 75th percentile, outer band from 10th to 90th percentile. (WeatherSpark)
2. Check the weather report back home and snow depth in his home town of Bennington, Vermont:
Source: http://www.google.org/publicalerts/alert?aid=bb3a19e9321d2bc0&hl=en&gl=US&source=web
Source: http://www.weatherstreet.com/city_snow_depth/05201-Bennington-VT-snow-depth.htm
Eh, maybe not.
It seems the winter snow extent trend is on the rise in Northern hemisphere, from Rutgers snow lab:
Source: http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal.php?ui_set=nhland&ui_season=1
So tell me again, why do our winters need protection?
UPDATE: Dr. Luboš Motl weighs in: Sochi, swimming, climate, activism
For the last 30 years, I’ve lived in the area of the dark blue patch, just NW of the town of Newfane (Snow Analysis Map). This area has the highest snow load roof rating in the state of Vermont. It is a microclimate caused by the loft of the Green Mountain spine just to the West. Besides the nor’easters we also get a fair amount of Lake Effect snow from as far away as Buffalo. Over the years there has been a definite cycle in the amount and intensity of the winter storms. In the last few years they seem to be picking up again, but starting later in the season and going longer into the spring.
Doesn’t appear that Mr. Newell has been paying much attention to that cycle…
Go, Canada, go … !!!
Hope you neighbors catch up.
“I snowmobile in Vermont.”
I truly hate you snowmobilers. A menace to the eardrums, and the peace and quiet of nature. Only thing worse are the jet skiers.
OTOH, all that CO2 spewing is in my view a net positive.
Why don’t they host the winter olympics is Siberia?
pokerguy says:
February 12, 2014 at 6:28 am
“I snowmobile in Vermont.”
I truly hate you snowmobilers. A menace to the eardrums, and the peace and quiet of nature. Only thing worse are the jet skiers.
OTOH, all that CO2 spewing is in my view a net positive.
———————————————-
AMEN!!!!
If you listen to the announcers during the skiing/snowboarding events they keep referring to the warm temperatures causing poor conditions on the courses and a lot of slushy snow everywhere but not alluding to why and just letting your mind decide for itself why (even the athletes are careful to not criticize the poor surface conditions). If it weren’t for this post I wouldn’t have realized that they decided to host the winter Olympics at a subtropical resort not climatically suitable for snow. One would think that more thought would go into where the winter Olympics is allowed to be hosted in order to provide a high probability of good snow conditions, but I guess that politics and kickbacks are more important.
For 2010-2011 in Vermont:
It was the third snowiest ski season on record.
Nationally, skier visits were the second best on record, with the Northeast posting the biggest gains of any region in the country
http://business.transworld.net/65852/news/2010-11-best-ski-season-for-vermont-since-2004-05/
I am working in Sochi Olympic Games. Just a week before the games there were big snowfalls and more than 50cm of snow accumulated in several venues. In December temperature reached -13°C. Cold waves are fairly common, but not the norm. Doing the Olympics here was a risky choice in terms of climate. Too dependent on a lucky cold wave at the right time. The normal conditions of snow is melting, not accumulating, any time of the year, it only accumulates in short periods. Last year several competitions during the alpine skiing test event had to be cancelled due to lack of snow.
Informative snowfall sites for Vermont:
Historical Annual Snow Depth 1954-2014
Mount Mansfield, Vermont – Elevation 4393 ft
Enter Data Parameter = Total Snow Depth
http://www.uvm.edu/skivt-l/?Page=.%2Fmansel.php3&dir=.
Waterbury, Vermont – Elevation 495 ft
http://jandeproductions.com/snowfall.html
The cynic in me wonders if Sochi wasn’t chosen specifically so certain people could whine about the lack of snow. Nah, probably just kickbacks as Gibby says.
Mike.
A few basic facts, rather than spin, lies and bullshit:
1. The only events actually being held in Sochi itself are indoors: the ice hockey, figure skating, curling, track skating. All the ski-ing, both Alpine and Nordic, are held up in the mountains to the north. Ditto the bobsleigh, sliding disciplines and the ski jumping.
2. The mountains to the north of Sochi have 250cm+ at the top of the mountain and 70cm odd at the bottom. The pictures on the TV confirm this. So where the athletes need snow, there is oodles of it.
3. There is nothing unique about Sochi and its mountains. The Alpes Maritimes in France are as close to the Mediterranean as Krasnaya Polyana (the ski station for Sochi) is to the Black Sea. Piancavalo in Italy is identical.
Now a personal history: in 1990, I worked a winter in the Swiss Alps in what was one of the worst seasons on record until mid February: worse than 1964, which was saying something. At the end of my season, my CEO asked me what I thought about ‘global warming’. I said: ‘Think it’s getting warmer, but it’s one hell of a lot more complicated than people are making out’. I stick by that 24 years later….
That year: rain in the middle of December up to 3500m, washing away the entire snow base across the Alps; a high pressure lasting for 8 weeks through the festive period, January and early February destroying the tourist trade stone dead; +23C at 1600m on February 10th 1990, which might be regarded by some as ‘quite warm for February’.
Oh, and then we had two hurricanes bringing snow, rain and snow (1st one), with significant damage through landslides; and snow, snow and snow (2nd one) along with 250kph winds at 3500m, with lots of trees down. The first storm brought 4 metres of snow to large swathes of the French-, southern Swiss- and Italian Alps and, but for a bit of rain at the end to compact the snow, several ski stations would have been wiped off the map by deadly avalanches.
Then we had a normal March with a bit of snow and plenty of warmish sunshine. Finally, we had the snowiest April for years, with snow down to 1000m 15 days out of 25 (before I went home to UK).
The year before that was almost worse – the high pressure lasted 12 weeks, not 8 and in Scotland where I lived, the mountains had no snow until mid March (this year, there is 4 metres of snow near the tops of many of the Scottish mountains where drifting has built up the snowpack to record levels).
So all, in all, the only place on earth right now with seriously substandard snowpack is California, which until the 5ft dump last week was looking at a disastrous drought (it’s just a pretty bad one now).
Facts are usually in abeyance when climate politics come to the fore.
Sadly……..
“This year, while preparing for my third Olympic games in Sochi I had to ask myself: what’s changed?” says Olympian organizer Andrew Newell.
What’s changed? – You are in Sochi, “the Russian resort, on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, is humid and subtropical……it wouldn’t be most people’s first choice for a ski trip”.
Perhaps Andrew should stick to skiing (preferably somewhere it is likely to snow).
Pick humid subtropical climate location for hosting the Winter Olympics, and then get 4% of the athletes to sign a petition to do something about climate change. This sounds like a routine from a British comedy skit.
Friedman (and others) said, “If you put the government in charge of the Sahara, the next year there’d be a shortage of sand.”
Global warming causes more or less snow. Will Bill McKibben Tweet this??
NOAA snow and ice warning
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/fxc/ffc/graphicast/image_full6.gif
96% of Olympic skiers are smarter than 97% of climate scientists
The fact that you have become an Olympic Sporter doesn’t mean you have the intellectual capacity to determine the difference between reality and political propaganda.
Just put a microphone in their face and let them talk for a few minutes and you know what I’m talking about, intellectual capacity I mean.
Sports stars and Hollywood Stars, Pop Stars and the latest generation of Astronauts get nice contracts to play the role of Ambassador for the UN, WWF and GreenPeace.
Just follow the money.
RE: “David L. says:
February 12, 2014 at 6:28 am
Why don’t they host the winter olympics is Siberia?”
Minus seventy is a bit too cold for the figure skaters. They’d have to wear so many layers they’d look like giant pom-poms on skates. Not too graceful. On the other hand, it would hurt less when they fell down.
I [am] sure Putin agrees.
Ask them again when they get back to Atlanta: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-12/historic-catastrophic-winter-storm-paralyzes-atlanta-pax-creeps-east-coast
“I truly hate you snowmobilers. A menace to the eardrums, and the peace and quiet of nature.”
Oh, go hug a tree. I’d rather spend my money in Maine or New Hampshire anyway. The riding, snow, views, fees and laws are much better and more inviting there. You can keep your environmental utopia in Vermont.
<blockquote)Rhys Jaggar says:
A few basic facts, rather than spin, lies and bullshit:
1. The only events actually being held in Sochi itself are indoors: the ice hockey, figure skating, curling, track skating. All the ski-ing, both Alpine and Nordic, are held up in the mountains to the north.
Actually, the ski venue is in the mountains to the east. Basic facts, spin, etc..
Ten whole years?? WOW!
Chuckle.
Reminds me of something I heard on the national news a couple weeks ago, CBS, I think. The weather dude was saying that one place in the south was getting more snow than they’d seen in “1000 days”. He had to use days to make it sound longer and scarier than it really was. I guess 3 years wasn’t scary enough.
Let’s see a sub-tropical Eastern coastal region with Palm trees and a tea plantation. Yep that describes South Carolina not Vermont. (I will note that I am just now iced in here in SC)
Here is a picture from Alert, Nunavut, Canada, in the summer of 2012:
http://cawt.ca/photos/field-work-in-alert-nunavut/
If Alert ever applies for the Summer Olympics, I do hope the Olympic Committee seriously considers the bid in keeping with a rational and consistent approach to their decision-making.