Guest essay by Eric Worrall
They can’t help themselves, their models predict a level of warming which would melt most of the snow.
Is skiing dead due to global warming?
Dear EarthTalk: With the onset of global warming, how likely is it that ski resorts and skiing itself might soon become a thing of the past?
— Mandy Billings, Provo, UT
Last winter’s low snow year and unseasonably warm temperatures across much of the American West meant a bad year for business for some ski resorts, and also left many of us wondering whether skiing would even be possible in the warmer world we’re getting as we continue to pump out greenhouse gases.
“Our recent modeling suggests that under a high emissions scenario, skiing could be very limited to non-existent in parts of the country by the end of this century, particularly in lower elevations — such as the northeast, Midwest and lower mountains around the West,” says Cameron Wobus, lead author on a 2017 study projecting climate change impacts on skiing across the U.S. “Things look better mid-century, so this dire future for skiing isn’t imminent — and things also look much better under a more aggressive greenhouse gas mitigation scenario, so this future also isn’t inevitable.”
…
The abstract of Wobus’ 2017 report;
Projected climate change impacts on skiing and snowmobiling: A case study of the United States
Cameron Wobus, Eric E. Small, Heather Hosterman, David Mills, Justin Stein, Matthew Rissing, Russell Jones, Michael Duckworth, Ronald Hall, Michael Kolian, Jared Creason, Jeremy Martinich
We use a physically-based water and energy balance model to simulate natural snow accumulation at 247 winter recreation locations across the continental United States. We combine this model with projections of snowmaking conditions to determine downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, and snowmobiling season lengths under baseline and future climates, using data from five climate models and two emissions scenarios. Projected season lengths are combined with baseline estimates of winter recreation activity, entrance fee information, and potential changes in population to monetize impacts to the selected winter recreation activity categories for the years 2050 and 2090. Our results identify changes in winter recreation season lengths across the United States that vary by location, recreational activity type, and climate scenario. However, virtually all locations are projected to see reductions in winter recreation season lengths, exceeding 50% by 2050 and 80% in 2090 for some downhill skiing locations. We estimate these season length changes could result in millions to tens of millions of foregone recreational visits annually by 2050, with an annual monetized impact of hundreds of millions of dollars. Comparing results from the alternative emissions scenarios shows that limiting global greenhouse gas emissions could both delay and substantially reduce adverse impacts to the winter recreation industry.
Read more: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378016305556
I suspect the repeated absurd “end of snow” predictions, regularly switched to claims that global warming causes MORE snow and colder winters whenever the Northern Hemisphere gets a good dump, will be the final undoing of the climate movement.
It is just too obvious that they appear to be making it up as they go.
In Australia there has been the same ludicrous switching from “This is the end of snow” predictions to the equally ludicrous “global warming causes more snow and colder winters”, whenever there has been a good fall of cover in winter over the Ski-Resorts in the Victorian and NSW Alpine areas. People are beginning to notice, especially as it has been a cold start to a summer that was predicted to be a ‘scorcher’ by the Alarmists.
I agree with all this. I remember about 20 years ago (?) they said skiing at Mt Bulla would be over ”very soon” ……What happened?…nothing happened. Now they are going to stretch the dooms day out to the end of the century. What a surprise.
Hot summer? As sure as the sun rises in the morning, the start of every single summer, including this one, now comes with a warning from the BOM that it’s going to be above average, a scorcher, dangerously hot, blah blah. So far we have not had more than 1 or 2 days close to 30. A very late start! I work out doors every day and I have not seen the really hot northerly winds since the 80’s. Even 2016/17 was not as bad as 89. It has got to the stage now where I have become so cynical that I don’t believe anything any more. I think most of this garbage is just made blindly presumed.
However, I wish I observed people beginning to take notice like you but I haven’t yet.
“It is just too obvious that they appear to be making it up as they go.”
Someone in a restaurant in France tried give me the GW makes more snow line. When I pointed out saying more snow, less snow and anything in between were predicted was a pretty facile argument he sort of went “oh yeah, I suppose you’re right”.
So he was honest enough to see the contradiction once pointed out but sadly needed it pointing out.
Folks watch telly and believe what they are told.
The non problem was made worse by BOM using truncated lower readings for minima.
They set the card reader to a minimum of minus 10C which meant there was an artificial error that showed minima were rising.
http://joannenova.com.au/2017/08/scandal-australian-bureau-of-meteorology-caught-erasing-cold-temperatures/
So this threw out their frecictions anyway, or more exactly, confirmed them so they did not check the instruments.
Likely the alpine readers were similarly compromised.
the snow in Australia is getting better year buy year.
Great ski season in Kiwiland this past year. Must remind my partner to get her season ticket At Mt Dobson last month. Had the US Olympic team using its slopes two years ago during the US summer.
nicholas, in Europe most of the people and majority of , already given up in the meaning of actual reality and measurements.
We in Europe had the most scorching summer this years, because these stupid insane guys told any one else here so, through the MSM, regardless that the thermometer readings, all over the place, were somewhere or somewhat as much as 10C lower than the proclaimed armagedon man-made warming scaring the shit out of ppl, as per the means propagated by the dupes of MSM anyhow.
Is not any more a question of science and data, or somehow the reality, in that respect… it is more in the lines of the what red comisars tell to the rest of ppl, and what expected by the rest to respond to as expected.
As far as I can tell, most in Europe had a very scorching summer this year, because that what these people were told by MSM here, even when actually thermometers all over the place still had clear readings and recordings of temps being at least 10C lower than claimed, at any time this scorching supposed to have happened.
But hey, this is the thing, this thing when ppl accept the reality as served by the very latest red comisar’s
MSM crop, the best ever so far,
regardless of reality, or the way of science, so to speak…The red comisars bolshevik reality must rule the rust …
God have mercy on all of us as there no much else to pray for at the prospect of such as an insane stupidity…
Maybe a bit too harsh, maybe rightfully so, but hey is what seams clearly to be the problem, and in the same time;
sorry to any one, that this comment may hurt or be hurting the feelings…
cheers
Ski resorts and the winter recreational industry in general, will be shut down due to the lack of energy long before they need to be shuttered due to a lack of snow.
The Washington Cascades are getting inches of snow tonight, 12/22/18.
Ski areas will be busy tomorrow, if folks can get there. The Department of Transportation tries to keep up, but if an accident happens (when one happens) the snow can get ahead of the plows.
They are in good cheer up there.
A Merry Christmas on the slopes!
Time, I think, for this again:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/6/19/here-come-de-heap-big-warmy.html
And meanwhile the local ski resorts are expanding as quickly are they can get approval from everyone… https://www.onthesnow.com/utah/open-resorts.html
New resort called Eagle Point, five hour fifty one minute drive from airport!
Yes, if they truly believed the narrative and were really concerned about emissions, then ski resorts would be closing, but instead they are expanding, building high speed lifts, gondolas (to protect from the elements, making the ascent warmer and faster), adding parking garages and larger lots, etc.
I took a survey of one of my favorite areas the other day and most of the newest lifts are diesel powered. The parking lot was full of diesel and gasoline powered vehicle (most EV’s do not handle cold an snow that well). I didn’t see one skier or boarder walking or biking to the resort. There were a quite a few people arriving by a local diesel powered bus, however.
They wouldn’t offer travel packages to fly in from places afar, encouraging air travel, but alas they are just hypocrites like the rest of greenies.
“Projected climate change impacts on skiing”……
Gee, I guess I should cancel my skiing trip to Florida..
Just take lots of wax.
This is better than we feared. Let us just hope the hype sticks, which means: Fewer visitors to ski destinations, hopefully resulting in a downward pressure on prices, so skeptics are rewarded with lots of skiing space and affordable prices. Thank you Al Gore!
Yeah lots of wax. We can all ski the eskers uncovered by global warming. Maybe practice in the nationals at Tadoussac…..sand skiing is already a thing.
“Projections” are not science and have no place in science. They are not predictions or forecasts and have zero validity. They should be totally ignored. Anybody producing projections is not a scientist.
According to the Cambridge dictionary, a projection is “an amount or result expected in the future that is calculated from information already known”.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/projection
In other words, you take a line from the data you have & project (stretch) it out into the future. It is actually a bit more complex than that, since you need to be careful of the statistical properties; it can become almost a complete guess much sooner than you would think. No reputable statistician would project temperatures 100 years into the future from the extremely high standard deviation you have with current data.
Projections by themselves are not science, but are certainly part of science. Projections that don’t match reality need to be thrown out. Instead they’re preserved in climate science as science.
Imagine if hurricane predictions were done like climate temperature predictions are done, i.e., average all of the different ensembles to predict a hurricane’s path and strength, and use that average to prepare society for the predicted point of impact, even after the hurricane deviates from that average. And then after the hurricane hits Charleston rather than NYC as predicted by the average, preserve that NYC prediction as feasible. It’s ridiculous, but that’s what climate science does because it doesn’t incorporate observations into models.
Well, obviously, if the hurricane hit Charleston instead of the model predicted NYC you need to adjust the data so that it matches the model. NYC will he happy to accept the FEMA money.
Dear EarthTalk: With the onset of global warming, how likely is it that
ski resortssnow chains andskiing itselfblack ice might soon become a thing of the past?There would be much of the population that couldn’t give a stuff about the ‘ski season’. They would rather get to work and their alternative recreations without having to dig the family car out from under the snow before driving on extremely dangerous icy roads.
Are they saying that the almighty IPCC is wrong?
Winter tourism (I’d think that would include skiiing? snowmobiling?) will be much less affected by climate change than it will be by changes in population, lifestyle, income and aging.
IPCC AR5 WGII Page 693 Table 10-10
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WGIIAR5-Chap10_FINAL.pdf
Mammoth Mountain in the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains of California had a record season for precipitation in 2016/2017. I suppose that was a result of climate change too.
Of course it helps that the records only go back about 50 years.
“Our recent modeling suggests that under a high emissions scenario, skiing could be very limited to non-existent in parts of the country by the end of this century…”
Skiing has always been limited to non-existent in most of the United States. I think this prediction is spot on.
Excellent! I noted something strange about the statement, but did not linger to see the obvious.
Oh horror! I’ll have to cancel my plans of skiing all the way down Mt. Kilimanjaro.
…based on modelling!? These people have no shame, no knowledge of history, and clearly no morals. The end of snow again? Love the cartoon!
Eric
We should start a fund, and challenge some of these doomsayers to back there forecasts with cash up front or security.
Put your moneywhere your mouth or forecast is. Including one with the chair of the IPCC. We could make a lot of money.
That will shut them up.regards
The datakeepers give the IPCC loaded dice.
We have this article that gives the history of global warming science. Around 1930, Hulburt calculated 4C climate sensitivity due to H2O feedback.
The measured equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) is around 1.5C. link In the face of the evidence that Hulburt was wrong, the modelers still cling to his climate sensitivity.
A non-alarming ECS isn’t very interesting and work based on that probably won’t be published. Plus ca change … sigh.
Where is the fun (or the money) in that?
Be careful not to trample any stranded pikas on your way up to the elevating snowline.
A pica is only 1/72nd of an inch. How can you trample it?
Hey! That’s my manhood you’ve trampling on!
https://www.thelocal.ch/20180913/switzerland-is-rapidly-losing-its-snow-and-global-warming-is-probably-to-blame
griff
“Probably”?
Where’s the scientific certainty in Probably.
I’ll probably wake up tomorrow morning. I hope.
Global warming causes more snow unless it cause less snow.
“The study also shows that the area of Switzerland given over to eternal snow (where there is an 80 to 100 percent chance of snowfall) also shrank in the period studied – from 27 percent over the 1995–2005 period to 23 percent from 2005 to 2017.”
So eternal snow shrank. I’ll bet my Swiss Chocolatier Thornton Continental Collection that meme will turn up all over the AGW landscape.
https://www.swissdatacube.org/index.php/2018/09/12/snow-cover-change-in-switzerland/
It’s curious why the ’95-’05 and 05′-17′ periods being compared are different lengths. What was magic about 2005? Why not change one year so that it is ’95-06 and ’06-’17? Or are they absurdly basing their results only on ’95, ’05, and ’17 data points?
Wow, a trend that is only a couple of years long, being projected out forever.
How unscientific.
How typical.
Wow. That global warming is pretty specific. I mean it’s only affecting 1 country! Go melt some snow big guy.
https://www.perspectaweather.com/blog/2018/11/16/1230-pm-impressive-snow-for-the-middle-of-november-which-comes-in-an-era-of-increasing-snow
From the English abstract of this report:
https://www.zukunft-skisport.at/site/assets/files/1019/studie_tirol_forum-zukunft-skisport_nov2018.pdf
“Under consideration of official measured data, the overall climatologic conditions for Alpine winter
sports in the Tyrol still remain very favorable. Over the last 50 years the winter temperatures on
the mountains in the Tyrol have not changed statistically.
If one considers solely the last 30 years, then the winters during this time frame have even become
colder – by 1.3 degrees Celsius.”
The report is called: “Die Winter in Tirol seit 1895” – Winter in Tirol (Austria) since 1895. Theres a 1-page abstract in English and several temperature and snowfall graphs. Interesting just for the data.
They used RCP8.5 for the high emissions scenario picked up by the media to prepare the propaganda articles. However, emissions are drifting lower than RCP8.5, and this case assumes unreasonable and exaggerated fossil fuel economic resources.
https://dacemirror.sci-hub.tw/journal-article/a3fb9e9007f9b29f4c4efc42f88b8fc3/beniston2012.pdf
“CONCLUSION
This overview of the behavior of snow has focused essentially on the case of the European Alps and more particularly on Switzerland, as there is a wealth of relevant data and long records that enables detailed studies to be undertaken.
It has been shown that, over the past 80 years, snow has exhibited considerable interannual and interdecadal variability. As a general rule, the fact that winter temperatures have risen over the intervening period by 2 ◦C or more according to location implies that, particularly at elevations below 1000–1500 m, the long term trends in snow point to a general decline in both duration and total accumulation. This linear trend since the early part of the 20th century is to some extent masked by decadal-scale fluctuations where snow thickness and duration does actually increase for a number of years, as seen in the most recent part of the record.
The conclusions reached in this article confirm other recent findings undertaken in Switzerland and in neighboring alpine countries. For example, Schoner et al have shown for one of the longest climate records in Austria that ‘both maximum snow- depth and winter season precipitation show a clear decreasing trend for interannual variability,’ a conclusion also reached by Hantel et al for an extensive study of the European Alps in which winter temperature can be considered to be a close proxy for snow duration. Changes in the alpine freeze–thaw mechanisms during winter in particular in the Italian Alps have been studied to assess how the impacts on snow affect soil leaching processes and their influence on living organisms. An extensive study in the French Alps shows that for a half-century period, ‘Snow patterns in the French Alps are characterized by a marked declining gradient from the northwestern foothills to the southeastern interior regions. This applies mainly to both depths and durations, which exhibit a maximal latitudinal variation at 1500 m of about 60 days, decreasing strongly with the altitude.’”
“…This linear trend since the early part of the 20th century is to some extent masked by decadal-scale fluctuations where snow thickness and duration does actually increase for a number of years, as seen in the most recent part of the record…”
So for half of a century – including a time of “global cooling” – snowpack decreased in the Alps. But during recent “warmest evah” years, it has increased. Did you mean to post an article saying something differentm
Did you mean to post an article saying something different”
No.
Try reading it again…..
“An extensive study in the French Alps shows that for a half-century period, ‘Snow patterns in the French Alps are characterized by a marked declining gradient from the northwestern foothills to the southeastern interior regions. This applies mainly to both depths and durations, which exhibit a maximal latitudinal variation at 1500 m of about 60 days, decreasing strongly with the altitude.’”
And…
“It has been shown that, over the past 80 years, snow has exhibited considerable interannual and interdecadal variability. As a general rule, the fact that winter temperatures have risen over the intervening period by 2 ◦C or more according to location implies that, particularly at elevations below 1000–1500 m, the long term trends in snow point to a general decline in both duration and total accumulation.”
You could alwas read the paper linked of course.
Yep, local conditions flux but overall the trend is clear.
https://www.perspectaweather.com/blog/2018/11/16/1230-pm-impressive-snow-for-the-middle-of-november-which-comes-in-an-era-of-increasing-snow
Yep there is a trend for increased snow extent (warmer air holds more precipitable water) …. melts earlier though …
“Records from the last five decades show that on average, spring snow is disappearing earlier in the year than it did in the past, with the most rapid declines in snow-covered area occurring in June. Across the Northern Hemisphere, the total area covered by snow during March and April has also shrunk over time.”
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-spring-snow-cover
I’ve never understood skiing..
Why not use A Computer Model:
10 STAY home and put air-con on to Full Blast
20 PLACE large bucketful of cash at bottom of stairs
30 GRAB handful of cash, ASCEND stairs to bathroom and PLACE cash into toilet.
40 FLUSH toilet
50 THROW self off top of stairs
60 IF leg, arm, neck, head = ‘Not Broken’ THEN GOTO 30 ELSE 70
70 AFFIX plaster-cast to broken part(s)
80 GOSUB ‘Pub’ and TELL everyone how great it was
90 END
It’s fun, great exercise, beautiful scenery, something to enjoy with family and friends or alone. It’s a physical activity that can challenge to improve ones skill. Falling becomes a thing of the past on even the steepest and most bump laden slopes as the seasoned skier conquers fear and physical obstacles.
One gains a sense of accomplishment and exhilaration, as well as acceleration. You can meet people and share the experience. You can take jumps and soar into the air and land into a soft patch of snow (most desired) with ease. You can bomb down the hill and feel the wind rush by as you enjoy the moment. Afterward, you can honestly go to the pub and tell everyone how great it was, or you can keep it to yourself and smile with or without a brandy or your favorite ale.
I got the same feelings from air assaults in Vietnam.
It’s fun, great exercise, beautiful scenery, blah,blah,blah….
Glad you think so. Been there, didn’t think it was all that (fortunately no broken bones in the process, others that I know were not as fortunate)
What is “Provo UT” ? (Mandy Billings’ alma mater) Is it just another duff university hell bent on destroying the reputation of academia?
Provo is a city in the state of Utah…hence “Provo, UT.” It isn’t a university. Brigham Young University is there, and there is skiing jn the vicinity. Her quote seems relevant for thr lattter.
Now prepare for the “skiing refugees” , upper middle class White folks with blank stares
carrying signs that say : “No more snow? Say it isn’t so” as they make their way to the nearest Starbucks , eating Ben and Jerry’s melting ice cream. Oh, the humanity of all this!! Next thing will
be no water for their swimming pools because of drought. When will it all end??
LOL these people do mot understand the law:
>>
451: Unavailable due to legal reasons
We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact news@azdailysun.com or call 877-810-7370.
<<
GDPR is about DATA PROTECTION for individuals. It is not the COOKIE law, it is not the INTERNET COPYRIGHT law.
Sorry about the caps but lawyers are alpha's and seem to LIKE caps at times.
Jeez.
Note: yeah it also limits the cookie trace thingy, but that was really the COOKIE law, not GDPR. Any site that has a warning like this uses hidden cookies without consent to track & trace and sell the proceeds.
So once you visit that site your IP and local data is collected and send to the highest bidder.
Sometimes it’s easier to not do business in jurisdictions with absurd laws (and even more absurd reporting requirements) than even attempting to “understand the law”.
I was a keen skier until my knees stopped.. December was always dodgy, and in the ear;y 90’s snow was not a goven in the lower Alpind rsorts, the Kitsch ones at 1,000 metres, a bit sparse at 1500m. Here is the report for my old skiing favourites in FRance along the Isere Rivr, 23rd Dec, when there couldeasily have been none in some of these places. Almost all lifts open. https://www.onthesnow.co.uk/france/skireport.html I skied the Sierras a lot, all the Tahoe resorts, Mammoth, Mount Rose, etc. but never Colorado (business ski bum, no budget). What’s it like there. I recall a great test was whether you could ski 4th July at Mammoth? (don’t bring your best skis, or rent).
PS California was good because the brainless sociopathic snowboarders were banned, so had to go to the gangster side of Heavenly in Nevada, where the thugs and tax dodgers are, thus protecting sensibly skiing in control Californians from flying morons.
Ski areas in Maine had to scramble to get open early this year because of the mid-November snows which are somewhat unusual.
Ski resorts were supposedly in a death spiral 25 yrs ago due to global warming with a “human fingerprint” and a fear-mongering observed impact. My how the goalpoasts, observations, and narrative have changed.
I’m going to trick them by dying* before the end of the century to avoid all these catastrophes. Surviving Y2K was enough for me.
*I don’t think it likely I’ll live to 151.
One needs goals, Gamecock!
Climate Scientists give fortune tellers credibility.
Funny thing, 2017-18 ski season in the French alps was one of the most marvellous delicious experiences in years.
It started a little earlier than usual, fantastic quality, and finished in Val Thorens on the 7-9th may as of every year.
End of snow?
You gotta be kidding, 2018 to descend the vallee blanche – on the glacier, was some of the best summer skiing conditions in decades!
As for Russia, it was so cold this summer & last summer, they begin to call it “green winter”.
I see “whingeatronic syndrome”.
The assumption of the climate models must be that rising CO2 forcing will effectively reduce negative Arctic Oscillation conditions. Though the AO observations show that since 2009, there have been a number of extreme negative monthly AO values not seen since the last solar minimum in the late 1800’s. With corresponding regional land cold and snow records of around 130 years. And that is despite the rise in greenhouse gases and the rise in the global mean surface temperature. The whole conceptual framework of changes in GHG forcing driving strong circulation changes that effect regional weather patterns is a fiction, primarily due to a lack of knowledge of how short term solar variability controls the cold shots. The second half of this November turning negative AO/NAO was on my long range solar forecast, see how the coronal hole streams weakened off from mid November:
http://www.solen.info/solar/coronal_holes.html
I’ve been skiing 70-100+ days per year for decades and I call BS. If anything, the storms in the Sierra seem to be getting colder as we have seen a larger fraction of light dry snow then the Sierra cement we are so famous for. This year, we actually lucked out a bit and got some rain on the first snowfall to help glue it down to the rocks.
Snow even persists in North facing bowls throughout the Sierras’s all summer long and since the end of the drought 3 years ago, the summer snow pack has been steadily increasing. I was even skiing snow fields in October that have usually completely melted away by mid August and last year was only about average snow fall.
To me, the ground truth matters more than what some hyperventilating pundits without a clue say.
All the snow didn’t melt during the 1930’s, and it was hotter then than it is now. In fact. although it was extremely hot during the decade of the 1930’s, there were also record cold spells during that period, too. The worst of both worlds.
And then things cooled off and we are now experiencing some of the best weather in memory.
Meanwhile, the Alarmists are in a panic over nothing. They have convinced themselves CO2 is dangerous even though all the evidence is to the contrary.
I guess we are all seeing just how strong delusions can be in some people. They hang on like their lives depend on their delusion being true.
I understand: Your delusions get destroyed, and *then* what do you do?
Answer: Modify your worldview. Obviously it is flawed. It is not serving you well.
Resorts on Colorado opened 2-3 weeks early this year. I’ve been getting snow at 6600′ since Oct 10th.
Starting with 2007 with a meeting on Mt. Washington, The Union of Confused Scientists have been telling the state legislatures in the northeast that runaway warming was threatening the ski industry and the warming would also cause maple trees to pack up and move north to Canada ending the Maple Sugar Industry. That winter set all-time record snowfall in Ski country from Alaska to Oregon, Utah, Wisconsin and New England. But they kept up with their press releases repeating that mantra. We responded to one in 2014 here that included that claim – https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/UNH-PRESS-RELEASE-REPORT-BY-SCIENTISTS-Update-081815-2-1.pdf – I debated a UCS enviro from UNH a few years later. He said he was a data guy not a modeler but spent his hour presenting data from the models. When I showed that the east has had more snow that any other decade back to the 1870s, one 6 foot 4 inch state rep said it could not be when he was a boy, snow used to reach his knees. I asked him if he was 6 foot 4 inch as a boy?
Herb Stevens, one of the Weather Channel Pioneers and the “Skiing Weatherman’ rebutted the claim here:
https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/ac-rebuttal-snow-101518.pdf this year.
Very strange – why would the most conscientious environmental scientists care about the cessation of the very carbon intensive and totally unnecessary activity of skiing/boarding in the mountains? Oh yeah I forgot – they are working for the wealthy elite liberals who will remain on earth to enjoy the spoils when the rest of us have been cleansed into oblivion after a short painful life in the cold dark eating nothing but expired organic micro greens. Needless to say, they will want to have a nice relaxing ski , and a dip in the hot tub after their hard work destroying human society.
Many ski resorts have been around for 50 years or more and keep extremely detailed records of snowfall. It might be helpful to the authors of this silly opinion piece to look at what is really happening.
I suppose facts have nothing to do with it though.
https://www.alta.com/conditions/weather-observations/snowfall-history
Hyping speculation pays more than reporting facts for alarmist ‘scientists’ and political hacks.
Ummm, global warming should increase the amount of moisture in the troposphere, which should increase the amount of precipitation, including snow in those areas normally in the “snow belt” where the global warming will show mostly as increased night time lows, and a couple of days earlier springtime and later fall. And a move North of the “snow belt” by 70 miles or so. Not really Climageddon.
“It is just too obvious that they appear to be making it up as they go.”
They don’t make it up as they go, that’s beyond their abilities, they recycle the worn-out alarmism as they go…towards scientific oblivion.
What needs to end is the CAGW snow-job. And we can’t wait a hundred years for that to happen
“…and future climates, using data from five climate models and two emissions scenarios…”
Were any of these climate models validated?
Calibrated?? Certified??? No……
The Climate Change ‘long con’ doesn’t depend on certified science! It depends on greed and gullibility.
The main reason I see why people might stop skiing isn’t because of global warming, climate change or lack of snow. The main reason I see is that skiing, in Australia at least, is so flipping expensive. Ski hire, lift passes, accommodation, eating out, drinks you name it, it’s expensive in the skiing areas in Australia so much so many people go to New Zealand. And there is the irony, those skiers *fly* to NZ to get to the, better, ski areas.
There must be thousands of these videos, here is one.
How many “scientists” does it take to run a water and energy balance model? Apparently twelve. I can’t imagine the grant money needed to support a team that large? I need to be more imaginative, I guess (or should that be model?).
Speaking of social costs…
Snow is a very costly substance. A fleet of plows, tens of thousands of tons of salt, glycol, millions in insurance claims, an entire and very expensive structure has to be deployed every time it strikes.
As usual in all green claims, follow the money, there’s always a bunch of happy contractors where it goes.
If the prediction is true or not, fact is that at least in Europe many professional skiers and similar sports massively abandoned their favorite snowy spots which served as such for decades because of a lack of regular snow fall. Perhaps not every year but they like their Olympic training grounds a bit more, like: predictable. This has everything to do with constancy, long-running averages, old and new snow packs and so on. Real parameters for those living professionally. Personally I trust those opinions more than a climate model or any competing, doubting model. And the opinion in the world of winter sports appears to be undivided and uniform: skiing is for them becoming more limited at many places over the last decade without end in sight.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46596070
“But in recent years it’s been difficult here. The smooth, deep snow required to run the dogs at full strength is late to arrive.
John Gaedeke has lived in Alaska his entire life and runs high-end holidays in the mountains to the North of the state. Mountain sports, dog sledding and running snow-mobiles are par for the course, but he’s seen big changes in recent years.
“Safe winter travel occurs later each year, in some communities rivers may never freeze,” he says.
“Our trails across frozen tundra are developing sink holes as the ice lenses below the tussocks melt and deform. The shorter winters mean hotter, longer summers with more wildfire danger, which only makes the problem worse.””
Meanwhile in the Arctic, glaciers in the Svalbard and Barents Sea region have advanced by 16 km during 2008-2016:
http://notrickszone.com/2018/12/20/arctic-glaciers-advanced-16-km-during-2008-2016-in-a-region-that-was-6c-warmer-9000-years-ago/
Arctic ice loss could be going into reverse.