Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to an “athlete and coach perspective” study conducted by the University of Waterloo in Canada, reductions in snowfall due to climate change will make it difficult to host future Winter Olympic events.
JANUARY 18, 2022
Climate change threatens future Winter Olympics
Failure to dramatically reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases may mean only one of the 21 previous Winter Olympics host cities can provide fair and safe conditions in the future
Climate change will limit where the Winter Olympics can be held as winter changes across the Northern Hemisphere, according to a study by an international team of researchers led by the University of Waterloo.
The study, involving researchers from Canada, Austria and the United States, found that if global emissions of greenhouse gases are not dramatically reduced, only one of the 21 cities that have previously hosted the Winter Olympics would be able to reliably provide fair and safe conditions for the snow sports program of the Games by the end of this century. However, if the Paris Climate Agreement emission targets can be achieved, the number of climate-reliable host cities jumps to eight, with only six considered unreliable.
“The world of winter sport is changing as climate change accelerates, and the international athletes and coaches we surveyed are witnessing the impacts at competition and training locations, including the Olympics,” said Daniel Scott, a professor of Geography and Environmental Management at Waterloo.”
…
“We’ve studied the many ways the Winter Olympics has reduced weather risk since the first Games held in Chamonix, France nearly 100 years ago,” said Michelle Rutty of Waterloo’s Faculty of Environment. “But there are limits to what weather risk management strategies can cope with, and we saw those limits exceeded in Sochi and Vancouver.”
“Climate change is altering the geography of the Winter Olympic Games and will, unfortunately, take away some host cities that are famous for winter sport,” said Robert Steiger of the University of Innsbruck in Austria. “Most host locations in Europe are projected to be marginal or not reliable as early as the 2050s, even in a low emission future.”
…
Read more: https://uwaterloo.ca/news/media/climate-change-threatens-future-winter-olympics
The abstract of the study;
Climate change and the future of the Olympic Winter Games: athlete and coach perspectives
Daniel Scott, Natalie L. B. Knowles, Siyao Ma, Michelle Rutty & Robert Steiger
ABSTRACT
The International Olympic Committee recognizes the risks climate change pose to the Games and its responsibility to lead on climate action. Winter is changing at the past Olympic Winter Games (OWG) locations and an important perspective to understand climate change risk is that of the athletes who put themselves at risk during these mega-sport events. A survey of 339 elite athletes and coaches from 20 countries was used to define fair and safe conditions for snow sports competitions. The frequency of unfair-unsafe conditions has increased over the last 50 years across the 21 OWG host locations. The probability of unfair-unsafe conditions increases under all future climate change scenarios. In a low emission scenario aligned to the Paris Climate Agreement, the number of climate reliable hosts remains almost unchanged throughout the twenty-first century (nine in mid-century, eight in late century). The geography of the OWG changes radically if global emissions remain on the trajectory of the last two decades, leaving only one reliable host city by the end of the century. Athletes expressed trepidation over the future of their sport and the need for the sporting world to be a powerful force to inspire and accelerate climate action.
Read more: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13683500.2021.2023480
WUWT has written about this “end of snow” climate alarmist cognitive dissonance many times, but it just keeps happening.
The climate models predict global temperatures will soar. So if you believe in the models, there must be a date by which all the snow must melt.
The failure of the snow to melt to date seems to be almost universally disregarded as an anomaly. Climate scientists weave elaborate theories of “enhanced water cycles“, “oceans swallowing all the heat” and Arctic warming disrupting the polar vortex, to excuse the allegedly temporary failure of their models to perform, because, you know, in Climate Science Occam’s Razor dictates that if your predictions fail, you add more epicycles to excuse the failure, rather than just admitting you made a mistake.
As the UK MET office John Mitchell once explained to us, “People underestimate the power of models. Observational evidence is not very useful”.
The following is a Climategate Email from 2009 in which climate scientist Keven Trenberth responded to a BBC story “What Happened to Global Warming?“.
… where the heck is global warming? … The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The … data published in the August … 2009 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate. …
Source: Climategate Email 1255352257.txt (2009, Kevin Trenberth speaking)
To: Michael Mann <omitted>
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider <omitted>, Myles Allen <omitted>, peter stott <omitted>, “Philip D. Jones” <omitted>, Benjamin Santer <omitted>, Tom Wigley <omitted>, Thomas R Karl <omitted>, Gavin Schmidt <omitted>, James Hansen <omitted>, Michael Oppenheimer <omitted>
Hi all
Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in
Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We
had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it
smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a
record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies
baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing
weather).
Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global
energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27,
doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained
from the author.)
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a
travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008
shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing
system is inadequate.
That said there is a LOT of nonsense about the PDO. People like CPC are tracking PDO on a
monthly basis but it is highly correlated with ENSO. Most of what they are seeing is the
change in ENSO not real PDO. It surely isn’t decadal. The PDO is already reversing with
the switch to El Nino. The PDO index became positive in September for first time since
Sept 2007. see
[2]http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GODAS/ocean_briefing_gif/global_ocean_monitoring_c
urrent.ppt
Kevin
Michael Mann wrote:
extremely disappointing to see something like this appear on BBC. its particularly odd,
since climate is usually Richard Black’s beat at BBC (and he does a great job). from
what I can tell, this guy was formerly a weather person at the Met Office.
We may do something about this on RealClimate, but meanwhile it might be appropriate for
the Met Office to have a say about this, I might ask Richard Black what’s up here?
mike
On Oct 12, 2009, at 2:32 AM, Stephen H Schneider wrote:
Hi all. Any of you want to explain decadal natural variability and signal to noise and
sampling errors to this new “IPCC Lead Author” from the BBC? As we enter an El Nino year
and as soon, as the sunspots get over their temporary–presumed–vacation worth a few
tenths of a Watt per meter squared reduced forcing, there will likely be another dramatic
upward spike like 1992-2000. I heard someone–Mike Schlesinger maybe??–was willing to bet
alot of money on it happening in next 5 years?? Meanwhile the past 10 years of global mean
temperature trend stasis still saw what, 9 of the warmest in reconstructed 1000 year record
and Greenland and the sea ice of the North in big retreat?? Some of you observational folks
probably do need to straighten this out as my student suggests below. Such “fun”, Cheers,
Steve
Stephen H. Schneider
Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies,
Professor, Department of Biology and
Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment
Mailing address:
Yang & Yamazaki Environment & Energy Building – MC 4205
473 Via Ortega
Ph: <omitted>
F: <omitted>
Websites: climatechange.net
patientfromhell.org
—– Forwarded Message —–
From: “Narasimha D. Rao” <omitted>
To: “Stephen H Schneider” <omitted>
Sent: Sunday, October 11, 2009 10:25:53 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: BBC U-turn on climate
Steve,
You may be aware of this already. Paul Hudson, BBC’s reporter on climate change, on Friday
wrote that there’s been no warming since 1998, and that pacific oscillations will force
cooling for the next 20-30 years. It is not outrageously biased in presentation as are
other skeptics’ views.
[5]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm
[6]http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100013173/the-bbcs-amazing-u-turn-on-cl
imate-change/
BBC has significant influence on public opinion outside the US.
Do you think this merits an op-ed response in the BBC from a scientist?
Narasimha
——————————-
PhD Candidate,
Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER)
Stanford University
Tel: <omitted>
—
Michael E. Mann
Professor
Director, Earth System Science Center (ESSC)
Department of Meteorology Phone: (<omitted>
503 Walker Building FAX: <omitted>
The Pennsylvania State University email: [7]<omitted>
University Park, PA 16802-5013
website: [8]http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html
“Dire Predictions” book site:
[9]http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/news/DirePredictions/index.html
—
****************
Kevin E. Trenberth e-mail: [10]<omitted>
Climate Analysis Section, [11]www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/trenbert.html
NCAR
P. O. Box 3000, <omitted>
Boulder, CO 80307 <omitted> (fax)
Street address: 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO 80305
References
<omitted>
Despite years of failure, with a few honourable exceptions the climate alarmist community seems determined to cling to blind faith that the pauses will end, that global temperatures will snap back to the trend line of their extreme hockey stick shaped warming predictions, and the only reason for current anomalies is that some hand waving excuse swallowed the warming. But rest assured, soon the frustration will be over, and that disappeared heat will re-emerge and smite us all. Any day now.
“… As you know, I’m not political. If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences. This isn’t being political, it is being selfish.” – Former CRU Director Phil Jones, Climategate Email 1120593115.txt
The only real impact the embarrassment of previous failed “end of snow” predictions appears to be that more cautious prophets have pushed the snowpocalypse date further into the future. But climate alarmists still can’t help making these silly predictions. The alternative, embracing the possibility that their models are a pile of junk, seems a step too far for most of them.
Despite the overblown rhetoric. There is a grain of truth in this article. Not about GW making it impossible for many countries to hold the events. But in the fact that the winter games are weather dependent and there is no assurance that any given venue might not suffer an unusual warm winter.
One possible solution might be to pick venues in different regions, in different countries, so if one region is not suitable they can move the event elsewhere. Why hold all the events in a single country? Spread it out.
The other might be to focus on only selecting countries with a very high probability of having suitable conditions. I have noticed that they have tended to pick venues where that is by no means assured.
It has been suggested many times that there should be at most 2 sites for each of summer and Winter Olympics
But then that completely eliminates the process of awarding Olympics which is when all the money changes hands.
Your suggestion would kill the Olympics as there would be little opportunity for bribery and corruption and living the high life.
It’s like saying that from now on the COP environmental gatherings must be held in Yellowknife, NWT in January of every year.
It would end immediately
Crude, but accurate! Pat, if your suggestion of one or two sites for Winter Olympics catches on, one is sure to be Squaw Valley, which just recorded a new record of more than 20 feet of snowfall by the end of December. Donner Party for a COP substitute?
If it comes back to calgary we can hope for a chinook that raises the temperature 40c in 30 minutes thereby exploding DiCaprio’s head, finally.
One less 75 IQ actor in the world
CO2 can do anything
It actually seems to me that Peter was suggesting exactly the opposite – have the winter events, for example, in 3 different locations instead of just one. “Spread it out”, as he said, is literally the opposite of choosing just one or two locations to use forever.
The major draws of the Winter Games are all held indoors, seems ironic but true… Ice Skating, Hockey, etc. The Alpine Ski events are run, almost entirely, on man-made snow, it’s just more consistent and safer for the athletes. In 2002 Park City was actually hauling natural snow off parts of the G.S. Runs and blowing in man-made. The cross-country events are truly weather dependent, since building up a man-made base on 50+ km of trail is a difficult, if not impossible task.
Another “climate scientist” (TM) blames record US snowfall on a warming Arctic:
https://news.yahoo.com/southern-snowstorm-likely-worsened-by-climate-change-scientists-say-221202263.html
When we don’t get “average” snow, it’s climate change. Whether it’s nothing or mountains of it, it’s climate change.
“Climate change” is the hypothesis that explains everything, and therefore not science.
Actually, unless the host city is really just a ski village way up in the mountains, the organizers of winter Olympics always utilize multiple venues depending upon climate.
As I point out in my comment elsewhere in this thread, Beijing, the host city for the 2022 Winter Olympics, averages 35 deg F in January – obviously not reliable enough to host outdoor events that depend upon snow cover. So the ChiComs are hosting the main outdoor evens involving skiing at Chongli – which is 240 km from Beijing, up high in the mountains, where their average January temperature is 12 deg F.
This isn’t new, actually. The trend in recent Olympics has been to locate Winter Olympics in major cities that can host the major stadiums for indoor events and such that are impractical to erect in a mountain ski village.
Trenberth’s comment was so precious. Believing the models are more real than observed reality looks very much like a psychological condition than science.
Travesty Trenberth – the null hypothesis was made for doofuses like him.
In fact, one other doofus quote was that this was so important that the null hypothesis needed to be changed.
You couldn’t even fix that stoopid with a baseball bat.
“Post-science” science
means that models provide all the answers.
Which don’t have to be supported by observations.
Lyin’ eyes are obsolete.
Might be fun to try though. ;-D
Certainly therapeutic. Ohh, did you mean for Trenberth??
Surely a Canadian university study with Trudeaus guidance and sponsorship couldn’t get it wrong . They know reality is wrong , not the models , might get them another grant to re-approve their studies . Climate guessing is a money go round .
Tell that to the long-suffering citizens of famously snowy Buffalo, NY, whose airport set two records for snowfall this month.
A record also in Ottawa and other NE North American sites.
In December, CA’s Sierra Nevada enjoyed record snowfall.
Well OK, yeah but that’s just weather! And besides it’s caused by globull warming. Yeah, that’s it, everything is caused by globull warming.
Record snowfall at Snoqualmie pass and North Central Washington too.
This is something griffter and his ilk seem unable to comprehend – if you look at enough places worldwide, you’ll find WEATHER extremes are happening somewhere. The same sorts of extremes happened 100 years ago. Claiming a climate “crisis” based on weather extremes that have always happened is laughable.
laughable=Griff
I should have mentioned the Cascades and Eastern OR and WA as well, my native region.
That’s really an increase in precipitation… caused by a warming planet, where there’s more water in the atmosphere.
The snow came with record cold.
Snow fell in Brazil in July and August 2021 because of a cold snap, not due to more moisture in the air.
nice epicycle
Once again, in Griffworld, less snow = evidence of Global Warming. More snow = evidence of Global Warming.
Tell me Griff, have you ever seen a mountain with more snow at the base than at the summit? After all, warm air carries more water than cold air.
Ouch! A direct hit!
Cute but flawed. I’ve climbed mountains with more snow at the base than the summit, and there are many such examples, but the main point is that the relative snow by elevation isn’t a simple function of the atmospheric capacity to hold water at that altitude. Griff has many flaws, let’s not make up one’s that don’t exist.
I’ve spent many, many years hill-walking in Scotland and Wales, the Alps, and the Rockies and have never once seen a mountain with a snow-free summit and snow at the base, but I’m sure you’re correct.
The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere available as precipitation; be it rain, snow, or something in-between; is primarily determined by the temperature of the atmosphere. In winter you have *less* water vapor in the air even with higher relative humidity. What you need to look at is the *absolute* humidity which is determined by the mass of water vapor divided by the mass of dry air.
All you are doing is repeating more religious dogma rather than actual physical science.
There are two fallacies that griff is promoting when he points out that warmer air is capable of holding more moisuture.
1) Just because it can, is not proof that it does. There are many factors that impact how much water vapor is in the air. Temperature is just one of them.
2) Even if warmer air is holding more water vapor, it’s in equilibrium. Unless something causes the warmer air to cool, it will continue to hold onto the extra water vapor. In other words, no extra rain.
Griff is allergic to actual physical science – as are any “true believers” of AGW.
And right on time the lie spewing liar spews lies.
Hey, Griff. Here in the Midwest, our temps are nosediving to single digits Fahrenheit! The global warming is so intense here.
Don’t you know, if it weren’t for global warming, it would currently be 50 below where you live. /sarc
Once again griff will believe and repeat any lie that supports his religious convictions.
Buffalo always has plenty of moisture, thanks to lake effect. It had record snowfall due to record cold.
Is there any weather event that is inconsistent with global warming?
Yes. Good weather.
A shortage of snow in Canada ? LMAO
Whatever the snow is going to do, it will do.
I keep pointing out that the Olympics are the culmination of a 4 year cycle of amateur sport that must involve billions of person miles flown, all those meets, all that training (think of all those northern hemisphere ski teams flying to South America in summer to train).
If I’m not supposed to drive to work or heat my home how can anyone possible justify all the CO2 emissions that the edifice of amateur sport creates, let alone the professional leagues.
If this was serious then all that unserious stuff needs to stop NOW.
Starting with the flustercluck in China shortly.
Governments failing to call a halt to this is just one more data point showing they don’t really believe this crap
If they believed their own crap, COP meetings would be virtual. Even in the middle of a pandemic where we were told, scolded actually, that plane trips and hotel stays and big public gatherings were lethal, the hypocrites still came trotting to the feeding trough.
Besides, “god wills it”
That would be the entire biosphere (and thus mostly plants) which would be churned up and deposited in many places, due to what could be rightly called a climate catastrophe ; ) Mega vulcanism (“the fountains of the deep”) and enormous seismic events virtually non-stop, resulting in colossal tsunamis scouring the landmasses.
I know, I know, it’s not the “consensus science”, but it has been rumored that consensus science can be challenged (around here), and I know those images that have been planted in our brains our whole lives are very persistent.
A good example is this, from that author; “…if your predictions fail, you add more epicycles to excuse the failure, rather than just admitting you made a mistake.”
Thinking in mass centric terms is so second nature to us now, that we can fail to realize that it was not yet “figured out” when epicycles were an attempted solution to the observable motions of the planets etc. across the sky. It’s really easy for us to think they did not “work”, but at that point the goal was to have a way to predict where things would be in the sky on such and such a date, and they did work for that.
(Naturally most of the people commenting here would have figured it all out at least a century earlier, had they not been born too late ; )
Consensus science can be challenged, but you need data to do so.
Consensus “acceptable” & consensus published & consensus peer reviewed data only!
I blame the MSM for zero critical thinking, censorship of sceptics and betraying its democratic responsibility for objective and balanced journalism.
What CO2 does, how and how much is whose fault is debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
There is no greenhouse effect!
The Earth is cooler with the atmosphere not warmer. Stand in front of a blazing campfire. Hold up a large mylar space blanket. Are you warmer now or colder? The fire (sun) warms you & you (surface) warms the surrounding air. That’s what the atmosphere does and a greenhouse that’s not. (i.e. data)
Per the K-T atmospheric energy balance graphic as well as numerous clones the GHGs must do their thang with “extra” energy upwelling from a terrestrial surface radiating LWIR as a black body. These graphical representations contain egregious math and physics errors. See https://youtu.be/0Jijw7-YG-U (i.e. data)
As demonstrated by experiment the terrestrial surface cannot independently upwell LWIR as a black body. For the experimental write up see:
https://principia-scientific.org/debunking-the-greenhouse-gas-theory-with-a-boiling-water-pot/
(i.e.data)
There is no greenhouse effect.
The so-called GHGs do not actually do anything.
Mankind’s CO2 does not drive global warming or climate change.
How/why am I wrong?
Stay on topic and bring science! (i.e. counter data)
I was challenging (what to me) was an obvious “straw man argument”, and offered an example of other such “arguments” which I frequently see alluded to here, without any “data” being presented.
My point is about how I believe we came to this state of affairs, wherein some scientists are treated as virtual gods, who can infallibly interpret the “data” to speak with unquestionable authority about hyper-complex things (like impending climate doom ; ) I suggest one can “see” how that became “normal”, in the way I was responded to by some, who speak as if matters of unquestionable fact, their own interpretations of some “data” they have seen.
In short, that’s how I think we got here. It became so routine for many to speak of what “consensus science” held to be true, as if absolute truth, and this was “noticed” by people who wanted that “status” (and the fame and fortune which can accompany it) for themselves.
On a recent article I saw people so gullible, in my opinion, that they derided an actual scientist (Roy Spencer) for saying he “believed” some things about what the “data” showed him. As a scientist, I see no rational alternative he had . . and see the derision as an example of how far from scientific “style” thinking many have strayed.
Merely using a term (‘believe’) which some “antitheist” types have claimed entrained a silent “without evidence”, was all it took to make it so for all speakers, in the minds of some such (to me) gullible people. It never had any such implied limitations on exactly why one believed something true until quite recently, as far as I had ever known. And I’m pretty old,
And I didn’t myself believe in God until fairly recently. People who do, routinely speak of their belief, which to my mind makes perfect sense, since humans are not infallible gods, and do well to bear that in mind. Not so with the Siants (sounds like science ; ) worshippers, who apparently think they KNOW what they merely believe to be true . . IF some authorities speak of it as if absolute truth. Such people helped open this Pandora’s box, it seems to me, and still try to hold it open, even as they are themselves confronted with what can come out of it, when “belief” is treated as absolute truth . .
That is not how oil and gas formed.
Oil is mostly from marine microorganisms, collected in basins which have become the world’s great reservoirs of crude.
Petroleum geology relies on actual science, not somebody’s imagination, based upon ancient myths.
I see your funny bone has decided to take a walk today…
Ridicule would be cruel. So, just the facts.
Even the greatest Christian theologians knew that the Bible isn’t literally true on every page, to include St. Augustine and Calvin. Luther considered some NT books bogus.
The Bible starts out as myth, moves on to legend, then, after about 800 BC, becomes quasi-historical, but with spin.
It’s not an astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology or biology text.
“The Bible starts out as myth, moves on to legend, then, after about 800 BC, becomes quasi-historical, but with spin.”
That’s what you believe, but you are in no position to verify such beliefs, are you? That is itself therefore “mythology”, now, it seems to me. A God could (by definition) inform someone of such things, but not no-God ; )
“Oil is mostly from marine microorganisms, collected in basins which have become the world’s great reservoirs of crude.”
Perhaps, but where are such marine micro organisms “collecting” now?
Or, I’m just having fun using mockery as a weapon for which there is no response
Past 21 sites takes one back to 1944. That would cover two in Norway — Oslo & Lillehammer– and one in Switzerland — St Moritz. (I ignored other notable ‘freeze your butt off’ locations because they’re generally less recognizable as such.)
So which two do these credentialed, not educated scientists cross off to get their sole remaining fair & safe site? Anyone know which single city it is?
Sapporo
Sapporo, 2006:
http://icons.wxug.com/hurricane/chrisburt/jptown.jpg
Day-um! That’s a whopper I missed way back when! Found the full text of it within the Volume 2 archive pile of numbered emails:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190223082024/http://www.di2.nu/foia/1120593115.txt
Sounds like he’s asking for data to show warming.
Right. Why this guy ever thought he could be a scientist is one of the mysteries of the ages.
It is difficult to imagine a more unscientific thought. Or a more callous one.
Imagine being him; I’m beginning to feel sorry for him, that sad mess of human.
==============
I agreed with you right up the point where you said you’re beginning to feel sorry for him; I don’t feel sorry for any pseudo-scientist who can’t admit when he’s wrong and continues to push propaganda to prop up his ego.
after that came out, you’d think he would have fallen on his sword
The Good News is that Ethical Concerns will NEVER be allowed to conflict with Athletic Excellence and those big sponsorship dollars.
EVER!
Perhaps the Winter Olympics needs a new sport: Jumping the Shark…
That’s a summer sport
Jumping the Sharkcicle?
Whiteface Mountain Lake placid has 24 to 40 inches of snow. Been over a foot on lower slopes since early November.
“The absence of snow and cold temperatures in the region leading up to the XIII Olympic Winter Games proved to be an obstacle for skiers and ice-oriented athletes. In order to ensure that all the events could proceed as scheduled, the Olympic Winter Games had to do something they had never done before — they had to create their own winter. While there was not enough real, organic snow to support the Games, a perfectly-timed cold snap provided the outdoor environment necessary to facilitate the creation and maintenance of artificial snow. ”
NOAA
https://vlab.noaa.gov/web/nws-heritage/-/no-snow-in-sight-the-nws-and-the-1980-olympic-winter-games
Yet the same idiots that can’t depend on the weather conditions being amenable when they pick the location and time think that we can generate the electricity we need based on weather dependent generators.
The level of stupid is mind-boggling.
Have you also noticed that just before a winter olympics starts, they come up with this scare:
2018: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2018/02/climate-change-threatens-winter-olympics/
2014: https://www.voanews.com/a/climate-change-threatens-winter-olympics/1841256.html
2010: https://www.ocregister.com/2010/02/08/global-warming-a-threat-for-the-olympics/
2006: https://www.greenbiz.com/article/ski-bummer-ski-industrys-battle-stave-global-warming-and-its-own-extinction
“…if the Paris Climate Agreement emission targets can be achieved, the number of climate-reliable host cities jumps to eight, with only six considered unreliable.” Yet they haven’t been correct with any of their prognostications from the past that have lapsed. What a crock.
They should have prefaced all of this with “based on the models,” thereby saving anyone with a brain from wasting their time reading any further.
As I understand it most winter Olympic games have required intervention by local organisers to keep the events on track. From trucking in snow and/or ice in the old days to making artificial snow now. The last winter games could only have gone ahead because something like 80% of the snow was man made! Actually you could hold the winter Olympic games in some indoor stadiums in Dubai in the middle of summer if you wanted, massively expensive, but possible for the oil rich gulf states.
Just another big event being used by the activists to scare people. Reality is that there are very few places on earth that could host a fully natural winter games, not now or anytime since the little ice age ended.
Sarajevo was the exact opposite in 1984. They had a blizzard lasting a whole week which meant that some events got postponed several times.
Should not be crazy expensive, certainly not for the Olympics. I’ve seen people playing on a full size indoor skating rink in mall in Jakarta (usually 30°+ all year round).
McMurdo Station? The ski-jumping would be so much more interesting in total darkness. Even more so if they are powered by 100% renewable energy.
It’s predicted to be -6°C in Waterloo, Ontario tonight. There’s a Parking Ban in effect to allow for snow plows, and more snow is predicted this week when the Big Arctic Chill hits — even though Waterloo is one of the southernmost cities in Canada. Great place for the Winter Wokelympics, but it’s kind of flat there so the skiing would have to be virtual. Problem solved.
Why Canadians fear a little warmth is beyond me. Would an uptick to -2°C really be such a bad thing?
I wondered this myself living in Britain, and for a time in the cold southern states of Australia. I think its because their Summer’s are too abrupt. In the tropics and subtropics there is plenty of time to acclimatise to warm weather, but in cold places where Summer is brief and intense, you don’t have time to get used to it – its all kindof unpleasant for a lot of people.
Not unpleasant for me, I love all 6 weeks of summer here in calgary.
I asked a radio talking head, who repeated the “canada is warming twice as fast” idiocy if he really thinks it’s a problem if true.
Verbal blank stare and hang up in response
Still leaves the big question – why? Why are they worried? Have they ever asked themselves what the problem is, or is it a mindless reflex?
For the life of me, I can’t remember the product that was being sold, but there was a commercial when I was in college. A guy drives a car up onto a hill. He retracts the roof of his car, pulls back the hood of his jacket and unzips it.
The sun appears from behind the clouds for a few seconds, then the clouds cover the sun again.
The guy re-zips his jacket, pulls on the hood, and closes the roof, then starts to drive off.
I lived in Hong Kong for a breif time in the mid 90’s. Taking a taxi by a beach I asked why no one was there. Too cold he replied. It was 80 degrees F.
During an Iowa spring, I observed someone wearing shorts and flip flops while there was still snow on the ground.
During a Florida winter, I observed people wearing heavy coats when the temperature got down to 60.
It all depends on what you are used to.
It all depends on what you are used to.
Absolutely, as I learned after moving from SoCal to NC. Used to be low 60’s meant gloves & thick coat. Now, 65 is t-shirt weather for me.
Yup! And interestingly, most people given their choice migrate to warmer climates when they retire, not to colder climates. One might gain the impression that a warmer climate is better…
“Why Canadians fear a little warmth is beyond me. Would an uptick to -2°C really be such a bad thing?”
BRING
IT
ON!!!
Please!
Here in Canada’s capital city, the 2-day forecast overnight low is -29C/-20F. Some warming would help, but who would notice that dreaded increase of 1.5C when it’s that cold?
What going to happen to Watts Up With That? When silly global warming thing ends?Or is nonsense never ending?
It could report on the weather, as that is always interesting.
But seems if pause goes on another 10 years, people going to get tired or
at least unfashionable.
Or this pause should be different than the last long pause, not mention just becoming
one huge long Great Pause.
Can anyone predict when we will become the Great Pause?
Looking back through history, the unscrupulous always find a new fake fear narrative when the old narrative loses steam, so I don’t think WUWT will run short of things to write about.
I suspect there will be some more warming, I think a climate sensitivity of around 1C / doubling is credible, though there are persuasive arguments that it might be lower. But what there is no evidence for is an imminent climate catastrophe.
As for the next fear narrative, if I keep predicting fear of malevolent AI, surely I’ll be right one day!
The next narrative is simple; once the temperatures start declining (being in an inter-glacial period during an ice age, that is the likely next “climate change”) to an extent they can no longer hide with their cynical “adjustments” to the instrument record, they’ll simply cook up some pseudo-scientific explanation as to how THAT is our fault, too. Of course the (non-)”remedies,” involving control over our energy use (and therefore control over everything) will remain exactly the same.
As for “climate sensitivity,” there just isn’t any – you’re ignoring the elephant-in-the-room assumption that is incorporated in any such claim of “sensitivity” to CO2, which is all other things held equal. That set of conditions has never, does not now, and will never exist, the “feedbacks” are negative, offsetting feedbacks in the aggregate, and the CO2 “sensitivity” is not distinguishable from zero.
That is what observations support. You wouldn’t get hundreds of years of reverse correlation between CO2 and temperature, repeatedly, at every inflection point of temperature trend changes if CO2 were capable of “driving” anything.
When global warming dies, they will invent another crisis that can only be solved by a one world, socialist government.
Me thinks that it will go back to the need to decarbonise the economy to stop global cooling.
Eric’s statement that
”The climate models predict global temperatures will soar. So if you believe in the models, there must be a date by which all the snow must melt.”
is just the usual hyperbole and makes no logical sense. Nobody is suggesting that there will be no snow left on the earth under any realistic scenario. There will always be snow at the south pole for example. But that doesn’t mean that places that currently get enough snow to host the winter olympics will continue to do so in the near future. It would not take much warming to stop Sochi from being able to host the winter olympics.
Quit being ridiculous. Claims by a British commenter in Britain are of course about Britain.
I’m in calgary, there is literally no chance of getting to the point of no snow in winter here so it’s a ridiculous point.
So the seas won’t rise by 20m
Why aren’t you calling out the alarmists who tout this nonsense, Izaak?
There have been several well known alarmists who have predicted a snow free Antarctica.
“There have been several well known alarmists who have predicted a snow free Antarctica.”
Here’s your chance (MIUM)Mark…Name them?
Oh dear, caught telling mince pies again.
Well, avalanches could pose a major problem for Winter Olympics due to too much snow. I doubt that is what they had in mind, though.
Mumbai’s Coldest Temp In a Decade; Record Snow Leads to 38 Avalanches Around Snoqualmie; And No, The “Climate Crisis” Isn’t Causing An Uptick In Arctic Lightning, Cosmic Rays Are
January 11, 2022
http://bit.ly/2KAK1ZR
Activist scientists discovered a round peg (a climatic anomaly) and have tried desperately to jam it into AGW’s decidedly square hole, offering no real scientific explanation for the phenomenon.
Lets fix this:
Quote:”The only real impact the embarrassment…….
….. is to highlight the pointlessness and waste-of-time and money that is: University of Waterloo
Who knew that cow farts could affect future Winter Olympics.
The like to use the largest villages near the right kind of snowy slopes.
The largest villages in the snowy regions are on the lower slopes which are easier to access from warmer towns & milder conditions for visitors.
Trying to find colder locations are more likely to have terrible conditions for competing & spectating. Who wants white out blizzards, cables/pipes/equipment frozen or buried under many feet of snow.
Sochi has been marginal for as long as I could see but occasionally has “earliest snow in 30 years”. Calgary still has good snow each year.
How much of the paper mentioned above is based on fact vs models?
The quotes from John Mitchell and from Kevin Trenberth regarding veracity of observational data remind me of a letter I submitted in Feb 2014 to EOS, the magazine of the American Geophysical Union. EOS had just run a one-sided article on global warming, and I responded with a letter quoting contrasting testimony given in a US Senate Committee by Prof Andy Dessler and Prof Judith Curry. My letter was not published – the AGU is not keen on debate on matters of climate science. But the quotes from that testimony might be of interest to those with a sense of history. I wrote as follows:
“One of the strengths of the US political system is the use of congressional committees which provide opportunity for expert testimony from both sides of questions of importance. An excellent example is recent testimony at the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on 16 Jan 2014. The panel of witnesses included two senior members of AGU, professors Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M and Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Dessler presented a cogent overview of AGW science, arguing for the standard model and how it stands the tests of comparison with observational data. I noticed one gem as he discussed discrepancies between models and some observational data, saying “I suspect future revisions [of the data] will bring it into ever-closer agreement with the models.”
Curry argued that in her view “both the climate change problem and its solution have been vastly oversimplified”, and reviewed global temperature, climate sensitivity and sea-level data from the IPCC AR5. She finds that the case for human factors dominating temperature change of the past 130 years is weaker than it was 10years ago, and evidence for the importance of natural variability on climate changes, is growing.”
My letter to EOS continued:
“These pages are not the place to adjudicate these opposing arguments, but it surprises me that the two sides rarely appear in AGU commentaries. I urge interested students to analyse both Dessler and Curry as succinct statements on the complexities of the challenges ahead in climate science. I have been a member of AGU since my student curiosity led me into my current career in 1973, and I am disappointed that while Congress regularly calls for, listens to and records opposing scientific arguments, EOS does but rarely.
The testimony of Dessler and Curry is available at http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_id=e07101a7-0715-7690-b6e9-c39e56a3b468 ”
Michael Asten, Retired professor of geophysics, Melbourne Vic Australia
BS – there’s no way that Calgary, Moscow, Lake Placid, Oslo, etc, will ever be too warm to host Winter Olympics, even with 3 or 4 degrees of warming.
And on the other hand, who cares? The Olympics are a huge business, they can take care of themselves. We don’t need to impoverish the Earth to keep temps at the current level, when actually it would be better for the world in general if it got warmer.
The Canadian Olympic Team wins the gold medal in the Team Prevarication event for tripe…
All data show Northern Hemisphere Snow Cover has not significantly declined over the past 30 years.
the International Olympic Committee should, however, do a much better job in selecting cities that actually have abundant snow, and also choosing countries that aren’t currently committing genocide and threatening to invade neighboring countries…
Don’t worry. The winter olympics are less than 100 years old. Greek Olympians between the 8th century and 4th century BC didn’t know what snow was.
It gets pretty snowy on Mt. Olympus in northern Greece, if not at Olympia, site of the games, in the western Peloponnese.
But of course they were held in the summer, since competitors were naked.
At one time I would have supported returning women’s sports back to that Greek standard. But now with trans athletes taking over the women’s events, I’ve lost interest.
A visual which can’t be unseen, like the trans athlete who revealed the surgical scars on his/her chest.
Well apparently there isn’t any actual snow at the Beijing Olympic sites: it is all artificially created…
So no problem!
Not unusual for that part of China – too dry. https://www.foxsports.com.au/olympics/winter-olympics/winter-olympics-2022-no-snow-for-beijing-games-usage-of-manmade-snow-climate-change-when-are-the-olympics/news-story/79592bd54b2df379ddd89f93e7ab5136
Publishing a study about the end of snow in the middle of the snowiest winter on the Northern hemisphere since decades.
Every time you think Global Warming propaganda has hit the rock bottom of stupidity, they surprise by taking dynamite and pickaxe to keep on digging.
It was also unusually snowy in the SH. IIRC, Brazil was snowier than since 1957.
The Man made Climate Catastrophists are moving the goal posts again. The first was from climate warming to climate change. Previously, the start date was the 1960’s when CO2 started to significantly increase. Now the start date is the start of the industrial revolution in the late 19th Century, which I am sure only coincidentally coincides with the end of a period of climate known as “The Little Ice Age”.
Zitta, in his book on Lukacs’ Marxist Utopia defines stages:
1) estrangement from environment;
2) self-righteousness;
3) pursuit of utopia regardless of cost to anyone.
Solution: impose socialist Utopia.
Page 72: https://bit.ly/2Pgb3IM
Just cancel the Olympics altogether. It is an outdated ritual.
I grew to hate the Olympics at a young age, when the TV channel a lot of my favorite shows were on was the channel that was televising the games that year. EVERY commercial break had a stupid Olympics commercial, with those annoying trumpets.
After a while it was all you could do to resist the temptation to throw a brick at the TV to make it stop.
From the article: ““… As you know, I’m not political. If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences. This isn’t being political, it is being selfish.” – Former CRU Director Phil Jones, Climategate Email 1120593115.txt”
You did your part to try to prove climate change right. But bastardizing surface temperature records is not the way to go about it.
You disappeared the warm periods in the past using your computers, so you could claim unprecedented warming today, caused by CO2, as part of the Human-caused Climate Change con. The only place Human-caused Climate Change exists is in your bastardized data. Actual temperature readings from around the world, that were not put through your computer, put the lie to your instrument-era Hockey Stick chart.
You and Mann are equally guilty of misleading the whole world about the Earth’s temperatures and hyping the dangers of CO2. You should both receive the same punishment. Whatever that might end up being.
Well it is a good thing there is more snow and not less. Really missed a bullet that time!
Most host cities in Europe may be marginal or unreliable by 2050, Waterloo’s ‘research’ is already pathetic now.
Europe is getting snowier:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_2010%E2%80%9311_in_Europe
From 2015:
Winter snow ‘breaks Europe records’
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-31159889
Then came:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%9319_European_winter
Failure to dramatically reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases…. – article
First off, let’s get all the blowhard political animals to stop yapping. That will ensure that those particular emissions no longer need to worry us. It’s a simple “factoid” that political people are more interested in hearing themselves talk than they are in being accurate or up to date on anything.
Second: there’s always Antarctica, if the problem is “lack of snow”.
You all have a nice remains of the week. Nothing is ever permanent on this planet or on Mars. Neptune? Maybe. Uranus? Hard to say. Even Saturn has seasonal changes. Nothing is ever permanent.
A quick random selection every 20 years starting in 1960 Squaw Valley site today could still hold the games , plenty of snow https://www.snow-forecast.com/resorts/Squaw-Valley-USA/6day/mid and same with 1980 Lake Placid at Whiteface https://www.snow-forecast.com/resorts/Whiteface-Mountain/snow-report and Japan Nagano : https://www.skiresort.info/snow-reports/nagano/ No need to check EU maps, they are having a great ski year https://www.onthesnow.co.uk/europe/skireport And for this year? https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202111/1238294.shtml
THE BBC link references one Piers Corbyn, brother of Jeremy Corbyn, an expert on solar heating.
“All of the net TOA imbalances are not tenable and all except CFSR imply a cooling of the planet that clearly has not occurred.”
Trenberth 2011jcli24, “All seven are incorrect & I am correct.”
As the UK MET office John Mitchell once explained to us, “People underestimate the power of models. Observational evidence is not very useful”.
“The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific “truth.””
Richard P. Feynman, “Six Easy Pieces”
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.” Richard P. Feynman
That’s certainly an objective scientific parameter, easily measured and tracked: asking athletes what amounts to fair and safe conditions at Winter Olympics.
SMH
Every place in the temperate zones on earth experiences varying weather year to year. There’s cold years, and warm years, and wet years, and dry years. So Olympics organizers have to take that into account in selecting the actual sites for specific competitions. Many events are held indoors, or course, such as large spectator events and ceremonies, skating and hockey and such, while other events are necessarily held outdoors where winter weather is variable. So they need risk management strategies in place to deal with the vagaries of weather for outdoor venues.
Beijing, being a large city, is a reasonable venue for the indoor activities, but for outdoor activities, other venues are necessary, such as ski hills. Chongli is a mountainous area that will host the ski events. In January, Beijing averages 35 deg F, while Chongli averages 12 deg F. Nobody is seriously projecting a 20 degree F temperature rise, even with the most ridiculous models put forth by the warmunists.
The challenge to hosting a Winter Olympic host is not snow it is the Men’s Downhill and finding a mountain with sufficient vertical drop within the IOC’s prescribed range of the host city (in a jurisdiction willing to pay for it). For example, Calgary had to use Nakiska which is not a great mountain and they stretched the run with a t-bar to the top (now closed). Quebec City would be a great option (no shortage of snow and we have governments more than willing to shill out the money) but no nearby mountain is big enough (Massif added an artificial pyramid at the top of its longest run to meet the Women’s downhill standard).
But if you recall, when we were having record snowfalls, “heavier snowfalls are ‘consistent with’ global warming.” So they’ve covered themselves for all outcomes. Remember that ‘heavier snowfalls’ edict followed closely on the heels of “The children aren’t going to know what snow is,” which was asserted when we were having winters with little snowfall.
When your “predictions” are the result of pulling back the curtain and looking out the window to see what’s currently happening, you know it’s not “science.”
No more snow in most of the world means not many practitioners of winter sports……. so why even hold winter Olympics if nobody practices the sports. Summer Olympics every 2 years
and they could be held on Baffin Island.
Yeah but we Brits rarely win anything at those games anyway!!!!!!!
Funny that.They’re holding the Winter Olympics in the worst “offending” climate/carbon sinning country in the world!I’m boycotting the Olympics in any case as long as they’re held in a torture state like Communist China!
Meanwhile snowfall in the Sahara. Perhaps not as unusual as one would think.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-60045153
I don’t know man. I normally agree with what’s published on this website but for this I’m not sure. I live in Salt Lake City and we typically get a lot of snow. Our average annual snowfall is 56 inches. For the past 3 or 4 winter seasons, we’ve seen below average snowfall. Below is a picture of our seasonal snowfall by year. If our warming world isn’t causing these consistently below normal snowfall years then what else could be? I also read this a few weeks ago: https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-snowfall-totals-46-1970s-due-rising-global/story?id=68748708
Good lord, man! If they have to cancel curling, whatever are we going to do?
Just… not curling. Anything but that.
Good. At last a silver lining in Climate Change.