The global ski industry appears to be doing nothing - ZILCH - about climate change

A snowHead

We had a very much more extensive rail network as recently as the 1960s. It was a crap way of doing most journeys which is why people forsook it for personal cars. There's no way in the world the railways could be upgraded to shift people on the journeys they currently do by car and plane (and train).

A snowHead

petemillis,

I saw the news programme about an Inuit feeling angry that there were too many people and cars polluting his land, making his traditional way of life impossible.

We went to attend that interview on a brand new snowmobile and the programme shows other Inuits travelling on sledges pulled by dogs.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

saikee, amazing init? I'm not convinced that it's pollution that will be the end of the Inuit way of life. Instead it'll be the young Inuit's thinking the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. They showed the young Inuits who had left their families to go and live is towns where they thought everything would be great, only to find it's not so good after all, at which point they turn to drink and drugs. Exactly the same happens in rural villages - the kids want to go and live in the exciting places like Swansea and end up as heroin addicts. Thing is, kids want computers, video games, nightclubs, a wide selection of potential partners - and none of that exists in the middle of an icy wilderness. I wonder if the angry Inuit is more resentful about the young leaving, knowing that is going to be the end of Inuit way of life and blames the developed world for enticing them.

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petemillis, I expect you're right. Makes sense to me.

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David Goldsmith, "appearances" are deceptive, then!

I've stated that many resorts are buying renewable energy, encouraging people to use mass transport, etc. That, to me, is doing SOMETHING. If they didn't do that, then I think you could stand by the headline. But the fact is they are.

Tell me, what are local councils in the UK doing to reduce pollution in the construction of new houses, new roads, new airport terminals? If you want to start a campaign to change the world, start at home.

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I'd say one should start anywhere and everywhere. Ignore the hype and the greenwash. Everyone's on a green bandwagon at the moment.

Ultimately the only thing that proves whether anything is happening is the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere (which continues on an upward trend) ... and the ski industry appears to be contributing to an increase, rather than a decrease, in that percentage.

When you say that many resorts are "encouraging people to use mass transport" ... which resorts and what type of mass transport, from where? With respect, I don't think much of significance is happening in that arena, which is crucially important.

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David Goldsmith, what would you define as "significant", because I suspect from the comments posted that no matter what facts I provide you with, you'll discount them as insignificant. So, define significant, and then I'll see what I can find, but I'm not going to waste my time getting facts only for you to disregard them.

It's pretty straightforward. Just find a ski resort - any ski resort - that's reducing the number of skiers arriving by plane or car, or a combination of the two. If they're not achieving that, it's not significant how many windmills and solar panels they're installing.

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Climate change and carbon economics is anything but...

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David Goldsmith, That seems to be just your opinion of what is significant, and seems to only be based on reducing air and road travel. Why are you not including trains? As has been pointed out above, there is significant environmental impact resulting from both the construction and use of rail services.

If you really want to reduce CO2 then perhaps you should start in China because, unless some reductions are made there, anything ski resorts do will make no significant difference.

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This thread is becoming cop-out city.

Sorry. OUR actions are a contributory threat to the atmosphere and many millions of people worldwide who will suffer an increase in flood, desert and famine risk from rising sea levels and all other impacts of global warming.

They also threaten the future of snow for future skiers.

rob@rar, so what do you propose?

David Goldsmith, Zermatt - a fairly effective strategy for reducing arrivals by car... wink

Then there are the new TGV services this year to the east of Paris, and the funicular from BSM to les arcs, now a few years old - all of which should improve numbers arriving by train.

So those are a few things more than zilch...

You know it makes sense.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

rob@rar, "Advocating that people stop going skiing runs counter to human nature"

as this thread shows, apparently not for everyone! but I agree.

We all make choices. There is a disturbing puritan tendency at the far edge of lots of subjects, environmentalism, religion, vegetarianism, left and right wing politics, etc where people define themselves by what they don't do and who they aren't, rather than what they do do, and who they are.

A snowHead

A snowHead

Let's avoid labelling each other and work towards a consensus solution.

It's my belief that we'll only make progress on this when the oil wells begin to be shut down, and are then progressively shut down. Carbon-trading, carbon-offsetting and other measures do not really get to the heart of the issue.

We're reducing the cancer-causing air pollution of cigarettes by taxing them heavily and banning smoking in public. But there's a growing realisation that fossil-fuel smoking is the greater threat to humanity.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

David Goldsmith, look on the bright side. Billions of people worldwide, rich and poor, are benefiting from increased economic activity. I'm sure you're old enough to remember when millions died in famines in Asia. That doesn't happen any more. Healthy life expectancy has increased dramatically in all parts of the world except sub-Saharan Africa. I think a lot of what you advocate would tend to kill the goose that lays the golden egg, to avert a threat that may not be nearly as bad as you imagine.

As rob@rar says, let's have more research into alternative energy sources. In the meantime, let's build some nuclear power plants. We should in any case look to reduce our dependency on middle-eastern oil and conserve oil and coal supplies for use as chemical feedstock.

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David , I agree about avoiding labelling - so let's not label the entire skiing indusrty as feckless, and by implication most skiiers. I think that energy saving and carbon reducing measures are justified - if only because they will run out sooner or later. But we have to bite the nuclear bullet.

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Sometimes a bit of zealotry is needed to shake up status quos and vested interests. It's sometimes needed to counteract cons, hype, greenwash, fake posturing and so on.

Quite a bit of zealotry is exercised in boardrooms of major corporations, when you look at what goes on.

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David Goldsmith, fair points... but I think zealotry and its concommitents do present a rather large target for those who wish to avoid the issue.

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How is heavy taxing of cigarettes reducing cancer-causing air pollution? Taxing has made no difference at all. More kids smoke now than did several years ago. Poor people who you would think wouldn't be able to afford to smoke still smoke. Rich people are unaffected by increased taxing on smokes. The taxing can keep going up until the poor can't afford to buy them, but the well off aren't going to be affected by even £10 tax on a pack of fags. Banning smoking in enclosed public places will have an effect in discouraging social smoking. But the government will still be happy to permit the sale of smokes as they make so much money on them.
In same way with tax on aviation fuel - increase the taxes to a point where the less well-off can no longer afford to fly, the richer among us remain unaffected. The government would still be happy for flights to be encouraged as they would make so much more on the av fuel taxes.
Are you suggesting that we should all just ban ourselves from flying to the resorts before the government does something? Like bite off our noses to spite our faces?
I've been involved in a big hoohaa over the past few years concerning vehicular rights on certain byways. Lots of idiots thought it was a good idea to stop using these byways so that there was no issue for the governement to deal with in the misguided hope that the rights would then not be removed. But the government already had it's agenda set. These people stopped using the byways, the lost out on a few years of enjoyment, and rights were removed anyway and now gone forever. Whereas other byways we were able to keep open by sufficient use to show that a right of way should be kept open as it was. It was a case of use it or lose it. Voluntarilly cutting back on an activity will leade quicker to its demise.

David, I'm sorry to have to ask, but are you a member of the Ramblers Association? Some of what you say sounds like it could have come straight out ofthe mouth of Janet Street-Porter and co.

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No, I'm not a member of the Ramblers Association, or the Ranters Association.

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You know it makes sense.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

To my eyes it's 20 years too late for soft options. The current actions by governments and industries are quite inadequate and are just not addressing the immediacy needed.

I have a copy of Geographical Magazine on the desk in front of me. The front cover is a photo of Alpine peaks. The cover lines read "The Alps R.I.P.?" "Pollution on the roof of Europe". The photo shows a pollution haze across the snow-covered mountains.

The date of the magazine is June 1988.

A snowHead

David Goldsmith, "pollution haze" has a COOLING effect on the earth. Perhaps we should have more of it. Complex business, this eco stuff, isn't it?

A snowHead

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

What extreme measures? The governments talk of 20%, 40%, 60% projected reductions in CO2 and then tell us we need new airport runways.

The roads are choked with traffic. I see no sign of measures at all, let alone extreme measures.

We blame the Chinese, yet their industrial boom is partly a reflection of western hunger for cheap goods.

Sensible measures, which I'd hardly describe as extreme, could include shutting airports for a day or two per week and regular 'no car' days. There has to be a serious and demonstrative evocation of crisis management. I live in an area of London where the school run is like a mass car rally, with mad motorists getting mad with each other, when their kids could be happily walking or cycling to school.

How are we going to reduce pollution? Dream it away?

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David Goldsmith, when was the photo taken? There was a big volcanic eruption in Ruiz, Colombia, in 1985 that killed 25,000 people. Perhaps the prevailing south-west winds brought a fair bit of gear over the hills. The sulfate aerosols from volcanic eruptions have quite a long residence time in the atmosphere and form a sulfate haze. See http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/SO2Aerosols.html , interesting quote "n contrast to these explosive eruptions, one of the most severe volcano-related climate effects in historical times was associated with a largely nonexplosive eruption that produced very little ash--the 1783 eruption of Laki crater-row in Iceland. The eruption lasted 8-9 months and extruded about 12.3 km3 of basaltic lava over an area of 565 km2. A bluish haze of sulfur aerosols all over Iceland destroyed most summer crops in the country; the crop failure led to the loss of 75% of all livestock and the deaths of 24% of the population (H. Sigurdsson, 1982). The bluish haze drifted east across Europe during the 1783-1784 winter, which was unusually severe."
......
" The eruption of El Chichon, Mexico, in 1982 conclusively demonstrated this idea was correct. The explosive eruption injected at least 8 Mt of sulfur aerosols into the atmosphere, and it was followed by a measureable cooling of parts of the Earth's surface and a warming of the upper atmosphere"
......

The effects of volcanic emissions seem to be quite severe and long lasting. And volcanoes are erupting all the time. Any temp drop resulting from an eruption is sure to be followed by a rise, and each eruption will release loads of water vapour and CO2 into the atmos I would think.. And with eruptions occuring all the time, under the sea as well......

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petemillis, also the eruption of Tambora (in modern day Indonesia) in the early 19th century caused "the year without a summer" in Europe and North America.

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from same website....
"Ozone depletion promoted by volcanic sulfur aerosols. The sulfate aerosols also promote complex chemical reactions on their surfaces that alter chlorine and nitrogen chemical species in the stratosphere. This effect, together with increased stratospheric chlorine levels from chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) pollution, generates chlorine monoxide (ClO), which destroys ozone (O3)."

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After all it is free

petemillis, I believe there is pretty good research showing that cigarette consumption is price-senstive - up to a point.

David Goldsmith, I am not sure all your measure are "sensible". Anyway we need more non-fossil fuel sources whatever happens - which brings us back to nuclear... But lets tax aviation fuel in the meantime - it's a totally absurd subsidy of the aviation industry.

David Goldsmith,

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seems pretty pointless to take to task the bits and bobs around the edge of energy consumption.. if you really belive in global meltdown due to carbon emmissions then go the the big dogd.. the drax power stations and industry,, make all electrical production nuclear.. if the world is going to end if we dont reduce carbon emissions then surely this will save the world now and leave a few hundred more years to deal with the nuclear waste.. personally im enjoying this fine spring weather and am hoping for a belter of a summer.. with all the recent rain i am also hoping to use my hose pipe a lot . ahem , cough...
ill worry about global warming when my air con bill exceeds my heating bill Cool

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The global ski industry appears to be doing nothing - ZILCH - about climate change

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