 Poster: A snowHead
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Ski journalist, Patrick Thorne has launched a new website dedicated to: "providing impartial information on how global warming is affecting our planet's snowfall, ski resorts, glaciers and polar areas, as well as what the ski resorts are doing and what you can do." ...
Find it here
http://www.saveoursnow.com/
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Excellent site
a MUST READ' for all. 
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Quote from www.saveoursnow.com: "xxx (TO name) , one of the UK's largest ski tour operators, is in the partnership with Carbon Neutral andcustomers are asked during the booking procedure to 'tick a box' to opt in. Making their flights carbon neutral"
Clearly I have missed something here. How does ticking a box make a flight 'carbon neutral'?
Quote: "Railxxx does not have any special green travel initiatives we're aware of but travelling by electrically powered train is the greenest way to get to the Alps short of cycling - which could be tricky with your skis or board down the motorway... "
Given research recently discussed on  I think this is a dodgy statement
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| Red Leon wrote: |
Quote from www.saveoursnow.com: "xxx (TO name) , one of the UK's largest ski tour operators, is in the partnership with Carbon Neutral andcustomers are asked during the booking procedure to 'tick a box' to opt in. Making their flights carbon neutral"
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I thought this carbon neutral stuff had all been debunked as a load of guff?
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Just took a quick look.
Very informative. I will definately revisit the site when I get home tonight.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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I am also sceptical of this Carbon Neutral claim.
It's ment to be that having taken your flight to your ski destination the airline pays for some trees to be planted around the world. The trees then absorb the carbon dioxide.
I just think this is an easy way for airlines to try and justify running old less efficient planes.
Why my flight to the Alps will be less environmentally damaging just becuase the airlines decides to plant some trees in another part of the world is difficult for me to understand.
We do need to be more environmentally aware and I have to say I am quite poor at this game although I know I should be better but when alot of countries will not even impliment the Kioto treaty then I unfortunately believe no matter what littlle I do will only be counteracted by that idiot government across the pond.
I do feel ashamed when I see all the environmental facilities in Austria.
My last point is though if burning carbon fuels is bad why do Austria and the like still burn wood for fuel ?????? ( Not a criticism but an honest question seeking a eduational answer )
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| Super Eagle wrote: |
I am also sceptical of this Carbon Neutral claim.
It's ment to be that having taken your flight to your ski destination the airline pays for some trees to be planted around the world. The trees then absorb the carbon dioxide.
My last point is though if burning carbon fuels is bad why do Austria and the like still burn wood for fuel ?????? ( Not a criticism but an honest question seeking a eduational answer ) |
The argument for wood is you are only putting back what you have taken out of the atmosphere so it is carbon neutral. Assuming you are burning forestry planted just for wood burning not old growth. The counter argument is that 60 million people in Britain could not be heated by the land's capacity to burn wood, that is why we moved to coal then oil from the 18th century.
Probably the answer (apart from massive populaton reduction - I've just read a book which says that the population post Roman Empire may have dropped by 75% in Europe) is cleverer forms of heating such as heat pumps, solar, small wind turbines and much better insulation but energy is still comparitively cheap and insulation can take many years to pay back.
Carbon neutral is hard to justify for transport because you have to ensure that at the end of the tree's life it is put in the earth and the carbon it has fixed out of the atmosphere is not released again (as happened with all that oil and coal). Planes also put out various kinds of pollution and pump it out at high altitudes. There are probably other arguments, both for and against.
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The argument is not whether global warming is happening. The argument is to what extent if any man is actually responsible for global warming. Implicit within the concept of carbon neutral is man's culpability for global warming. Therefore a site promoting carbon neutral could surely not be considered to be taking an impartial stance.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Where do these carbon-neutral 'plant-a-tree' schemes actually plant their trees? Are they perhaps repopulating the areas of Northern Europe which were allegedly turned into a wasteland by acid raid caused by the UK's industry in the 70's and 80's (anyone remember those TV pictures)?
As Davidof points out, the trees need to be allowed to mature and then be buried - like that's going to happen! There's no point planting trees to suck up CO2 from aircraft now if they're cut down in 30 years' time and burnt in some Austrian chalet.
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Hello from Patrick the saveoursnow compiler. I think you all know more about the Carbon Neutral thing that I do. I know there's been debate as to whether it's a load of rubbish or not and I don't know, I'm just trying to report what'sd there is people are interested. To be honest I'm finding it difficult to find any travel companies that do much, really, on the 'green side.' Being realistic most travel is going to involve releasing more CO2 than you're likely to standing quietly in a wood watching the flowers grow. As far as I've found out so far, if we go back to the start, then if we believe global warming is happening and we want to try to slow/stop/reverse it ...and believe we can do that and there's some point in trying ...BUT we want to keep travelling to the snow ...then carbon offsetting seems to be the only thing on offer to help us lessen our guilt. So, too many ifs and buts at the moment really. It all needs to get a lot simpler! If anyone is really bothered it's easier and probably sounder science to just change your house to wind generated electricity (Took me five mins with ecotricity.com and they say it won't cost any more). But I'm not holding my breath that there isn't some big problem with wind power.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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snowhunter, If the travel companies published some facts it may help people come to a green method of travel. If expressed in simple terms, say per person it would help .
For example how much carbon is produced/used by 1 skier going to the Alps from the UK by
1) Train
2) Car
3) Plane
IIRC Jeremy Clarkson maintains that 2 would be the most carbon efficeint (assuming each mode of transport has all seats full.)
The fact that no one publishes figures that are easy for the man in the street to understand speaks volumes!
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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PS I'm not intentionally promoting 'carbon neutral' actively or intentionally- although I can see putting it up there on the site - gives that impression. But really I'm just trying to include anything that looks relevant, and as I say that's about all there is.
I like the news pages and the Melt Projections page more as I've tried to gather up various UN/EC et al reports on climate change projections around the world in the one place. Hoping to do a nice clickable map some time...
There does seem to be a vast amount of potentially glacier-melting hot air about environmental concern generated by press releasses from ski resorts and tour ops but alas most of it doesn't boil down to much.
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boredsurfin. Agree completely and funny you should say that as currently trying to persuade a selection of resorts to produce stats on how much power they use on lifts/snow making they use, then aiming to do some maths and divide by number of skier days to work out a vague avereage C02 per skier per day. Perhaps factor in something for heat and light for a typical ski week.
If I ever succeed in persuading any of them to deliver these details and we get an average C02 per skier day, maybe add in the flights, the question arises do we offer a ski-holiday-carbon-offset in the hope there's some point or do we just get more depressed?
On travel to the alps there seems to be some consensus on electric trains from what I've read. Not sure how that balances against flying to Colorado and skiing Aspen or Vail where all the lifts are to be wind powered next winter. Probably still better at a guess!
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You know it makes sense.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Good point! Think there's going to need to be some major 'averaging out' I suppose, if it could be calculated, one upside might be that if resorts could claim that if you are concerned about global warming they offer a 'below average' or even 'zero emmissions' ski holiday (once you've got there at least...) - against whatever benchmark was finally determined, it might help drive up resort/tour op efforts in this area if there was a standard to be measured against.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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snowhunter, Conceivably some commuters may cause less damage by being on holiday 
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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These are the figures from http://www.carbonneutral.com/ based on one person traveling
1. 0.12 tonnes for the train (1000 mile trip)
2. 0.26 tonnes for the car (1.4 to 2.0l petrol engine, 1000mile trip)
3. 0.19 tonnes for the plane (Heathrow-Geneva)
According to this page:
http://www.climnet.org/publicawareness/transport.html#com
Coach travel is better than all of the above.
As for energy consumed by the lift infrastructure, the best I can come up with at the minute is this:
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One retail electricity company is taking part in the Keep Winter Cool solution. Green Mountain Energy Company has purchased enough windpower to run the main chair lifts of five ski resorts for the day. The 18,000 kilowatt-hours of wind energy will offset more than 10 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions at the five ski areas - three in New York: Gore Mountain, Holiday Valley, and Peek 'n Peak, and two in Oregon: Mount Bachelor and Mount Hood Meadows.
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from http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2003/2003-02-20-02.asp
This seems to suggest that the energy required in getting to the resort exceeds that to haul you up and down the mountains for a week by quite a margin.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Wonder if the train figures they quote are electric or diesel - perhaps it doesn't matter too much if electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels. Then again, probably nuclear if it's SNCF. Good point about some people generating less C02 on the mountains than at home. Wonder if it matters if the C02 is being generated at 2000m or nearer sea level.
I'm sure it's right that getting to the resort generates much more C02 than using the lifts/snow making, but it would be nice to have it in context, albeit probably with some vague and debatable figures! I did hear Ski Dubai arguing they were good for the environment as they saved the locals the need to fly to the Alps or Rockies to ski. Hmmmm
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Actually, given that Ski Dubai PR claim, perhaps Dendix is the future after all... 
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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The only way to convince people that carbon offsetting is viable is to give passengers information about how many trees would need to be planted for each of their flights and for the airlines to actually declare how many trees they are actually planting.
Eg:- Manchester to Salzburg = 6 Trees.
However what happens when all the worlds surface is covered in trees due to Carbon Offsetting.
Believe me I do think we need to do something but I just think Carbon Offsetting is a gimmick.
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If I read this right, the figures above suggest that a car containing 4 passengers equates to .085 tonnes per person. Perhaps that clown Clarkson has a point...? I'm sure the coach is better still (in CO2 terms at least  )
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Wear The Fox Hat,
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Red Leon, depends whether it could maintain the same MPG with all those skiers and their gear... and my guess is that the cars Clarkson typically drives down to the alps don't fall in the 1.4l-2.0l bracket
snowhunter the figures for trains come from the UK Department of Transport (I think), interestingly the emissions for 'regional' trains are lower than those for 'intercity'. For these figures diesel trains are better than electric - but this would be sensitive to the source of the electricity. The British run on about 15%-20% nuclear, the French are at 75%.
Super Eagle, I agree with broadly on offsetting - direct reduction is better than offsetting - but there's no harm in using the carbon calculators and even using the offsetting if it makes you feel better.
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What you know about "artic effect"??? This is the stop of the Gulf Stream.
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You know it makes sense.
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metalhead132, The North Atlantic Conveyor? The mechanism that moves the hot water from the gulf up to the UK and beyond?
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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| Super Eagle wrote: |
The only way to convince people that carbon offsetting is viable is to give passengers information about how many trees would need to be planted for each of their flights and for the airlines to actually declare how many trees they are actually planting.
Eg:- Manchester to Salzburg = 6 Trees.
However what happens when all the worlds surface is covered in trees due to Carbon Offsetting.
Believe me I do think we need to do something but I just think Carbon Offsetting is a gimmick. |
I think it is, too. Just outside our house, a massive beech tree has had to come down for safety reasons. 4' diameter trunk at the base. It may have consumed a lot of carbon whilst alive - it'll be giving it up over time, now.
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Poster: A snowHead
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achilles,
As mentioned earlier in the thread, provided they bury the tree or turn it into timber, the tons of carbon within it will remain locked away for many moons. But we all know it'll be chopped up & burned by whoever's in charge - probably the local council who insists we all recycle our newspapers
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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My local council has just made the front page of the newspaper for taking their recycling campaign one step further - they recycled (or as we call it, chucked on the dustcart) the suitcases & duty frees of some poor schmuck who'd just come back off holiday. They won't take a black bag containing garden waste, they won't take a bag if it's 1 inch inside your property but if they see a pile of suitcases 10 foot up a driveway they chuck 'em.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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FenlandSkier
Yes, the today heat can bring us cool weather in the future in all western Europe.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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All this talk of global warmjng is total rubbish. We have got the central heating on, the skies are full of grey cloud and there is so little light after 4pm we have to have the lights on in the middle of the "August heatwave".
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FAQ
