 Poster: A snowHead
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…according to Aurelian Daodrey, of the French ecology association, Mountain Wilderness. A major clash is looming between developers and conservationists as both battle to gain the high ground. Are low altitude resorts such as Kitzbuhel, Morzine, Megève, Gstaad all doomed? Certain businessmen, planning a new generation of developments over 3,000m apparently think so, suggesting half of all European resorts will close over the next few decades. However conservationists are preparing to rise to the challenge…
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Good journalism from The Observer. Unimpressive quotes from Peter Hardy and Chris Gill.
The self-styled 'independent' figureheads of skiing ought to get real about the environmental impact of our sport. We all need to get real about this. High-altitude resort development is extremely destructive.
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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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I see no reason why resorts should be over about 2000m high. All the super-high resorts are going to do is cause more people to suffer from altitude sickness and therefore not enjoy their holiday so much. You can get ski-in ski-out a lot lower...
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These people are talking about building a resort at 3000M does anyone have any idea as to the long term and short term health effects this will have on Staff and visitors to such a resort ? Having seen how some people are affected by just a short time at this sort of Altitude I'd be seriously concerned
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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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It's the provision of sewage treatment, services, erosion of slopes and pollution at these altitudes that are equally troublesome.
It's a horrendous idea. There's no need for ski-in ski-out. It's an indulgence of an era now passed. We have to look at ways of getting skiers up to the snowline from valley accommodation, and reduce the impact of future ski infrastructure at high altitude.
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David Goldsmith, as long as the paying customer is prepared to put his hand is his pocket to ensure he can combine maximum pleasure with maximum confort (ease of access to the slopes in this case), only legislation can change things. As Maggie said, "you can't buck the market"...
I wholeheartedly agree that we should be encouraging investment in the means to get people up to the resorts from the valleys.
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I did read the Nature article, I don't have access at home but I'll look again when I'm back at work. From my memory the thrust of the criticism there was the possible opening up of another glacier in the Austrian Alps (mentioned in the Observer article). I really don't see that accomodation at 3000m is viable - I know that astronomers at the high altitude observatories retreat down the mountain to sleep because there are health risks in staying at altitude and they don't sleep well anyway.
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Who wants to be crammed in anyway at higher levels? But nothing will change until there is an economic imperative. The global temp is predicted to increase by up to 5.8 degrees C by 2100. Snow cover has already descreased by about 10% since the 1960s (following a much smaller increase in temp over the last couple of hundred years) so basically I think we're just about f***ed as far as decent skiing goes - especially if you're under 50! Ha, ha - there's some compensation for getting older!
These high altitude areas are alreay vulnerable to climate change and any other stress will just make things worse. Why don't we ever learn? Well - Intrawest and others like them just want to make money - and we just want to have fun!
Well - now that's off my chest it's time for a cup of tea and browse through the si brochures for next year.
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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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I've always thought that high-altitude resorts (or lift stations, at least) rely much more heavily on the Alpine permafrost for stability (in that they're set into the mountain rock, rather standing on the ground, plus they tend to be immediately below more shear rock faces). Now, considering that there has been some permafrost problems recently, they'd have to be very careful where they site those resorts.
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Yes, especially as permafrost has been thawing and warming in mountainous regions - though I don't know where exactly.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Jane, the Matterhorn was one famous example.
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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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| Jane wrote: |
| The global temp is predicted to increase by up to 5.8 degrees C by 2100. |
The key words here are "up to".
The 5.8C figure comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Their reports do not, in fact, make predictions. They have defined a number of scenarios (defined by factors such as population growth, economic growth, use of alternative fuels, etc) and made projections for each scenario. The IPCC make no statement on the probability of any of the scenarios coming to pass.
One can safely assume that the scenario leading to the highest (or lowest) projection is relatively unlikely to come to pass, being based on extreme assumptions for each input factor. Further, the projections for each scenario are themselves uncertain, with a range of about 2C for most (more for the high-end scenarios).
Thus the 5.8C figure is the worst possible outcome in a most unlikely scenario.
The range of projections given by the IPCC is 1.4C to 5.8C, with a mean of about 3.0C. That's enough to take very seriously, and disappointing for our well-favoured community, but a whole lot better than 5.8C.
I'm sorry to go on, and I know some of you will have read similar things from me on other threads, but the process by which the results of scientific research enter the public conciousness seems to me rather like the way His Toni-ness analysed intelligence on WMD: filter out the re-assuring bits and amplify the scary bits.
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laundryman, You're quite right. I'm aware of the IPCC report. I didn't want to get too technical here, hence the 'up to' - mistake! I should have guessed someone would pick me up on it . I certainly don't like to be accused of 'amplifying the scary bits!' But despite the uncertainty in the data, the IPPC believe that 'global average surface temps during the 21st century will rise at rates very likely without precedent during the last 10 000 yrs'. 'Very likely' here is judged to be a 90-99% certainty. (IPCC Summary for Policymakers 2001.) It is very difficult to give a balanced view of this complex issue in a 'quick reply'. It's easy to pull out contradictory bits of info from a report, but the above quote is from the 'Robust Findings' section of the Summary Report. It does of course have key uncertainties associated with it, manifest in the range of 1.4C - 5.8C given above. The overall findings of the report would suggest at the very least we take a precautionary approach.
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You know it makes sense.
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| Quote: |
Good journalism from The Observer. Unimpressive quotes from Peter Hardy and Chris Gill.
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Particularly interesting, since the Observer article was by their science correspondent, Robin McKie, who is himself a very keen skier.
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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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| David Goldsmith wrote: |
| Unimpressive quotes from Peter Hardy and Chris Gill.. |
Chris Gill and Peter Hardy are dinosaurs. I don't mean they are too old, just ossified in their way of thinking. It is the SKIer generation (Spending the Kids Inheritance). They probably don't realise that over 50% of winter tourists in France don't even ski, board, telemark or whatever. They do there to enjoy the winter environment and do other, often lower impact, activities.
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Poster: A snowHead
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http://www.hns-info.net/article.php3?id_article=4529 (in French) explains the moves afoot via the Giran political reform to amend the current status of the French national parks. Quite an uproar over this from the ecologists, who see it as a backdoor way of facilitating development in the Alps in what would be redesignated as so-called "peripheral" zones.
The new law would also reduce the power of ecologist associations, such as Mountain Wilderness, in the local decision-making process.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| Ian Hopkinson wrote: |
| I really don't see that accomodation at 3000m is viable - I know that astronomers at the high altitude observatories retreat down the mountain to sleep because there are health risks in staying at altitude. |
I'm not so sure it is because of their health they go down the mountain. Probably more to do with looking for sex, drugs and rock-n-roll. Athletes do it the other way round: they live at altitude and work (train) down the mountain. And lots of people live quite happily above 3000m. According to The Guinness Book of World Records, the highest town in the world is Wenzhuan (Tibet) at 5000m. Lhasa, the old capital of Tibet is at 3760m. La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, stands at 3600m. And Leadville in Colorado is just over 3000m. Many American ski resorts are around the 3000m mark: Alta at 3216m, Breckenridge at 2927m and Taos at 2807m.
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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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Jonpim: I was up at the observatories on Mauna Kea(Hawaii) at 4,200m, last week. The sex and drugs were readily available....but you're probably right about going down to boogie! Took a gentle hike to a nearby lake...after 20mins began to feel a little dizzy; after 40 a dull headache kicked in and after a little over an hour we stopped talking....add booze to that and what kind of apres-ski would it be?! The observatory workers/visitor centre employees stay up for half day shifts max.
No problem with living at altitude if you're born there...I get headaches in London from the air/noise pollution but you're probably acclimatized!
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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All hoping that Mount Helen will blow big time then? That should help to cool things.
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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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So can't we just intentionally bung a whole lot more muck up into the stratosphere? Combat pollution with pollution? Dust, dirt and soot as a kind of space-born parasol? No doubt someone's already thought of that though.
[EDIT] Just found this article! So what's the big deal about climate change and all the end of the world stuff if this is all we have to do?!
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PG, the trouble is that many of these so called solutions are just short term fixes and do nothing to actually solve the problem, think of it like this
A person discovers that the sole of their shoe has worn thin and a hole has appeared, because they do not have time in their busy schedule to go to a repairers they cut a bit of cardboard and fix it inside the shoe then carry on walking arround, some time later they notice that the cardboard has worn through as well and decide it's finally time to take the shoes to the repairers, the repairer looks at the shoes and says I'm sorry there's nothing I can do the damage is too great, if you had come to me when you first noticed the damage I could have repaired it but not any longer.
Pumping particulates into the atmosphere will act as a sunshade but if the greenhouse gasses are not reduced eventually you reach a stage where the particulates provide insufficient shade to combat the warming
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D G Orf, that was definitely a tongue-in-cheek edit, (need a special smilie for that one, chief smilie maker...)
That said, who knows, to hijack your metaphor, we may one day reach the situation where all the shoe repairers and manufacturers are no more, and a "stop gap" solution is all that's left.... 
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Sorry PG, I didn't mean the solutions were invalid, just that it's important to see the bigger picture, to use my previous analogy, if the man had phoned the repairer straight away then used the cardboard for just a short time things would not have been so bad
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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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D G Orf, very true. People all too often comment along the lines of "so what, there's nothing I can do that'll make any difference ...." And of course, we all know that coordinated action, even if apparently insignificant on an individual level, can make all the difference...
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PG, great article on “geo-engineering”, but from a rather interesting source: Omni . Omni was a magazine which contained articles on science fact and science fiction. The magazine was started by Bob Guccione, of Penthouse, in 1978. It ceased publication in 1996, but continued for a short time on-line.
I think Owen Davies (the author, who also wrote a lot on witchcraft) was deadly serious, but you will note the article is dated 1993, and not many of these ideas seem to be mainstream today. A pity really: I thought 55,000 40-mile-square mirrors orbitiing round the earth would have looked rather lovely.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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 It did seem just a little 'fantastic' in parts! But then, so did Da Vinci's flying machine ...
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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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On the subject of damage to the environment from car-generated pollution, this article in the Tapei Times...
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Ford becomes latest company to tackle global warming emissions
In a recent powwow of top executives, the US auto giant laid out an aggressive plan to improve its cars' fuel economy by 80 percent by 2030 |
About time too. A 'genuine' move, or publicity gimmick? Suppose it doesn't matter in the end, assuming it's not too late to make a significant difference...
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Bonjour PG, I expect you've been up for hours. You've read all the English Sunday newspapers, all the French ones, are onto your fourth cup of coffee and now going through all the Asian papers. Such dedication.
The bit I have not got quite clear, is if we all go over to electric cars, what about the pollution caused by generating that power? And then I bet there will be an outcry about all what do with all the spent batteries.
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You know it makes sense.
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Bonjour Jonpim, I've been converted to chaussons aux pommes and pains au chocolat for brekky, but I generally stick to a cuppa of proper Yorkshire tea, specially imported, seeing as most French variations taste like used washing up water. Coffee occasionally, but preferred after a long lunch...
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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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80% improvement is easy when you start with a 6 litre lump of Detroit pig iron with an engine management system which is as sophisticated as a s**t in a swimming pool. Surprised it's taken Ford so long to wake up and smell the fumes.
I once drove a Dodge Ram Charger - glorified pickup with a 6.8 litre straight 6 engine, 3 speed column shift. Cruising on desert tracks with the A/C on it's consumption was 1 gallon every 10 minutes !!! ( ~ 10 mpg ). It had a 220 lt tank - that's an oil drum. I now drive a very sophisticated Volvo S60 2.4 Lite Turbo - and that's really a Ford, so they already know how to do it.
Jonpim - unless you use solar, wind or hydro to make the electricity or hydrogen for fuel cell power, you are right - these new propulsion ideas are not as clean and green as some expect them to be.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Chaussons aux pommes: yummy! I'm just a tea and toast man. Best you can get round here.
No lovely bakers opening early with tempting fresh bread and rolls.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Apple Puffs - nice. But not allowed - the good Dr Atkins insists I have bacon and eggs. Turkey bacon out here unfortunately. Now what was this thread about ..... ???
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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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The electricity generation question for the electric cars isn't a problem. Scrap all the coal/gas jobbies and go totally hydro-electric, what with all those melting glaciers everywhere there should be plenty of running water to tap into.
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| FenlandSkier wrote: |
The electricity generation question for the electric cars isn't a problem. Scrap all the coal/gas jobbies and go totally hydro-electric, what with all those melting glaciers everywhere there should be plenty of running water to tap into.
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Well, I can spot a grenade when it's thrown.... But (deep breath) hydro-electric power floods valleys and affects riverbeds downstream. Even run of the river schemes have problems. Despite that anti-nuclear note of the link's author, perhaps the French have got it right going for nuclear power as a non-carbon-emitting energy source - notwithsanding the obvious problems. Cars, of course, are only part of the picture - see the pie chart called CO2 Culprits (you'll have to scroll down a little). It's interesting that no politicians are talking about racking up VAT on home heating - though that is a significant carbon-emission cause. (And no, I don't want to pay extra, thank you). With the Chinese and Indian economies are still gearing up, and alternative energy sources show no realistic sign of statisfying the need, maybe nuclear power is the only salvation.
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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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The Hoover dam was built some time ago but it cut off the water flowing to Mexico and diverted it to supply desert areas such as Las Vegas and Los Angeles. I am waiting for Mexico to demand its water back.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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There are major problems on the Colorado at the moment. This article from the LA Times goes into detail (requires free registration I'm afraid). In summary, 5 years of drought, including relative lack of snowfall in the upper basin, have left the river with its lowest flow for 500 years (not sure how they know that) and with some of the reservoirs behinds the dams at 60-70 percent full. To get to the point, the hydro plants are operating at 17-30 percent below capacity, and will fail altogether if the levels of the reservoirs dip below the intakes, which may not be far off in some cases.
I crossed the Colorado at Yuma, Arizona (not far from the Mexican border) this summer, and if there was a trickle in the bed, I didn't see it.
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One *potential* advantage of electric cars is that the generation is centralised, so that any depolluting measures are more easily applied (cleaning even a few coal fired power station is easier than 20 million cars).
Two points that would need to be taken into account (and are often missed out) when considering nuclear. Firstly a nuclear powerstation requires alot of concrete. Contrete requires a lot of energy to make - consider the amount needed if we were to replace all non-nuclear power stations...and while we're doing that the contrete will be made using non-clean generation. Secondly, you'd need a very large reserve of uranium deposits. I'm not sure how many are currently known about.
The biggest way to cut atmospheric pollutants (of all types) is to cut demand (through lifestyle, insulation, efficiency, etc.). A good second is to use locally generating sustainables (small wind & solar, for example).
Incidentally:
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This article from the LA Times goes into detail (requires free registration I'm afraid).
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Visit: http://www.bugmenot.com
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| skanky wrote: |
| ...Secondly, you'd need a very large reserve of uranium deposits. I'm not sure how many are currently known about.... |
Could be a case for going back to research into fast breeder reactors - like the Chinese. And could the plutonium from nuclear warheads be used in nuclear power, I wonder.
| skanky wrote: |
| ...The biggest way to cut atmospheric pollutants (of all types) is to cut demand (through lifestyle, insulation, efficiency, etc.). A good second is to use locally generating sustainables (small wind & solar, for example). |
I think world-wide power consumption will inevitably rise with the increasing affluence of China and India. One day, that may be true of Africa, too. I am not convinced that wind and solar power will do more than tinker at the edges. Wind generators have made a fascinating change to our landscape so far, but I also wonder how many more we want. Off-shore plans are expensive, yet despite the cost, are forecast to meet just 5% of UK needs.
More research, at least, into nuclear power would seem worthwhile.
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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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| skanky wrote: |
| The biggest way to cut atmospheric pollutants (of all types) is to cut demand (through lifestyle, insulation, efficiency, etc.). A good second is to use locally generating sustainables (small wind & solar, for example). |
I agree with all of that; and the biggest contribution could be from lifestyle changes. The interesting point is whether snowheads will make a contribution by cutting back on their habit. I'll post a poll to guage feeling.
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| Quote: |
I think world-wide power consumption will inevitably rise with the increasing affluence of China and India. One day, that may be true of Africa, too. I am not convinced that wind and solar power will do more than tinker at the edges. Wind generators have made a fascinating change to our landscape so far, but I also wonder how many more we want. Off-shore plans are expensive, yet despite the cost, are forecast to meet just 5% of UK needs.
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That's why you have to change the demand. The local, micro-generation gets round the idea of a few, big generation farms. There are houses around that generate all their own energy and are actually able to sell surplus electricty back to the national grid. Admittedly these houses have to be built from scratch, but existing houses can be converted to greatly reduce their demand. The question is, at what point does the cost seem worthwhile?
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FAQ
