 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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I got this tagged to the bottom of an e-mail I recived today with a nice gif of a green tree next to it ...
"Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to."
Yes, and why would I print it otherwise? 
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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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| Winterhighland wrote: |
....perception!
Earlier I was chatting to a pupil at a High School in the Highlands who was telling me none of his mates are buying season tickets this year. Due to last year? No, apparently they got plenty days last season, but because they've had it practically drummed into them in school that it wont snow again with Global Warming. He said all they go on about is global warming and how it doesn't snow in 'Global Warming UK'.
It seems that because the UK media can't grasp the fact that snow is and has been since the little ice age anyway a climatic rarity in much of the low lying areas of the UK that it justifies insane reporting like the BBC Global Warning series a couple of years back which had the infamous line "It's now five years since it snowed in the UK". Which helps strengthen the belief that it actually doesn't snow anywhere in this land now.
Perception of Global Warming is now many decades ahead of even the worst case warming scenarios. There are in fact no UKCIP or IPCC scenarios that would deliver snowless winters in the Scottish Mountains by 2080. A more recent BBC program on AGW acknowledged this fact in mock winter forecasts for the future when in the forecast for winter 2080 they expressly referred to snow still falling on the Cairngorms. Unfortunately the majority of the population believe that snow on the Cairngorms exists only in history, in stories from Granddad by the fire and in curled up old photos!
If you think thats an exaggeration consider this (and consider it along site the first paragraph). Last Tuesday I was at a business to business exhibition in Inverness. I spoke to 26 people who said they were skiers, of these....
....12 pointed out that though they were skiers they obviously had not skied in Scotland for at least a couple of seasons as there had been no snow last winter. When questioned further as to whether they meant not enough for them to consider it worthwhile, to my horror the answer from all 12 was no, just no skiable snow at all. They all believed that the Scottish Ski Areas had not opened for snowsports last winter. When showed photos of CairnGorm Mountain in early March this year they were  !!
What is worse these were all people living in or around the Inverness and Inner Moray Firth area. Small sample I know but that is 50% of people in what could be considered the local area no longer bother to even check if there's snow any more as 'obviously there isn't snow now with global warming' to quote one gentleman.
I had a very interesting discussion with another guy who works in mountain sports and he said my story above was the final proof in what he believed, perception of climate change is not just decades ahead of reality, but perception not actual climate is killing winter mountain sports in Scotland and not just snowsports. If its 50% in Inverness, is it 80% in the Central Belt, and 99.9% further South? |
Winterhighland -- The findings are not a surprise. Massmarket perception always gets way ahead of, or behind, reality. For example, Vauxhall cars are still viewed as rubbish today, despite actually making half-decent vehicles.
A perceptual gap exists because Average Joes have access, intentionally or unintentionally, to imperfect information. Thus, they routinely make underinformed decisions.
By one account, snow days in Braemar have plunged by roughly 65% over the past 15'ish years. Ski days have collapsed by circa 55% in the same period.
If those recent trends continued, Scottish skiing could effectively be wiped out by the 2020s / 2030s.
Based on the above contexts, it is easy to see why peripheral or casual skiers might form relatively extreme conclusions.
Blaming the customer is pointless.
Instead, point the finger at the private and public Scottish tourism industry. It should have a clear strategy in place to measure perceptions; then reset them with a high-profile, aggressive, continuous, targeted marketing campaign.
Where are the massmarket newspaper adverts screaming that Scotland has snow in mid-Winter?
Where are the daily or weekly press releases via Businesswire on updated snow conditions for the media to reprint?
Where are the industry-sponsored GooTube videos showing kids some cool boarding stunts in Scotland?
Where are the cool, national TV promotions highlighting Scotland as a sexy place to ski on a weekend?
Where are the cool Easyjet posters encouraging rich Londoners to show off and fly to the Scottish hills for a few days?
Where is the famous website that aggregates short-term ski accommodation in an easy-to-use, online, instantly-bookable format?
Where are the snowguns guaranteeing atleast a few runs are usually open?
I could go on.
Lack of money is not an excuse. Scotland and the EU are awash with tax dollars.
I know Winterhighland.info does a great job of promoting Scottish skiing. It has beautiful photos and good updates. It is one of my favorite sites in the whole world.
But it is a rare voice in a sea of incompetence.
Make no mistake, the Scottish Winter tourism industry is woefully unsophisticated. It must fight back against the eco-mentalists.
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I like that take. Thanks for that wisdom. In our own small way we are running features on the good stuff that can be done in the Highlands. Document Snowboard and Fall-Line can hit the core of the market but it needs that next level of awareness to make a difference. You might see an improvement in the websites soon - there's fresh resource in place to start building on the info available for booking etc.
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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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You'll need to Register first of course.
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| Whitegold wrote: |
................I could go on.
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Indeed
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Actually - did you know that it's farty cows that contribute more to greenhouse emmissions that anything else?
har har - keep your car but go veggie...
a United Nations report entitled Livestock’s Long Shadow which states that the world’s 1.5 billion head of cattle are responsible for 18% of the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Transport as a whole, including the much reviled ‘Chelsea tractor’, smoke belching rickshaws in India, rusty tramp steamers and cheap charter flights accounts, in total for 14% of greenhouse gases. Perhaps Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary was close to the mark when he facetiously declared that global warming could be solved by slaughtering the world’s cattle.
http://cars.uk.msn.com/greenmotoring/article.aspx?cp-documentid=6085605 (full article here...very interesting reading)
Methane: The billions of chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows who are crammed into factory farms each year in the U.S. produce enormous amounts of methane, both during digestion and from the acres of cesspools filled with feces that they excrete. Scientists report that every pound of methane is more than 20 times as effective as carbon dioxide is at trapping heat in our atmosphere.5 The Environmental Protection Agency shows that animal agriculture is the single largest source of methane emissions in the U.S.6
Nitrous Oxide: Nitrous oxide is about 300 times more potent as a global warming gas than carbon dioxide. According to the U.N., the meat, egg, and dairy industries account for a staggering 65 percent of worldwide nitrous oxide emissions.7
I live in Edinburgh and am not far from the 5 main resorts in scotland. i'm gonn try and get up there for a few weekend and am delighted the snow could potentially hold until April! but a weekend away skiing just up the road doesn't really compare fun wise to a week away in a forgein country with cute french ski instructors. a weekend is a hobby, a week is a holiday!
i don't see why people can't do both and support the Scottish ski industry?
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| Quote: |
i don't see why people can't do both and support the Scottish ski industry?
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Most do. I'll be doing two weeks abroad (dolomites at new year and LDA at february halfterm) + hopefully at least 1xc race abroad. I'll then try and fit in as much Scottish skiing as possible, both at the resorts and in the (Clashindarroch) forest on evenings after work. Least number of Scottish days I've managed is 11 last year and most is 27 the year before. Latest Ive ever skiied (in scotland) is 24th July. The best snow in Scotland tends to be in March and April.
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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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it's not farty cows but apparently belching cows - most the methane is belched out. May be worse due to the feed cattle are given. So to save the planet either save the cheer leader, heroes style, or eat more cows < cows = < methane =  world. Or maybe it's because there are now 6,000,000,001 people and going up fast. Nobody ever seems to say "wow isn't the world great, there are so many more of us nowadays"
Or lets go back in time to when the skiing and life was apparently better...come on Hiro ( >_< )
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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I have to teach about global warming, and mostly my message is - its a natural cycle and if every human died tomorrow, it'd carry on anyway. Usually addendum'd with 'the media talks dangly bits, especially the BBC'. Followed by a fairly detailed explanation of how it'll lead to an ice age anyway, and then we'll all be bug'd regardless........... however, at least thats 60 kids a year getting a more balanced view..........
.....unfortunately, my collegues in the humanities department are rather more pc 
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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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Congratulations, austin7, do you teach them Intelligent Design too?
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You know it makes sense.
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Hoppo, a cheap rhetorical trick, to link two entirely separate issues.
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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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does an ice age not mean more skiing though? (there's always a bright side!)
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Poster: A snowHead
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| brian wrote: |
| snowball wrote: |
| P In those days I would simply go up without particularly checking conditions and there would always be enough snow, even if it was often boilerplate. It was unusual not to be able ski down to the carpark at Glencoe (how often was that possible last year?). |
I think that's slightly stretching it, the car park at Glencoe is only about 1100' above sea level, there hasn't been reliable snow cover there since the last ice age !
However, it's certainly true that there was a great run of winters in the early and mid 80s when I started skiing.
Having said that, around 1990 there were some real stinkers and I'm not overly convinced it's got much worse on average since then (multi decadal phase switch of the NAO anyone ?).
The chances of cracking conditions lasting for weeks are still there, all of 2001, mid season 2005, mid to late 2006. 2007 was fairly duff, 2008 who knows ?
Agree about the Braveheart, most frustrating. When not closed for lack of snow or avvy risk it seems to be broken. |
It is a very long time since I've skied up in Scotland though I made a short visit most years in the mid and late 80s and a couple of times rather unsatifactorily since. Perhaps I was just lucky but I could ski to the car park at Glencoe more often than I couldn't in the 80s (though often it was icy in places - I remember a hard fall). The trouble is the few times when I have heard there was good snow in Scotland recently I couldn't go.
Do they put up signs if there is avalanche risk on the back of Nevis? I cannot remember that in the 80s, but I think it was always skiable when I visited. The first time I skied the area was after several days of snowstorms and I asked where the back was and made the first tracks, watched by the pisteur I'd asked (or whatever they are called in Scotland) who then followed me down. Fabulous day of powder skiing!
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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laundryman, on the contrary - I find the parallels highly illuminating.
Both evolution and anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theories find a high degree of consensus amongst scientists practising in the field. For evolution the primary way of establishing this is to look at undergraduate textbooks in biology: this works for AGW too - I have "Physics of Atmospheres" by John Houghton but other undergraduate texts in atmospheric physics would do equally well. You could also look at what's currently being published in the scientific peer reviewed literature, very few papers these days question evolution as a theory - they are interested in the impacts of the theory. Similarly with climate science, very few papers question the theory of anthropogenic global warming - they are interested in the details and the consequences.
For AGW there are a couple of additional mechanisms for testing where the science is currently at: you can turn to the IPCC (which summarises the current state of the scientific literature in climate change), and the G8 national academies of science have asserted their support for the latest report of the IPCC. (Amongst numerous other scientific societies)
If we look at the debate on snowHeads we see direct parallels to the "Intelligent Design vs Evolution" debate. Proponents of the position contrary to AGW seem to gain their science by a process close to "divine revelation", and if you look around you can find them espousing "teach the controversy", "only a theory" and "missing link" arguments.
I should probably clarify the "missing link" one: a favourite of the Intelligent Design folks is to demand for "missing link" fossils between arbitrarily selected species, for climate change the equivalent question is to demand the temperature on some arbitrarily selected day in the future.
I've just discovered another link that I hadn't previously appreciated: if we look on wikipedia to find out more about "The Discovery Institute" (world leaders in the 'Intelligent Design' movement) we discover they are a spin off from "The Hudson Institute", who were the original source for the "500 scientists..." story. See the original press release here. (Attribution to the Hudson Institute is at the bottom.)
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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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snowball, with all due respect I think it's difficult to make any sort of judgement about Scottish snow conditions changing based on personal visits. I recollect great days (and weeks) in the 70s and 80s - and crap ones. Some years we had to cancel just about all of the Uni races and some years they were all great. Causes included: too much snow (on the hill, on the roads), not enough snow (on the hill, or at least the race course), too much wind, inadequate snow clearing - not all of which could easily be related to global climate change.
Winterhighland and his friends have posted some truly epic pics in recent seasons.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| Hoppo wrote: |
laundryman, on the contrary - I find the parallels highly illuminating.
Both evolution and anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theories find a high degree of consensus amongst scientists practising in the field. For evolution the primary way of establishing this is to look at undergraduate textbooks in biology: this works for AGW too - I have "Physics of Atmospheres" by John Houghton but other undergraduate texts in atmospheric physics would do equally well. You could also look at what's currently being published in the scientific peer reviewed literature, very few papers these days question evolution as a theory - they are interested in the impacts of the theory. Similarly with climate science, very few papers question the theory of anthropogenic global warming - they are interested in the details and the consequences.
For AGW there are a couple of additional mechanisms for testing where the science is currently at: you can turn to the IPCC (which summarises the current state of the scientific literature in climate change), and the G8 national academies of science have asserted their support for the latest report of the IPCC. (Amongst numerous other scientific societies)
If we look at the debate on snowHeads we see direct parallels to the "Intelligent Design vs Evolution" debate. Proponents of the position contrary to AGW seem to gain their science by a process close to "divine revelation", and if you look around you can find them espousing "teach the controversy", "only a theory" and "missing link" arguments.
I should probably clarify the "missing link" one: a favourite of the Intelligent Design folks is to demand for "missing link" fossils between arbitrarily selected species, for climate change the equivalent question is to demand the temperature on some arbitrarily selected day in the future.
I've just discovered another link that I hadn't previously appreciated: if we look on wikipedia to find out more about "The Discovery Institute" (world leaders in the 'Intelligent Design' movement) we discover they are a spin off from "The Hudson Institute", who were the original source for the "500 scientists..." story. See the original press release here. (Attribution to the Hudson Institute is at the bottom.) |
Most of the world's ice melted long before the Industrial Age.
There was a glacier in London in 12k BC. It had 100% disappeared by the time the Romans got there in 55 BC.
Man has been shedding bodyhair for millions of years. We continue to shed it. Mother Nature has long been preparing us for a warmer climate.
Today, there is plenty of oil under the Arctic ice. This means plants and animals were once comonplace.
Greenland is named that way for a reason.
The planet Mars is also heating up. The Earth is not alone.
Make no mistake, global warming is mostly natural and cyclical 
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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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Hoppo, there are a set of facts about evolution and an entirely different set of facts about the climate. The rightness or wrongness of any theory adduced from one has no bearing on that of any adduced from the other.
Thank you for recommending an undergraduate text on atmospheric physics. As it happens, I spent several years working in the field - concerning the propagation of infrared, visible and ultraviolet radiation which ended up hitting satellite sensors. It certainly taught me the complexity of the subject and the huge uncertainties that build up in complex models. I also found outright errors in the understanding of physical processes, construction of mathematical models therefrom and the software implementation thereof, relied upon in peer-reviewed research. It was quite fun extracting a verbal retraction from a professor of physics. However, it's my biggest professional regret that it was all hushed up, because it would not have done to jeopardise the tens of millions of pounds of public funding for a line of research. Still, that's the way of the world and one must move on.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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Snowball wrote "Do they put up signs if there is avalanche risk on the back of Nevis? I cannot remember that in the 80s, but I think it was always skiable when I visited"
Nevis Range opened for lift served skiing in December 1989. No there were no signs in the 80's for avalanche risk!!
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brian
brian
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Hoppo, the IPCC said they were 90% sure gw has an a cause. Evolutionary scientists are more like 99.9999999999999999999999999999% sure of evolution by natural selection.
A 10% wriggle room is pretty significant, otoh you'd have to be an utter loony (imo) to deny evolution.
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| pirin-mountains wrote: |
Snowball wrote "Do they put up signs if there is avalanche risk on the back of Nevis? I cannot remember that in the 80s, but I think it was always skiable when I visited"
Nevis Range opened for lift served skiing in December 1989. No there were no signs in the 80's for avalanche risk!! |
1989!!! I thought I skied there at least acouple of years before that.... but obviously not. My introduction must have been its first year.
Still, the question remains: how do they signal avalanche risk? Is it roped off on those occasions?
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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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| Whitegold wrote: |
Man has been shedding bodyhair for millions of years. We continue to shed it. Mother Nature has long been preparing us for a warmer climate.
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Most of what you said in that post appeared quite reasonable.
But that was just so utterly stupid as to cast considerable doubt on everything you said.
If you want to make a point, try using ALL rational arguments, rather than mainly rational ones but with some ttal idiocy thrown in.
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| laundryman wrote: |
| ........Thank you for recommending an undergraduate text ........ |
I wondered at that, too.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| Whitegold wrote: |
Man has been shedding bodyhair for millions of years. We continue to shed it. Mother Nature has long been preparing us for a warmer climate.
Greenland is named that way for a reason.
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"Mother Nature" doesn't prepare for anything in particular, there are simply faults in DNA replication plus variations caused by sexual combination - which are either bred out or retained depending on whether they help or hinder survival.
Greenland was so called to boost the numbers settling there by fooling them into thinking the climate was better than it actually was.
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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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| snowball wrote: |
| Greenland was so called to boost the numbers settling there by fooling them into thinking the climate was better than it actually was. |
It's good to know that in the event of further global warming, climate change will be for the better somewhere.
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Greenland will be a great place to live once my car has warmed the planet 5 more degrees.. a nice green bit round the coast then tons of sking plus, during what will be the ski season there, days are 20 hours long!! then everyone goes home to leave winter to dump 40 feet of snow ,, perfect
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You know it makes sense.
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| Quote: |
| Still, the question remains: how do they signal avalanche risk? Is it roped off on those occasions? |
It would be a hell of a long rope to rope of the Back Corriesat Nevis Range! Information signs and blackboards are placed at the foot and top of the Summit Ski Tow, if in doubt ask Ski Patrol. If the avalanche risk is high the runs along Lemming Ridge may be be posted closed, but this partly depends on whether Warrens is skiable. Take heed of the fence posts that have no fence in the vicinity of the Summit Tow area, they mark the edge of the mountain even if the snow extends another 5-10yards out! 
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FAQ
