XXII Olympic Winter Games | Sochi

And they're off . . .
Post Reply
User avatar
Typhoon
Posts: 27242
Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2011 6:42 pm
Location: 関西

XXII Olympic Winter Games | Sochi

Post by Typhoon »

May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
User avatar
Heracleum Persicum
Posts: 11571
Joined: Sat Dec 22, 2012 7:38 pm

Re: XXII Olympic Winter Games | Sochi

Post by Heracleum Persicum »

.


End of snow


.

There will soon be a scarcity of places to hold the Winter Olympics.


..


Officials canceled two Olympic test events last February in Sochi after several days of temperatures above 60 degrees Fahrenheit and a lack of snowfall had left ski trails bare and brown in spots. That situation led the climatologist Daniel Scott, a professor of global change and tourism at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, to analyze potential venues for future Winter Games. His thought was that with a rise in the average global temperature of more than 7 degrees Fahrenheit possible by 2100, there might not be that many snowy regions left in which to hold the Games. He concluded that of the 19 cities that have hosted the Winter Olympics, as few as 10 might be cold enough by midcentury to host them again. By 2100, that number shrinks to 6.

The planet has warmed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1800s, and as a result, snow is melting. In the last 47 years, a million square miles of spring snow cover has disappeared from the Northern Hemisphere. Europe has lost half of its Alpine glacial ice since the 1850s, and if climate change is not reined in, two-thirds of European ski resorts will be likely to close by 2100.

The same could happen in the United States, where in the Northeast, more than half of the 103 ski resorts may no longer be viable in 30 years because of warmer winters. As far for the Western part of the country, it will lose an estimated 25 to 100 percent of its snowpack by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are not curtailed — reducing the snowpack in Park City, Utah, to zero and relegating skiing to the top quarter of Ajax Mountain in Aspen.

The facts are straightforward: The planet is getting hotter. Snow melts above 32 degrees Fahrenheit. The Alps are warming two to three times faster than the worldwide average, possibly because of global circulation patterns. Since 1970, the rate of winter warming per decade in the United States has been triple the rate of the previous 75 years, with the strongest trends in the Northern regions of the country. Nine of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000, and this winter is already looking to be one of the driest on record — with California at just 12 percent of its average snowpack in January, and the Pacific Northwest at around 50 percent.

To a skier, snowboarder or anyone who has spent time in the mountains, the idea of brown peaks in midwinter is surreal. Poets write of the grace and beauty by which snowflakes descend and transform a landscape. Powder hounds follow the 100-odd storms that track across the United States every winter, then drive for hours to float down a mountainside in the waist-deep “cold smoke” that the storms leave behind.

The snow I learned to ski on in northern Maine was more blue than white, and usually spewed from snow-making guns instead of the sky. I didn’t like skiing at first. It was cold. And uncomfortable.
Launch media viewer
Artificial snow-making has become the stopgap defense against the early effects of climate change. Björn Andrén/Matton Collection — Corbis

Then, when I was 12, the mystical confluence of vectors that constitute a ski turn aligned, and I was hooked. I scrubbed toilets at my father’s boatyard on Mount Desert Island in high school so I could afford a ski pass and sold season passes in college at Mad River Glen in Vermont to get a free pass for myself. After graduating, I moved to Jackson Hole, Wyo., for the skiing. Four years later, Powder magazine hired me, and I’ve been an editor there ever since.

My bosses were generous enough to send me to five continents over the last 15 years, with skis in tow. I’ve skied the lightest snow on earth on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, where icy fronts spin off the Siberian plains and dump 10 feet of powder in a matter of days. In the high peaks of Bulgaria and Morocco, I slid through snow stained pink by grains of Saharan sand that the crystals formed around.

In Baja, Mexico, I skied a sliver of hardpack snow at 10,000 feet on Picacho del Diablo, sandwiched between the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific Ocean. A few years later, a crew of skiers and I journeyed to the whipsaw Taurus Mountains in southern Turkey to ski steep couloirs alongside caves where troglodytes lived thousands of years ago.

At every range I traveled to, I noticed a brotherhood among mountain folk: Say you’re headed into the hills, and the doors open. So it has been a surprise to see the winter sports community, as one of the first populations to witness effects of climate change in its own backyard, not reacting more vigorously and swiftly to reverse the fate we are writing for ourselves.

It’s easy to blame the big oil companies and the billions of dollars they spend on influencing the media and popular opinion. But the real reason is a lack of knowledge. I know, because I, too, was ignorant until I began researching the issue for a book on the future of snow.

I was floored by how much snow had already disappeared from the planet, not to mention how much was predicted to melt in my lifetime. The ski season in parts of British Columbia is four to five weeks shorter than it was 50 years ago, and in eastern Canada, the season is predicted to drop to less than two months by midcentury. At Lake Tahoe, spring now arrives two and a half weeks earlier, and some computer models predict that the Pacific Northwest will receive 40 to 70 percent less snow by 2050. If greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise — they grew 41 percent between 1990 and 2008 — then snowfall, winter and skiing will no longer exist as we know them by the end of the century.

The effect on the ski industry has already been significant. Between 1999 and 2010, low snowfall years cost the industry $1 billion and up to 27,000 jobs. Oregon took the biggest hit out West, with 31 percent fewer skier visits during low snow years. Next was Washington at 28 percent, Utah at 14 percent and Colorado at 7.7 percent.

The winter sports industry contributes $66 billion annually to the nation’s economy, and supports more than 960,000 jobs across 38 states, according to the Outdoor Industry Association. A surprisingly large sector of the United States economy appears to be teetering on the brink.

Much of these environmental data come from a 2012 report, “Climate Impacts on the Winter Tourism Economy in the United States,” by two University of New Hampshire researchers, Elizabeth Burakowski and Matthew Magnusson. The paper was commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council and a start-up advocacy group called Protect Our Winters. The professional snowboarder Jeremy Jones started that group, known as POW, in 2007 when he realized that many of the slopes he had once ridden no longer held snow. It has since become the leading voice for those fighting to save winter, largely because few others are doing anything about it.

The National Ski Area Association has reacted with relatively ineffective campaigns like Sustainable Slopes and the Climate Challenge, while policies at ski resorts range from aggressively green to indifferent. Somewhere in between lie the majority of American ski areas, which are struggling to make ends meet while pushing recycling, car-pooling, carbon offsets and awareness campaigns to show they care.

.



enjoy as long as it lasts



.
User avatar
Typhoon
Posts: 27242
Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2011 6:42 pm
Location: 関西

Re: XXII Olympic Winter Games | Sochi

Post by Typhoon »

May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
noddy
Posts: 11318
Joined: Tue Dec 13, 2011 3:09 pm

Re: XXII Olympic Winter Games | Sochi

Post by noddy »

the northern european amusing winter activities festival.
ultracrepidarian
User avatar
Miss_Faucie_Fishtits
Posts: 2152
Joined: Sat Dec 17, 2011 9:58 pm

Re: XXII Olympic Winter Games | Sochi

Post by Miss_Faucie_Fishtits »

Things were very quiet at the figure skating trials. Mother didn't want to watch that, opting for some other entertainment...'>>......
She irons her jeans, she's evil.........
User avatar
Typhoon
Posts: 27242
Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2011 6:42 pm
Location: 関西

Re: XXII Olympic Winter Games | Sochi

Post by Typhoon »

noddy wrote:the northern european amusing winter activities festival.
The Aussies fielded a surprisingly large team.
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
Hoosiernorm
Posts: 2206
Joined: Fri Dec 16, 2011 7:59 pm

Re: XXII Olympic Winter Games | Sochi

Post by Hoosiernorm »

Watching Bob Costa's eyes drip has been interesting.
Been busy doing stuff
User avatar
Heracleum Persicum
Posts: 11571
Joined: Sat Dec 22, 2012 7:38 pm

Re: XXII Olympic Winter Games | Sochi

Post by Heracleum Persicum »

.


3qZA-xOeQmE



Then Kate Hansen, a member of the U.S. Olympic Luge team, posted a video from her hotel room early Thursday.



.
User avatar
Nonc Hilaire
Posts: 6168
Joined: Sat Dec 17, 2011 1:28 am

Re: XXII Olympic Winter Games | Sochi

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

A bobsledder has been eliminated for doping.

Really? What kind of biological enhancement does one need to jump in a bumper car and slide downhill? Can we just stop calling the winter games "Olympics" and just call it "147 ways of sliding and falling on ice" now?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/theedge/2014/0 ... bobsledder
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”

Teresa of Ávila
User avatar
Heracleum Persicum
Posts: 11571
Joined: Sat Dec 22, 2012 7:38 pm

Re: XXII Olympic Winter Games | Sochi

Post by Heracleum Persicum »

Nonc Hilaire wrote:.

A bobsledder has been eliminated for doping.

Really? What kind of biological enhancement does one need to jump in a bumper car and slide downhill? Can we just stop calling the winter games "Olympics" and just call it "147 ways of sliding and falling on ice" now?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/theedge/2014/0 ... bobsledder

.


Puzzled how "bob-sliding or synchronised swimming " got into Olympic ? ? are they in spirit of Helenic Sports ? ?

All this has morphed into a ridiculous (somehow political) circus

Olympic should keep to real sport for mass of world inhabitants .. sports that do not need money to be exercised and not sports for rich

Olympics lost its reason


.
User avatar
Typhoon
Posts: 27242
Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2011 6:42 pm
Location: 関西

Re: XXII Olympic Winter Games | Sochi

Post by Typhoon »

Heracleum Persicum wrote:
Nonc Hilaire wrote:.

A bobsledder has been eliminated for doping.

Really? What kind of biological enhancement does one need to jump in a bumper car and slide downhill? Can we just stop calling the winter games "Olympics" and just call it "147 ways of sliding and falling on ice" now?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/theedge/2014/0 ... bobsledder

.


Puzzled how "bob-sliding or synchronised swimming " got into Olympic ? ? are they in spirit of Helenic Sports ? ?

All this has morphed into a ridiculous (somehow political) circus

Olympic should keep to real sport for mass of world inhabitants .. sports that do not need money to be exercised and not sports for rich

Olympics lost its reason

.
Bobsleigh has been featured since the first Winter Games in 1924 in Chamonix, France.

It makes sense to me. Fastest team down the hill wins.

Not clear why ski jumping requires style judges as the ski jumper with the best aerodynamic form goes the furthest.

Even changing wind conditions are now taken into account.

The problem sports are the ones that rely entirely on the human factor in judging. Figure skating is the canonical example.

Apparently there's again a controversy with regards to the results of the women's single event.

The Olympics are now a multi-billion dollar business. There is no going back.
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
User avatar
Heracleum Persicum
Posts: 11571
Joined: Sat Dec 22, 2012 7:38 pm

Re: XXII Olympic Winter Games | Sochi

Post by Heracleum Persicum »

.

Most beautiful closing ceremony ever seen in (summer and winter) Olympics

Putin will go into history par to Peter the Great and Catherina

Bravo Vladimiro


.
Post Reply