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Ski Resorts Battle For a Future as Snow Declines in Climate Crisis - Slashdot

 8 months ago
source link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/12/26/1615245/ski-resorts-battle-for-a-future-as-snow-declines-in-climate-crisis
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Ski Resorts Battle For a Future as Snow Declines in Climate Crisis

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After promising early dumps of snow in some areas of Europe this autumn, the pattern of recent years resumed and rain and sleet took over. From a report: In the ski resorts of Morzine and Les Gets in the French Alps, the heavy rainfall meant that full opening of resorts was delayed until two days before Christmas, leaving the industry and the millions of tourists planning trips to stare at the sky in hope. But no amount of wishing and hoping will overcome what is an existential threat to skiing in the Alps, an industry worth $30bn that provides the most popular ski destination in the world.

The science is clear, and is spelled out in carefully weighed-up peer reviewed reports. The most recent, this year, warned that at 2C of global heating above pre-industrial levels, 53% of the 28 European resorts examined would be at very high risk of a scarce amount of snow. Scarce snow has been defined as the poorest coverage seen on average every five years between 1961 and 1990. If the world were to hit 4C of heating, 98% of the resorts would be at very high risk of scarce snow cover. Another study has revealed the way in which snow cover in the Alps has had an "unprecedented" decline over the past 600 years, with the duration of the cover now shorter by 36 days.
  • Sweden and Finland joined, so there is enough snow in Europe now.
    • Re:

      Your joke would actually make sense if it was the EU they were joining and not NATO which has never been exclusively European.

  • If this decline is over 600 years then is it reasonable to expect to reverse or halt it by changing our behaviour now? After all, for most of that 600 years it can't have been human activity making an impact.

    • Bad reporting, see my reply above. The decline is compared to 600 years ago, it has only occurred in the last 185 or so.

      • Re:

        Thank you. I read The Guardian article and suspected it was wrong in some way but I don't have access to the paywalled Nature article to check.

  • OMG, whatever will we do?

    • Vote for the second coming of Jesus in the next election of course. And in case Jesus isn't available, vote for whichever candidate is the most holy. Or sanctimonious.

      • And in case Jesus isn't available, vote for whichever candidate is the most holy.



        Candidate A is a practicing Catholic, goes to church every Sunday, has been married to the same woman for 45 years (after his first wife was killed in a car accident), and hasn't raped anyone.



        Candidate B used a Sharpie to sign bibles, can't name a single commandment, has been married three times and cheated on all three wives, and has raped at least one woman.



        Clearly candidate B is the superior candidate.

        • Re:

          Just ask yourself which of the two candidates more resembles a loud, primitive, scum tele-evangelist and you can easily see that candidate B is at least a much better cultural fit.

  • by tchetch ( 6418204 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @12:27PM (#64106681)

    Kill the rich is always a good solution. In that particular case, climate crisis, the richest 1% produce 16% of CO2. As guillotine is carbon neutral, we can save the earth ( https://www.oxfam.org/en/press... [oxfam.org] ).

    • by sonlas ( 10282912 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @01:29PM (#64106855)

      Kill the rich is always a good solution. In that particular case, climate crisis, the richest 1% produce 16% of CO2.

      Nice idea, but wrong analysis.

      The richest 1% emit 16% of the CO2. Interestingly, the poorest 66% also emit 16% of the CO2. Which means that all of them combined emit a mere 32% of the CO2.
      Simple math tells us that the average Joe and Jane (of which you are most likely a part of), which consists of the remaining 33% of the world population, emit ~67% of the CO2. Read again: 32% of the world population emit 67% of the CO2.

      What happens if you kill the 1% richest? You still emit 100-16=84% of the CO2: still too much.
      What happens if you klill the 66% poorest? You still emit 100-16=84% of the CO2: still too much.
      Here is an idea: what happens if you klill the 66% poorest AND the 1% richest? You still emit 100-16-16=68% of the CO2: STILL TOO MUCH.
      Oh wait, what happens if we kill the average 32% people (of which you are, again, most likely a part of): You emit only 100-67=33% of the CO2. I don't know about you, but from a pure mathematical perspective, this is the best solution to put in place if you insist on killing anyone. This solution means less killing and more impact on CO2 reductions.

      But hey, this is purely an imaginative scenario. Turns out that people who want to kill others as a mean to solve any crisis, tend to be quite shy when they realize they will be the ones having to die.

      • Yep but killing 77000 people is less of a deal than killing 7999923000 people.

        • Re:

          But killing 77000 people (even if those are the top 1%) will have no noticeable effect.
          However, killing the middle 32%, which is ~2.5 billion people, will have a tredemendous effect (68% less CO2 emissions, enough to solve the climate crisis for the short/mid term).
          Killing the bottom 66%, which is ~5.5 billion people, is also useless: it will have no noticeable effect.

          If you insist on killing people, the most reasonable thing to do is really to kill the middle 32%. You can start with your own relatives, see

        • If we followed our Constitution then Congress would have to declare war. Which has not happened in the 5 decades I have been alive.
          • Re:

            Where does the constitution say that?

  • For decades, oil companies have been gaslighting everyone about emissions. Take it up with them. Sue them for loss of business.
    • Tax not sue.
      Big oil, ICE cars, airlines, meat.
      Tax the fuck out of them.

      Needs politicians with balls.

      So won't happen.
      • Re:

        Politicians need to get elected. That is why it won't happen.

      • We live in a democracy, not a dictatorship. A politician can't impose an unpopular policy without losing his job sooner, rather than later.

        • Re:

          Except when it comes to presidents, in which case we live in a democratic-*ish* republic. If we elected presidents by popular vote we would almost certainly have had drastically different climimate policies since the turn of the century.

          • Maybe yes, maybe no.

            If we were to move to a popular vote system to elect the president, I would hope there would be a runoff or ranked choice system so that Bill Clinton in 92 can't squeek out a win with 43 pct cuz Bush and Perot each grabbed up less (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_presidential_election).

            In such a scenario, several things would be different to how 2000 went down:
            1. More campaign spending in lost-cause areas (blue parts of red states and red parts of blue states) that mak

            • Re:

              Well, the electoral college system gave the race to Clinton anyway, so the results weren't better from your perspective than a popular election.

              In any case political scientists now largely think Perot didn't throw the election to Clinton; based on exit polling Perot voters were actually pretty evenly split between Bush and Clinton as their second choice; only two states were swung by Perot, and in opposite directions: Arizona to Clinton and Nevada to Bush, resulting in a gain of only 4 EVs for Bush.

              Of cours

              • Indeed. Which is why I look askance at the claim that the electoral college system (or the apportionment of the Senate) or at-large voting (as opposed to defined districts) in city council elections are somehow less democratic than plausible alternatives.

                My own personal, subjective, opinion is that having a system that strongly protects minority rights and requires broad consensus for big shakeups is a better idea than a system that is more responsive to the whims of the moment or allows a small majority to

                • Re:

                  Alright

                  But they are, there's no two ways about it. You can like those things, you can argue for them and justify them but you cannot deny that they are undemocratic, especially the electoral college which the minority rights argument has absolutely zero to do with is the most red herring argument that ever gets brought up.

                  Me personally, I am aging into just the opposite. Blow up the state borders, expand the house, do all districting and state lines algorithmically. Is that a fantasy? Absolutely but th

                  • Any system that protects the minority against the arbitrary will of the majority is undemocratic. The fact that 50%+1 of the voting public can't just vote to help themselves to everyone else's stuff *is* undemocratic.

                    • Re:

                      "Majority rule with minority protections"

  • This is nothing. The rich will get REALLY cranky when golf courses turn brown because it's too hot, and water is too expensive.

    • Nice thing about water is it rains down from the sky. No amount of global warming short of a killer asteroid boiling the oceans off clean is going to stop water from evaporating in the tropics and condensing at mid-latitudes.

    • The rich will not notice -- their exclusive courses will pay for the expensive water... if we ever get around to making water expensive. In much of the US making water expensive for the rich requires discarding ridiculous "first to claim" historical water rights and there is no sign that our governments are ready to switch to a more rational approach to water rights such as basing them on the contribution of the land itself. California gets 58% of the Colorado River water, yet only has 8% of the river frontage and much less in relative watershed contribution. A rational allotment would give California a small fraction of what it gets via its ridiculous "First Claim" rights.

      Down in Cabo San Lucas the golf courses in the desert are irrigated with desalinized water created by the resorts. Expensive water has not put an end to golf there.
      • Re:

        If California were rational then they'd be building nuclear power plants and seawater desalination.

        • Re:

          We could also start thinking about figuring out a rational economy that doesn't depend on eternal population growth.

          If a region can only sustain a human population by large-volume desalination and nuclear power plants, maybe it's not 'habitable' at the scale we're attempting.

      • If you want to take the water rights away from people you have to pay them. The US government granted those rights on condition those people's ancestors risked their lives to settle a new part of the country. They fulfilled their part of the deal so the government can't simply renege on their side. It's called integrity. It is not as if you would have to pay some alfalfa very much to buy their rights. Probably a lot less than a desalination plant. But for some reason some people don't respect property
  • Not the ever so important ski resorts! The world needs those!/s

      • Re:

        They are getting plenty of moisture. Just not snow.
  • Many ski resorts in Utah opened early this year. Alta has more snow this early in the season than anytime I can remember. Weather in Europe != climate. Weather in Utah != climate either.

  • I’ve lived in Minnesota around 50 years now and this is the first time lakes froze completely over to about 4” and have now lost about half their ice and have open water with birds swimming in it. Three days of around 50 degrees and heavy rain and I’ve got green growing grass and weeds coming up and it’s almost January. The difference of just a few degrees pushes the jet stream and we get southern air which means 2-3 inches of rain instead of 1-3 feet of snow. I’ve seen the
    • Great lakes region dweller here. I've seen balmy winters with zero snow accumulation, and dangerously early springs going back to the 80's. I've also seen winters that drop below freezing in late December and stays that way until April, as recently as eight years ago.

      • Re:

        Sure, but when have you seen this low snow accumulations across the state combined with unfrozen ground throughout much of the central and southern areas this late? A few balmy days, a holiday without snow, maybe, but lakes frozen to 4” fully melted by the holidays and completely unfrozen ground isn’t normal. If the warmth keeps up like it is for the next week, I’ll have to mow my lawn in January.
  • ...that the end of the "global warming" is an Ice Age, right?

    I mean, they'll have millions of kilometers to snow on.

    Just wait for it.

    • Re:

      I'm guessing a lot of ski resorts can't afford to wait 10,000 years for the next ice age

  • Is there any consideration for building nuclear power plants yet? No? Okay then, don't tell me that there is some climate crisis.

    The usual repay to any mention of the need for nuclear fission is that wind and solar power is cheaper and faster to build. Okay then, DO NOT TELL ME THERE IS A CLIMATE CRISIS!

    If the solution is to keep doing as we are doing, except maybe more quickly, then that is not a crisis. That is an inconvenience. It might suck that we aren't building solar PV and windmills fast enough but if these are already cheaper than coal, nuclear, natural gas, or whatever, then it is only a matter of sitting back and letting market forces do what they do. If wind and solar were cheaper than any fossil fuels then anybody stupid enough to drill for petroleum and natural gas would simply go out of business. But that is not what we are seeing, is it? As nuclear power plants close we see demand, and profits, rise on fossil fuels.

    To oppose nuclear fission in the middle of a "climate crisis" is to say nuclear power is a greater threat than any global warming that could come from not using nuclear fission. That tells me that global warming is nothing to fear, because nuclear fission is nothing to fear. Nuclear fission is as safe as wind and solar power. Don't believe me? Then tell me just how nuclear fission compares to wind and solar on safety. How many people were injured and killed from nuclear fission per unit of energy versus that of wind and solar? I already have a very good idea on the numbers but I want anyone opposing nuclear fission to give me their own sources. Can you make your case that global warming is preferable to nuclear fission? I doubt anyone can make a good case that solar is preferable to nuclear fission.

    I feel a need to specify "nuclear fission" every time I bring up something that turns uranium or thorium into useful energy because there will always be the usual two replies. One reply is how solar power is nuclear power, because we have this big glowing nuclear reactor above us in the sky. The other nonsense reply is how if we only figure out nuclear fusion then all of our problems would be solved. Nuclear fission provides today what nuclear fusion promises in the future.

    • It's not the environmentalists holding back nuclear power, it's the capitalists. When they figured out that nuclear power wasn't as profitable as coal, they build coal plants instead. When they figured out that coal wasn't as profitable as natural gas, they built natural gas plants instead of coal and gave themselves a big green pat on the back. But green, blue, or black, what gets built is what makes the greatest economic profit, which is why Texas with its deregulated grid is the leading state for *wind* power. The low financing costs of wind power makes it especially attractive if you don't factor in grid stability when you're licensing power plants.

      It's no accident that France, a country that gets almost 2/3 of its electricity from nuclear, built its nuclear fleet under a socialist government. The socialists didn't care if the plants they were building weren't going to make what economists call a "normal profit" (i.e., even if the plants made a small profit they'd be an *economic* loss when you count the financing costs). France built their nukes as a national security measure in response to the OPEC oil embargo. They no more expected those nukes to make an economic profit than the US expects a carrier battle group to pay for itself.

      So, short of electing a socialist government, what we really need to do to make nuclear competitive is to charge fossil fuel electric plants the cost of their pollution.

    • Re:

      How stupid and disconnected.

      • Re:

        China does not seem to have any problem building nuclear power, they have built more reactors in the last 15 years than the entire rest of the world combined. And they are using Westinghouse designs, all the better to point out how incompetent the rest of the world is.
      • Re:

        You keep telling me that the climate crisis is solved but when I play that back then I get a chorus of banshees screaming on how we have a "climate crisis". Can you make up your mind?

        If nuclear power "costs too much" then whatever global warming comes from not using nuclear power must be cheaper. If wind and solar power is cheaper than fossil fuels then those LNG terminals being built in German seaports must be a figment of my imagination.

      • Re:

        If all 4 of those projects were on budget and on time would your opinion change on the matter?

  • ... the snow boarders for scraping all the snow to the bottom of the slope.

  • I have been to a few ski resorts in Germany where they have mountain bike trails and downhill as well
    Some of the locals aren’t too happy and spits after you others welcome the new business opportunity.

  • "The science is clear, and is spelled out in carefully weighed-up peer reviewed reports."
    Translation: The royal 'we' have deemed the 'science' 'clear' and don't you dare doubt it because it's "spelled out" (meaning: you're too stupid to comprehend it) in 'weighed-up' (I'm sorry, what?) reports (that we don't list so you can't read them for yourself). Just trust us because we know better than you, heathen.

    • Re:

      Just go on google scholar and search for review articles, for Pete's sake. It's not that hard [google.com].

    • Re:

      And if they're speaking to you... their positioning is probably valid.

    • Re:

      Translation: LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU! LALALA GLOBAL WARMING SO FAKE!

  • Who gives a fuck about some poor saps getting flooded, but won't someone think of the ski resorts?

    • Re:

      It is called a "warning sign". The ressorts themselves are immaterial except in stupid journalism. The actual scientists looking at this are collecting indicators and this is a rather strong one. Will, of course, not convince the flat-earthers and anti-vaxxers.

  • Oh, no, where will all the rich WASPs go to spend the Winter weekends now?
  • I know something is up, and I don't have to look further than my driveway to observe it. I have not shoveled snow yet this season, and today it is 7 degrees C. I live in northern Canada.

    This ain't right. It's not just unseasonably warm - this is alarming. Next spring the fire season is going to make 2022 look meek. There's no end in sight. Usually it's a coin flip as to whether we have snow on Halloween. Now we're staring into a January of brown grass and a dustbowl summer. No pit fires, camp fires, or BBQs

  • Who needs to go skiing anyway? It's not exactly an activity that is absolutely necessary, although it does have some positive benefits, however. For example, it rid the world of that ass hat Sonny Bono. But seriously, would the apocalypse come that much sooner if wealthy people could no longer go skiing where or as often as they used to? In fact, that might actually be a net benefit to humanity. I thought the craziest thing I could do is ride a motorcycle, which is something I did for thirty-five years

    • Re:

      I suppose you have a point... but it's kind of like having a pack of wolves laying siege to the house next door, and thinking. "That's fine. I don't like that guy anyway."

      • Re:

        As they say, "Don't look gift wolves in the mouth."
    • No, you don't understand how panama canal works, and you don't understand how snowfall is different than sea levels.

      The panama canal needs a lot of fresh water to run the locks that raise or lower the ships. The fresh water comes from Gatun Lake. The drought in Panama is affecting the lake there.

      You mention the sea level but I think you are confusing snowfall and lake water, which are more local to particular areas, and different than global sea levels of the oceans.

        • Re:

          It's true that global warming causes some places to cool down. For example, warming in the polar regions causes more icebergs which results in short term cooler temperatures in the waters surrounding some countries. In the long term these effects will dissipate.

          If it's cooler where you live, just wait until the temporary effects taper off. Of course it could still be cool but the days of 40 degrees below zero might well be numbered.

          • Re:

            Poe's law applies. Sorry, I was trying to be funny.
        • Re:

          Clearly, this is a localized cold zone due to the temperature of your intellect (if you were serious).;-)

        • Re:

          Uh, you are in Congress?...sorry, I couldn't resist.

      • Re:

        Is there some reason they actually need fresh water? Or is it just impractical to pump enough salt water? I imagine it wasn't practical 100 years ago - is that the only reason?

        • That's not how it was designed over 100 years ago. To change to sea water would require many billions of dollars and a complex project to ensure it could remain open at all times during such s change. It's very non-trivial.
          • Re:

            It's worse than that. Locks use gravity to move water around. The lake water is at a much higher elevation, so it's ideal for running the canal. Using sea water would involve pumping lots of sea water to a high elevation, which is not just an engineering problem, but a power problem, which cannot be worked around or fixed with redesign.

            • Re:

              Indeed. It would need to be pumped inland, kept separate from fresh water (a new salt water lake and pipeline to it) or constant pumping. Salt build up with need to be dealt with. Or alternately, desalination. Swapping from one system to another would need to be quite seamless and testing new systems complex. Desalination would probably simplest but still not simple or cheap
                • Re:

                  Yep. Most people have no clue how much energy is there in a body of water at elevation. And it is free.

        • Re:

          up to this point nobody has even mentioned "climate deniers", someone just made a completely false and uniformed claim and was politely corrected and you are just trolling.

          that's not necessarily what's going to happen. anyway, if it does and that's to your liking, good for you. be prepared for company, though, because more people will like it there.

          other than that, since you don't seem to give a fig about anything but you and your plot of land it's probably pointless to try to inform you about any consequen

        • You might want that until you realize that the rare regions that became increasingly habitable instead of the opposite will be flooded.. with climate refugees. Like they say, be careful what you wish for. Even if your region might directly benefit from something, it may be indirectly harmed by it. Not even to mention all the other global problems caused by the climate change being reflected everywhere somehow.
        • Re:

          This still sounds like denial to me. I have character faults which I work on in therapy, and one common thing about many of my faults is that they can be considered strengths in some cases. I am prone to denial about these character faults because I focus on how they help me instead of how they hurt my life and relationships. Sounds a lot like what you are describing regarding climate change.

          Anyone who is hopeful about climate change is either very uneducated about its overall effects on humanity and/or ver

        • Re:

          >I don't deny climate change, I'm hopeful for it.
          You are an idiot, I guess. Or psychopathic.

          The total effects of global warming are disastrous.

    • by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @11:54AM (#64106571)

      Why do climate deniers invent such ridiculous "disproofs" of what is so Fucking Obvious to anyone with sense?

      I am beginning to think that some of them are not being paid by big oil and are simply Fucking Stupid.
      • Re:

        Because they stop reading as soon as something challenges their assumptions. They intentionally shield themselves from new information because ignorance is strength.

        That said, there are some weird myths that people cling to when they try to defend climate change. And those bad ideas still get in the way of productive discussion. Luckily one or two people on "my side" being wrong doesn't invalidate all the science. It just seems the side of climate skeptics have a lot more of these problems than the other si

      • Re:

        Because being a climate denier is a self-identity, not a scientific position, so evidence is irrelevant.

    • Re:

      > Odd how the sea level isn't raising then

      The Earth's weather systems are not as trivial as placing an ice cube in a glass to melt and watch the water level rise.

      As the atmosphere warms it can hold more water. If we're lucky for it to cool a bit we'd see the water accumulate in oceans a bit more. However, for the time being, it is hiding as clouds.

      There's stuff we can do to try and slow rainfall and make more use of the water on land for farming crops, that'd probably help reclaim some desert land for pr

        • Re:

          He's referring to the denialist argument that ice melting can't raise sea levels, which is of course true if we're just talking about *sea ice* and its *direct* impact on sea levels. This argument *proves* (in denialist thinking) that climate scientists are lying about sea level rise.

    • by battingly ( 5065477 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @12:47PM (#64106751)

      So then the panama canal, which is connected to two oceans, is in a "drought" supposedly with not enough water to fill it, but we have not cold enough conditions causing rain and everything to melt in Europe? Odd how the sea level isn't raising then????

      It's easy to laugh at somebody like this, but idiots like this are not only trolling Slashdot, they are also running governments and setting national policies.

    • Re:

      Your ignorance is vast, deep, and impressive.

      Knowledge has tried to catch you many times, my friend, but you have always been faster.

    • Re:

      Yep. If you had paid attention (which you clearly did _not_ do), you would know that a main effect of the climate catastrophe is much more variable weather. Also, WTF are you talking about things "melting in Europe" causing sea levels to raise? There is not enough there. Glaciers are what keeps water in rivers flowing in summer and reduces flooding in winter. And, as you can see in the current (!) German news, there is plenty of flooding at the moment because it is too warm.

      What makes the sea levels rise i

    • Re:

      No. The truly rich will still have places to go skiing, even if it means being heliported there.
      However, normal people who enjoy a one week vacation per year to go skiing won't be able to do so anymore.

      Maybe it will mean that Joe and Jane Sixpack will stop taking their cars for rides less than 10kms, and will stop thinking that cheap meat/planes are normal. Yes, that sucks for them, but what Joe and Jane don't realize is that they are already part of the top 10%. The rest of the world population will never

        • Re:

          You said it: people will have to shift their spending patterns. Either voluntarily (by choosing not to buy a new iphone every year for instance, or a new car, or another useless plastic toy for their kid) or involuntarily (by not buying something because it is too expensive for them). For the physical world, the voluntary/involuntary side of the equation doesn't matter: the end result will be the same.

          You forget a 4th part in this equation: living in smaller houses, and in an inter-generation setup. Up unti

          • Re:

            This seems like a good start. Thank you for bringing numbers. I will provide the English version of your study at the bottom of this post. Two follow-up items:

            1) Please provide the numeric reductions you believe are possible for each of your proposals. Currently you suggest something, and then stop short of providing the numeric benefit of your proposals which removes any ability to compare.

            Your study proposes perhaps some similar items for French citizenry. However, many of these proposals aren't
    • Actually there ARE things that ordinary people can do that greatly reduce their carbon footprint. If these things became trendy and many people did many of them, we would see a significant decrease in the climate-change-causing pollution.

      The problem, of course, is that nobody wants to do these things. And I can't blame them. These are unreasonable things to ask people to do. But the fact that they are unreasonable does not change the fact that, if done, one's carbon footprint decreases significantly:

      1. Work from home. Driving to/from work is an enormous polluter.
      2. Stop flying around. Cancel those trips. Spend your time off doing hobbies or connecting with people online instead.
      3. Stop eating meat. Factory farms are terrible polluters, and vegetarian diets are much easier on the environment.
      4. Stop breeding. The carbon foot print of raising a child is through the roof.
      5. Live in a small house, the heating costs of a big house add up.

      So, there you go. Almost everyone can do almost everything on this list, if they are willing to adapt. Nobody will though (at least not for the sake of saving the environment).

      I am really trying to drive this dichotomy home: these things ARE UNREASONABLE. But also they ARE SIGNIFICANT to one's carbon footprint. The harsh reality that most of us must accept is, we don't care about the environment enough to do these unreasonable things to protect it.

      • Re:

        turn off the airco



        Says someone who has obviously never lived in a place where it can get 110F with 60% humidity. For days or weeks on end.

          • Re:

            Easy to say but if the only metric to that is looking at global emissions then the people in cold climates should move first. Heating whether by burning fuel or electric heaters is responsible for a larger amount of GHG than air conditioning (AC is estimated at about 4%).

            This tracks logically as AC can have much higher coefficients than either of those, which is why there is such a push to move to heat pumps where possible (yes, yes person in the snowy mountains the heat pump is not perfect for you but you

      • Re:

        Actually, in a well-insulated house, Air Conditioning is not that bad. You also do not need it all the time. I ran it this summer for 3 weeks, because it was just too hot. But for the rest of the warm time I just use fans in the night for much the same effect via colder outside air. Energy consumption for these 3 weeks was about on par with winter heating for the same length. As this is a minimum energy building, this is a mobile AC, so less efficient than a split one.

        Fully agree on the big cars. Especially

        • Re:

          Quite well actually. A lot of people going to ski in the Alps are not "rich". At least not by the French or Swiss standards. Most of them are part of the middle class, and go there for 1 week per year, by car.

            • Re:

              Being able to spend $5-10k on an occasional vacation doesn't necessarily make someone rich. Certainly easier if you're towards the upper end of middle class, but definitely not necessarily the Rolls-Royce driving, yacht owning, Gucci wearing "rich" you have pictured in your head.
    • This is a fine example of bad science journalism, possibly intentionally made so by an editor with sponsor or ideological sensitivities. Itâ(TM)s understandable that a casual reader would infer there has been a steady decline over the last 600 years.

      The actual report, summarized here https://www.carbonbrief.org/re... [carbonbrief.org], shows the real data collected. The decline is unprecedented in that it has not been seen before in the previous 600 years. Snow shows a consistent avaerage and variability until early in

    • by sonlas ( 10282912 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @12:33PM (#64106711)

      Here is the actual study [nature.com]. Data collected ranges back to 600 years (for statistical purposes, and because the scientists who wrote the research paper are actually competent). However the decline in snow cover only starts around 1900, and accelerates in the last 50 years.

      But nice try as being a climate change denier.

    • Re:

      Every time a story which involves time frames come up you raise the same point "why this time frame, do others not fit the narrative". And every single time your nonsense conspiracy is trashed by people who are actually able to give this a bit of thought.

      Does it not exhaust you being wrong literally all of the time?

      • Re:

        No, typically what happens when I bring up the time frame is exactly what you did here - you wouldn't or couldn't come up with a counterargument, you set up and argued against a strawman. It's certainly much easier. If you'd worked in the field (which I did, when I was younger), you'd know that selecting the proper timeframe before drawing conclusions *is* very important.

        Now sonlas, above, gave an actual good, informative answer. He gets docked a point by then drawing a bad conclusion - I actually believe A

    • "Cycles"
      LOL

      I am beginning to be sure that some of them are not being paid by big oil and are simply Fucking Stupid.
    • Re:

      I understand it can be difficult to glean long-term trends when our collective memory barely reaches further back than the last election cycle.

    • Re:

      It is called a "warning sign". You know, those things when smart people take things seriously and do something effective. I can understand that you never had that experience though and do not have the mental capability to understand how that works either.

    • Re:

      No need even to paraphrase, plenty of people saying these things openly. "We cannot solve climate change without socialism". That sort of thing. I'm also wondering why the various governments are taking so little action. Oh, they set ever more stringent targets, but they do not have a real plan. If they had, they'd be adding offshore wind, solar, hydro (whichever works in your country), and nukes. They would have beefed up the power grid. As it is, we're still not generating a lot of power from non-fo

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