Global 'weirding'

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

By Nancy Taylor

That’s the term free-ski champ/environmentalist Alison Gannett used in her presentation, “Save our Snow,” last Friday night at Teton Village, referring to the often counterintuitive side-effects of global climate change.

Gannett said, for example, that if we do nothing to stem our carbon dioxide output, by the year 2050 all ski areas under 5,000 feet will be extinct, and all ski areas above 5,000 feet will go out of business by 2100.

In Europe, predictions are that 1,700 of the 4,000 ski areas will close. She showed slides of European areas where skiers cannot access lifts due to retreating glaciers.

Snowmaking is not a solution, because it produces more carbon dioxide, is water intensive, and contributes to the problem rather than solving it.

Meanwhile, this past week upper New York state got 12 feet of snow in a short period of time, due to the “lake effect.” The lake effect is expected to intensify as the Great Lakes freeze less often and moisture that used to be trapped in ice evaporates and turns into snow. So, as global warming intensifies, some areas will get more snow, some will have none – hence the “global weirding.”

Bill Fraser of the Polar Oceans Research Group reported on Saturday night that emperor penguins (the species made famous by the movie “March of the Penguins”) are extinct from the Western Antarctic Peninsula.

He has been studying them for 30 years and said the saddest thing is the silence. Emperors and Adelie penguins are dependent on sea ice, which is melting, turning into snow and burying penguin eggs, driving penguins toward extinction.

Polar regions harbor the “canaries” of global warming; as polar bears and penguins fall other species are not far behind.

Gannett’s presentation can be accessed at www.alisongannett.com.


PERMALINK:
Global 'weirding' | Planet JH News Article: Going Green

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