Summer Banks
CleanUpTheWorldIs global warming the death of the snow industry?
July 29th 2008 12:24
After a dry June, July has delivered the snow goods for Australasian skiing. Which begs the question - is global warming really impacting the ski industry and what are they doing about it?
Warming and snow tend to end in tears, or at least liquid. For every one degree rise of temperature snow lines rise by 150 metres. If science is right then it doesn't bode well for we lovers of all things white and frozen. Miss Snow It All is no scientist but the CSIRO employ them. Their 2003 report predicted Australian resorts would lose half their snow by 2050 and a quarter in fifteen years.
The report recommended doubling the amount of snowmaking to get resorts through to 2020 but the report was also partly funded by the ski industry who have been madly investing millions of dollars in new snow guns, reservoirs and towers since. Not that we're not grateful, the difference to Heavenly Valley, the Supertrail, Front Valley, Bourke St and Wombat's Ramble are phenomenal.
Global warming is a catch-22 for the snow industry who have in the past output a fair amount of carbon to allow us to have our winter fun. This increases global warming, in turn creating a suicidal cycle. But many of Australian and International resorts have turned to best environmental practices and innovative programs like Keep Winter Cool to reduce their carbon footprints and increase their chance of continuing snowfalls...or so they hope.
Read on to see how the industry is giving back, check out more hot images from the snow resorts this week that say "global what?", plus your chance to WIN a pair of Rossignol skis or snowboard.
If you listen to the experts in Europe the glaciers are disappearing, with over half of them melted completely in the past century. The ski resort of Verbier has taken to installing insulation sheeting across hundreds of thousands of square feet to try to stop the Tortin glacier melting.
Believe climate change or not, ski resorts around the globe are taking global warming seriously and doing what they can to save their own industry from meltdown. Resorts such as Deer Valley run their entire grooming fleet on bio diesel fuel, others such as Aspen, Jackson Hole, Sun Peaks, Megeve, Zermatt, Gstaad, Valmorel, and Lech have acquired the sought after ISO14001 environmental management certification across all aspects of their resorts.
The Save our Snow website allows skies and boarders to choose environmentally friendly ski resorts around the world for green skiing and an Israeli company has gone so far as to create the technology for snowmaking at any temperature. That's right, no longer does the outside temperature have to be low in order to create man-made snow.
IDE Technologies have created an all weather snow making machine that can even create snow in the desert. It's costly, but claims to be environmentally friendly and is said to use less power than six snow guns which is what it replaces. This could be the way of the future...
Back home in Australia our resorts are all 'doing their bit' including Hotham's impressive Banksia Award-winning water recycling for snowmaking with their $8million plus water project using treated water.
Mt Buller are the first and only Australian resort to receive the ISO 14001 certification and are running their new Holden Chairlift on one hundred percent green power.
Falls Creek run their three busiest lifts, Falls Express, Towers and Drovers Dream on 100 per cent Green Power and all their man-made snow ends up back in Rocky Valley Dam used to generate hydroelectricity in the Kiewa Valley Hydroelectric Scheme.
Perisher Blue offset the entire carbon emissions of their grooming fleet with Origin Energy and In 2007, Perisher Blue converted the power source for the Village Eight Express Chairlift, night skiing lights and six snowmaking fan guns on Front Valley to a 100% renewable energy source.
Thredbo have converted over a dozen urinals to a Desert waterless urinal system, saving half a million litres of water annually. Their grooming fleet runs on LPG and deisel and all their lifts are accredited with ten percent Green Power electricity.
Even the local snowboarding manufacturers, Heresy Snowboards, have got in on the action with their 3 Degrees range of "carbon negative" clothing. Ten dollars from every sale goes to Greening Australia. The theory being there's three degrees of separation between every snowboarder and with a temperature rise of three degrees it's the end of snowboarding as we know it.
Something's working because what a week it's been in the Australasian ski fields. Fresh snow, blue skies, it's peaking in the New South Wales and Victorian resorts. Falls Creek has recorded 160cms of snowfall in July alone while New Zealand's Mt Hutt have had to dig their way out of the base lodge after a metre fell in 36 hours.
Global warming and climate change may be a serious issue but with pics like these is it another Y2K or is the ski industry on limited time?
Warming and snow tend to end in tears, or at least liquid. For every one degree rise of temperature snow lines rise by 150 metres. If science is right then it doesn't bode well for we lovers of all things white and frozen. Miss Snow It All is no scientist but the CSIRO employ them. Their 2003 report predicted Australian resorts would lose half their snow by 2050 and a quarter in fifteen years.
The report recommended doubling the amount of snowmaking to get resorts through to 2020 but the report was also partly funded by the ski industry who have been madly investing millions of dollars in new snow guns, reservoirs and towers since. Not that we're not grateful, the difference to Heavenly Valley, the Supertrail, Front Valley, Bourke St and Wombat's Ramble are phenomenal.
Global warming is a catch-22 for the snow industry who have in the past output a fair amount of carbon to allow us to have our winter fun. This increases global warming, in turn creating a suicidal cycle. But many of Australian and International resorts have turned to best environmental practices and innovative programs like Keep Winter Cool to reduce their carbon footprints and increase their chance of continuing snowfalls...or so they hope.
Read on to see how the industry is giving back, check out more hot images from the snow resorts this week that say "global what?", plus your chance to WIN a pair of Rossignol skis or snowboard.
If you listen to the experts in Europe the glaciers are disappearing, with over half of them melted completely in the past century. The ski resort of Verbier has taken to installing insulation sheeting across hundreds of thousands of square feet to try to stop the Tortin glacier melting.
Believe climate change or not, ski resorts around the globe are taking global warming seriously and doing what they can to save their own industry from meltdown. Resorts such as Deer Valley run their entire grooming fleet on bio diesel fuel, others such as Aspen, Jackson Hole, Sun Peaks, Megeve, Zermatt, Gstaad, Valmorel, and Lech have acquired the sought after ISO14001 environmental management certification across all aspects of their resorts.
The Save our Snow website allows skies and boarders to choose environmentally friendly ski resorts around the world for green skiing and an Israeli company has gone so far as to create the technology for snowmaking at any temperature. That's right, no longer does the outside temperature have to be low in order to create man-made snow.
IDE Technologies have created an all weather snow making machine that can even create snow in the desert. It's costly, but claims to be environmentally friendly and is said to use less power than six snow guns which is what it replaces. This could be the way of the future...
Back home in Australia our resorts are all 'doing their bit' including Hotham's impressive Banksia Award-winning water recycling for snowmaking with their $8million plus water project using treated water.
Mt Buller are the first and only Australian resort to receive the ISO 14001 certification and are running their new Holden Chairlift on one hundred percent green power.
Falls Creek run their three busiest lifts, Falls Express, Towers and Drovers Dream on 100 per cent Green Power and all their man-made snow ends up back in Rocky Valley Dam used to generate hydroelectricity in the Kiewa Valley Hydroelectric Scheme.
Perisher Blue offset the entire carbon emissions of their grooming fleet with Origin Energy and In 2007, Perisher Blue converted the power source for the Village Eight Express Chairlift, night skiing lights and six snowmaking fan guns on Front Valley to a 100% renewable energy source.
Thredbo have converted over a dozen urinals to a Desert waterless urinal system, saving half a million litres of water annually. Their grooming fleet runs on LPG and deisel and all their lifts are accredited with ten percent Green Power electricity.
Even the local snowboarding manufacturers, Heresy Snowboards, have got in on the action with their 3 Degrees range of "carbon negative" clothing. Ten dollars from every sale goes to Greening Australia. The theory being there's three degrees of separation between every snowboarder and with a temperature rise of three degrees it's the end of snowboarding as we know it.
Something's working because what a week it's been in the Australasian ski fields. Fresh snow, blue skies, it's peaking in the New South Wales and Victorian resorts. Falls Creek has recorded 160cms of snowfall in July alone while New Zealand's Mt Hutt have had to dig their way out of the base lodge after a metre fell in 36 hours.
Global warming and climate change may be a serious issue but with pics like these is it another Y2K or is the ski industry on limited time?
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