Non ski resorts: Gearing up for a future without snow

by Neil Woodburn on

This is slightly scary but not entirely unexpected.

According to a New York Times report, ski resorts in Europe are making the necessary adjustments to continue attracting people to the resorts after global warming has all but eliminated the possibility to ski.

Resorts are already investing in more snow making machines, but this alone won’t solve the problem. Instead, in places like the Swiss Alps, ski resorts are beefing up their “off-slope attractions” and adding spas, shopping, sun decks, pools, and funky architecture to attract non-skiers to snowless ski resorts.

It’s a scary world out there folks. Better get your skiing in before Dubai becomes the only place on this planet where you can do it.

A Bittersweet Reminder of Global Warming

by Brett Atkinson on

Excuse my absence from Gadling for the last couple of months. but I’ve been discovering what’s new and different in the South Island of New Zealand for the next edition of Lonely Planet’s guide to my home country. Normally my LP ventures with laptop and notebook take me overseas, but it’s been kind of cool to poke around off the beaten track in my own backyard.

Between being surprised by the increasing number of great Kiwi microbrews and dangling off a hang glider above Queenstown, the most bittersweet memory is an excursion by inflatable boat onto the waters of Lake Tasman. The lake’s just three decades old, and its increasing size is being fuelled as global warming melts the Tasman Glacier, still New Zealand’s largest river of alpine ice, but 5 km shorter than it was 30 years ago.

The lake’s now a similar length and dotted with icebergs of all shapes and sizes that are continually rearranged by the mountain winds like giant floating chess pieces. The crystalline ice is up to 500 years old, and a lack of air bubbles trapped from earlier centuries produces an almost diamond hardness.

Out on the lake, a surprising late spring overnight snowfall had settled on the icy monoliths, and the gossamer sprinkling was enough to disturb the delicate balance of several icebergs that turned and rebalanced during the early morning.

Beautiful yes, but also a poignant and tangible reinforcement of the impact of climate change.

GADLING TAKE FIVE: Week of October 20-26

by Jamie Rhein on

The time of year when there is a convergence of holidays is upon us. Halloween is in less than a week away. My son couldn’t wait to carve our pumpkins so, now they are rotting on our porch. And here Matthew’s already brought up Christmas in his post on fuzzy breast-shaped toys, all the rage in Japan. In addition to the Halloween build-up, and the beginning hum of holidays yet to come, I’ve noticed a range of posts that offer up the kind of chit chat information you might toss out at a party. Did you know that. . . ?

  1. You can fight global warming by eating chicken.
  2. Pigs can be trained to jump through fire.
  3. Chewing betel nuts does a real number on your teeth.
  4. Sex is the word that is Googled the most in India, Egypt and Turkey.
  5. There is a way to pee in privacy on the side of the road.

And one more…

Philadelphia has the least attractive people. (Sorry again to Philadelphia, as this can’t possibly be true.)

Fight global-warming by eating chicken

by Abha Malpani on

For someone who is a sacrilegious beef-eating Hindu carnivore, I have many ‘official’ reasons to quit eating meat, but I love my steak and chicken-wings, so that’s not going to happen. (In my caste, we cannot even eat egg).

Which is why I was thrilled to read that eating chicken can help combat global warming drastically!

A recent story on Salon explains in a nutshell: the amount of energy and resources we invest in breeding animals for food, alongside naturally toxic excretions of those animals, is more responsible for global-warming than burning fossil fuels. However, poultry are the least polluting. (Gore, did you know this?).

The story throws in some shocking statistics:

  • “livestock accounts for 18 percent of global warming emissions worldwide, more than the entire transportation sector” — why is this not in Al Gore’s film?!
  • “cattle, bison, sheep and goats burp out a lot of methane that traps 23 times more heat per ton than carbon dioxide” — and we’ve been fretting about spraying deodorant?!
  • “the difference between a vegan diet and one that includes cheeseburgers is less than 2 tons of greenhouse gases a year — that’s about the equivalent of switching from a Camry to a Prius” — I wonder what Toyota would have to say about that.

With that in mind, eating beef is the worst; then comes cattle, sheep and goat; and then pork and dairy products are relatively less harmful. Pork and dairy hold the same place in the environment?!

Conclusion: if you want to change your diet to combat global-warming — eating chicken is the best thing you can do. Chickens don’t “burp” methane and they produce only one-tenth the methane of cattle waste.

Now who would have thought!

Breaking Ice With the North Pole

by Abha Malpani on

People who travel to dangerous corners of the world not only because they are adventurous and want to conquer a stubborn internal drive, but also because they want their expedition to count for something valuable to the world, never fail to astonish me.

The latest is endeavor is that of British explorer Pen Hadow who will walk 1200-miles journey to the North Pole whilst pulling a scientific sledge on the way that will measure the thickness of ice remaining in the Arctic Circle. Analysis of the measurements will tell us how long the snow will last us.

As you must know, the ice in the North Pole provides a protective shield that helps balance the Earth’s temperature. The more the ice melts, the more disruption will be caused to the world’s weather systems – hence the grave threat of global-warming.

The expedition is called the Vanco Arctic Survey and a team of 3 explorers (led by Hadow) will do it over a period of 100-120 days, beginning in February next year. Expert oceanographers, glaciologists, and meteorologists from the UK Met Office, Cambridge University and the US Navy will all be working with the team to help them accomplish this feat.

Probably the most ambitious, not to mention dangerous, expedition in the North Pole — the sheer curiosity, inspiration and blatantly adventurous desire of purposeful discovery with travel, always leaves me in utter awe.