Summer of Snow part 5

that last jump actually makes me nausious

wow was i the only one who noticed the double lincoln loop? that step-up was absolutely ridiculous... I want it.

sick

but what was up with that song for the final edit?

wow you have terrible taste in music and cant edit worth shit but otherwise good article!

good interviews but the quality of the actualy skiing is pretty bad. get ns to hook u up with a better camera!

Ahh summer and the "summer of snow" articles come to an end! Finally!

"f u dan, that jump looks great, id hit it in a second." - dave pauls.

congrats on the awesome series of stories dan. it was like i was in whistler. except i didnt see any videos of wag, or you dog walking in your spare time. what.

stacey, the wag people moved way the hell out of town and i could not even use dogs to pick up ladies in town (completely accidental of course). The only dog i was wagging in my spare time was.....

Dave you wouldn't hit a step-up on blow-hole and this thing was sketchier

wolf07, that music fucking blows your face off.

Dishwalla, the camera was dope, the camerman was a dope....hahahah wait a minute, no. he just sucks.

The double lincoln was quite hucked but still pretty sick...and you can hae a step up of your own, just takes a chicopee worth of snow and a whole bunch of skilled labourers.

All the points are well mentioned. But in a country like china, there is an unbelivable amount of un-employment. So for big ski company's that move out there to get the cheap work is not a bad thing for china, they are offering a lot of jobs, which helps reduce the suffering people on the street. All though I do agree that if they are doing that the consumer should get those products at a cheaper rate, cause that would be nice. haha.

Props on everything. Awesome article.

dalke the jobs that are created in china are jobs lost in north america. we then have to ship the items from china using climate destroying tankers.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/48/127736593_49205ab9bf_b.jpg

This is what the Whistler Glacier looked like in the middle of the summer in 1984. Seems like a long time ago but in the life of a glacier it's not really a long time. There's no chance a summer ski camp could run on Whistler now. It's happening really fast!

Thanks for that picture pemberton. I knew camps used to be run on the whistler glacier but i had no real data and did not want to fake it. That glacier is ablating rather quickly eh! is it from salt use alone or a combination of salt use, over camped, and climate change?

I'm pretty damn skeptical about the whole buzz for biofuels. Basically nearly all the arable (farmable) land in the world is being used right now whether for agriculture based food or biofuel based energy source. If corn in used in the US, palm oil in Malaysia, and sugar beets in Europe then that means less land for agriculture crops.

And then the problems start. Do you provide crops for energy or food?

There is a finite amount of energy harnessed by the Earth from the sun every year, as long as society uses more energy then that we are running an energy debt. And what happens with debt's? The ultimate issue that everyone has to face is that its CONSUMPTION that is the problem, and changing to biofuels isn't going to change a damn thing. If anything it'll just delay the day of reckoning.

If anyone wants to think about this a little bit more look up 'Tragedy of the Commons'.

subsidized biofuels on huge factory monocrop farms are the stupidest way the government is wasting our money. corn is the primary source and it needs such high levels of fertilizer to grow year after year that we are spending more energy creating biofuels than they give off. they are in themselves an energy debt.

you bring up some good points KyleMcIver

First of all, don't believe all the doom and gloom Kellar says. He sounds like a catastrophist!! Global mean temperatures are not rising such that they're going to completely melt the glaciers around the world -- we do have time. The world needs to continue de-carbonizing as it has been doing since the days of Abraham Lincoln, and will continue to do so. It's also pretty naive to think that ALL global warming is attributable to CO2 emissions from humans.

For the future, a mix of solutions will be the only way this world will keep chugging along. Hydrogen vehicles. Nuclear power. A bit of wind and solar power in some cases. Carbon sequestration in the interim. I agree with Kyle -- I am skeptical of biofuels. Humans will wake up eventually.

As for China, cut them a bit of slack. They've got problems, but they've been improving quite quickly relative to the development of the West. China knows its problems -- especially its environmental ones -- will be its downfall if it doesn't do something, so i don't think the answer is to boycott all things chinese. It's a global capitalist economy -- which is far better than the communist alternative -- and we North Americans and Europeans just need to work hard and be competitive.

Sanchez, just because we are living in a capitalist economy does not mean we have to live with it. Boycotting products that come from environmentally damaging sources forces industry to change if it wants to survive. The communist alternative that you talk about is China...

Hydrogen vehicles will do nothing as hydrocarbons are a by-product of oil extraction another limited resource, and where do you put nuclear waste? It is not sustainable. Wind and solar are our future along with geothermal and of course REDUCTION through efficiency and cutting back. We do not have time to eventually wake up, as eventual action will lead to eventual disaster.

As for your 'de-carbonizing' as we have since the time of lincon? What does this mean? Global carbon emissions have never been higher then it is right now. It would be naive to think all warming is attributed to CO2 emissions, there are some natural fluctuations. No fluctuation has ever occurred as quickly as this one is and CO, WaterVapour, and Particulates are also strong greenhouse gases (as well as global dimming contributors but that is a whole other issue).

China exports food while millions of its own people are dying, they take over farmland for industrial expansion while their population chokes on pollution. The remaining land is overused and becomes fallow. This is an unsustainable country which needs guidance. The endurance events at the 2008 Olympics are going to be 'postponed' (read: canceled) as the athletes will not be able to breath due to dust coming off the eroding Loess plateaus.

Thinking Status Quo will not solve our problems.

Sanchez, it is good though to be skeptical of biofuels, go the next step and be against them, they are useless wastes of farmland. Communism is not a bad thing, it is the infiltration of communism by evil forces that leads it astray. That being said, evil forces will always leak in as long as we are a consumptive greedy society.

Boards, I agree with much of what you say, including boycotting products you don't agree with. I am simply trying to downplay the catastrophist mentality, as I personally don't believe we're in for any catastrophes. Also, I do not consider China truly communist. Politically they're communist, but economically they're capitalist. Sooner or later, democracy will prevail.

As for energy, I may not have mentioned geothermal as a source and reduction as a strategy, but I agree they're also key as well. I don't share the same concern as you regarding nuclear waste -- there are new ways of dealing with it that should keep the planet safe. I do not see your connection between hydrogen vehicles and hydrocarbons. The point of hydrogen vehicles is that they do not emit carbon byproducts, but rather friendly water. The difficulty currently with hydrogen vehicles is the hydrogen supply.

With respect to de-carbonizing, I am referring to the trend to first move away from burning wood, then other carbon sources like coal, etc. There is a trend, though I do not dispute that current consumption is a lot higher than 1860. But that was not my point. As for fluctuations, it's easy to say "no fluctuation has ever occurred as quickly as this one is" when accurate temperature records only cover about 150 years for a planet that is billions of years old, so I don't think that means much. By the way, global dimming actually COOLS the planet.

You're bang on about the unsutainabilty of China. They definitely need to change. No one ever said status quo was an acceptable approach.

And you're bang on about what you refer to as "evil forces". I prefer to view them as "power hungry" or "egotistical" -- either way, people corrupted by positions of power. Happens all too often...

Sanchez, i'm happy we can agree on a few points and i recognize that dimming cools the planet and shades us from the true effects of the climate crisis.

Paleoclimatology gives us pretty accurate readings of the last few thousand years. ice core samples, tree core samples, heck, even pollen samples can all tell us what past climates were like. The current climate is pretty distressing (even if you are not a fan of the hockey stick graph).

I am wondering what new ways people are dealing with nuclear waste, putting it in the ground in concrete bunkers is not dealing with it, it is placing it out of sight so one day a nuclear catastrophe may take place. As for Hydrogen vehicles, they may emit h2o but the process of extracting them is energy intensive and associated with oil extraction. as was discussed above, hydrogen production is an energy debt much like bio fuels, it requires more energy to produce then it produces. ANd i do agree with you that china is not really communist, they are more like tyrannical/facist capitalist (much like we in NA are heading as we lose control of our lives to CEOs).

In america and china new coal plants are being built all the time and bush is actually pushing for more coal mining. he stresses clean coal which will reduce the dimming (through less particulate emmission) but will do nothing for the Greenhouse gases. True warming will be felt then.

Evil forces: the power hungry and the pure capitalist will be the downfall of humanity.