Posted on 02/13/2014 10:49:01 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Will Sochi be the last Winter Olympics? Has the Earth run out of snow? Readers on the east coast may find this essay from The Atlantic’s Ian Freidman a little ironic today, but he warned just as the snowstorm hit the entire East Coast that global warming was making the Winter Olympics potentially extinct, and that Sochi proves his point:
One of the warmest Winter Olympics in history is getting warmer.
Temperatures reached the low-60s today in Sochi, and they’re expected to stay there on Thursday and Friday. For some perspective, the weather in the coastal resort is now roughly as warm as it was during certaindays of London’s Summer Games in 2012. According to Forecast.io, the average temperature for the Sochi Olympics so far has been 45 degrees Fahrenheit, three degrees lower than the average during the previous Warmest Winter Olympics Ever: the 2010 Vancouver Games. But Sochi’s highs have been higher than Vancouver’s. And Vancouver’s daily average never rose above 50 degrees, while Sochi’s has surpassed that level several times.
All this creates issues. Like mush, which the American snowboarder Shaun White cursedshortly before failing to medal in the relatively cool mountains outside Sochi. Organizers are now compensating for the lack of hard snow with awintery mix of chemicals, water injections, andstrategic snow reserves. Hundreds of snow cannons stand ready in case of emergency.
This week, however, over 100 Olympians, 85 of them American, blamed more than warm weather for the poor conditions. The real culprit, the athletes said in a statement, is climate change—and world leaders better do something about it during climate talks in Paris next year. “Snow conditions are becoming much more inconsistent, weather patterns more erratic, and what was once a topic for discussion is now reality and fact,” U.S. cross-country skier Andrew Newell wrote. “Our climate is changing and we are losing our winters.”
First, let’s start with the inherent assumption that Sochi was a reasonable venue for a Winter Olympics in the first place. It wasn’t, and its selection by the IOC raised eyebrows at the time for this very reason. Russia had to promise that they could keep the slopes snowy in order to win the bid, and so far that’s not been an easy task. While many think Russia is all about snowy winters, especially for those who know the history of large armies marching on Moscow, it might help to see a map of Sochi’s location:
That’s Sochi — at nearly the southernmost part of Russia, on the Black Sea. It’s not Siberia or even Moscow, and it’s not even close. The driving distance between Sochi and Moscow is more than a thousand miles, slightly longer than the distance between Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon. It’s roughly the same latitude as southern France, and well below the latitude of London, which Friedman uses as a comparison.
As a quick piece of research demonstrates, the temperatures noted by Friedman for this Olympiad are in fact the average temperature for Sochi at this time of year. The February average for Sochi is 42.8 degrees, and the average daily high is 49, with a low of 37. That’s a pretty poor choice for a Winter Olympics venue that has to rely on a lot of snow sticking to the ground, let alone falling at all. Even London is colder than Sochi on average (41.5 degrees, hi/lo 46.9/36.1). For that matter, so is the 2010 Winter Olympics venue, Vancouver (40.8 degrees, 46.7/34.8), which as Friedman notes was another head-scratching choice by the IOC.
So yes, if the IOC insists on picking warmer-weather sites for its Winter Olympics, then the games will have trouble with snow. Perhaps they should consider the actual climate of their potential sites before picking them in the future. Given that the IOC selected this site, in a region where violent unrest and terrorism are rampant, I’m not too confident that they’ll make better decisions on any basis in the future.
Update: Just for fun, let’s look at the weather conditions today at the last few venues of the Winter Olympics:
Basically, all of these venues are sticking close to their averages, with Lillehammer the only one skewing warmer by any significance — and it’s still going to snow tonight in Lillehammer.
Also, I forgot to hat-tip John Ekdahl at Ace for the story.
I’ll bet a lot of cavemen said this same exact thing at the end of the last Ice Age.
The Atlantic.....filled with garbage, old fish, crabs and s**t. It’s also the name of an ocean.
I don’t recall Odyseus complaining about frigid winters at Troy (39.9 N)and it sat on similar latitudes as Sochi (43.4 N). The difference is about 200 miles or a 3 1/2 hour drive (like from Austin to Dallas, TX). What were the Russians and the Olympic committee thinking when they chose a southern location in Russia. I’ll bet Putin wanted to turn Sochi into a future resort area for the West. That was a good plan. But if so, why were the hotels and infrastructure not ready? Some of Russia’s lower managers are surely in trouble. Maybe they’ll take a vacation in the comfortable camps in Siberia. Putin could have pulled off an impressive event had it gone well.
Also, if these global warming cranks think they can accurately predict climate into future decades, they could make some real money working as weather announcers because they are usually wrong on the weather for next week.
Rising temperatures are a symptom of AGW.
Falling temperatures are a symptom of AGW.
Steady temperatures are a symptom of AGW.
Droughts are a symptom of AGW.
Floods are a symptom of AGW.
Rivers flowing within their natural banks are a symptom of AGW.
Early Summer is a symptom of AGW.
Late Summer is a sign of AGW.
My cat having kittens is a sign of AGW.
(OK, I made that last one up.)
Quite a racket, huh? They can’t lose with that setup.
Apparently the American athletes haven't spent much time in their home country this winter, otherwise they'd notice the snow and here in the United States is the coldest its been in 30 years. I could sure use some "global warming" after weeks of snow storm after snow storm.
But in SC, a snow board is what you use to move the snow out of the way so that you can get into the outhouse.
Look hard enough and you will find a study about the CO2 expelled during cat birth is a contributing factor to AGW.
Remember Cow and termite flatuence are. Why not cats too?
Sochi is the same latitude as the French Riviera.
For the women’s downhill is was 30’s at the top and 50’s at the bottom. Generally spring skiing conditions.
Time Magazine from June 1974…
“Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the
waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.
Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best f(sic) Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data.
When Climatologist George J. Kuklaohad suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.
University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society,Warns “I don’t believe that the world’s present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row.”
“But the scientific enterprise will never be completely free of mistakes.” Al Gore
No doubt. Propaganda takes many forms.
Anyone want to bet that belief in AGW was also a prerequisite for a spot on many olympic teams?
In Soviet Russia we hold Summer Olympics in Moscow (55 degrees North; Juneau, Alaska is at 58 North) and Winter Olympics in Sochi (43 degrees North; Boston is at 42 North).
Then capitalist pigs come to games and blame weather on themselves. Go figure.
LOL! My daughter, a resident of the District of Columbia, would answer that in the negative today!
>>So yes, if the IOC insists on picking warmer-weather sites for its Winter Olympics, then the games will have trouble with snow. Perhaps they should consider the actual climate of their potential sites before picking them in the future.
As someone who saw an inkling of the shenanigans of His Fascist Excellency Juan Antonio Samaranch (former International Olympics Committee chairman) in the selection and operation of the Atlanta ‘96 games, I would guess that considering the actual climate of their potential sites was well down on the selection criteria, if the current IOC crowd is similar. No reason to think it isn’t.
Sochi is at about the latitude of Florence.
But then it’s also at about that of Chicago, Boston and Vladivostok.
Hadn’t thought of that. I wonder what they would find most obnoxious: Kitten breaths or cattle farts?
Well it’s a violation of the cat’s rights for a human to keep it as a pet according to the PETA nuts, but meat is murder too...
I dunno...tough call ;)
No wait, they kill thousands of cats in their no kill shelters yearly so the cows win.
Correct. The cows win. PeTA always kills the cats they get the instant the “donor” walks out the door.
Yes, and the key fact is that this is NORMAL weather for Sochi in February. The only aberration exposed in the 2014 Winter Olympics is the illogical choice of its location.
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