20 November 2007

Where’s Al?

Skiing, it was said a year ago, would permanently become a thing of the past or involve some kind of Astro-turf. This declaration was made presciently by the all knowing, all caring, predictive neo-scientific sort that the rest of us are forced to pretend are serious. What’s funnier is these are the same people who think skiing is bad for soil erosion, or as the case is with these folks – always something else, its’ inverse, obverse, and itself.

As far as early indicators go, ski resorts are to industry what frogs are to the animal kingdom - both are among the first to suffer from environmental changes. It doesn’t take a lot of looking to discover a great deal of concern from ski resort investors and management all over.
It also doesn’t take much to realize that they are under an unceasing attack of people who in spite of a habit of exaggerating are also humorless, unoriginal, and yet talk too much.

Like Al Gore. More to the point where’s Al Gore’s Gulfstream when you need it?
Austrian resorts have received a thick blanket of snow this week, allowing 26 resorts to begin their season early this weekend.

Many of the resorts are small, and able to react to events quickly. But big resorts like Obergurgl, Mayrhofen and Sallbach are also planning to open this weekend, two or three weeks ahead of schedule. Zell am Zee opens tomorrow.

The big falls have been repeated in parts of France and Switzerland, where Verbier is now scheduled to open on Saturday. Norway’s largest resort, Trysil opened today and will be followed by Hemsedal tomorrow and Geilo on Saturday.
I guess all that praying-to-Gaia, heavy taxation, PR stunts, installing recycling trash cans all over Europe that no-one ever seems to use have by themselves, through the force of good intentions and worrying people to death about doom – dropped the air temperature.

Richard North writing at his EU Referendum blog has a bead on the pattern whose only root-cause argument is one of journalistic laziness and narcissism.
So it is with global warming. The media drops its "bombshells" like well-formed turds on the pavement and then moves on, leaving others to clear up the mess behind them. Decades down the line, when the world doesn't come to an end, when the fears and the alarms prove groundless, there will be another scare in the making – or several more – and no one will want to know.
And we’re somehow supposed to not question or criticize the media that does this, whie they as a rather narrowly draw self-selected class tch-tch the mere-mortals and slobs who DO question them, using their spare time to backcheck the research of Journos who don’t look into something that they get paid to do.

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