As has been said on more than one occasion, while climate change mitigation poses substantial costs, so does climate change. The profusion of water infrastructure being constructed around Australia’s major cities is, arguably, one very visible example. But there are plenty of other potential effects, and they’re not small beer.
Take this report put out by the Australian ski resorts’ lobby group, the Alpine Resorts Coordinating Council. While it’s always necessary to take economic benefit claims with a grain of salt, they claim that the existence of alpine resorts increases the GDP of New South Wales and Victoria by hundreds of millions of dollars:
The total combined summer and winter benefit for the New South Wales alpine resorts in 2005 was found to be $812 million for additional gross state
product and 10,459 additional annual equivalent employment opportunities. While for Victoria the benefit was $505 million for additional gross state
products and 6,571 additional annual equivalent employment oppoertunities. Including Tasmania, the combined benefit for the three States with resorts was $1,319 million for additional gross state product and 17,050 additional annual equivalent employment opportunities.
There’s plenty of room in exercises like these to ignore opportunity costs - the various state governments have made an art form of it when justifying their subsidies for major events. People will presumably still take holidays during the snow season, just not to the ski fields. But we’ll take the figures as read (and, frankly, Victoria and southern New South Wales are not great holiday destination without snow in the middle of winter), and look at how much of an impost the complete loss of the snowfields would be to the economy of, say Victoria. According to this page, Victoria’s Gross State Product is roughly 233,000 million dollars. So the snowfields represent about 0.2% of GSP.
A few industries here, a few industries there, and pretty soon you’re talking about serious damage to the Victorian and New South Wales, and by extension the Australian, economy.
Not to mention those communities which serve the snowfields - places like Bright, Mount Beauty, and Jindabyne.
And it came to pass ,that government attracts the greatest thinkers to its fold,and by that decree alone ,for none may dare question such self-enlightenment…it came to pass.Verily I say,with reason failing the various attempts of wonderment I have expressed..I now declare,without any notion that would say..surely you would of thought of this..Vortex Tube and water mist on cold and frosty mornings.Then I whistled while I worked…Lycopodium s grow in Antartica….Lycopodium as particles in mass production,sprayed over snow to make it last!?….Scale, you idiot!?….. And I heard myself believing the echoes of reason somewhere still in my head,as I practiced the self-restraint of carrying down the Ten Demandments..OF I MUST GET SOMEONES ATTENTION..I knew it wasnt completely lost!? I had heard my own echoes,and,I believed my own thoughts..even if no-one said… they did.
So how come there is snow at the opening of the ski season for the first time in seven years?
When the projections differ from reality, IGNORE REALITY
Climate 101 - increasing temperatures increase relative humidity. Higher relative humidity equals the Potential for snowfall IF the appropriate barometric conditions coincide. Early snowfalls this year are good news for the snow bunnies, but NO conclusions can be reached until the total of the seasonal snowpack has been measured. A total that has been in steady decline since the 1970s.
The same applies in the Antarctic. The ice packs are shrinking rapidly, glacial motion is hugely increased, but there is increased precipitation over some parts of the continent. Not enough in way shape or form to offset the other two factors however.
Australia has miniscule areas of alpine & sub-alpine eco-systems which are already under huge pressure due to human activity. Proposals for vast redevelopments in both Vic & NSW are not only environmental vandalism in the Gunns scale of things, but beggar belief if their own findings come even close to realisation.
It´s a huge worry here in the Austrian alps. Last winter was the warmest winter ever on record and we had almost no snow. The economy of the alpine regions of Austria and Italy revolves almost completely around winter tourism. Already people here are terrified that the dud season last year will lead to another dud season this year because all the serious ski buffs will go to North America where they will be guaranteed good falls.
In a somewhat similar vein, I was at a conference earlier in the year where one of the papers outlined CSIRO data (I believe) on the projected southward migration of good wine-growing weather. The punchline was that she probably wouldn’t be getting her Coonawarras from Coonawarra within 20 years!
Problems in Austria? It cannot be! Everything I read at Catallaxy tells me that the Austrian school had it so right. Evidently, they were just warming up…
There was an item on RN’s Bush Telegraph today entitled Don’t eat the brown snow! about purified effluent being used by the snowmaking machines to cover the ski slopes at Mt Buller. They have a large dam to store water from which they create artificial snow. If I remember rightly, they also had plans to expand the resort.
I think the predictions are roughly for a halving of the number of good seasons by 2030 (memo for Chrisl - if the prediction is for half as many good seasons and we have the first good one for several years, reality is confirming the projections, particularly since we haven’t hit 2030).
The thing about this is that presumably there comes a point where upkeep of the infrastructure is very hard to afford even if there is the occasional good season.
I think until recently they had two good seasons out of three at the better resorts. If that falls to one out of three, is it financially viable to keep resorts going when for two years out of three there is minimal snow and few customers? Possibly, but how about when we hit one year in five or in six?
At the moment many resorts survive on snow making machines, but these chew up electricity, which will get more expensive with time, and of course only work if there is water available in the first place, so they’re not going to save the resorts if they need to be used every year.
Very arguably
The worst case scenario tempertature rise means no snow in any Australian resort by 2050 - only the highest peaks would get a short cover. The current best case scenario is about a 50% reduction - which would affect snow depth and hence the length of the season. If it is 8-10 weeks now, it will be 4-5 weeks in 2050, which probably won’t be economically viable. This will be a tragedy for many rural areas that derive income from skiing, and obviously for all skiers. The first to go will be Lake Mountain, which was the largest cross country ski resort in the Southern hemisphere.
So the Howard Government claiming that we cannot do anything about climate change because it will impact the economy is actually completely incorrect. If we don’t take urgent action then we lose the ski season, the Great Barrier Reef. Sydney becomes tropical. Melbourne becomes arid. I am convinced that political inaction now will be regarded as the crime of the century in time to come.
On 10 May 2007, Senator Christine Milne (Greens Senator for Tasmania) moved that the Senate:
(a) notes that most industrialised nations now accept the imperative of constraining global temperature increase to 2 degrees or less to avoid catastrophic climate change; and
(b) agrees that the imperative of constraining global temperature increase to no more than 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels should underpin government policy responses to global warming.
Greens and Democrats voted for the motion, while 44 Labor, Liberal and Family First senators voted against it. Senate Hansard, 10 May 2007 (PDF).
Labor, the Liberals and Family First all voted against it. Their actions speak louder than their words. Now we are faced with the prospect of runaway climate change, with very rapid and irreversible effects imminent.
This is too important to play politics with.
I was distantly involved in preparing the Victorian Government Alpine resorts strategy, and the climate modelling done on our behalf by the CSIRO unambiguously showed that there would be no commercial skiing in Victoria in 2050 (Peterc, it wasn’t ambiguous at all!). We wern’t allowed to put that data in the Strategy under pressure from the industry, as it would hurt investor confidence apparently, so we only used the 2020 data, which showed that Hotham and Falls would be surviving, Buller marginal and all the rest dead.
The resorts do realise all this of course which is why they’re slowly trying to turn into four season resorts - actually it’s very nice up at the top of the alps in summer.
…frankly, Victoria and southern New South Wales are not great holiday destination without snow in the middle of winter…
Depends what you’re into I guess, but I reckon that’s absolute rubbish unless your only holiday idea involves getting skin cancer. The art galleries, the theatres, the cafes and restaurants, the shops, the wineries, the gardens, are all very much open and welcoming.
I don’t know what is worse: Calling computer modelling data, or believing the data
I know what is worse: irrelevant pedantry.
Fair point, Wilful. Perhaps I should have restricted myself to outdoor tourism. When you live near the art galleries, theatres, cafes, shops..etc. etc., I usually regard it as the normal run of things rather than something people would travel long distances for. Thus, my holiday destinations often involve the opportunity to catch skin cancer.
As far as four season resorts go, as somebody who grew up near the snow resorts, I happen to think the local Aborigines had it right. Valleys in winter, mountains in summer…