The skiing industry, as I noted about 6 weeks ago, is going green for fun and profit. The AP story gives the details, and of course uncritically promotes the view of man as the generator of higher global temperatures, legitimate criticisms and alternative explanations notwithstanding.
STATELINE, Nev. - Mammoth Mountain urges its visitors to park their cars and take advantage of an extensive bus network. The Vail resorts, including nearby Heavenly at Lake Tahoe, run their lifts with wind power. In Colorado, the Sunshine Express high-speed quad at Steamboat operates on sunlight.
The ski industry is going green to help offset the pollution that feeds global warming — a phenomenon that challenges the resorts' very existence with the threat of later snowfalls and earlier snow melts.
Here's my favorite part of the article.
Vail trumped its own environmental card earlier this month with the announcement of plans for Ever Vail, one of the largest green projects at a North American ski resort. The $1 billion development will total about 1 million square feet including condos, a hotel and commercial buildings. Katz hopes it will win certification from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design system, or LEED, which promotes buildings that use less energy and water, emit less pollution and conserve materials.
You know, if there were no million square foot development Vail would use even less energy. You recall that in the article's second paragraph we were told that the ski industry was trying to "offset the pollution that feeds global warming?" Well, get a load of this, in paragraph 16:
There's no consensus among scientists that greenhouse gases produced by burning fossil fuels are wholly responsible for global warming.
No concensus? But ... but ... Al Gore ... the IPCC ...
Nevertheless, the symbolic Doomsday Clock, first set at 11:53 p.m. in 1947, at the beginning of the Cold War, was moved to five minutes before midnight in January. For the first time, scientists who oversee the clock cited the threat of climate change along with nuclear standoffs with Iran or North Korea for pushing the clock's hands two minutes closer to midnight.
Well, we wouldn't want to wait for a little thing like a concensus to push that doomsday minute hand ahead, would we?
