Guest essay by Eric Worrall

According to an “athlete and coach perspective” study conducted by the University of Waterloo in Canada, reductions in snowfall due to climate change will make it difficult to host future Winter Olympic events.

JANUARY 18, 2022

Climate change threatens future Winter Olympics

Failure to dramatically reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases may mean only one of the 21 previous Winter Olympics host cities can provide fair and safe conditions in the future

By Media Relations

Climate change will limit where the Winter Olympics can be held as winter changes across the Northern Hemisphere, according to a study by an international team of researchers led by the University of Waterloo.

The study, involving researchers from Canada, Austria and the United States, found that if global emissions of greenhouse gases are not dramatically reduced, only one of the 21 cities that have previously hosted the Winter Olympics would be able to reliably provide fair and safe conditions for the snow sports program of the Games by the end of this century. However, if the Paris Climate Agreement emission targets can be achieved, the number of climate-reliable host cities jumps to eight, with only six considered unreliable.

“The world of winter sport is changing as climate change accelerates, and the international athletes and coaches we surveyed are witnessing the impacts at competition and training locations, including the Olympics,” said Daniel Scott, a professor of Geography and Environmental Management at Waterloo.”

…

“We’ve studied the many ways the Winter Olympics has reduced weather risk since the first Games held in Chamonix, France nearly 100 years ago,” said Michelle Rutty of Waterloo’s Faculty of Environment. “But there are limits to what weather risk management strategies can cope with, and we saw those limits exceeded in Sochi and Vancouver.”

“Climate change is altering the geography of the Winter Olympic Games and will, unfortunately, take away some host cities that are famous for winter sport,” said Robert Steiger of the University of Innsbruck in Austria. “Most host locations in Europe are projected to be marginal or not reliable as early as the 2050s, even in a low emission future.”

…

Read more: https://uwaterloo.ca/news/media/climate-change-threatens-future-winter-olympics

The abstract of the study;

Climate change and the future of the Olympic Winter Games: athlete and coach perspectives

Daniel Scott, Natalie L. B. Knowles, Siyao Ma, Michelle Rutty & Robert Steiger

ABSTRACT

The International Olympic Committee recognizes the risks climate change pose to the Games and its responsibility to lead on climate action. Winter is changing at the past Olympic Winter Games (OWG) locations and an important perspective to understand climate change risk is that of the athletes who put themselves at risk during these mega-sport events. A survey of 339 elite athletes and coaches from 20 countries was used to define fair and safe conditions for snow sports competitions. The frequency of unfair-unsafe conditions has increased over the last 50 years across the 21 OWG host locations. The probability of unfair-unsafe conditions increases under all future climate change scenarios. In a low emission scenario aligned to the Paris Climate Agreement, the number of climate reliable hosts remains almost unchanged throughout the twenty-first century (nine in mid-century, eight in late century). The geography of the OWG changes radically if global emissions remain on the trajectory of the last two decades, leaving only one reliable host city by the end of the century. Athletes expressed trepidation over the future of their sport and the need for the sporting world to be a powerful force to inspire and accelerate climate action.

Read more: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13683500.2021.2023480

WUWT has written about this “end of snow” climate alarmist cognitive dissonance many times, but it just keeps happening.

The climate models predict global temperatures will soar. So if you believe in the models, there must be a date by which all the snow must melt.

The failure of the snow to melt to date seems to be almost universally disregarded as an anomaly. Climate scientists weave elaborate theories of “enhanced water cycles“, “oceans swallowing all the heat” and Arctic warming disrupting the polar vortex, to excuse the allegedly temporary failure of their models to perform, because, you know, in Climate Science Occam’s Razor dictates that if your predictions fail, you add more epicycles to excuse the failure, rather than just admitting you made a mistake.

As the UK MET office John Mitchell once explained to us, “People underestimate the power of models. Observational evidence is not very useful”.

The following is a Climategate Email from 2009 in which climate scientist Keven Trenberth responded to a BBC story “What Happened to Global Warming?“.

… where the heck is global warming? … The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The … data published in the August … 2009 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate. …

Source: Climategate Email 1255352257.txt (2009, Kevin Trenberth speaking)

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 From: Kevin Trenberth <omitted>
 To: Michael Mann <omitted>
 Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
 Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
 Cc: Stephen H Schneider <omitted>, Myles Allen <omitted>, peter stott <omitted>, “Philip D. Jones” <omitted>, Benjamin Santer <omitted>, Tom Wigley <omitted>, Thomas R Karl <omitted>, Gavin Schmidt <omitted>, James Hansen <omitted>, Michael Oppenheimer <omitted>
 
  Hi all
  Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in
  Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We
  had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it
  smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a
  record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies
  baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing
  weather).
  Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global
  energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27,
  doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained
  from the author.)
  The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a
  travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008
  shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing
  system is inadequate.
  That said there is a LOT of nonsense about the PDO. People like CPC are tracking PDO on a
  monthly basis but it is highly correlated with ENSO. Most of what they are seeing is the
  change in ENSO not real PDO. It surely isn’t decadal. The PDO is already reversing with
  the switch to El Nino. The PDO index became positive in September for first time since
  Sept 2007. see
  [2]https://ift.tt/3FFuZJI
  urrent.ppt
  Kevin
  Michael Mann wrote:
 
  extremely disappointing to see something like this appear on BBC. its particularly odd,
  since climate is usually Richard Black’s beat at BBC (and he does a great job). from
  what I can tell, this guy was formerly a weather person at the Met Office.
 
  We may do something about this on RealClimate, but meanwhile it might be appropriate for
  the Met Office to have a say about this, I might ask Richard Black what’s up here?
 
  mike
 
  On Oct 12, 2009, at 2:32 AM, Stephen H Schneider wrote:
 
  Hi all. Any of you want to explain decadal natural variability and signal to noise and
  sampling errors to this new “IPCC Lead Author” from the BBC? As we enter an El Nino year
  and as soon, as the sunspots get over their temporary–presumed–vacation worth a few
  tenths of a Watt per meter squared reduced forcing, there will likely be another dramatic
  upward spike like 1992-2000. I heard someone–Mike Schlesinger maybe??–was willing to bet
  alot of money on it happening in next 5 years?? Meanwhile the past 10 years of global mean
  temperature trend stasis still saw what, 9 of the warmest in reconstructed 1000 year record
  and Greenland and the sea ice of the North in big retreat?? Some of you observational folks
  probably do need to straighten this out as my student suggests below. Such “fun”, Cheers,
  Steve
  Stephen H. Schneider
  Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies,
  Professor, Department of Biology and
  Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment
  Mailing address:
  Yang & Yamazaki Environment & Energy Building – MC 4205
  473 Via Ortega
  Ph: <omitted>
  F: <omitted>
  Websites: climatechange.net
   patientfromhell.org
  —– Forwarded Message —–
  From: “Narasimha D. Rao” <omitted>
  To: “Stephen H Schneider” <omitted>
  Sent: Sunday, October 11, 2009 10:25:53 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
  Subject: BBC U-turn on climate
  Steve,
  You may be aware of this already. Paul Hudson, BBC’s reporter on climate change, on Friday
  wrote that there’s been no warming since 1998, and that pacific oscillations will force
  cooling for the next 20-30 years. It is not outrageously biased in presentation as are
  other skeptics’ views.
 
  [5]https://ift.tt/3qGwV0j
  [6]https://ift.tt/3tEZDjK
  imate-change/
 
  BBC has significant influence on public opinion outside the US.
 
  Do you think this merits an op-ed response in the BBC from a scientist?
 
  Narasimha
 
  ——————————-
  PhD Candidate,
  Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER)
  Stanford University
  Tel: <omitted>
 
 
  —
  Michael E. Mann
  Professor
  Director, Earth System Science Center (ESSC)
  Department of Meteorology Phone: (<omitted>
  503 Walker Building FAX: <omitted>
  The Pennsylvania State University email: [7]<omitted>
  University Park, PA 16802-5013
  website: [8]https://ift.tt/3rvrDnp
  “Dire Predictions” book site:
  [9]https://ift.tt/3tIRGtY
 
 —
 ****************
 Kevin E. Trenberth e-mail: [10]<omitted>
 Climate Analysis Section, [11]https://ift.tt/33wdmim
 NCAR
 P. O. Box 3000, <omitted>
 Boulder, CO 80307 <omitted> (fax)
 
 Street address: 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO 80305
 
 References
 
<omitted>
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Despite years of failure, with a few honourable exceptions the climate alarmist community seems determined to cling to blind faith that the pauses will end, that global temperatures will snap back to the trend line of their extreme hockey stick shaped warming predictions, and the only reason for current anomalies is that some hand waving excuse swallowed the warming. But rest assured, soon the frustration will be over, and that disappeared heat will re-emerge and smite us all. Any day now.

“… As you know, I’m not political. If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences. This isn’t being political, it is being selfish.” – Former CRU Director Phil Jones, Climategate Email 1120593115.txt

The only real impact the embarrassment of previous failed “end of snow” predictions appears to be that more cautious prophets have pushed the snowpocalypse date further into the future. But climate alarmists still can’t help making these silly predictions. The alternative, embracing the possibility that their models are a pile of junk, seems a step too far for most of them.