Also this.
Uhhhh…
It’s hard to look at something like this and not stare in awe at how far we’ve come.
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Half the cost of Tesla and all it takes is a nail gun.
…no society can ever have an ethical relationship to a place it stole.
The author acknowledges that this probably seems unimaginable to most, but what of the concept that the most effective way to combat climate change is to return land to the control of indigenous peoples and thereby start to reverse the deleterious effects of capitalism and colonization?
I have also heard this referred to or talked about in connection with the “Land Back” movement. While it still seems like a distant dream, the fact that more and more people seem to be talking about it and giving it serious thought is encouraging. As radical as it may be, I think that any steps made in this direction comprise perhaps the only ethical way forward for social and climate justice.
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It will be an uphill battle in both securing power and appeal but I don’t see anything incorrect in what’s being proposed
Architecture could be so cool, if 40 years ago we just embraced the facts of climate change and bettered the way the natural environment is integrated into urban spaces.
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Lack of natural snow thus leading to organizers needing to create ‘artificial’ snow for cross-country skiing & biathlon competitions is being blamed for increased and more severe injuries in the sport. Apparently the artificial snow has a higher water content thus leading to more icy conditions which results in higher speeds and more crashes and more severe results from crashing off the snow.
It depends on when/how the artificial snow is made. It can range from “identical to real snow” to “basically just spring conditions.” Most of the problems with artificial snow are basically the same as the problems with “the climate is different and the temperature is higher.”
Utah in particular is known for having particularly “dry” powder snow. It’s the only reason I’d ever consider traveling to Utah again in my life. There are few places on Earth with that particular kind of snow, and it’s can’t easily be made artificially as it requires a specific climate around it (among other challenges).
They’re not wrong, but the sport as they remember it is gone. We ruined it when we fucked up the planet.
Over time, more and more skiing is going to be like what we’re used to in the northeastern US. Heavy snow and icy bullshit. The snow they’re complaining about is the only snow I’ve ever known, and the kind of snow that east coast racers are used to.
What’s extra interesting is the buried lede in that story. It’s not just the snow that is “faster.” Skis are faster. Technique is better. It’s similar to the problem that happened with ski jumping (people were able to jump so far they could outrun the landing zone and just die, and the sport transitioned from “go as far as you can” to “do it with perfect form” with distance being less of a factor.)
You can even see this on the east coast on much smaller/crappier mountains. There are ski runs that were extremely challenging up until around 1990 when modern “shaped skis” first appeared. Those runs are now honestly pretty easy to even an intermediate skier just due to the better tech. Similarly, there are runs that were relatively safe for good skiers on old-style skis that are too fast on modern skis and become extremely dangerous to someone who isn’t that skilled and is relying heavily on the modern kit.
i.e., they’re fine unless they make a mistake and then they don’t have the extreme skills necessary to correct: in an older time they wouldn’t even be on that trail in the first place. The technology gave them more capabilities, but as a result they’re skiing trails that were inaccessible to them previously.
I learned to ski on straight skis in the 80s. When I picked it up again as an adult I had to “un-learn” a lot of obsolete technique and re-learn modern methods. But it was so much “easier” on modern skis that I was able to take on much harder terrain much earlier. But it also meant I was taking on terrain that in the past only experts would touch, as a 20-something remembering how to ski.
The problem of injuries and snow conditions appears to be occurring all over the world. Apart from the snow characteristics and equipment development there is also the issue that when they have to make snow for the competition track, the areas outside of the track are likely to have exposed dangers of rocks and trees and such and to not have a snowy buffer. It sounds like this is also a major source of injury. It makes me think about the debate around racetrack run-off areas in F1 and other motorsports.
Racing in my local haunts is basically on shaped ice at this point. They’ll shape ice moguls (partly so they retain their shape for all of the runs). Just miserable to ski on, but it’s what the racers are trained for and used to.
The point Yanis makes on nuclear power makes it clear to me why we should be kicking and screaming for more solar and wind.
I don’t know how true it is, but there’s been a lot of talk lately about solar power and aluminum. When manufacturing solar panels, you need aluminum. The emissions produced and energy required to produce the aluminum are supposedly not great…