So they'll just convert the lower altitude resorts to more "summer" activities like hiking and mountain biking.
(Though admittedly "just" convert to summer activities sounds much easier than it is. Skiing was something that was always confined to few areas, you can hike just as well in many more places.)
One can easily see the changes over last 20 years by looking at the ski mountains on the East Coast. The skiing season now is late January to mid-April.
The snow was delivered via trucks.
Locally they are experimenting on heat pump technology, and to use the excess heat to something useful. Then it might be more viable. Probably cannot do it in too high temperatures, but a bit above freezing should work.
Here, they have also experimented on building a gigantic heap of snow at the end of the season, and covering it so it doesn't melt too much during summer. Then it's easier to lay artificial snow on top in the fall, or the natural snow that occurs doesn't just melt when hitting the ground.
There were numerous years in the pre-snowmaking era where large numbers of East Coast ski areas barely operated.
Repeated bad years for natural snow in the late 70s/early 80s drove a ton of smaller places into closing down.
And there's all kinds of old pictures of the crazy things attempted to save snow before they could make it. Fences to try to catch it from blowing into the woods, giant vacuums to try to get it from the woods and put it on the trails, etc. Whole crews out in summer picking up every small rock and stump so they could open trails with as few inches of snow as possible.
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And back then, conditions were expected to be poor a lot of the time. Skiers today expect wall to wall snow on the runs and a large portion of them to be open just about every day during the main season.
The problem with East coast skiing is that it won’t take that much more warming to make them economically unviable.
Hell, I grew up in central Alberta, 1970s and 80s. Latitude 53. Winter time temperatures drop to the -30C range all the time. And yet even there you could not rely on consistent snow cover at the little hills around. Many Christmases well above zero with the lake unfrozen followed by a January of -25C.
Back then the little hills around there were also all closing because people were now able to drive or fly further and go to Jasper and Banff etc. to ski instead of hitting their local hills. And I also remember many days skiing on solid ice in Jasper, which is pretty damned cold, high elevation.
Most of North America is a continental climate. It has always been highly variable. It is getting more so.
Climate change is real and is impacting this industry, but I feel like the really bad effects are still coming. But even when it comes it's not like the winters will be universally _warm_ -- they will be highly volatile, with intense blizzards one day followed by rain later. That's the pattern this year already.
I'm off to Revelstoke to ski in a week and a half. Absolute craploads of snow there this year, while here in the east it has been awful. But last year it wasn't that great out there but was pretty good in the east, considering.
But I don't expect to be seeing ski areas becoming generally untenable operations in the Eastern US until many decades in the future, other than maybe some of the southernmost areas (there's ski areas as far south as Alabama).
Average conditions may be more variable and resorts will have to push even harder in snowmaking windows.
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On the other hand though, there's quite a bit of technological advancement still coming down the pipe on the snowmaking side. In some respects, Eastern US conditions are (for now) arguably improved from what they used to be for many as a result.
The massive automation coming to the industry is making it possible to make a lot more snow and take advantage of small weather windows, and the efficiency improvements have made the energy costs a lot less prohibitive to use extensively (and less environmentally problematic).
However, a fairly bitter pill to swallow this year was some parks I was looking forward to riding being caught in the Australian bushfires. One was a local park, and I look forward to helping rebuild it once it's safe.
It's a scary prospect for that to become the norm. Nature is dear to me. Being able to go riding in the forest is a pillar of my health, mental and physical. I have consistently been unable to ride this summer due to heatwaves and bushfire smoke. Occasionally I would make poor judgement, and leave to ride when it was clear only to be smoked out on the trails an hour later, from fires hundreds of kilometers away.
Skiing is simply more unique/exquisite experience, more people are willing to spend more. It also often requires less effort, if one is not so fit. Plenty of folks ride down 2 times in the morning, park with beer/wine on the sun, eat, do 1-2 runs and call it a day and go to apres bar. For whole week.
I am a bit skeptical about this 'reinventing' of ski resorts into something new. I look at Chamonix in France, for somebody like me the best mountain place in Europe, maybe even globally. Beautiful hiking, trail running, climbing, world class (or easy) alpinism available quickly, skiing, ski touring, paraglide, bikes and so on and on. The best season for non-winter activities is actually early autumn, September-October - better temperatures than summer, nature is stunningly beautiful, good stable weather.
But almost nobody comes in autumn. Why? Because kids don't have holidays and are back to school. This is the bulk of visitors in mountains, anytime. So summer season for tourism lasts 2-2.5 months. Winter one, still is more like 4 months.
Somewhat paradoxically, climate change could make some areas of the Rockies and Sierras more snowy. But depletion of snow in other areas would cause the areas with snow to become even more expensive -- and they're already pretty exclusive today.
> Already, the summer generates 60% of the tourism intake, according to Garmisch Mayor Sigrid Meierhofer.
Indeed, hiking doesnt require you to spend moneys on rental equipment. It's a bit different for mountain biking - most of the time you need lift passes to enjoy the mountain. And with the explosion of electric bikes rentals in the last years, and there are lots of growth opportunities for generating revenue there as well.
And it's not only about hiking/biking, of course.
Of course, having more places to ski is better than having less places - my main concern is people and their jobs, and not specific resort activities per se.
While I would love to see more bike parks, I think most mountain resorts would shutter if these were the only activities bringing in revenue throughout the year.
As if the worst thing is the loss of ski resorts?
How about going finding a new place to live, cultivate, and the huge casualties in human life, animals, etc?
Hint: it’s not actually about the skiing.
Why do you think that evolution happens like that? Extinction events are a major driver in evolution, and as far as I know, Punctuated Equilibrium Theory still has quite a bit of traction; many models (especially simulations) seem to show that this is what quite often happens.
Like, sure, mass extinctions happen... but this one is totally optional.
For them the problem is something they read about - not something real.
If they lived in one of the directly affected areas from climate change, and suffered the consequences, they'd change the tune regarding "why expect earth to look like this geologically", etc.
Yea, things have always changed. It's why weather stable regions are historically more habitable than those which aren't.
Only if one has their head in the sand. Historically higher temperatures year after year, massive loss of arctic ice, etc.
All of those things weren't "always changing", except if you go back to thousands to millions of years. And even then, they didn't get there with the same rate of change we have now.
Climate changes over hundred thousands years.
The rapid industrialization caused rapid heating in hundred years! This is a fact and trying to dispute it is akin to sticking you head in sand.
Anyhow the whole line of its natural so we should ignore it is crazy to me. Cancer is natural and yet people treat it. It doesn't matter if global warming is, or isn't natural, or its a mix. We need to stabilize it to suit us before we go back to having total population counted in millions or so.
From Wikipedia: "Solastalgia (/ˌsɒləˈstældʒə/) is a neologism that describes a form of mental or existential distress caused by environmental change. In many cases this is in reference to global climate change, but more localized events such as volcanic eruptions, drought or destructive mining techniques can cause solastalgia as well."