Just in time for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, scheduled to begin in Beijing on February 4, comes a new fearmongering study claiming that in future decades, it will be much harder to find reliable sites to hold the winter games. The study, released by the University of Waterloo in Ontario, claims that, as things stand, only one of the 21 previous hosts of the games will continue to be a reliable site for winter sports by the end of the century should climate change not be properly addressed.
“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,” Waterloo News reported.
But wait! There is hope for the future of speed skaters, downhill skiers, and bobsledders. If the nations of the world will simply keep their commitments made in the Paris Climate Agreement, some of those wintry places can be saved from the ignominy of becoming too warm to host the Olympics.
“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,” Waterloo News happily reports.
Researchers reviewed historical climate data from the 1920s to the present day and relied upon future climate scenarios for the 2050s and the 2080s. Since we cannot forecast weather (or climate) reliably out more than a few days, it’s likely the researchers used the notoriously flawed climate models to project future climate conditions. Or they used the latest IPCC report, which used the least-likely, worst-case scenario to issue its dire warnings.
According to the study, four former hosts — Squaw Valley (United States), Chamonix (France), Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany), and Sochi (Russia) — are already considered unreliable to host the Winter Olympics.
According to the study, if greenhouse-gas emissions don’t slow down, and quickly, over the next few decades, of the past hosts only Sapporo, Japan, will still be considered a reliable host city by 2080.
“The International Olympic Committee will have increasingly difficult decisions about where to award the Games, but the world’s best athletes, who have dedicated their lives to sports, deserve to have the Olympics located in places that can reliably deliver safe and fair competitions,” said Siyao Ma of the University of Arkansas.
Sapporo hosted in 1972 and is again bidding for the 2030 games. Since it’s considered by the experts to remain safe under even the most dire of emissions scenarios, perhaps the Japanese city could just become the permanent site for the winter games. Wouldn’t that be “fair” for everyone?
The researchers also interviewed some 339 elite winter athletes and coaches from 20 countries in an effort to discern what they considered “fair and safe” conditions for the winter games. The study concluded that the “frequency of unfair-unsafe conditions has increased over the last 50 years across the 21 (Olympic Winter Games) host locations.”
Isn’t the ability to adjust to dissimilar conditions one of the things that make so-called elite athletes elite?
The researchers believe that man-made climate change is already adversely affecting the winter games.
“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 — one of those past Winter Olympic sites. “Most host locations in Europe are projected to be marginal or not reliable as early as the 2050s, even in a low emission future.”
This study and its dire predictions are just another example of climate-alarmist fearmongering. It’s a slightly different version of the “children just aren’t going to know what snow is” trope popularized by Dr. David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in the year 2000.
Twenty-some years on and the average British school child still has a relatable memory of what snow is. One suspects that average snowboarders and figure skaters will find a way to hold on to and even hone their skills — even if the world becomes a degree or two warmer.
