Winter resorts revel in white gold after best snowfall in decade - Times Online

Ski resorts across Europe will open this weekend ahead of schedule after the biggest November snowfalls for at least a decade.

The exceptional conditions, including 60cm (23in) of snow on Alpine slopes and even more in the Pyrenees, has given a much needed boost to the ski industry after claims that global warming could devastate its multibillion-pound business.

“This is nature's way of cocking a snook at the experts,” said Christian Rochette, the director of Ski France International, the tourist body for French resorts.The industry was expecting a good season despite gloomy forecasts from bodies such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

“We've got excellent conditions for this time of year and very cold temperatures, which means we can use the snow cannons to make artificial snow as well,” he said.
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A spokeswoman for the tourist office in Meribel, an up-market Alpine resort and a favourite of British skiers, said that, with 30cm of snow at an altitude of 1,500 metres and up to 80cm at 2,000 metres, the ski lifts would start operating today, a week earlier than planned. “It's many, many years since we've had this much snow at this time of the year,” she said.

Michael Broom Smith, of Purple Ski, said: “On the lower pistes, the snow is thigh deep and beautifully light and fluffy and more snow is forecast this weekend.”

Val d'Isère will also open today with snow two metres deep at 3,000 metres. “We've often had to put off the opening,” a tourist office spokeswoman said. “Last year we opened a few slopes at the start of the season but this year we're opening them all.”

The mood is equally upbeat in the Swiss Alps. The Ski Club of Great Britain said that snow in parts of Switzerland was 12 times deeper than average.

Pyrenean resorts are also enjoying snowfalls unseen for years. “Oh, what happiness!” said Hervé Mairal, director of the Pyrenean Tourist Federation. “We've got 95cm at the foot of the slopes and 1.4m at the top. We've not had that for a decade.”

Andorra, which has had some poor conditions in recent years, is enjoying its best start to a season for four decades and both the main areas of Grandvalira and Vallnord will be open fully from this weekend.

On the Spanish side Roberto Buil, the marketing manager of the Baqueira Beret resort, said that the slopes had opened on November 22 for the first time in 44 years. “All our 69 ski runs are open,” he said. “We are having an amazing start.”

NC Media Watch: Al Gore brings his propaganda machine to Oprah

We can only hope the most people in the US are shopping on Black Friday and not watching the Oprah Winfrey Show today...

Vincent Gioia | President-elect Barack Obama will hasten America's decline

Sorry, Mr. President-elect, but the science actually disputes your premises and you and your side are perpetrating a hoax on the American public by ignoring and covering up the facts.

Unthinking dogma | The Australian

Science must always be contested - even climate change

IF climate change is real -- and "if" is the operative word -- every aspect of the phenomenon needs to be picked over and analysed with the utmost rigour. It is too important for anything less. But in parts of the community, rigour and climate change have become mutually exclusive terms.

Distressingly large numbers of people have elevated climate change to something verging on a fundamentalist religion. True believers draw comfort from endlessly repeating the dogma to each other. Those who demand proof are shunned as heretics.

This approach might be fashionable, but it is dangerous. It is a reversion to a pre-enlightenment mindset that rejects the essence of the scientific method. And without the mental toughness of science, any public policy on climate change will have all the effectiveness of burnt offerings.

Science, with its questioning and testing, provides none of the comfort and certainty that comes from an article of faith. But there can be no rational response to this phenomenon without an understanding of the true nature of what the world is facing. That will only be possible if the community -- and those responsible for public policy -- are given all the facts, not just those "good" facts that support the received dogma.

In this regard, the media has a heavy responsibility to lay out all the facts -- even the "bad" facts -- and allow the debate to take its course. But in some parts of the media, this traditional approach to journalism has been displaced.