Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Loss of snow cover is further proof, if any were needed, that our climate is changing – and not for the better (“ Which of Australia’s favourite ski fields will survive by 2080? ”, June 5). Perhaps a majority of Australians will not mourn the loss of skiing as a sport, but future generations will certainly mourn the other impacts of climate change – more floods, fires, droughts and storms, and a hotter, increasingly uncomfortable world.
Yet, still, we go on acting like nothing is wrong, feeding the fossil fuel addictions of friend and foe. It’s still not too late to save the snowfields and everything else we hold dear on this planet, but not without a concerted about-turn. Ken Enderby, Concord Credit: Matt Golding The article regarding the future viability of Australian ski fields includes mention of four crucial issues.
These are the future survival of Australia’s alpine ecosystems, water supply for irrigation in our nation’s major food bowl, hydroelectric generation capacity, and the contraction in the length of ski seasons. The relentless increase in global temperatures, due to growing carbon emissions, provides an unquestionable indication of the consequences for our alpine areas. However, both this and the trend towards more extreme weather events, and the difficulty confronting the meteorologist’s capacity to predict them, will further compound greater uncertainties, not just in the alpine.