…THAT IS, IF YOU CONSIDER KILLING RABBITS A “SPORT”!!!

The USA Today ran an article yesterday by U.S. Olympic cross country skier, Andrew Newell, entitled, Climate Change Impacts Winter Sports.” Newel tells us, “As a skier, my life revolves around winter and being outside. Years spent training have not only honed my skills, but also shown me the negative impacts of climate change first-hand. There have been countless times in the past 10 years when our early season competitions have been delayed or canceled due to lack of snow, or our spring and summer training camps disrupted due to erratic weather or insufficient snowpack. It’s no coincidence then that the last decade was also the hottest decade ever recorded…

“Even the most reliable snowfall areas have seen a decrease in storms and precipitation. In the last few seasons, Scandinavian countries such as Finland, Norway and Sweden, which host world cup ski events in November and December, have had to rely upon man-made snow and injected ice for races. Many Nordic athletes, myself included, train on glaciers during the summer months.

“I’ve witnessed the visible recession of off season ski destinations such as Eagle Glacier in Alaska and the Dachstein Glacier in Austria in the last decade. Warming temperatures melting snow has meant in recent years, summer skiing conditions on glaciers have become too unstable to train on. Some countries have resorted to skiing indoors in artificial ski tunnels due to unpredictable conditions.

‘The conditions in Sochi are no exception. The organizers of these Winter Games ran into similar problems and had to go to extreme and unorthodox means to supply the snow necessary to hold high-level competitions. Workers in Russia have been stockpiling nearly 16 million cubic feet of snow and adding a special kind of salt to prevent melting.”

The article goes on: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/02/11/andrew-newell-olympics-global-warming/5370379/  and in many ways parallels an early post of mine about the impacts of climate change on skiing, “In Case You Haven’t Noticed, Global Warming is Real.”  https://exposingthebiggame.wordpress.com/2014/02/01/in-case-you-havent-noticed-yet-global-warming-is-real/

But there’s one winter “sport” (if it can be called that) that isn’t effected by a lack of snow–bunny blasting. As Utah’s Daily Herald claims, “Rabbit hunting offers chance for winter sport” reports, “Regulations allow each hunter with a license to kill up to 10 cottontails.” [per day, no doubt.] And it also quotes Mark Zornes, who boasts, “This is what bunny hunting is like,” he said. “We rarely see people doing this, and this is the most fun kind of hunting. It’s also a great kid activity.”

So, forget snow sports, winter can be yet another chance to kill something.