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  1. #1
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    Low carbon travel experiences

    Hey all,
    I'm working on a story for TGR about low carbon travel options in the snowsports industry, particularly because I find it strange that many of us are advocating to 'save our winters' and yet aren't willing to sacrifice carbon-intensive travel — which it seems would be the only reasonable contribution to reducing our carbon emissions. Motives aside, I'm curious about everyone's experiences with traveling as sustainably as possible, whether by self-propelled means, public transit or an old truck converted to veggie oil.
    So, what are your best/wierdest/most epic biking/hitchiking/touring/public transit experiences? Do you have a resort nearby that provides shuttles? Do you live in a city that provides bussing to the mountain? Have you hitched a trailer with all your ski gear to the back of your bike and quad-ed it out up some volcanoes, a-la Brody Leven? If so, you should probably tell me about it.
    Thanks in advance for the help!
    Amanda

  2. #2
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    Switzerland. America won't develop the infrastructure.

    And the big skihitchhikes of long ago. Parts of the story are out there.
    Merde De Glace On the Freak When Ski
    >>>200 cm Black Bamboo Sidewalled DPS Lotus 120 : Best Skis Ever <<<

  3. #3
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    Please, allow me to be the first to ask for naked pics of you walking with all your organic material belongings on some epic journey powered by smugness which will surely help save our planet until we come to the realization that carbon has nothing to do with climate change.
    (For the record, I believe we should decrease our emissions because I hate breathing that shit, and I do believe humans have played a part in increasing temps, but I don't believe it has anything to do with co2 and I am far from being a scientist, and I am certain that 95% of us here want to see some titties.)
    “I really lack the words to compliment myself today.” - Alberto Tomba

  4. #4
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    The old "I'm not a scientist, but". Yeah, cut that shit out.
    No longer stuck.

    Quote Originally Posted by stuckathuntermtn View Post
    Just an uneducated guess.

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by stuckathuntermtn View Post
    The old "I'm not a scientist, but". Yeah, cut that shit out.
    Think for yourself, do some research. There are factors that are way overlooked that (to me) would much better explain what is happening. But hey, if it makes you feel better, go buy some carbon credits, that will totally get things back on track.
    “I really lack the words to compliment myself today.” - Alberto Tomba

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by mmmm...pow! View Post
    Please, allow me to be the first to ask for naked pics of you walking with all your organic material belongings on some epic journey powered by smugness which will surely help save our planet until we come to the realization that carbon has nothing to do with climate change.
    (For the record, I believe we should decrease our emissions because I hate breathing that shit, and I do believe humans have played a part in increasing temps, but I don't believe it has anything to do with co2 and I am far from being a scientist, and I am certain that 95% of us here want to see some titties.)
    Total fail. There is so much wrong in your reply it is tough to decide where to begin.

    First of all, your response that the OP must give up everything, including synthetic clothing, is ludicrous. The OP says he's sure some of us are willing to cut our carbon footprint in travel in order to help save the sport we love (not to mention human civilization). Your notion that wanting to cut carbon emissions means having to give up all of civilization is ridiculous, and no one is suggesting that but you. There are many ways to cut our own personal footprints (the point of this thread), but, ultimately, the solution to this problem is to stop burning fossil fuels and to stop clear-cutting rainforests. We have to move completely to renewable energy, and fast, to avoid catastrophe. This winter kinda already feels like catastrophe to me. 2014 was the warmest year on record, with 9 of the hottest years ever recorded having occurred in the last decade. Shit is getting warmer,
    and fast, and it is affecting ski seasons.

    You are not a scientist but you are sure carbon has nothing to do with this? Please do enlighten us as to what is causing the planet to warm up? I'm sure the 97% of the world's climate scientists (top scientists with NASA and NOAA among them) who are sure that carbon emissions ARE causing climate change would love to hear the truth from you. I'm not a scientist either, so I listen to the scientists who overwhelmingly say we are fucking up our planet by burning fossil fuels, and I believe them. As Neil deGrasse Tyson says, "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."

  7. #7
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    Ugh...I am all in on climate change. I believe the scientists. However, I am severely skeptical that there is anything any individual can do to move the needle. Go ahead and convert your car/bus to biodeisel if that makes you feel good - it doesn't hurt and I applaud your dedication to the cause, but we need societal change. We need regulatory and taxation incentives to move our (global) society towards renewable, less carbon intensive technology. There is no other way. I really don't think criticizing Jeremy Jones for flying all over the earth to celebrate winter and nature while promoting environmental responsibility really hits the mark. We need more of that - followed up by legislation that values our environment. We need most everybody to buy in or its just asceticism.

  8. #8
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    Good question for debate. I know this may be a 'bit' off topic from what you want, but hopefully it can shed some light.


    I see it this way and i know the Pro athletes feel the same. The whole point of life is to enjoy it and have fun. We are all hypocrites in some way, however the point is not to be perfect, but to actually lessen your foot print as much as you can without sacrificing the point of living.
    So we use fossil fuels to do the thing we all love, yes. No one denies that, even Jeremy Jones is a jet setter. But the fact we do use fossil fuels for travel and the fact most of us are aware of our impact means we have to limit our foot print in other aspects of our life. Que the bio diesel truck, organic veggie garden etc.


    I also think if you took away our travel to the mountains and exotic locations, you would also take away our passion to protect those places. People don’t care about things they don’t see or know about. This is why we need to get it out there and educate people, so they can care.
    In saying that I do think, especially the snow sports community, has some form of responsibility to lead the charge. We are already seeing the affects and it will be the sport we love that goes first.


    Every person CAN have an impact, you would be surprised how, like ripples in water the influence you can have on family and friends… I know friends of mine regularly tell me now about the changes they have made or the things they did to help, like they are searching for my approval.
    Here is a pro tip for everyone. 50 very simple little things EVERY human can do. It all helps.
    http://www.50waystohelp.com/

    Anyway back on topic. Heaps of people hitchhike at my local mountain. There is a ski tube/tram but even getting to the station is a little way out of town, so there is lots of car pooling and lots of full cars (which is good). For me, when i fly i off set my carbon. I know its not much but its something, i want to get more into skinning and boot packing my lines as i love hiking and just being out on the mountain. However i think air travel will always be a big part of skiing for a lot of people.

  9. #9
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    ^Well said..... for a Gaper.


    I picked up a snowboarder once, back in the 70's. Car still stinks.
    Screw the net, Surf the backcountry!

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by mmmm...pow! View Post
    Think for yourself, do some research. There are factors that are way overlooked that (to me) would much better explain what is happening. But hey, if it makes you feel better, go buy some carbon credits, that will totally get things back on track.
    Yes, your google research trumps that of subject matter experts who have spent their lives researching this. Why did they even go to school when they could have just spent a few hours google searching?

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Buster Highmen View Post
    Switzerland. America won't develop the infrastructure.
    Every major airport in yurp has trains at them. The trains also all pass through the cities en route to the mountains. Geneva-->Verbier in somewhere around 2 hours. If you play the tourist you might get away with not knowing that you had to purchase a ticket ahead of time 😏. And the train is nice to travel on as well.

    Thing is it's expensive compared to NA, cheap compared to a car. Policy that results in a liter in Yurp being almost as expensive as a gallon in the US is a big reason.
    Quote Originally Posted by iceman View Post
    This is kinda like the goose that laid the golden egg, but shittier.

  12. #12
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    I luv me sum brapbrap.
    watch out for snakes

  13. #13
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    Click image for larger version. 

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    picador

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by pvars View Post
    Ugh...I am all in on climate change. I believe the scientists. However, I am severely skeptical that there is anything any individual can do to move the needle. Go ahead and convert your car/bus to biodeisel if that makes you feel good - it doesn't hurt and I applaud your dedication to the cause, but we need societal change. We need regulatory and taxation incentives to move our (global) society towards renewable, less carbon intensive technology. There is no other way. I really don't think criticizing Jeremy Jones for flying all over the earth to celebrate winter and nature while promoting environmental responsibility really hits the mark. We need more of that - followed up by legislation that values our environment. We need most everybody to buy in or its just asceticism.
    I want societal change, but I'm not willing to change my behavior until someone forces me to? LOL.
    "These are crazy times Mr Hatter, crazy times. Crazy like Buddha! Muwahaha!"

  15. #15
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    Until we effectively and honestly deal with human population growth (or even current population levels), cutting back on carbon emissions will be pretty much meaningless in any sort of realistic time frame. Problem versus symptom...

  16. #16
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    www.adventureskier.com
    Brian and Emily would have some good info...

  17. #17
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    ^Dealing with population growth isn't enough. Last year was the hottest year on record. Tea party nutbags are fighting forest fires with garden hoses. Gas is dirt cheap and just the other day my neighbor with a 500 hp Dodge Charger told me that our Prius V basically has no resale value because of $50 barrel oil which I thought was quite the statement coming from someone owning a quickly depreciating Dodge. Republicans continue to pretend we don't have a problem and the majority of Americans just took great pleasure in putting them in charge of running this country. We have no way to go skiing without burning a bunch of carbon short of buying a Tesla and having our own solar panels or buying a house among the one percenters right next to a resort and moving there on our non existent trustfund. Our oceans are becoming acidic and inhospitable to shellfish and coral reefs. Our forests are burning and being changed and destroyed by invasive species in part due to warmer summers and winters. The oceans are rising and the weather is growing increasingly unpredictable and destructive.

    The fact is we can't solve the problem by not having kids, turning down the heat, using LED bulbs, driving a Prius, recycling our bottles, cardboard, and poop. We can't do it ourselves. Everybody knows this and on top of that a few greedy self serving douchebags keep telling us we don't have a problem at all and even if we did we can't solve the problem without destroying our economy and who we are and that the problem is just a myth created by a bunch of liberal treehuggers who want to change true independent American gun and oil guzzling lovers into ballet dancing Prius owners that live in tiny houses stacked on top of each other in a commune and a large enough percentage of people actually buy into that line of bullshit to keep the pressure off our politicians and business leaders (the true leaders of this country).

    Anyway at my local ski area there is always a bunch of giant buses that come from Chicago every single weekend from various ski clubs and ski shops. My guess is that on those buses are some people who take public transit to the bus. I suppose they are the cleanest folks at the hill but I doubt most of them give a shit or have given it a thought and there is a coal plant just up the road from the ski area spewing carbon and powering the lifts and snowmakers.

    Maybe that lack of options is the story? We don't have a clean way to the mountain even if we give a shit...and a lot of us do.
    Last edited by uglymoney; 01-19-2015 at 04:50 AM.

  18. #18
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    Back off, man. I'm a scientist.

    "Hottest year on record" is about 150 years long, maybe. Less than two normal human lifespans. The earth has existed for a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time, y'know? Learn about time.

    The problem isn't fat cats skiers in Chicago, it is babies that haven't been born yet in China, India, Brazil, etc. Tell them they can't have a slice of the apple pie.

    Your liberal guilt is clouding your perspective.

  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by FatChance View Post
    Back off, man. I'm a scientist.

    "Hottest year on record" is about 150 years long, maybe. Less than two normal human lifespans. The earth has existed for a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time, y'know? Learn about time.

    The problem isn't fat cats skiers in Chicago, it is babies that haven't been born yet in China, India, Brazil, etc. Tell them they can't have a slice of the apple pie.

    Your liberal guilt is clouding your perspective.
    LOL. You didn't even read what I wrote but if you want to focus your finger pointing and blame for global warming on the excessive birth rate in India I'm not here to keep you from your crusade. Carry on.

  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by pvars View Post
    Ugh...I am all in on climate change. I believe the scientists. However, I am severely skeptical that there is anything any individual can do to move the needle. Go ahead and convert your car/bus to biodeisel if that makes you feel good - it doesn't hurt and I applaud your dedication to the cause, but we need societal change. We need regulatory and taxation incentives to move our (global) society towards renewable, less carbon intensive technology. There is no other way. I really don't think criticizing Jeremy Jones for flying all over the earth to celebrate winter and nature while promoting environmental responsibility really hits the mark. We need more of that - followed up by legislation that values our environment. We need most everybody to buy in or its just asceticism.
    No, a single individual won't make much difference. But 200,000,000 individuals doing the same thing make an enormous difference. And that's the impact regulation has - forcing change on countless individuals that are otherwise too lazy, indifferent, cheap or stupid to do it on their own. Yet many also object to those same regulations because they get in the way of their right to be lazy, indifferent, cheap or stupid.

  21. #21
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    A couple years ago a ski shop guy sold me a ski-porn vid that he proclaimed to be "carbon neutral." A DVD is plastic, after all, so I asked him what that could possibly mean. The answer: no heli skiing or sleds, just hiking, skinning and climbing to get where they were going. Ditto for the camera crew.

    I do believe in global warming and I do not believe that the scientific community is engaged in a giant hoax (I'm a scientist, ret.) and that the overwhelming preponderance of evidence points to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. So I thought that was pretty nice.

    I'm hard pressed to understand why anybody that cares about that stuff wouldn't hate helicopters and sleds. I, for one, will never, ever go heli-skiing or use a sled for skiing (or anything else I can think of). Ditto ATV's, jet skis etc. All are noisy, highly polluting and do all kinds of environmental damage beyond their blue, oil-saturated exhaust. God has spoken to me and proclaimed that all sports should be gravity, wind or human powered. All else is an abomination. Ask me how I really feel.

  22. #22
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    I just @protectourwinters on social media posts and figure I'm doing my best.

  23. #23
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    That morning I felt those gritty scrapers under my eyelids and a foul taste in my mouth like I slept face down in a catbox. Deleriously dragging up the onramp, nothing was real, everything was ugly. The view was carpeted in rolling stubble of shredded, hibernating fields with a ceiling of vague gray cold.

    A bass flatulence coming up the ramp made me spin around. There, lugubriously lumbering up the ramp was a huge beige-pink motorhome, a true gargantua of the freeways. I dropped my duffle and skis and stuck out ye old thumb in the vain hope of a ride. The driver and passenger scowled, the passenger singularly so in frosted curls and a bitter pruneface. But futility has never been a reason or excuse for not trying.

    Morning metallic toothpaste taste smeared thickly on exhaust eyebrows, corpulent roadhogs wallowing on pebbled planar sections. Glurknesses. A melange of belching diesel and whining, windswept grinding gears drowning out the pastiche of recent past, the petulant pink mumu still glowing in the receding back rooms.

    Small towns singular brick edifaces, fences, stockyards, singlewides, halebales, and barbed wire. More kinds of barbed wire than I had thought imaginable, all variants of braided tendrils and prongs.Storefronts, feed lots, chicken shacks, twisted barns succumbing to the torquings of time and gravity. Lean faces, wrinkled, creased, greased, cussed and spit. With grasses flattened by the gales, the denizens grit their teeth against being laid similarly low until time takes them and then away. Long jaundiced eyes, lost intent, crippled by the incessant wind and weather, anima non carborundum. The high plains of the American west drown in the timeless, thieving winds.
    Merde De Glace On the Freak When Ski
    >>>200 cm Black Bamboo Sidewalled DPS Lotus 120 : Best Skis Ever <<<

  24. #24
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    If the guys driving the "OMG - GLABAL WARMINZZZ!!!" bus were a little more credible and cut back on the hypocrisy, data manipulation and flat-out lying, I might be much more willing to see things their way. That said, the "Hottest Decade" stuff has so many counter-indications that it is impossible to believe anyone any more. Which is too bad, cuz I'm one who might REALLY care if it weren't for all the politics involved in it. And a little evidence that carbon is the TRUE CULPRIT would be helpful too. So far, I'm just not being sold on the connection.
    Gravity. It's the law.

  25. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by mmmm...pow! View Post
    Please, allow me to be the first to ask for naked pics of you walking with all your organic material belongings on some epic journey powered by smugness which will surely help save our planet until we come to the realization that carbon has nothing to do with climate change.
    (For the record, I believe we should decrease our emissions because I hate breathing that shit, and I do believe humans have played a part in increasing temps, but I don't believe it has anything to do with co2 and I am far from being a scientist, and I am certain that 95% of us here want to see some titties.)
    A.) You're really asking to see my tits? Has that literally ever worked for you on the TGR forums?
    B.) You entirely misunderstood my perspective/point/question. As WMD so helpfully points out below, your stock impression of hippies doesn't apply here. This isn't about being smug. Why can't we get over these ridiculous political platitudes and just start working towards a cleaner future that isn't reliant on a commodity that has been directly responsible for countless wars, not to mention the dirty air you seem to hate breathing? While it is admittedly idealistic of me, the only way we can even begin to work towards that future is to begin making sacrifices, however small. The story I'm working on isn't going to argue for or against climate change (because there's nothing to argue...). What I do hope to assert is that we can be working towards a less oil-intensive future — not merely because it's warming our planet, but because our addiction to oil is an unhealthy one, and one that can be replaced by alternatives, if those alternatives are given precedence over our current, less-sustainable options. Yeah, that means carpooling when you can. It means taking the bike in lieu of the car. It means getting creative and taking the hard way because we all know it's more fun that way.
    C. By saying "I believe we should decrease our emissions because I hate breathing that shit," you're further validating my entire point in writing this piece.

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