Canadian global warming scare: Outdoor skating season could shrink!

Backyard ice hockey in Canada
(image wikipedia)

Canadian climatologists have published a truly scary global warming report - the outdoor skating season could shrink from the previous average of nine weeks to less than six weeks in 2050! This groundbreaking study by researchers from the McGill and Concordia universities study is, not surprisingly, cited by warmist David Suzuki:

“Many locations across the country have seen significant decreases in the length of the OSS (outdoor skating season), as measured by the number of cold winter days conducive to the creation of rink ice,” their study states.

This echoes a 2009 David Suzuki Foundation report, On Thin Ice: Winter Sports and Climate Change. The McGill investigation looks at constructed outdoor rinks while DSF’s focuses on frozen rivers, canals and lakes, but the conclusions are similar. Both predict that, unless we rein in greenhouse gas emissions, outdoor skating in parts of Canada could be history within the next 50 to 100 years (the McGill study’s authors now say it could happen within 20 to 30 years), and the length of the outdoor skating season will continue to decline across the country.

“Our hope is that Canadians from coast to coast will help us track changes in skating conditions, not just this year, but for many years to come,” associate professor Robert McLeman said in a release. “This data will help us determine the impact of climate change on winter in terms of length of season and average temperatures.”

According to the DSF report, one of Canada’s best-loved outdoor skating venues, Ottawa’s Rideau Canal, provides an example of what to expect. It concludes that, with current emissions trends, the canal’s skating season could shrink from the previous average of nine weeks to 6.5 weeks by 2020, less than six weeks by 2050 and just one week by the end of the century. In fact, two winters ago, the season lasted 7.5 weeks, and last year it was down to four. The canal had yet to fully open for skating when this column was written.

On Thin Ice notes that many of Canada’s hockey heroes got their start on outdoor rinks. “Without pond hockey, we probably wouldn’t have what has become the modern game of hockey,” the authors state. The DSF study says climate change could have a profound effect on many other winter sports, from skiing and snowboarding to winter mountaineering.

PS

Before Canadians start panicking, maybe we should remind them about what a leading British climatologist said about the impact of global warming in the UK thirteen years ago:

According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

This winter we could read headlines like this in the (warmist) UK Independent:

Will this be the coldest winter for 50 years?

Harsh winter weather is prompting comparisons with the Big Freeze of 1963

So, we should perhaps take the new Canadian ice report with a pinch of salt. 

One could, of course, hope that Canadian taxpayers' money would be used for some other purposes than this kind of climate "science".