U.N.: Warming threatens ski resorts

[Shyriath]

TURIN, Italy (AP) -- Global warming is threatening the world's ski resorts, with melting at lower altitudes forcing the sport to move higher and higher up mountains, according to a United Nations study released Tuesday.

Downhill skiing could disappear altogether at some resorts, while at others, a retreating snow line will cut off base villages from their ski runs as soon as 2030, warned the report by the U.N. Environment Programme.

"Climate change is happening now. We can measure it," said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the U.N. program. "This study shows that it is not just the developing world that will suffer."

The report focused on ski resorts in Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Australia, the United States and Canada, using temperature forecasts produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of some 2,000 scientists.

It also mentions the possibility of ski resorts taking a more active role in fighting global warming to protect their business. Not the most noble of aspirations, perhaps, but a common-sense one; in the long run, the effects of global warming will hurt everybody.