from Hacker News

The Environmental Impact of Making Snow (2012)

by blue_devil on 1/20/20, 10:47 AM with 11 comments

• by jbob2000 on 1/20/20, 2:21 PM

  The title doesn't correlate to the article at all; they don't actually know what the environmental impact of making snow is. If you pull water from a polluted source to make snow, and then that snow melts and returns to the polluted source, you didn't really change anything. And if there's already a coal power plant running, making snow with that power isn't changing anything; you still need to build an alternate power source before you can shut down the coal plant.

  I'm tempted to say the impact is very little, given that there aren't that many ski resorts. Of those that make snow, they might have less than 100 machines making snow, and only when it's needed.

  If you want to clean up polluted water, then do that. If you want to get off coal, then do that. But making snow has nothing to do with either of those things.

• by seren on 1/20/20, 2:10 PM

  This is not related to skiing, but assuming there is less snow overall, it seems there is a point where will need to "generate" snow anyway to store water for spring/summer, this is probably still cheaper that building dam/reserve everywhere.

• by mikequinlan on 1/20/20, 2:31 PM

  This is dated Oct 11, 2012