More confirmation that climate change is going to be bad (dollars-wise) for winter tourism
Posted by David Brooks | Friday, December 7, 2012
At UNH, Elizabeth Burakowski, a grad student, and Matthew Magnusson, an adjunct lecturer (higher-ed lingo for a kind of freelance academic), have tried to quantify the obvious: Rising temperatures from our fossil-fuel use is going to cost winter tourism a lot of money.
You can read the whole report here in PDF form. It was released by two groups: Protect Our Winters, and Natural Resources Defense Council.
A couple local tidbits:
+ Maine has the second-highest number of snowmobile registrations per capita, behind only Wyoming. Both are well over 60 per 1,000 people - only Vermont (51.5/1,000) is even close. New Hampshire is at 39.5, Massachusetts at 2.4. But snowmobile registrations nationally have been falling since 2004.
+ New Hampshire's winter tourism industry in 2010 supplied jobs for almost 8,000 employees, who earned $259 million in wages.
I recently covered another researcher who came to the same conclusion. Very depressing ... I think I'll go skiing this weekend.
