The Washington Post can’t get enough of the end of winter. No, not as in they wish this long winter would end. Rather, “Climate change is making the Winter Olympics harder to host”. Riiight. The Winter Olympics have been bedevilled by warm weather from the outset. For instance the 1932 Lake Placid edition “Virtually no snow fell for two months before the Games, and there was not enough snow to hold all the events until mid-January” and you can just imagine what the Post would hallucinate if it happened today. But it didn’t. Because there’s been no meaningful decrease in snow cover in the Western Hemisphere, or in Eurasia, over the last six decades. And half a degree of warming if it even happens won’t melt the outdoor ski hill. Instead in 2026 they just had to cancel the first women’s downhill training session in Milano Cortina because… what’s this? White stuff come from sky?

Speaking of wishing winter would end, Chris Martz posted that on Jan. 2, 2024 the New York Times ran a guest essay “The End of Snow” whereas on Feb. 5, 2026, it wrote “Bad News for New Yorkers Weary of Winter: More Snow and More Cold are Likely”.

Still, this Post item is hot news all right. It recycles a study from 2024:

“By the middle of this century there could be fewer than 20 countries with the right conditions and infrastructure to host the Games, according to a study from 2024. A study published last month from the same authors examines how to make the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games more climate-resilient.”

We have some ideas, like going uphill, making them permanent somewhere cold, or just learning to relax. Especially as, the minute we read this passage “If global emissions and Games continue as they are, there will be just 52 locations that remain climate-reliable by the 2050s, and 46 by the 2080s”, we smelled not artificial snow or an indoor rink but RCP8.5. However we check things before printing them, unlike small underfunded outfits like the Post, and in fact no, it’s RCP4.5 that gives you 52. (Not that we’re on that emissions path, but as noted the Post can’t or won’t check facts.)

But what about “fewer than 20”? Ah, there it is. RCP8.5 and its mutant offspring SSP8.5. And while the paper itself says 4.5 is more probable, the journalist naturally leads with the high-emissions one (that “fewer than 20” clickbait).

BTW we were alerted to that Post item by “Nature Briefing: Anthropocene” whose newsletter unwittingly offered a revealing glimpse into the minds of climate alarmists. Their lead item was “Svalbard bears learning to live with less ice” which is a curious way of expressing the surprising find that predictions of less ice killing bears were wrong. How wrong? Very but not at all. The capsule description of a BBC article reads:

“Polar bears on the Norwegian Arctic islands of Svalbard have grown fatter and healthier since the 1990s. Researchers suggest that the bears have adapted to declining sea ice by hunting more land-based prey such as reindeer and walruses. The surprise development could also be the result of walrus-conservation efforts, which have boosted the bears’ food supply. ‘The short-term picture can be very region-specific,’ says biologist John Whiteman. ‘In the long term, if ice loss continues unchecked, we know the bears will eventually disappear.’”

So “learning to live” is how they express “flourishing”. Then they proceed to explain that the failure of melting ice to kill the bears should not be mistaken for evidence that melting ice will not kill the bears.

By the same token, the persistence of winter is not evidence of the persistence of winter. Instead Bloomberg Green joins the lack of fun with:

“How the Winter Olympics Are Adapting in a Hotter World/ The world's premier winter sports event is facing a future with more heat and less snow.”

Not for them the Axios headline “1 big thing: The ice just won't melt” atop a story about how:

“Many U.S. cities are still struggling with leftover ice and snow from last month's winter storm… Extreme cold has made it difficult to clear roads and sidewalks… Power recovery has been patchwork, with the juice flowing in some neighborhoods while others remain in the dark.”

Nor the presence of snow contradicting the absence of snow. Instead Bloomberg Green produces a classic “Who are you going to believe?” moment with:

“The snow that blanketed the Italian Alps throughout January came as a huge relief to the organizers of this month’s Winter Olympic Games. Unusually warm weather around the holidays had them worried the slopes wouldn’t be ready in time.”

But of course you know what’s coming: “Alpine areas are heating up faster than the rest of the planet” just like anywhere else a journalist is filing from. A point on which clearly they lack a sense of their own absurdity, since the same piece also says:

“In fact, all the cities that staged the Winter Games since 1950 have heated up in the years since by an average of 2.7C (4.9F), according to scientists at Climate Central. That’s well above 1.4C, the warming average for the entire planet.”

But you didn’t just see the everywhere-warming-faster-than-everywhere chestnut coming. You also foresaw a scary graphic labeled:

“Annual Snow Days in Major Mountain Ski Areas Could More Than Halve by Century’s End/ Percentage change in annual snow cover days in 2071–2100 under a high-emissions scenario”.

RCP8.5! Get your RCP8.5 here!

Oddly enough, Reuters “Sustainable Switch”, which seems determined to put the red into green, welcomes an Italian train drivers’ strike that really does pose a threat to the Olympics. (And still doesn’t post its newsletters on line.) And perhaps you think we’re nitpicky about technology but here’s the thing: If journalists knew stuff like PDF and online search, they’d also know that, as Steve Milloy helpfully posted on the interwebs on one of those “social media” channels the kids are on about (or were; for all we know they’ve moved on and only dads use X), “Not mentioned by WaPo @janicekchen: Seven of the first nine Winter Olympic Games were almost cancelled because of warm winters and lack of snow.”

Dang. Seems they also don’t know that if you want to understand anything including climate, you really must know your history.

P.S. If these alarmists are right it will undermine the Babylon Bee satirical headline “Winter Olympics To Protest Trump's Immigration Policies By Removing Ice From Skating Rinks” so we decided to share it with you while there was still time. And now permit us to explain to non-Canadians the rules and strategy of curling, a version of shuffleboard played with rocks and brooms in very cold conditions (and inexplicably omitted from the Winter Olympics for over 50 years between 1932 and 1988) with “hammers”, “antifreeze”, “skips”, “biters” and… hey, where’d everybody go?