Is it time for the FIS to promote the international outlawing of heli-skiing? - Page 2

Although I aggree with your sentiment about there being too much regulation and intervention I would not go so far as to say let the market decide. The market has its purpose but is only concerned with the acquisition of wealth and consumption. Unrestrained consumption without any consicence or accountability is the last thing we need. It would be like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. If left unchecked all the hens would eventually dissapear and the wolf would starve itself to death without even knowing it.

David, it's nice to see you here on EpicSki!

Interesting question, but I fail to understand the basis upon which the FIS would address this. Are you thinking that the snow levels in Europe can be traced directly to heli skiing in the Canadian Rockies or elsewhere in the world, and that curtailing it or further limiting it (it's not exactly widely practiced relative to the total square miles of terrain served) would somehow impact that?

They dont have any authority to do so, and like the UN, even if they did they couldnt enforce it. I know the U S of A wouldnt listen.

I’m sure most of you will agree that not a lot, if anything, beats the feeling of hopping in a chopper just as the sun is on the rise, knowing how much vertical pow you will be skiing that day, and how that day will change your outlook on skiing for the rest of your life, and keep doing so. You have to agree that heli-skiing does pose a slight risk on the environment, but no where near as much at the average persons petrol usage is in a week. And the thrill to ‘environmental impact’ ratio, is of the charts If the FIS band heli-skiing, it will break the hearts of many a true mountain lover.

Global warming is not part of their mandate. They should butt out. Besides helicopters run on jet fuel not fossil fuel!

If you read the Mainu Manifesto for which David provided a link, it implies that the only way FIS could "enforce" such a ban would be to refuse to saction FIS races or competitions in a COUNTRY (not an individual state in the case of the US) that allowed heli-skiing.

David, that obviously wouldn't have any impact at all on Nepal (or China, depending on how you look at these things) or several other countries where heli-skiing is starting to appear. It would have some impact on the US and Canada, but I suspect both of those countries probably wouldn't misss their FIS races all that much. Certainly not enough to regulate heli-skiing out of business, anyway.

I agree with you that heli-skiing is an egregious consumption of btu's. So is riding the Queen Mary (does it sail anymore?) for an ocean cruise. So is a major ski resort with all its associated traffic, snowmaking, snow grooming, and lift operations. What about indoor ski operations like Milton Keynes?

Of course, heli skiing is also a colossal PITA if you're hiking/skinning in an area that's also accessible by heli's - such as the Wasatch Range which is where the most bitter conflicts between backcountry skiers and heli skiers occur. In the case of many other US-based heli operations, however, there's very little conflict between self-propelled skiers and heli-borne ones.

Still, I don't think this question has anything to do with esthetics beyond the amount of energy consumed. If that's the issue, I agree with many others here that time will solve this problem and the amount of pollution generated by heli ops really doesn't matter much in the overall scheme of things.

Interesting question, though.

Are you assuming that everyone on this site has the cash to just jump on a chopper and go skiing?

The last time I was on a chopper, I was holding a M-16 and sitting on a steel pot.

Interesting in light of this conversation that the Vail newsletter arrived in my e-mailbox today:

Thanks for the cynical view icanseeformiles! No I wasn’t assuming everyone has the cash to jump in a chopper. Just the fact that it is truly one of the best experiences you can have being in the mountains. sounds like you need to lighten up!

Errrrrrr ..... jet fuel is fossil fuel .. :

Modified kerosene just like you burn in your heater.

Wanna keep fuel consumption down? Just halt immigration? It ain't hit the streets yet but sooner or later someone is going to figure out that if you let a few million more people, legal or illegal, it doesn't matter, they are going to buy cars and have kids who buy cars and drive .... and burn fuel.

Please tell me you're making a joke.

I'm just about to pack my bags to go to New Zealand tomorow for 12 days including a day heli-skiing (for my first time ever). I hope I don't feel too guilty when the heli drops my close friends and I off on top of those pristine NZ mountains

I hope you take lots of pictures and post a most Premium trip report.

C'mon, let's try to use some common sense!

A quick bit of internet searching tells me that Wiegele uses Bell 212 helicopters, and some searching suggests they have a capacity of 1400lbs (840kg) of fuel. No way these choppers have the ability to produce "1.5 tonnes of CO2 per hour".

Yes they can. They have to work very hard at altitude. All that fuel being mixed with air is going to CREATE a lot of CO2. I don't have exact figures to hand, but I wouldn't be surprised if 1000kgs were being produced per hour, at least, given the work load in the heli-skiing environment.

One thing I've often struggled to figure out, especially when you see ads on tv about pollution, is, what exactly do they mean by a metric ton of CO or CO2? It seems, according to these ads, that an average car has the ability to produce many tons of CO and CO2 in a very short amount of time. I don't know what a metric ton of CO2 looks like or how it is measured. So while it sounds astonomical, I have my scepticism about some of these metrics, whcih seem to be used as scare tactics (although I should note that I'm very much in favor of cutting pollution and emissions)

Are these pronouncements made from the comfort of one of his three hummers?

Clearly heliskiing is a case by case enviromental issue and counter to your statement is not a free for all in Canada. Considering the hoops Chugach Powder guides had to go through in Alaska I'm guessing that's no free for all either. Compare that to the environmental impact of the Athabasca Oil sands or that huge Caribou range in Alaska inching towards development and it's probably harder for heli approval relative to the impact.

Regardless it couldn't be further away from anything to do with FIS. Maybe they could ban FIS athletes from using helicoptors to train and that's about it. Of course maybe first they should concern themselves with overuse and degradation of glaciers in the Alps.

I don't think many helicoptors in use at heli operations can lift a payload PLUS 1.5 tonnes of fuel in an hour let alone enough fuel to produce 1.5 tonnes of CO2. No use letting facts stand in the way of hyperbole and an agenda though.

No time to do the math now L7, but the mass of emissions from combustion are many times the initial mass of fuel. Obviously when combining carbon and hydrogen with 2 molecules each of oxygen (under the right conditions), the emissions (CO2 and water) are considerably heavier than the input.

Steve commented on Vail purchasing 152,000 megawatt hours of power from wind turbines. I suspect this is a pretty good shell game, since there won't be a wind turbine at Vail itself. Power can be purchased at a premium from many "green" power sources like biomass, landfill and digester waste gas, solar, wind, etc. The power is transported through the grid and comingled with coal-fired power, so what you consume is simply electric power. Green power is more expensive than conventional power, so purchasere are subsidizing those operations and incuring higher utility costs. Even more surprising, is that Vail has nearly 18 megawatts of continuous power demand, based on an 8760 hour/year basis. That is a lot of windpower to locate and purchase.

California is presently debating a bill that would prevent the state from buying power from coal fired generators out of state. Another shell game that will increase our costs, while coal power continues to be built and sold to the lowest bidder. I'm not much of a fan of global warming remedies because they are overall ineffective. Maybe if we could cork some volcanos, or harvest timber instead of allowing wild lands to burn.

For the record, FIS clearly has no jurisdiction or power to ground private heliskiing ops, and I would be opposed to them even suggesting this as a solution.

Key here being that there are in fact two byproducts and water is benign with a high specific weight so I still find it hard to believe more weight in CO2 would be created than the initial weight of fuel that creates it. I hadn't thought in terms of combining with the O2 though.

I am finding it hard to believe that the FIS has a clear path to being able to "outlaw" heli-skiing.
If I understand the original post, the organization believes they can make it happen, and I don't see how, globally, it can be done.

I don't think we had even gotten there yet.... we were still debating why let alone how.

It is already the case that, once sports organisational bodies make an environmental commitment, "environmental protection" organisations can use it to put pressure on those same bodies, if they feel they're not adhering to their commitment, like here: http://www.commondreams.org/news2006/0512-07.htm

Although there are possible situations where FIS might have direct jurisdiction (eg. would FIS sanction a free-skiing event which used heli-access?), it would be more the case that any "ban" by FIS would merely have a symbolic value towards the long-term moulding of public opinion, and, hence, national policy.

FIS' environmental commitments are listed here:
http://www.fis-ski.com/uk/newsinform...vironment.html
From this it is clear that
a) FIS is talking primarily about competitive skiing.
b) FIS intends to take a flexible and measured approach:
"The environmental conflicts caused specifically by skiing are not the same on different continents and countries. Their gravity is determined by the specific landscape, the density of population, the intensity of use and the geology of the mountains in question."
So just because heli-skiing is banned in France doesn't necessarily mean that FIS would recommend it should be banned in Canada.

We here in the USA drive the most emission friendly cars on the planet. Our socialist friends in Europe are strangling the environment with their particulate emitting diesels,which they are forced to drive to avoid punitive gas taxes. Global warming is really caused by all the 3rd world crap holes that spew what ever they want into the atmosphere. Let's just ban 3rd world crap holes and cure the problem once and for all.

The molecular weight of water is 18 mol. 16 from a single carbon and 2 from the two H atoms. BTW water vapor is also a greenhouse gas, as is methane and many other compounds.

Carbon dioxide is much heavier with a mol wt of 44. The difference being it is a gas at ambient temperature and pressure, so you don't perceive the accumulation, nor are you aware of its mass. As gases go, CO2 is relatively heavy, as the tragedy at Mammoth showed.

If I burn straight (clean) Methane CH4, with a molecular weight of only 16, I will get a CO2 at 44, and 4 water molecules at 18 each resulting in 62 mols of exhaust. Jet-A fuel is a complex hydrocarbon ranging between 8 and 14 carbon atoms per molecule. The CO2 potential is much higher than with a predominately hydrogen based fuel. The Enviros are out to persuade us not to release oxidized carbon to the atmosphere by super refining fuel to remove carbon. I will tell you that winning that race is like Russia trying to outspend the US in the Arms race. An unwinnable proposition where all the energy kinetics work against you.

By mass percentage, gasoline is overwhelmingly carbon. And the most stable and common carbon byproduct of combustion is CO2. The carbon has to go somewhere. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline#Chemical_analysis_and_production.

(Automobile) Gas is a mixture of far too many specific compounds to list, but octane (C8H18) is somewhere between a 5 and 12 carbon alkane chain. Carbon atoms are 12x the weight of a hydrogen atom, so if you do the math octane is 84% carbon by mass. Toluene is even higher at 91% carbon.

So if you guess low, and say gas is only 70% carbon by weight, 70% of 840kg (heli fuel capacity mentioned earlier) is 588kg. Carbon dioxide is 27% carbon by weight, so those 588kg of carbon in the fuel tank are only 27% of the mass of CO2 produced when they burn. That translates into 2177 kg of CO2 (2.177 tonnes) per tank of gas. I thought 1.5 tonnes sounded astronomical at first, but now it looks pretty realistic. Besides, 840kg is A LOT OF FUEL.

And sure not all of the carbon goes to CO2, only the vast majority of it. Carbon monoxide (yum) and methane (even worse greenhouse gas) are two of the next most common byproducts of non-ideal combustion.

Why is it hard to believe? A carbon atom has a weight of 12, and each oxygen atom has a weight of 16, giving each single molecule of CO2 an atomic weight of 44. Simple, basic math! :

Really? I thought global warming was a conspiracy dreamed up by Al Gore, the liberal media, and a few yahoo atmospheric scientists.

With the chemistry lesson I will buy there may be more co2 released than fuel burned BUT I'm still not buy 1.5 tonnes /hour by one chopper. Close to 3500lbs of CO2. It might be possible that rate of fuel is burned during a high altitude heavy lift. BUT in an hour a heli ski machine will spend a similar amount of time descending empty and a substantial amount of time with rotors turning but no load 'idling' while skiers load and unload. The fellow mentioned one group of skiers but that would be 3 to 4 separate groups or the helicopter would wait quite a while for that one group to get down. 3500 lbs an hour for a normal ski group was the claim. I'd use an annoying rolly eye smiley face to make my point but I don't like them much.

I'd like to see some comparitive for figures on particulate and greenhouse gas emmisions per capita, from passenger vehicles for Europe and the U.S. Or are you just making stuff up?