Slashdot Mirror
How Russia Transformed a Subtropical Beach Resort To Host the Winter Olympics
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Duncan Geere reports at The Verge that Russian resort as Sochi, on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, is humid and subtropical with temperatures averaging about 52 degrees Fahrenheit (12 C) in the winter, and 75 degrees (24 C) in the summer. "There is almost no snow here — at the moment it's raining," says Olga Mironova, a local resident. It's estimated that the cost of staging the Olympics in Sochi has been greater than the previous three Winter Games combined — ballooning to a whopping $51 billion including the cost of implementing an extensive system of safeguards to ensure there'll be sufficient snow in Sochi for the games including the cost of implementing one of the largest snowmaking systems in Europe. The system includes two huge water reservoirs that feed 400 snow cannons installed along the slopes that can generate snow in temperatures of up to 60 degrees fahrenheit (16 C). If that snow isn't enough, then the authorities will fall back on 710,000 cubic meters of snow collected during the winters of previous years leading up to the games. To keep it from melting in the region's hot summers, 10 separate stockpiles have been kept packed tight under insulating covers high up in the mountains, safe from the sun's rays. Down in Sochi itself the other half of the games will be held in five indoor arenas that will host figure skating, speed skating, hockey, and curling, and an additional outdoor area will host the opening and closing ceremonies. In each of these indoor arenas, underfloor cooling systems are installed so that the ice stays frozen above it using propylene glycol, which doesn't freeze until temperatures reach 8.6 F (-13 C). Climatologists predict that even under a best-case scenario, almost half the venues that have hosted the Winter Olympics over the last century would be unable to do so by 2080 without resorting to extensive and expensive artificial snowmaking techniques.""
Taking a semi-tropical place and turning it into an expensive, barely working winter wonderland is a very stupid idea. Implementing it is even stupider.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
But 43.5 degrees C is!
Not to nention that Sochi is characterised by poverty, separatism, terrorism and mass beach tourism:
http://www.thesochiproject.org...
Pete Boyd
Did Obama do something last night that we need to be distracted about. Usually don't pull out the Bush did it card til we need to distract from his actions.
It would even be clearer to most people here if you did it in kelvins rather than Fahrenheit.
Its down to the monumental institutionalised corruption in Russia where everyone from the highest level apparatchik down to the brick layer is on the take.
These games are also a show of the absolutely incredible depth of corruption in Russia. The initial budget of $12 billion has ballooned to over four times to some $50 billion – the most expensive winter or summer Olympics in the history. The 45-kilometre road from Sochi to the outdoor venues alone cost $8 billion, enough to pave the finished road with 5-millimetre thick gold. It was a common arrangement in the Olympic construction projects to use the money as follows: 30% for the actual construction work, 35% to the officials and 35% to the "oligarchs" who oversaw the project. And let's not forget how the Sochi locals who happened to live near the coming Olympic venues have been brutally forced on the streets without any compensation for their expropriated property, thanks to a special law that Putin had passed in Duma. You should see the documentary Putin's Games for some background on the mind-boggling amounts of corruption in these games.
43.5 degrees N (more northerly than Buffalo, NY) is not "subtropical."
The word "subtropics" refers to a particular location. The word "subtropical" can refer to any area that has characteristics similar to the subtropics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_locations_with_a_subtropical_climate
Hey lookie there: Eurasia -> Russia -> Sochi
Ok. I'm frankly sick and tired of all this media campaign of discrediting the Russian olympic games. I mean, this article is completely ridiculous.
As a comparison, the weather in Sochi is similar to the one in Grenoble (at least from a temperature point of view). Now, the thing is that I live in Grenoble, which was also the location of the olympic games in the 60's. Like in Sochi, right now it is raining in Grenoble, and the temperatures are around 10 degrees Celsius. Despite this, just yesterday I went skiing at the resort which hosted the downhill event in the 60's and guess what? Perfect skiing conditions, all slopes were open and no artificial snow has been used in the last 4 weeks. How is this possible? Well, most of the events at the winter olympic games are hosted in the mountains, which in the case of Grenoble are 2000 meters above the level of the city. I don't know about Sochi but the Caucas mountains have peaks of over 5000 meters.
Just comparing the temperatures in the biggest city which happens to be located near the actual mountains which host the games is completely stupid!
Now, doesn't the lack of shower curtains and door knobs seem a bit pedantic?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
That Q&A is a hard fact that except for some drift it comes so close to what is reality, We were driven to near austerity in the 80s with the this mentality. Here we were in the 2000s and nearly achieved it the second time around in that same geographical area. History is being denied just as AGW is now being denied. It's time to stop living the American dream which for most has been a nightmare and start living the American Reality. We have to address global warming with the same attitude as a Soviet invasion would have been that never came to be. A few more questions . ...
Q. How come we can't watch the Olympics?
A. Because we don't have a cable provider and our video stream is not a sponsor of the NBC networks.
Q. But I thought the Olympics were for everyone including so we could support our team?
A. They are but the sponsoring is now controlled by greedy networks that are run by exclusive clubs owned by the elite.
Q. Do the elite believe in AGW?
A.
I guess they couldn't find a colder place in such a tiny territory
Yes, it's time to give up! http://imgur.com/3ZidINK and to use the metric system also : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
This is the comment I am forced to type.
Yeah, making snow in Russia... Only in Russia... The cost of Olympic games is more than $50 Billion, or approximately $500 per Russian citizen, that is including babies and retired people. Had most of Russians been asked whether they agree to donate $500 per person they would have told "No". So they blew $50 billion... That is not entirely correct since this $50 billion has transformed to the salaries of the workers, organizers and security, cost of construction materials and the profits for organizers. So it is not all gone to waste. However Olympic games has always been a classic and favorite way of spreading the wealth... upwards. in 50 years we will hear about Russia's summer Olympic games in Arctic pole.
While the indoor activities may well be in the City of Sochi, the activities which actually requires a large amount of snow (alpine and nordic) are actually arranged in Rosa Khutor, which may only be 50 km away, but happens to be approximately 1000 meters above sea level, something which does have an impact on the climate.
There may be lots of things wrong with these Olympics, but there is no need to exaggerate.
Right up until the end when GLOBAL WARMING.
The Metric Conversion Act would disagree with you.
Actually, "subtropical" is a description of climate, not of place on the map. And from a climate point of view, Sochi is subtropical. Yes, Sochi might lie more north than Buffalo, NY. But still, it's warmer the whole year than Buffalo, NY. Rome is north of New York City. Palermo, Sicily is about as north as Baltimore. But Sicily is definitely subtropical.
The Greater Caucasus Mountains where the Olympics are being held receive as much snowfall as any major ski resort in the US. It's just a bad year for them...sort of like Vancouver 4 years ago. I really don't understand the "subtropical" knock that everyone keeps repeating. This is a huge mountain range that gets tons of snow every year. Not considering climate change, the facilities they've built in the mountains will probably serve as a very nice ski resort after the olympics...
Oh just wait until you come to Canada, neighboring the US especially in Southern Ontario or Alberta you have: Meat, veggies, fruit and bulk goods weighed in, grams and lbs. Lumber by the ft, and meter, road signs in various spots in mph and km/h. Liquid in containers, in fl oz, quart and ml, or liters. And to top it all off you get screwed over when buying gasoline.
Then again, you could go to the UK and get baffled by stones.
Om, nomnomnom...
No it doesnt. This is not trade and commerce, or I would agree with you.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Common sense I do have.
Obviously. You have so much of it, that you can completely disregard obvious facts. That must be convenient.
WTF does this have to do with the original article?
It has a lot to do with the original article, which is unfortunately somewhat off track. The subject tackled are the important investments to ensure proper conditions for the winter competition. Sadly the article and the title used by slashdot are missleading, as they suggest these investements are made to transform a sub-tropical climate into a winter paradise. What so many people fail to understand is that the climate up in the mountains IS NOT the same as the one near the sea in the city of Sochi.
So what does it have to do with it? A lot.
What the poster of this article understood but you - and most likely the journalist behind the article - failed to understand is that the a large part of the investments are made to ensure that the proper conditions are met in the competition sites in the mountains (not in the sub-tropical paradise, mind you). The risk of having non-adequate conditions, and thus require the equipement and huge investment behind it - is obviously linked to the climate.
I do not believe Sochi - and the sites in the mountains in the direct neighbourhood - could ever garantee the right conditions, regardless of the outcome of the winter. Hence the large investements. The interesting catch is that many of the past Winter Olympic sites, which could garantee for those conditions, fall in the same category as Sochi due to climate change. This means that these sites would also need similar investments to hold such competition in the future.
But stick to your common sense, widely feed by ignorance and closed mindset.
The 0-100 degreen range of Farenheit better represents the range of temperatures that humans encounter. http://imgur.com/gallery/ucOQh
reporting largely to Americans
Are you sure about that?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
2080? heh. Reminds me of Disraeli saying (and I am paraphrasing) that politicians enjoy a the privilege heretofore only afforded to whores - power without responsibility. I guess climatologists, too, now. Making predictions not verifiable until after their retirement? Check.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Indeed. What's the meaning of Stonehenge?!
Play Command HQ online
Celsius merely replaces one set of 'arbitrary' reference points (human warmest/typical =100 and coldest/typical = 0) with another (the freezing/boiling points of a hypothetically-pure water in a specific set of pressure circumstances = 0/100 respectively).
Aside from that, it's what people grew up & are comfortable with.
Well, the only other difference is that I don't see Americans being evangelical about trying to convince anyone to use their system. (Shrug)
-Styopa
You can easily divide a foot, for example, into thirds, halves, quarters. Not so much with base 10.
If you can't easily divide the number ten into two equal halves, then perhaps you have bigger problems than just which set of units to use.
Aside from that, it's what people grew up & are comfortable with.
I'm people, I didn't grow up with it and I'm not comfortable with it.
All that being said, there are a lot of things that are bananas in the USA compared to the rest of the world. Use of the Fahrenheit system is *way* down the list of crazy to the point where it's almost a rounding error.
Allow me to divide one meter by the amounts you mentioned:
3 - 0,333mm (use as much precision as you'd like)
2 - 0,500mm
4 - 0,250mm
Now, allow me to do something you can't do trivially with imperial units:
How many centimeters does a kilometer have?
1km = 1000m = 100.000cm
Try doing that under 5 seconds with imperial units.
You only insult yourself by using such stupid arguments. SI is better.
All systems of measurements are based on arbitrary references.
The difference is that SI is a coherent system of base and derived units with very simple relationships between them, all based on the number 10 and a series of greek prefixes.
Nobody ever asks themselves (*kids still learning the basics excepted) how many meters are in a kilometer. Knowing that, nobody is going to be left wondering how many grams there are in a kilogram or how many newtons in a kilonewton. The keyword is coherency.
SI is coherent within itself and with the numerical system used by nearly everyone on this planet (base 10). Imperial units are neither.
Also, SI is used in all but three countries. Don't you think those three countries might have done things wrong?
Last I checked, the US do not represent a majority of the world's population (the other two countries who do not use SI do not alter this significantly and are essentially irrelevant in industrial terms). Therefore, a majority of the world's population uses SI units (and thus degrees Celsius and Kelvin).
Your reluctance to accept SI is baffling, moronic even.
it's fucking ridiculous. with 51 billion dollars you could have hosted the games in Helsinki, BUILT THE FUCKING MOUNTAIN for the slope needing competitions and still have the hotels ready in time.
but you want to know the really funny thing? Sochi has more gay clubs than Helsinki.
it's not one or two guys who got killed over the Sochi contracts either. that's why foreign companies didn't touch the bidding for contracts... and why the companies really didn't think that they would be penalized on payments if they fail to deliver on time properly.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
You can easily divide a foot, for example, into thirds, halves, quarters. Not so much with base 10.
You're right! It's much easier to divide 1"1/16 into thirds than it is to divide 27mm into thirds (they're the same length to a good approximation).
And if you're going to complain about me cherry-picking silly values, I'll point to the 2400mm sizes that wood is sold in which is every bit as dividisible as imperial units since it's a multiple of 12.
mass, etc came about in the same way.
Ah yes. 16 oz to the pound, 14 pounds to the stone, 8 stone to the cwt, 20 cwt to the ton. That's long tons of course, not short ones. But you guys seem to have abandoned stones and hundredweights, leaving the ton as a nice, tractable 2240lb. That's a lovely number to do mental arithmetic with.
Er, or are you working with short tons, where it's 100lb to the short hundredweight and 20 of them to the short ton.
etc
And what about volume? Do you work in cu Ft or gallons? That's a conversion factor of 6.22883288. Real easy to use. Quick: anser in two seconds or less: how many cubic inches to the cubic foot?
Come on it's only 12x12x12. Which is uhh 144*12 which is er 1440+288... 162.. er 172... er 1728! got it! Did that really take you under 2 seconds?
Oh yeah and BTUs. Heater at 220V, 2A is how many BTU/hr again? I have no fucking clue. Seriously. Not a clue. Not even slightly. Now try some more complex conversions like figuring out how long it would take to heat up a room's worth of air by one degree. Or if you prefer, some container of water.
Or it it takes a turning force of 0.1 foot pounds to turn (er or is that about an inch pound or a foot ounce???) a shaft on a bearing, how much heat must the bearing be able to dissipate at 100RPM?
See, all these calculations are really REALLY hard with imperial. The famed divisibility only helps if you happen to be working with whole feet. For everything else (mass, energy, force) and calculations involving unit conversions, it's a massive PITA.
Nature isn't base 10, other than the number of fingers and toes we have.
It's not base 2, 3, 4, 12 or anything else, either.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If you can't easily divide the number ten into two equal halves, then perhaps you have bigger problems than just which set of units to use.
GP never said it couldn't be... you're deliberately missing the obvious point that 12 can be divided into by thirds and quarters with integer results while 10 cannot.
A base 10 unit system is better because (and only because) base 10 is our primary number system. A meter is better than a foot because (and only because) it is the more popular international standard. We could scale Imperial unis with base-10 SI prefixes if we wanted to, and some people do.
I would tend to argue that Imperial units tend to be more natural since things like inches, feet, tablespoons, teaspoons, gallons, and miles came out of practical usage rather than a top-down choice of a base unit standard and subsequent base-10 scaling by SI prefixes. But I also readily admit that I may be wrong and merely biased since I grew up with Imperial units.
It's funny that you should bring up Skolkovo, given how the main innovation that it produced so far is the means of funneling away the budget in highly efficient ways. Seriously, Skolkovo is entrenched as one of the symbols of government corruption of the Putin era (the Olympics will probably be that, as well, but at least they have something to show for it, unlike Skolkovo).
Only if he does not get away in time.
Yes, a lot of the money got stolen, but holding such games in Sochi instead of say Moscow, has a huge investment potential because it's a great destination and people will visit after the Olympics again.
Actually, they won't, which is why several Olympic venues were intentionally constructed in such a way that they can be deconstructed later and moved to some other part of the country where they're actually useful on a more permanent basis (do you really think that the expensive snow producing will be kept on after the Olympics?). The other problem is the shoddy quality of a lot of what was built, because of endemic corruption and a rush to complete it on time.
You could also say that it was a worthwhile state project because it put money in the pockets of all those workers that built the infrastructure, but the majority of them were immigrants from other countries...
So, literally, these Olympics do nothing positive for Russian economy. The money that's spent on it is partly wasted on infrastructure that's going to be unused after the Olympics, partly left the country in the pockets of migrant labor, and partly left the country after being pocketed by the corrupt builders and stashed away in their Swiss accounts.