“White Christmas” — A Song of Climate Change?

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas

Just like the ones I used to know

Irving Berlin was prescient when he wrote those words over seventy years ago.  Little did he know that White Christmases were on their way to becoming a thing of the past.

This year is a striking illustration, as ThinkProgress reports:

In Indiana, golf courses are still open while ski resorts remain shuttered. From the Pyrenees to the Balkans, ski resorts in the Alps have not only failed to receive natural snow, it’s been too warm to make any. “Virginia ski resorts are watching their assets melt away.” The December season has been a wash for the $1 billion New Hampshire ski resort industry. “Skiing is all right, if you consider the rain and everything,” one Massachusetts skier said of resorts’ efforts to make snow amid spring-like weather.

“Most Canadians will not wake up to a white Christmas on December 25 for the first time since Canada’s weather office began recording snowfalls in 1955,” AFP reports.

Of course, white Christmases won’t completely disappear.  They’ll just become more unusual, and the song will become an elegy for a cooler planet.

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