So, how far do you think the poor little guy was shot out of that thing? Do they even shoot people out of cannons anymore?  If not, it is a sad day for us all.

I've never seen a snow canon this close before. I guess a snow canon blasts a huge blast of very cold air mixed with water which then becomes snow. I wonder if a zoom was used to capture this shot.

President Bush's latest attempt at concealing global warming?

Global warming is fictional.  Look at the science, people.  It's like everyone relies on the media nowadays.

Sure there are some icebergs melting, but lots of others are growing!

Global warming states the carbon dioxide emissions are causing a rise in temperature over the globe.  How do you explain that in the 70s, when CO2 emissions were still increasing that the average temperatuve of Earth declined?

All I ask is that you find out for yourself instead of just believing what your politicians tell you.

I want to hop inside it and get shot off across the mountian.

Oh why do I bother...  The ACADEMY of SCIENCE (i.e. group of world's most predominant scientists) wholely declared human-influenced climate change is occuring.  What this change means (warm here - cold there, snow here - drought there) is still to be seen.  Whether it is or is not occuring... yes there are still some holdouts... wouldn't it be better if we tried to change to minimize our  greenhouse gases knowing the dramatic weather patterns and sea level rise which is proposed to occur if it is occuring?

What the hell does a snow cannon got to do with shooting people out of it and making snow for skiers.  

are people really still that arrogant that they think we have no effect on the earth...."look at the science", it's obvious that we have a huge effect!

Awesome photo!
It is hard to determine if the climate is changing because of "people" - but hey, 55 million years ago there was global warming and it changed the earth drastically.  Didn't need cars, people or factories to do that.  And how about that supercontinent theory.  I believe the earth is doing what is has been doing naturally over the past many million years.  Our earth is fine, nature has its way of cleaning and repairing itself.  But we should be responsible Americans and be more energy efficient.

I'm sure the Earth will be a wonderful place, with or without a few degrees temperature change. The question is, will our children and grand children be paying more taxes and insurance and losing their lives due to shifts in storms and droughts and floods that we could be preventing...

When I was about 17, I worked at Sterling Forest Ski Center in Tuxedo, NY. I operated 6 snow cannons (I think they were made by Hedco?)Just a big diesel engine turing a fan in the bottom of the drum with water nozzles around the top. Pretty simple, but they worked like gangbusters!

TechnoAlpin makes snow cannons if you really want to buy one.

As for trusting scientists on global warming?  Their science has flip-flopped far faster than the climate.  Through much of the 70's scientists exclaimed that the next ice age was imminent.

If you mix journalists with scientists who need funding you get sensationalism six-ways from Saturday.  Scientists don't get funding to prove things are normal - they get funding to alert us to catastrophe.  And it's not even worth going to a journalist without some kind of wild story for them to hype.

The best reason to be energy efficient - whether you're a corporation or a regular citizen - is to save money that you could be spending on other things.

No need for Chicken Little.

Hello!! Are you really serious? Are you all living in a cartoon-world?
This is not a conspiracy to cover up global warming. This is not for firing people across the sky. This is for creating snow on ski slopes so people can slide down hills with slippery sticks on their feet.

I like the web site , but I dont like the advertisment which blocks the
pictures if you click view all. it cuts off half of the pictures, should be a better way of doing this.

Oh quit trying to link every picture to an insult of Bush.

Some of us are a little tired of it and it's irrelevant.

Grow up.  It's a SNOW CANNON.  For fun stuff, ok?

Great shot BTW...

If you still think global warming isn't happening...

Watch Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth."

Then talk.

I think part of the problem is that even if we in America all decide to buy hybrid cars and heat our homes with solar power, it won't even make a dent when you consider that India and China are both expanding industrially with no real environmental conscience.  Overpopulation alone in that area of the world is a frightening thought, regardless of ozone gas emissions resulting from their daily grind.

I am waiting for my beach front property.

Thank you.  This photo looks exactly like the junk spewing out of the mouths of the people commenting on global warming.  Come on people! This is a photo blog not your soap box for political issues.  There are excellent chat rooms and political blogs for that, go find them.  For crying out loud!  What a bunch of babies.  

PS: Interesting photo.  More scale would have be nice.  I think we'll see more of these machines world wide 'cause there's something weird with the weather lately.

global warming is fictional? I had to read this more than twice before deciding if "marie" was serious. (In truth, I'm still not sure) No one enjoys good sarcasm more than myself, so, if that is indeed the case here, Good One, Marie.  However, I'm afraid Marie is really a public affairs emloyee of some energy conglomorate....looking for promotion.

I am starting to wonder about Robert. He can only give us one-liner comments unless there is a political statement to make. Please tell us why you liked this picture.

BTW, snow cannons can only shoot snowmen. Hardee-har...

It is the height of arrogance to believe that we have such a profound effect on the climate and the Earth as the proponents of Global Warming would have us to believe.  Anyone heard of the ice age?  I am pretty sure it ended long before the appearance of soccer moms in suvs.  What killed the dinosaurs?  The did not all get run over by a hummers.  Scientists have also determined that the sun is getting hotter.  No SUVs there.  Pretty sure. Oh, and I have heard that the climate on other planets have changed over million of years.  Maybe we had ancestors driving suvs there way back when. The Earth has seen many dramatic climate changes, reversals on it's magnetic poles, ices ages have come and gone, mass extinctions, continental shifts, floods and every kind of cataclysmic occurrence imaginable and all longer before the first human walked the planet.

It is nothing but ignorant to deny the solid chemistry behind the explanations of the effects of greenhouse gas emissions upon the earth’s atmosphere and climate.  Pishhh... why do I bother? Anyone who argues that "global warming is a myth" can not be well educated in chemistry, biology, or any physical or earth science.  Wake up people!! Nature always prevails.  We can not kill this planet, but we can force it to change just enough to eliminate ourselves, or our potential future generations.

Look over the course of history - the earth is ALWAYS heating and cooling.  What is the time between ice ages??  Doesn't it have to warm before it cools again - it's cyclical...  Yes, it is warming - the questions is not if, but what contribution do we play, if any.  The scary part is that it will actually cause the next ice age, not cook us all...
So, when the earth did this before people were even around, what could have been done then????  Add to that the fact that recent history is abnormally stable - now we go back to a more "normal" process and everyone freaks out...  There are a lot of questions that play into this, not just the simple fact of is the globe warming.  That in itself is no cause to rethink evertyhing we know.

I want to do a crazy fight club co-op and steal these machines and place them all over Los Angeles. "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow." I think it'd be wonderful to let it snow for x-mas.

For those that doubt global warming or the fact that humans are the primary cause, please go do some real research on the topic.  The so-called "scientists" that disagree that man is causing global warming are usually paid off by some industry that wants to confuse the issue.  As far as I am aware after looking at the results of several searches performed by various scientists for ANY recent peer-reviewed paper that has been examined rigorously, there are no dissenting opinions in the scientific community.  In fact, the U.N. this week is releasing the results of a years-long study by THOUSANDS of scientists all over the world that clearly states that man is the primary cause of global warming.  Just today a survey of U.S. government scientists revealed that nearly half of them have had their results changed for political purposes and/or have been pressured to not work on the problem.  Worse still, it turns out that climate change is happening faster than any of the earlier models had predicted.  This is the same thing that happened with cigarette smoking.  The tobacco industry had doctors that insisted smoking was not hazardous to your health for decades after they knew for a fact it was.  Same thing here.  In the not-too-distant future (10 - 20 years) we'll look back at the blatent lies that say that global warming is not man-made the same way we see those bogus claims about smoking not being bad for you.  Look at actual peer-reviewed rigorous scientific evidence, not the pseudo-science put out by a handful of hacks.  There is no doubt.

I've seen this on a Star Wars movie...they used this ray to destroy other planets!

lol @ global warming is fictional. Please, do us all a favor and educate yourself. I'm not into politics whatsoever, and even I know that global warming is an issue. I don't need to get my information from politicians in order to educate myself. They're not the experts on this matter. They are not scientists. Scientists are telling them this. Being a biology major myself, I am personally very scared of how ignorant and uneducated people are on this matter. We are getting very close to a disaster, it's just difficult to imagine the circumstances involved.
Someone said here that "recent history is abnormally stable". Even if it was, the pollution and waste products that the human race has emitted is still a huge problem. There is too much waste, the planet is not as clean as it used to be before we got here. This needs to be fixed, and fast before we won't be able to go back.

Global warming is a real problem, and chosing to ignore it without educating yourselves first is going to lead to humanity's downfall (as is being ignorant in other world problems).

is that the same Acedemy of Scientists that said dark matter doesnt exist??

The snow cannon: proof that a nation has too much money.

At first glance I thought it was a jet engine. MAYDAY MAYDAY WE'RE GOING DOWN!

A snow cannon....so what if Mother Nature doesn't want to snow.....money talks.....man will make it snow....screw the environment

We can use snow cannons to rebuild the glaciers.  Will that make all of you enviro-geeks happy?

Its inevitable that change will occur.  Do you really think we could drop BILLIONS of people on a planet and expect it to have no effect?

You choose - do you want luxuries (a home, a car or two or three, clothes, toys, electronics, etc)?  

Because if you are complaining that we are bringing an END TO THE WORLD, then you should start the trend.  

Give away everything you have and live on the streets.  Perhaps then, you will have no impact on the environment.

Juan, you bother because you care.  (He he.. had to laugh at first reading tho... I can imagine you saying that with such a blah-blah feeling!)

Hey StupidMonkey... I don't have too long to wait.  I'm 60 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico!  Whooohoooo!

A better picture would be to have Alec Baldwin standing in front of the snow cannon.

My first impression was that this photo was taken by a very unlucky plane passenger.

I want one

Thank you to all of those who posted on the fiction of global warming here. I Feel so alone in the fight to educate the Lemmings who follow the media rather than actually find hard evidence(no watching the great global warming Lie AKA Al Gores little film does not count). Rather than try to explain science to the blind. If you want more evidence Google 'The Great Global Warming Swindle'. Ohhh by the by, two of my family members work for NCAR, and I for the USGS. Your comment is Quite True Perry. Humans Want to feel like we are much more important than we really are. Trust me mother Nature is much bigger than we are.