AS we embark on the 2003-04 ski season, it looks as if we may have a repeat of last year’s fabulous schussing with steep and deep snow, but while we have the weather to create great conditions this year, some scientists are telling us the future of the industry does not look good.

But let’s look at the positives for the moment. The big ski areas in the northeast have gotten a good jump on the season with some snow falling in the Adirondacks and the Green Mountains, but most importantly, it will be the cold temperatures and snow making systems that dictate how good they have it this year.

Catskill areas like Hunter, Belleayre and Windham are up and running as are the big resorts of Vermont – most will offer decent skiing for this weekend. Many of the Berkshire resorts will open on Saturday, and for New Jersey skiers, Hidden Valley will open tomorrow, while Mountain Creek will wait until next weekend.

If you’re looking for the best place in the country for skiing this weekend, head to Utah. There, many of the ski areas are already in mid-season form with almost all of their terrain already open – that’s remarkable considering it is the first week of December!

Now for the bad news. Global warming is threatening the world’s ski resorts, with melting at lower altitudes forcing the sport to move higher and higher up the mountain, according to a United Nations study released Tuesday.

Downhill skiing could disappear altogether at some resorts, while at others, a retreating snow line will cut off base villages from their ski runs as soon as 2030, warned the report by the U.N. Environment Program.

An accord aimed at halting global warming, meanwhile, may be dead. A top Kremlin official said Tuesday that Russia won’t ratify the Kyoto Protocol limiting greenhouse gas emissions because it will hurt the country’s economy. The United States rejected the accord for the same reason. Did someone say, dumb and dumber?

Back to some good news.

The U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame has selected seven new members, including Olympic ski champions Tommy Moe and Diann Roffe, World Championships medalist AJ Kitt, and Alex Cushing, who brought the 1960 Winter Games to Squaw Valley, Calif. The seven will be inducted Jan. 24 in Ishpeming, Mich., where organized ski competition in America was founded in 1905.

In addition to those four, Hall of Fame president Dick Goetzman said the Hall had elected Clare Bousquet, founder of Bousquet’s Ski Area in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts who helped popularize skiing with the “ski trains” of the 1930s; Jerry Nunn, a pioneer National Ski Patrol member and the first woman avalanche ranger in the U.S. Forest Service; and ski lift pioneer Ernst Constam. Bousquet and Constam will be honored posthumously.

Here is a sign of things to come. A snowboarder was convicted of third-degree assault Monday for crashing into a ski patroller and breaking his leg at Durango Mountain Resort in Colorado. The incident happened last January.