Reply #25: Dubai Debt Crisis Halts Building Of World's Largest Indoor Mountain Range

[Demeter]

http://www.theonion.com/articles/dubai-debt-crisis-halts-building-of-worlds-largest,2886/

DUBAI—Representatives from the emirate of Dubai announced with disappointment this week that its recent debt crisis has forced developers to halt construction on the city's long-planned 22-mile-long indoor mountain range.
Planners continue to take future reservations for the mountains' 9 and 10-star hotels...The culmination of a decade's worth of ambitious and expensive building projects, Dubai's estimated $100 billion debt officially brought work on the artificial mountain range to a stop on Tuesday....

With only seven of the planned 19 peaks completed and the artificial glaciers only partially frozen, the real estate firm Nakheel now says the landmark Alps Dubai development will miss its planned April 2011 opening date, and with it, the controlled volcanic eruption that would have commemorated the event.
Enlarge ImageSome of the more conservative construction projects completed before Dubai's financial meltdown.

"Everything had been progressing right on schedule," said project manager Zayed Kemaar. "The plate tectonics were almost in place, we were getting good vulcanism, and we had helicopter-loads of marble and schist arriving every day from Switzerland. We even had herds of pure-white albino bighorn rams standing on five of the peaks. Then, of course, the bottom fell out, and now we barely have the money to keep the air conditioning on."

Added Kemaar, "It just goes to show you that, when the economy is down, vital infrastructure projects like this are always the first to suffer."
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"And mark my words," he added, "We will still put a man on the artificial moon we're building by 2025."