Can Global Warming Kill Off All the Sportswriters? Or at least Alexander Wolff? Please?

Sports Illustrated is poised to release an issue dealing with global warming. Now, while Al Gore may say that global warming is not a political issue, Al Gore is a former politician, so I'm not really inclined to believe that. Up front, I am going to say that I'm not really convinced by the global warming chicken littles of the world. It may be happening, it may have human causes, but it's been my impression that nobody knows for sure. Even the much-publicised gathering of scientists in Paris last month said they were "90% sure." That doesn't sound very scientific. "Don't worry. The other doctors and I are 90% sure you don't have cancer."

Now, I'm admittedly not a science guy, so anyone who has better information, please correct me. I'm not arguing with any of his figures (if he'd present any), but I will take issue with his writing (which will include some rebukes). However you feel about global warming, this really is a very poorly written article that is chock full of holes...like the ozone. (rimshot) Here are some of the highlights.

The next time a ball game gets rained out during the September stretch run, you can curse the momentary worthlessness of those tickets in your pocket. Or you can wonder why it got rained out -- and ask yourself why practice had to be called off last summer on a day when there wasn't a cloud in the sky

I wonder if the author knows who killed JFK too. The truth is out there.

Global warming is not coming; it is here. Greenhouse gases -- most notably carbon dioxide produced by burning coal, oil and gas -- are trapping solar heat that once escaped from the Earth's atmosphere.

Also, the waste from the production of thousands of Sports Illustrated magazines, and all the hot air coming out of Jay Mariotti.

As temperatures around the globe increase, oceans are warming, fields are drying up, snow is melting, more rain is falling, and sea levels are rising.

Holy shit, he's right. I too have noticed the snow around here melting, and I've recorded ever-increasing temperatures since January.

All of which is changing the way we play and the sports we watch.

Loosely-contrived jump from current hot-button issue to sell magazines to issue's relevance in a magazine that covers neither the environment nor politics nor science.....GO!

Evidence is everywhere of a future hurtling toward us faster than scientists forecasted even a few years ago.

Wait, hurtling towards us? Future? Didn't you just say global warming was here already?

Searing heat is turning that rite of passage of Texas high school football, the August two-a-day, into a one-at-night

Might have more to do with parents demanding that coaches NOT treat their kids like crap. Or small towns that base their self-worth on a bunch of 17-year olds nine Friday nights out of the year not wanting to have their rosters slimmed by passed out kids. Also note how the author hasn't listed any examples of two-a-days being cut here, so he's more or less free to say whatever he wants because we don't know any better.

while at the game's highest level the Miami Dolphins, once famous for sweating players into shape, have thrown in the soggy towel and built a climate-controlled practice bubble.

Might have more to do with the rain that comes through South Florida about every day. Or the deaths of players who were in the heat and refused to hydrate themselves.

Even the baseball bat as we know it is in peril, and final scores and outcomes of plays may be altered too.

Notice again how he didn't say HOW it was in peril, or HOW outcomes of plays could be altered? We have to take him at his word because he knows more than us, or at least he won't tell us.

Because of the melting of glaciers and polar ice, and because water expands as it warms, oceans are rising. Researchers expect an increase of up to a meter by 2100, enough to drown wetlands.

Wait.....DROWN WETlands? Also, small note, water expands as it freezes and contracts as it melts. Almost got it right.

If we continue to spew greenhouse gases as we are, the Earth could become five degrees warmer this century. The last time Earth was that warm, three million years ago, sea level stood 80 feet higher than it does now.

So we've had climate change in the past? 3 million years ago? Before humans? Well what caused that? I wonder how many baseball games it affected then.

Since the early 20th century, the amount of rain dropped in the biggest 1% of storms each year has risen 20%.

How can we make the best case? I know, let's go to the sportswriters' favorite tool! Statistical outliers! Let's only measure the top 1%! It's no different than saying that Shawon Dunston leads the NL in Home Runs with runners on 2nd and 3rd with 2 outs at home on Thursdays against the Mets.* (*= Truth not known...Vinnie?)

A warming planet doesn't create hurricanes, but it does make them stronger and last longer. Tropical storms become more powerful over a warmer Gulf, turning a category 4 storm, for example, into a category 5, like Katrina

Not only outliers, let's pick one of the biggest storms to ever hit the United States.

which transformed the symbol of sports in New Orleans, the Superdome, into an image of epic disaster.

Oh yea, this is a magazine whose specialty is SPORTS. However, Hurricane Katrina also gave us the U2/Green Day version of "The Saints are Coming" which is a prety decent song, so I guess it wasn't a total loss. (/gallows humor)

Unlike many other pressing environmental concerns -- pollution, water shortages, overpopulation, deforestation -- global warming is by definition global. Every organism on the planet is already feeling its impact.

Really? How has the global warming disaster personally affected YOUR life. Your goldfish's?

"There are many important environmental battles to be fought," says Bill McKibben, the Vermont-based writer, activist and passionate cross-country skier. "But if we lose this one -- which we're doing -- none of the others matter. It's crunch time."

Here's my friend who lives in Vermont. He listens to a lot of Steely Dan and wears a hemp necklace, but he SWEARS this is all true. (Still no actual facts presented on HOW global warming affects sports, just conjectures.)

Sports condition us to notice first those things that happen at scatback speed, and until recently climate change took place in world-historical fashion, the way a nil-nil soccer match unfolds.

Minor point, but AC Milan took 29 shots on goal in yesterday's Champions League match, and didn't score untill extra time (1-0 final). In a 120 minute game, that's an average of one shot every 4 minutes roughly. On a field bigger than a football field.

But that perception is changing fast, especially for skiers, whose season has endured a whipsaw of extremes: One day in November enough snow fell at Colorado's Beaver Creek to cause the cancellation of practice for the men's downhill at a World Cup event. A day later on the other side of the globe, officials at the French resort of Val d'Isère called off another World Cup event on account of too little snow

Surprise! The weather isn't the same everywhere in the world! In fact, on several days last summer, some major league baseball games were called off on account of rain, but others played on, without a cloud in the sky. What a whipsaw of extremes. That's just in the same country!

Winter in Vermont is now the equivalent of winter in Rhode Island a generation ago.

Latitude of Vermont (42 degrees, 40' North) Latitude of Rhode Island (42 degrees 1' North). All hail the coming....warm snap?

The good news is that stadiums and arenas, if built with green aforethought, can be more than symbolic Valhallas that remind us that we're all in this together. Site one near a public-transit line, and there's less need to build that most Earth-hostile of features, the vast parking lot.

RFK Stadium, US Cellular Field, the United Center, and AT&T Park beg to differ.

The Philadelphia Eagles may have some of the most discourteous followers in sports, but their management is a leader, having launched an environmental initiative replete with catchy slogans like Go Green and Time for Some Serious Trash Talk.

This helps because????

Scientists told the NFL that Super Bowl XLI would put one million pounds of carbon dioxide into the air -- not counting air travel to Miami

Because those planes wouldn't have been flying to Miami anyway.

What happens in an arena so familiar and beloved may sound an alarm we will hear and heed. At a time when so much in our lives is linear and digital, from the economy to technology, sports still run in graceful cycles, marking time in rhythm with the seasons.

So kind of like Football season now more or less starting in July and finishing in February whereas it used to only go from late August to mid-January?
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So there you have it. I'm certain that my own personal beliefs came out in that, and my goal is not to turn YCS into a Yellow Chair Politics, but the idea of Sports Illustrated writing an article about global warming is about as laughable to me as Rolling Stone magazine writing about the details of a nuclear arms treaty.

The fact that the man was so convinced, yet offered, really, no evidence is laughable as well. Before everyone jumps down my throat on how I'm an evil fascist who hates the rain forest, take a step back and think "If I read the baseball season preview in Martha Stewart's magazine, and she says that David Eckstein is the best player in the majors because he has "hustle" and "grit" and doesn't really offer any reasons WHY he's a good player, wouldn't that be worthy of ridicule?