Can Global Warming Kill Off All the Sportswriters? Or at least Alexander Wolff? Please?
>> Thursday
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?
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15 comments:
Ok, I agree--The premise that global warming has already had a tangible and significant effect on our sports lives is rather absurd. The whole idea of global warming centers around its most significant elements having a gradual and subtle--if not imperceptable--effect on most human day-to-day experience. (Note I said "most." If you live in a costal town that's now lost hundreds of acres to rising sea levels, then this is not "subtle.") He also doesn't help himself by supporting it with spotty anecdotes.
However, you have to realize how ignorant you come off on a number of points.
1. Fuck you non-scientific-minded fucks for your outrageous standards of "proof." Do you have any idea how unrealistic--nay, impossible--it is to offer the kind of black-and-white definitive conclusion you expect? For something so complex, it's necessary to make tons of assumptions and estimates, and there's no way to get the proof you're asking. Comparing it to cancer makes you sound dumb. You're talking about the presence or non-presence something. That's way different than an issue of causation. Plus, I'm sure "having cancer" is a diagnosis with plenty of complexity and gray shades also. I don't know. Paul?
2. You obviously don't know what wetlands are and your attempt to be sarcastic just makes you sound ignorant. And holy shit--are you not even slightly aware of the danger in melting glaciers?? This is a very, very elementary global warming topic, and it demonstrates to me that you haven't even attempted to educate yourself on the matter.
3. Again, you don't know anything about storm frequency/intensity, and your attempt to downplay the 20% increase in storm intensity is horribly crafted. What you're calling an "outlier" is actually an aggregate of many, many samples compared to many, many years of these same aggregate values. Learn the difference.
4. Right, Mike. The people who take global warming seriously are all old hippies from Vermont. They're not climatologists who've dedicated entire professional careers toward creating complex climate models or anything. They're all just old hippies.
Like I said, admittedly, I'm not a science guy. I really only get what I've been told by science guys, people who claim to be science guys, and by Sports Illustrated, which is in no way qualified to comment with any level of credible expertise.
The article to me came off as a listing of a bunch of platitudes, without giving any specifics.
Ie: The Texas two-a-days are being cancelled. OK, how many? Why? Is excessive heat the only reason there's a change in practice strategy?
Ie: The baseball bat being in danger. How? Why? He didn't even go into an explanation. He just left it at that.
It's those kind of blanket assumptions that pissed me off. I never said global warming WASN'T happening, or that it WASN'T cause by humans. It may very well be, just that Sports Illustrated declaring for a certainty that it has and has a tangible impact on sport was laughable.
Likewise, the hippie crack was largely based on how this was the first guy he brought forward to testify on his behalf, and he really didn't offer anything of substance.
The 90% crack was to show how enormous the difference between 90% and 100% is, but how so many people seem to take 90% as a certainty.
I'm with you there. His supporting "evidence" is a tad suspect, to put it lightly. It's like last July when people were saying "Wow, can you believe this heat wave? Must be global warming!" Of course, that heat wasn't global warming's fault. It was July's fault. It would've been hot regardless of the gradual 1.2-degree average global temperature change. Maybe only 99.8 F instead of 101 F, but it still would've been hot.
All I'm saying is that if we're gonna be salty, let's first be informed. Don't let your commentary overshoot your knowledge.
Okay, let's be very clear about one thing: Global warming IS HAPPENING. It's not some crack-pipe theory made up by hippies, democrats, environmentalists and "chicken littles". Find me one, ONE, scientist who has researched the issue and concluded that global warming is not a problem. I defy you to find one.
The problem is that more than half of newspaper editorials written on the topic dismiss the issue, because of the writer's lack of understanding. And I will not quietly be part of a website that contributes to this problem.
There's a reason that Al Gore is being praised for his movie. It is 100% convincing, and not a single one of his arguments is based on politics. If it weren't for a mention of the 2000 election (which was definitely unnecessary and tacked on, showing that he's still bitter) you would forget that he was even a former politician.
Seriously, this pisses me off, because our world could very likely be destroyed (or at least sent into another ice age) because of people like you, who see this as a political issue and therefore refuse to become educated on it.
It also pisses me off that if you give half a shit about the environment, you're labeled a tree-hugging pussy. And if you drive a gas-guzzling truck, you're a real man.
So regardless of whether this article was well-written or not (I haven't even read it yet, but I will) do not downplay the issue of global warming when you admittedly don't know a god damn thing about it.
And to your claim that Sports Illustrated has no business writing about this, fuck that too. Anyone who has any kind of podium needs to be writing about this, because so many people would just prefer to ignore it. But ignoring it will certainly lead to disaster.
Wolff is not trying to prove that global warming is happening (as you so desperately want him to) because he is not a scientist. Scientists have already proven the effects and future effects of the climate changes.
Wolff is reaching a crowd that cares about the sports world and saying, "Just so you know, this world is going to be effected too."
*affected. One of my pet peeves, and there I go and do it myself.
http://www.jbs.org/node/2879
Nate, here's an article about three scientists that are skeptical about the impact of humans on global warming. I'll just leave you to read and spare you commentary.
Okay, read that article. Here's a good summary of the argument: "Does all of this mean that global warming has nothing to do with melting glaciers? In all truth, no. But it does serve to point out that opinions vary considerably and that it is inadvisable to base global-warming claims on the status of glaciers alone."
In other words, their argument is doubt. Weeeeeeeeelllll, we're not 100% sure of anything. In fact, the so-called "descenting scientists" are not offering any evidence against global warming. They're simply saying that they're not convinced yet.
All in all, it sounds almost exactly like the "scientists" that still contend that evolution is a bunch of athiest hogwash.
Regardless, I'm not trying to prove anything (largely because I believe it's already been proven). I am only trying to prod EVERYONE to research the topic fairly. Remember, the economy will likely take a hit if we become environmentally responsible, so there are always going to be people making an argument against it.
And since you were up to my challenge to find a dissenting scientist, here's my next one: find one that's been published. In other words, find a scholarly article that denies global warming.
Not gonna do that because even if I did, it would be, "Well the majority disagree," and we'd be right back where we started.
I'm almost sorry I opened this whole can of worms, but then I remember that it's been a while since YCS has had a good fight, so this is good for the soul.
I guess what I would have to say my main issue on the whole debate (trying so hard not to turn this into Yellow Chair Politics), is that global climate change is a complex issue, with possibly many causes.
With the reported changes so minute and gradual, it seems like it's impossible to tell to what degree humans, shitting cows, and natural causes are responsible for increases in gasses that have raised the average global temperature whatever it is like 1 degree on average over the last 100 years.
That being said, my problem is that most of the people who aren't on the global warming canarval wagon yet are the people saying just that, that there needs to be more research on the subject. Sure there's a couple right-wing wackos out there who will call people commie bastards and stuff like that at the slightest mention of the topic, but I'd imagine their numbers are relatively equal to the left-wing wackos who would tell us to bury our cars and just "get along, mannnnnn."
My problem (and maybe that came across in the article) is that those people who simply say, "It's complex. We don't know for sure" are villified by people who have accepted the reality of global warming as unassailable gospel, and who anticipate this secular armageddon to occur in our lifetime.
Recently, the Boston Globe went as far as to say that global warming deniers are on the same level as Holocaust deniers. Excuse me? We have all the information we need on the Holocaust to know where, when, to whom, and by whom it took place. I'd like to see more research taken into account on climate change because it would seem that we don't know who, how much, when, etc. with the kind of certainty to make people like Brian and me march lockstep with the Alex Wolffs of the world.
But that's a very unpopular viewpoint. When I recently mentioned the phrase "for people who believe in global warming" to a friend, she responded, "What do you mean? Isn't that like saying 'people who believe the sky is blue?'" I don't think it's that cut-and-dry yet, and the public discourse should reflect that.
Sorry Mike. It is that cut and dry. We'll never be 100% sure of anything, but rarely will we be more sure of something than we are of global warming.
Also, this particular matter requires immediate action, even if there are some questions that haven't been answered yet. Enough questions have been answered to make it obvious that something needs to change.
Nate: Sorry but it's not that cut and dried and that's exactly what Mike is saying about dissent.
If it was that cut and dried there would be any debate and if you think there isn't debate then you're not paying attention.
Saying something is fact does not make it fact no matter how many times and how loud you repeat it.
Global warming is happening and as a matter of fact it's been happening for hundreds of years. DUH! What is up for debate is whether or not human activity is causing global warming.
One thing that turns me into a cynic regarding the human activity part is the catastrophe that is being trumpeted. Change does not always mean bad things. Some people may need to move back from the shore...some people may find there's more food to eat because of an increase in growing seasons.
Global warming is happening but then it's been happening for a very long time...the planet has also been much hotter than it is now...what is up for debate is the level of impact human activity has on global warming. That's not cut and dried and it's not simple.
Global Warming is coming! Global Warming is coming!!!
Get a grip folks. Scientists all agree that Global Warming happens. What they don't agree on is the CAUSE of the warming (and cooling) trends. There is absolutely no proof that GW is caused by humans and anyone who says different is lying.
If you want to educate yourself beyond what you hear on the news, here is a good place to start.
http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/history_of_climate.html
If you are a fan of "An inconvenient truth" and you think that Gore's movie is "Proof" of GW, you can take a look at this movie.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4520665474899458831&q=global+warming+swindle&hl=en
I wrote on the subject at www.bizplusblog.com and came to similar conclusions. Most of the scientists in the Global Warming Terror industry aren't even in the weather scientists and they make a substantial living off of scaring us to death. I want my sports magazines to give me what I want -- sports. Thanks for your post.
http://gwgh101.blogspot.com/
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