Posted on 03/11/2007 8:34:29 AM PDT by Diago
Posted by Noel Sheppard on March 7, 2007 - 23:03.
Listen up, sports fans: your favorite weekly magazine is worried about global warming, and how it might impact your next trip to the ballpark. I kid you not.
In fact, Sports Illustrated is so concerned about this issue that its the cover-story of the March 12 issue. Just read the hysterical opening paragraph (h/t Drudge):
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; and why that Gulf Coast wharf where you used to reel in mackerel and flounder no longer exists; and why it's been more than one winter since you pulled those titanium skis out of the garage.
Nice beginning, dontcha think? And heres the truly delicious punchline:
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. 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.
SI, as the bastion of scientific reason, had the decency of making some suggestions:
Turbines mounted on upper decks would catch the same wind that plays whimsically with pop flies, turning it into the source of power to offset at least some of the energy demands of a ball game. Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., features a water filtration and reuse system that collects and recirculates "black" and "gray water" to make the most of all that beer and all those flushes.
Yet, the best was saved for last:
"It's the last of the semipagan calendars we keep," [writer and activist Bill] McKibben says, "and a lot of it is going to disappear. All that Bart Giamatti stuff" -- the pastoral invocations of the former commissioner of baseball -- "has a different valence if we're not going to Florida for spring training, but to St. Paul. We're still so used to the idea that we can deal with the forces of nature that we think nothing of naming our teams Hurricanes and Cyclones. In 10 years, that will be like calling a team the Plagues."
Ten years. That's two-and-a-half Olympiads -- enough time for our teams and athletes to take the lead, galvanize attention and influence behavior. When they do, per usual, may we cheer and may we follow. But as we watch, let us remember that this game is different. We don't have the luxury of looking on from the sidelines. We must become players too.
Truly unbelievable. Now I've got to put up with this nonsense while watching a baseball game.
What's the world coming to?
I don't give a rat's elbow what Sports Whatsit has to say about anything?
M Kehoe fears fried brain cells are changing Sports Illustrated.
5.56mm
Goodbye hockey! Hello urban surfing!
I know that quite often the same coat etc I wear to Cubs opening day is the same coat etc I wear to the last Bears game.
SI is, has been and always will be a crappy magazine.
I see they have now found a subject they know even less about than sports. They are an absolute joke of a publication.
I think Howie Long may be a conservative. Several years ago he made the remark "The Minnesota Vikings spend less on defense than the Clinton Administration". My fantasy football league had a good laugh at that for a while...
I love Howie Long, a real man.
I'm sure there are a few conservatives in the sports reporting field as there are in the acting field. In fact I would bet that most of them would probably be ex-jocks. But like the acting profession, they are dwarfed by the huge amount of liberal activists who have chosen sports to push their cause. I was absolutely stunned to hear the words of Lebetard in the friend of Tiger Woods interview, but SI and ESPN have a number of writers whom I've read express their liberal sympathies. Rick Telander is another one. Their mindset is still pre-nineteen-sixties.
The article states ...in so many words...Willy Mays was a talentless lucky bum whose abbility to play baseball was based on the daily temperature.....The article was more concerned with the loss of sports stadiums....To hell with the millions of displaced people from Florida to Maine...(No flooding in Canada or the rest of the World) as long as we have the modern Portable Sports Stadiums that can be assembled/disassembled and moved as needed...
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