Posted on 03/14/2007 4:01:18 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
Hey, Chicagoans, how would you like to live in the Miami of the Midwest? All you gotta do is stay put! Climate-wise, in 50 years, maybe less, Chicago could be what Miami is now -- minus the proximity to Havana, of course, and minus the fact a good part of South Florida might be under water. Forget January snowball fights in Grant Park.
How about spring-break water skiing on Lake Michigan?
How about Christmas margaritas outdoors?
By now, you've heard of global warming.
I'm guessing the only people who don't think the condition is real and largely man-created are right-wing loon Ann Coulter -- whose little black dress will give way to a little black bikini with temperature increase -- and flat-earth societies.
Sports Illustrated, not exactly a scientific journal, just used a doctored photo on its cover of Florida Marlins pitcher Dontrelle Willis standing on the pitcher's mound at Dolphin Stadium in Miami, thigh-deep in water.
''SPORTS AND GLOBAL WARMING,'' the headline reads. ''As the Planet Changes, So Do the Games We Play -- Time to Pay Attention.''
Ya think?
Ice caps that have been around for millennia are melting swiftly.
The ocean is expected to rise anywhere from a minimum of 4 inches to 3 feet by 2100.
If that doesn't sound like much, consider that 4 inches would imperil many of our Eastern beach areas, and 3 feet would, according to the April cover story in The Atlantic, threaten the survival of countries from Bangladesh to the Netherlands, ''while submerging pretty much all of the world's trendy beach destinations to boot.''
SI lists 13 ballparks and arenas -- from San Francisco to Jacksonville, Fla., from Oracle Arena in Oakland, Calif., to Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla. -- that will be under water with a 1-meter sea-level rise.
In its quaint, sports-focused way, SI neglects to mention that the host cities will be swamped, too.
The heck with South Beach -- come visit our South Shore!
The future, and the present You see, fresh water -- and 20 percent of the earth's drinkable supply resides in our Great Lakes -- will not increase in the future, except from torrential rains, floods and unusable dumpings over the ocean. Lake Michigan and her sisters will shine like a glorious liquid treasure more precious than oil as hundreds of millions of world inhabitants beg for more water, some of them no farther away than Phoenix and Las Vegas.
All this climate turbulence -- or at least the vast majority of it -- is being caused by us humans, who have been burning fossil fuels and polluting the atmosphere at an increasing rate since the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1700s.
This isn't about blame or politics.
Who of us voted the Oscar to Al Gore?
I like my gas-guzzling SUV, air-conditioned house and belching barbecue grill as much as anybody.
But whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, a fascist or a Commie, it doesn't matter now because, as the apolitical Sports Illustrated points out, ''global warming is by definition global. Every organism on the planet is already feeling its impact.''
For once, we all are truly in this together.
So as we realize that it's high time to do something about our treatment of this little planet, we also should be aware of the things that are already happening because of global warming, things that will affect us as we deal with the problem.
Animals and plants are migrating, and local climates are transforming regions into new places with new identities.
This isn't a good time to open a ski slope, for instance, as snowfall is lessening and seven World Cup skiing events had to be canceled in Europe this season because of warming.
''Winter in Vermont is now the equivalent of winter in Rhode Island,'' Sports Illustrated notes.
People should be wary of ice fishing in Wisconsin, and woe unto the high school football players who must struggle through two-a-days in places such as Texas and Louisiana, where summers are becoming like Indonesia's.
Any silver linings? It might be a good time for butterfly collectors, perhaps, for those who get to chase species in northern latitudes where the insects never have been before. But it's tougher if you don't like marching fire ants or emerald ash borers, which already have moved far enough north to threaten the Adirondack ash trees that produce the baseball bats for our major leagues.
It's not all certain doom and gloom, mind you.
Things such as expanded growing seasons and lowered heating bills can be short-term pluses.
Indeed, parts of Greenland now are open to cultivation two weeks longer than in the 1970s, and imagine what that once-desolate mini-continent might become.
But the time has arrived to think about the things we need, as opposed to the things we want, and to ponder the things we do for amusement, compared with the precious things we must bequeath our descendants.
Our planet, our species, needs a sporting chance.
Letters to our sports columnists appear Sunday. Send e-mail to inbox@suntimes.com. Include your full name, hometown and a daytime phone number.
mailto:rtelander@suntimes.com
CHICAGOLAND PING
The blind leading the blind...
Oh my.
I wonder how those great lakes came about. Oh yeah. The melting glacier over North America left behind the Great Lakes. Must have been those SUV driving American Indians.
As is evident here, the idea is to so fill every section of the paper with this garbage that you can't miss it.
They claim that oceans will go up and the Great Lakes going down is also an effect. In other words, anything bad that happens is because of SUVs.
Someday soon, Provincetown, MA will be the same as Key West.
Oh wait.
It already is.
The ocean goes up another 580 feet or so and Chicago is in big trouble.
What is it about this particular kool-aid that makes people want to just gulp it down? This comes at a time when the whole foundation of anthropogenic warming is beginning to crumble.
For Icy Greenland, Global Warming Has a Bright Side
But to many of the people who live here in Greenland, the warming trend is a boon, not a threat. [snip]Already, the temperature rise in Greenland has extended the growing season by two weeks since the 1970s -- no small matter since those two weeks come during the spring and summer when the sun shines for as long as 20 hours a day in southern Greenland. Warmer days allow farmers to take better advantage of the extended sunlight, which gives plants more energy and a better chance to survive and thrive. If temperatures rose enough to allow the growing season to begin in late April, rather than mid-May, Greenlandic farmers might be able to grow fruit, including strawberries or apples. [snip]
Near the end of the 14th century, the Norse vanished from Greenland. While researchers don't know for sure, many believe an increasingly cold climate made eking out a living here all but impossible as grasses and trees declined. Farming faded away from the 17th century to the 19th century, a period known as the Little Ice Age.
It seems like what the Gorites are up to is rejecting all of the "old" conventional science and, little by little, replacing it with their own national socialist meteorology.
baloney. you wouldn't even notice a four inch rise in ocean depths. Erosion will do more damage to the coast.
They can't even get the weather correct on a day-by-day basis and we're expect to believe them when they say what it's going to be like in 50 years.
It appears that someone doesn't understand that WATER VAPOR not CO2 is the "chief warming gas". Furthermore, that same someone doesn't understand how the Sun affects cosmic rays.
I think it's the cosmic rays that affect the distribution of cloud formation and water vapors, which affects the greenhouse effect. At least, that's the "cosmic ray" theory as I read it.
Retarded in the extreme.
Let's face it. People don't turn to SI when they are looking for intelligent writing.
Climatologists, the real ones anyway, are beginning to acknowledge that global temperature readings have been falling for the past three years. And yet, what amazes me is that the Global Warming myth perpetuators can't recognize what is happening before their very eyes: GW protest events are having to be cancelled or postponed because of (gasp) record COLD temperatures and (horrors!) BLIZZARDS!!!
When temperature data can no longer sustain the myth of human caused global warming (unless the data is manipulated or manufactured as Michael Mann did to create his [now] discredited "hockey stick" graph), how will the MSM and the GW myth perpetuators (Al Gore comes to mind) convince people that they were and still are "right" about GW??
Inquiring minds and such . . . .
No, no, no.....it was Buffalo farts
Apolitical SI?
Danger Will Robinson - Incoming Spew!
My Dad cancelled his subscription to SI in the 80's cause he couldn't stand their leftist bent back then.
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