No, not the Flipper kind. According to CNBC, the rising oceans will turn Miami’s professional footballers into a water polo team or some such. But as David Middleton points out, the scenario in question, of a two-foot rise in 20 years, is bad science fiction since they’re currently rising about one tenth of an inch a year. The piece also declares that pro sports teams are so “woke” they’re right into the climate fight. But one problem with being a bully is it’s hard to know whether people really agree or are just too scared to say no. The test is whether you notice teams leaving Miami. In fact they’re moving in.
There are climate alarmists, or perhaps we should call them “worriers”, who deplore the rhetorical and scientific excesses of their less disciplined colleagues while expressing concern about climate and our impact on it. But until they do so more vocally it will be necessary for skeptics to call time-out, or off-side or even a personal foul, when people say things like the seas around Florida will rise by two feet in 20 years.
Or when someone grovels that “The last three years in September, we’ve had climate issues, whether they’re hurricane threats. We had to actually move a game. We’ve had lightning strikes that we’ve never had in 30 years here, where we had to delay a game. It was the longest game in the history of the NFL.”
The guilty party here was Miami Dolphins CEO Tom Garfinkel. And as Middleton rightly observes, he was spouting windily electrifying nonsense. Hurricanes are not getting worse period, so they can’t be getting worse because of climate change, witches or anything else. As for lightning being a climate issue, this claim is a bolt from the blue.
CNBC is also guilty of driveling, by virtue of selecting a professor who asks whether the people planning to construct the new Miami professional soccer team facility near the airport “know that they are building in the future Atlantis.” As we’ve observed before, it’s free publicity to say you’re woke on climate. But when it comes to where people put their money you discover what they really think.
With billions on the line, they checked. Here doesn’t come the flood.
