An examination of the data suggests “quite possibly”.
You can read the press release from the Senator’s office here.
From CNS News video:
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) warns sports stadiums are at risk from the “sea level rise effects of climate change,” and that climate change specifically threatens hockey and skiing.
“We see significant sports facilities, the palaces of – of sport that are at risk from the storm, climate, sea-level rise effects of climate change,” Sen. Whitehouse said today following a closed-door climate discussion with executives from the NFL, NHL and NBA.
Hockey and skiing aside (which we’ll look at later), let’s check some stadiums and sea level, shall we? We’ll start with the largest stadium in Rhode Island, Brown Stadium, located under a mile from the water in the flatlands of East Providence:
The nearest NOAA tide gauge is not far south of the stadium, about 2.4 miles, and according to NOAA, it was established in 1938. Brown Stadium was built in 1925, so it should give us a good indication of the threat. Note the old piers in the photo:
And here is the sea level trend calculated by NOAA for the Providence tide gauge:
NOAA’s calculated rate is 0.64 feet per 100 years. Brown Stadium is about 110 feet above sea level according to Google Earth, so the calculation becomes:
110 feet / 0.0064 feet per year =17187.5 years
17,000 years! Hardly a problem for the present and it may not even be a problem for the future, as I sincerely doubt the stadium will last that long. We may be in a new ice age by then.
Let’s look at some others near his sphere of influence. How about the New York Giants stadium in the Meadowlands? Giants Stadium was demolished in 2010 and replaced by MetLife Stadium, located adjacent to its former site. Built in 1976, it only lasted just over 3 decades. It is about 2/3 of a mile from the nearest ocean linked waterway. According to Google Earth, it is about 10 feet above MSL, a fact that apparently didn’t concern the architects, backers, and owners of the new stadium.
The nearest tide gauge is The Battery, in New York City:
With MetLife Stadium being about 10 feet above MSL, the calculation becomes:
10 feet/.0091 feet per year = 1098.90 years
I’m willing to bet a new stadium will be built well before then wouldn’t you?
OK, How about Boston? Fenway Park isn’t far from the water, approximately 1/4 mile from the Charles River Basin and just across from MIT. Like the former Giants Stadium, it is a mere 10 feet above MSL.
The nearest NOAA tide gauge in Boston is located on the right side of the U.S. Coast Guard Building adjacent to Northern Avenue Bridge (now closed), about 2.3 miles from Fenway Park, which opened in 1912.
With Fenway Park at 10 feet AMSL, a rate of 0.86 feet/100 years the calculation becomes:
10 feet/0.0086 feet/year = 1162.79 years
Like Giants stadium, will Fenway park even be around then? Will it be around in 100 years or will it go the way of many older baseball parks, demolished and relocated/rebuilt to handle bigger crowds?
Climate alarmists often say that low lying Florida will be greatly affected by climate change induced sea level rise, and Miami will be underwater soon. So let’s try a sports stadium in Miami.
Sun Life Stadium in Miami (built 1987) hosts the Miami Dolphins, Miami Hurricanes football, annual Orange Bowl, and BCS National Championship Game every fourth year. Losing it to the sea would be a big deal. It is about 7.5 miles from the Atlantic ocean and about 6 feet above MSL according to Google Earth:
The nearest tide gauge is in Miami Beach about 13.5 miles away:
Unfortunately, the station was removed in 1981 after 50 years of service. I suppose sea level rise wasn’t a big concern or they would have kept it. The rate up until then wasn’t much different that the other tide gauges we’ve examined at 0.78 feet per 100 years. The nearest working gauge to Miami Beach is Naples, Fl, showing only 0.66 feet per 100 years.
With the Orange Bowl being 6 feet AMSL, the calculation becomes:
6 feet/ 0.0078 feet/year = 769.23 years.
Will we even have an Orange Bowl Game then? Who knows?
While Senator Whitehouse is from the east coast, maybe we’ve concentrated on the east coast too much. Let’s try the Gulf of Mexico. Surely the Mercedes-Benz Superdome stadium (built in 1975) in low lying New Orleans is threatened soon?
Notable is this entry in Wikipedia:
The Superdome was used as a “shelter of last resort” for those in New Orleans unable to evacuate from Hurricane Katrina when it struck in late August 2005.
Located about 1 mile from the Mississippi River, Google Earth pegs its elevation around 1-3 feet AMSL.
The nearest NOAA tide gauge is south of New Orleans, about 50 miles at Grand Isle, and is directly on the Gulf of Mexico. It has quite an astounding rate of sea level rise of 3.03 feet in 100 years.
With the Superdome being as low as 1 foot above MSL, the calculation becomes:
1 foot/0.0303 feet per year = 33.00 years
Some of us, though probably not Senator Whitehouse, will be around to see that. I have to wonder though why he isn’t calling for an abandonment/evacuation of the city or New Orleans, since many of the wards are below sea level now. Oh wait, that’s right, they’ve adapted to the subsidence that plagues the city, something they’ve know about for quite some time.
Source: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=6623
Maybe sea level is threatening west coast sports stadiums?
San Francisco is often depicted as being underwater, as evidenced by an alarm raised by The former Governator of California:
The map Schwarzenegger is pointing to comes from BCDC, and is shown below:
San Francisco’s new AT&T Park built in 2000, right on the bay, surely is threatened. It is located in one of the blue zones of the map above, just SW of the Bay Bridge.
The SFO tide gauge is located about 5 miles northwest, near Fort Point and has a long record:
According to Google Earth. AT&T park is about 9-10 feet above MSL.
The calculation becomes:
9 feet/ 0.0066 feet/year = 1363.63 years
It is more likely that San Francisco and the new stadium will devastated by an earthquake before then. And, chances are that A&T park won’t have much more of a lifetime than many of the others we’ve touched on in this article.
Maybe Senator Whitehouse was talking about Seattle. Yeah, that’s the ticket. CenturyLink Field (home to the SeaHawks) and the nearby Safeco Field (home to the Mariners) are right off the wharf, and less than 1/2 mile from Puget Sound.
Google Earth places their elevation at 17 feet above MSL a twofer double threat in the eyes of Senator Whitehouse I’m sure. The nearest NOAA tide gauge at Seattle just 1/2 mile northwest of the stadium at Colman Dock, has a calculated trend of 0.68 feet in 100 years.
The calculation becomes:
17 feet/ 0.0068 feet per year = 2500 years
Drats. Surely there must be a sports stadium somewhere in the USA that is threatened in the near future by sea level rise, so that closed door meetings with sports franchises with the highly distinguished senator from Rhode Island can make his sales pitch factual?
The facts suggest Senator Whitehouse doesn’t even fit the definition of useful idiot.
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References:
List of U.S. stadiums by capacity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._stadiums_by_capacity
NOAA Tides and Currents http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html
What is dangerous and sleazy is that behind doors, we can assume much talk of trading influence for money was discussed. If it was honorable, it would have been open.
the AGW movement at heart is always about using other people’s money to line the pockets of the climate kooks.
That answer for Brown Stadium should be 17,187.5 years rather than 1,718.75.
REPLY: Yep, incorrect placement of decimal point, fixed thanks – Anthony
For those east coast locations, consider it’s all the same ocean. So with greatly differing values of “sea level” rise, clearly it isn’t just the sea affecting the gauges. In SF, all those lands in blue are fill. So add more fill. And if there is more to the story on the east coast, there is almost certainly more to the story regarding sea level rise on the west coast too.
Minor mistake:
110 feet / 0.0064 feet per year = 1718.75 years (this should be 17187.5)
I’m not nit-picking, just trying to help.
[fixed earlier – mod]
It is of interest perhaps that the Science Museum in San Francisco is all about warning of major sea level rise from global warming. To my knowledge the Warriors stadium moving to the waterfront has not been impacted by these concerns.
Re: New Orleans “astounding rate of sea level rise of 3.03 feet in 100 years.
Let’s call it what it is:
It is a normal rate of sea level rise of 0.75 feet in 100 years,
plus a subsidence rate of 2.28 feet per 100 years, which is perfectly normal rate for a delta of a world class river system.
No amount mount of climate change legislation/taxation/regulation/dictation is going to change the subsidence rate. Indeed, if worldwide sea levels dropped, subsidence rate of New Orleans would likely increase, perhaps catastrophically from slumping.
Did you let Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) know of this quantified peril?
Dumbest ever? Hmmmm. That is a high bar indeed. I can’t answer that one because there are so many worthy competitors in climate “science”.
I will say that there are plenty of structures world wide that are close to the sea’s edge and have been there for decades on end. These places show no danger of being covered by the sea. And if a sports stadium were to be lost to this mythical sea rise — so what? Should we destroy the industrial economies of the world to save a few sports stadiums? Give me a break.
I am only eyeballing those two graphs but it looks like there has been a ‘pause’ in sea level rise from around 1980 or so. Anyone care to draw a trend line?
Tonyb
This is right here is how we are and will continue to win: facts, facts and more facts. They can wave their hands and shake their overly-tanned faces (Ahhhnold), but that doesn’t change the facts. It still shocks and sickens me how people who are supposed to be so much smarter than us plebes have all this influence to spread their lies. Regardless, we are working in the shadows, making bunny ears behind them in their photoshoots, themselves complete oblivious to it all…much like they are of any shred of reality.
The Amsterdam Arena is already 3m below sea level. It’s worst than we thought!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam_ArenA
Remember, the Superbowl will be played in MetLife Stadium this year. It looks to be a colder than normal winter on the east coast and a pattern is developing that might bring nor’easters up the coast this season. The NFL and some green groups are conspiring to spread climate alarm and a few well placed ads coupled with a little help from Mother Nature might make for some interesting messaging about climate change and sports stadiums.
It’s dumber that we thought! Although, nothing really beats that the oceans will smell different from climate change.
You typed subsistence in New Orleans when you meant subsidence
REPLY: Yep, fixed, thanks -A
Anthony,
I liked your New Orleans review …
‘Oh wait, that’s right, they’ve adapted to the subsistence that plagues the city, something they’ve know about for quite some time.’
A searing indictment of Democratic Party local governance if ever I saw one. 🙂
So, we know that the mid Atlantic ridge is rising grom the ocean floor and the whole Eastern seaboard is sinking due to tectonic movements. What has that to do with climate change?
Seattle’s going to cop a packet when the Cascadia Fault next shifts anyway,that’s going to be a lot closer than 2,500 years in the future.
tonyb -got the same impression of pause ~1980 from last two graphs also
Whitehouse is one of the worst fear mongers, the master of disasters, leveraging every human tragedy for his political benefit. After the Moore Oklahoma tornado he shamelesly blamed the deniers for the tornados, with ““the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas. It hits Rhode Island with floods and storms.”
edit note re New Orleans: ” they’ve adapted to the *subsistence* that plagues the city” perhaps intended to read ‘subsidence’?
Me thinks one of his staff must have tried to explain the stadium wave theorem of climate to the esteemed gentleman.
But not to fear, has anyone told SW that the stadiums will be destroyed in the tsunamis caused by the impending capsize of Guam?
Given the deal Obama just handed Iran, by comparison, Senator Whitehouse appears to be a cool, calm, rational man making decisions based on the facts at hand.
Maybe I’m odd, but if I were worried about sea levels, probably the very last concern would be the sports stadiums. Of course, team owners are always looking for someone to build them a new stadium. so they won’t laugh out loud at this buffoon.
The lack of concern for rising sea levels in Seattle is evidenced by the current construction of a tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct (SR 99) along the city’s waterfront. The southern tunnel entrance will be closer to the water than the stadiums. Those concerned about rising sea levels did not make an effort to replace the elevated highway with another one.
Additionally, a major portion of the waterfront seawall is being rebuilt soon. As of now, have not read of any plan to make it higher. Major remodels of the Washington State ferry terminal in downtown Seattle have not altered the elevation of any structures there. Lastly, plans for a brand new arena near the waterfront to attract an NBA and NHL team to Seattle have recently been floated. (Pun intended.)
Why wasn’t Sen. Whitehouse out here alerting us to the danger before we sank billions into these expensive capital projects?
Dumb and Dumber – Whitehouse and Waxman.