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
Oh no! Beach Volley Ball is doomed!
I guess then that freestyle water-skiing (y’know, the type where they do tricks in the air after launching themselves off ramps) will be just…water skiing.
But why so negative about stadia being underwater anyway? Get creative! Old Olympic velodromes can host brand new sports:
Sheldon Cooper would have done better
I could be wrong, but I think all that extra CO2 they gripe about is caused by the people jetting around to climate change conferences and talking about trying to change the climate – this goes back 121 years: http://www.lowerwolfjaw.com/agw/quotes.htm It fits, doesn’t it?
Useful to whom? Just as useful as the buffoon Mann, to the Greedy Greens, who want a big slice of everyone’s pies.
“………….. sea level rise effects of climate change,” and that climate change specifically threatens hockey and skiing.”
Water skiing?
Well I guess that when sea-level rise has submerged the ski-runs, he’ll just have to go and find a lake with a slope on it.
Pro Sports Execs “We should meet with the dumbest politicians in D.C. we can find and see if we cannot squeeze some ‘climate change’ money out of them to bolster our profits”.
Yeah, like last night’s football game between the Patriots and the Broncos. From my 11 years of weather data in New Hampshire, yesterday afternoon is the new coldest November day I’ve had. Combined with the wind, I bet we could convince the senator that negative global warming had a big impact on the game.
I’m Canadian. Hockey is played indoors (called arenas!). Pond hockey doesn`t exists in urban areas, where most hockey is played. Even in rural areas, outdoor hockey has never been reliable (snow is the biggest problem, since you have to clear the ice right after a snowfall, which is not always possible). The NHL has ice rings all over North America, even in Florida. So I fail to see any link between warming and hockey being threatened.
Dumbest? I think Guam tipping over still leads.
The quid pro quo is continued taxpayer subsidies of stadiums for the leagues and related BS economic impact reports. Adding climate shamanism to this situation amounts to layered BS.
I hope that his website is inundated (no pun intended) with links to this post as I’ve just done.
Rhode Island is politically New York/Boston/DC, so no surprise at such idiocy.
One can’t help but feel that a Spoonerised version of the Senator’s name might be more apt.
Maybe the NFL/NBA/others were considering building expansion facilities in Venice, Italy, and the good Senator saved them from their foolishness. And perhaps the sky is really pink.
“I’m Canadian. Hockey is played indoors (called arenas!). Pond hockey doesn`t exists in urban areas, where most hockey is played. Even in rural areas, outdoor hockey has never been reliable (snow is the biggest problem, since you have to clear the ice right after a snowfall, which is not always possible)”
Where do you live — Vancouver?
I grew up skating on a rural marsh in NB. If there’s snow, you clear it. But normally there isn’t, because the winds will clear the ice. When we were too lazy to go all the way to the marsh (a good 20-minute walk away) we’d skate in the back yard, where we made our own ice by dumping buckets of water on the ground. Currently I live in Montreal; the city’s outdoor skating rinks open December 15, or whenever things freeze up if it’s not frozen by then — which it hasn’t been, lately. It’s common in winter to see people going around town carrying hockey sticks and skates, headed to or from an outdoor rink. In the hills to the North of the city, small towns plough their lakes to make a city rink.
University and professional sports leagues want more controlled circumstances, but kids definitely grow up skating outdoors in much of the country. Global warming is shrinking the length of the outdoor skating season.
According to Wikipedia Senator Sheldon Whitehouse was investigated for Insider Trading.
So Senator Sheldon Whitehouse what is his property investment portfolio.
So with the great Global Warming Melting icecaps sealevel rises panic he could bag himself some nice desirable beach front real estate.
It sounds like this guy is just dumb enough to be our next President. Some people (47%?) would probably support him just for the novelty of having a President Whitehouse…in the white house.
Senator Sheldon is in on it. He knows CAGW is false.
He’s playing it for control. The control that fear can bring. He is representative of the cabal. The AGW cabal that is now so apparent.
They are called the “Progressive Left” now. They used to be the “Red Menace”.
Times Change and Socialism changes its cloths. Sheldon and his ilk are dangerous opportunists . They spread the propaganda fervently. With Gusto.
They’ll have good jobs in the new order.
The reason for closed door meetings is to prevent the truth from seeping in.
Alvin’s 4:01 comment is priceless! May not be original but at my age lots of jokes are new more than once.
I think Rep. Hank Johnson (Democrat) still wins the prize for the stupidest statement. He thinks that islands can tip over if they’re overpopulated…
(D) Rep. Hank Johnson: Island of Guam Will Tip Over!
“My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize.”
Clearly we have some real geniuses out there electing other real geniuses to congress. /sarc
In time the dumbest thing ever will turn out to be climate change deniers. Sports stadiums or sports are the least of our problems. What amazes me is an intelligent man like Ed reposting this drivel and the a denier blogger using his energy to refute the obvious. I just with we could send them and the fossil fuel companies the bill for their mass propaganda denial campaign- it is public fraud and the you should be ashamed to aid an assist it.
REPLY:LOL! And yet here you are wasting time here when you could be spinning more conspiracy theories about Walmart on your Facebook page and watching MSNBC. – Anthony
Robert Malin says:
November 26, 2013 at 12:53 pm
Gee! Can we get back the 100 billion damage done BY your climate change deniers – you know, the many government-paid so-called scientists who deny natural climate changed before man’s addition of a vital item to the ecosystem allowing all plant growth to expand 12 – 18% percent the past few decades?
Can we get back those 25,000 “excess deaths” you murdered in the UK last year by deliberately increasing the price of energy, food, transportation clothes, fuel and housing?
There are no problems, no hazards, no dangers from any increase in CO2 between 280 ppm and 1000 ppm; there are no problems, no hazards, no dangers from any increase in global temperature between 1/2 of one degree and 2-1/2 degrees. Further, you cannot even establish that any increase in CO2 will actually cause a rise in temperatures. You cannot establish the probability of any increase in global temperature past 3 degrees, and – given your government-paid lab’s results so far, you cannot even determine the sign of any CO2-temperature feedback over even a 20 year period.
There are millions killed by YOU in your efforts to stop that rise. Can you tell me exactly how much you are paid for your religious belief in CAGW? Why should we trust any government-paid “scientist” for repeating government-paid research to generate government-needed tax revenues for government-paid bureaucrats? After all, have you not claimed (without any evidence at all) that skeptical critics create “science” based on their funding; so – when a skeptic DOES has evidence of massive government spending influencing massive government-sponsored grants to produce government-needed results from government-funded universities and from government-funded laboratories printing government-dominated publications?