Ladies and gentlemen, no matter how often the climate doomsday cult appears to have officially reached peak absurdity, along comes another “journalist” saying: Hold my beer! No longer content with blaming hurricanes, wildfires, and bad hair days on climate change, TIME magazine has now decided that football—yes, the sport where 300-pound men slam into each other at full speed—is somehow under siege from slightly warmer weather.
Jeffrey Kluger’s article, How Climate Change Is Affecting the NFL, is the latest entry in the ongoing competition to see who can produce the most ridiculous climate alarmism. Let’s break this nonsense down, shall we?
OMG, It Was Hot in October!
Kluger kicks off his fever dream with a tale of a 98°F game between the 49ers and the Cardinals on October 6, 2024. Wow, stop the presses! It was hot in California in the fall! What next? Are we going to blame climate change for earthquakes too?
For some perspective, the highest temperature ever recorded in San Francisco in October was 102°F on October 5, 1987. So, a 98°F day in 2024 is hardly unprecedented.
The author even notes that the 49ers changed their pants color to reflect more heat. That’s it. That’s the big climate catastrophe. Pants.
Of course, Kluger doesn’t mention that the hottest recorded NFL game was a 1978 season opener in St. Louis at 105°F, long before carbon hysteria took over the media. Nor does he mention that cold-weather games still happen every season, including the “Ice Bowl” of 1967 at −13°F or the 2016 Seahawks-Vikings playoff game at −6°F. Climate change sure works in mysterious ways.
A Whole 2.8°F Warmer! Over 54 Years!
According to Kluger, a survey by Climate Central (a group that exists solely to push climate fearmongering) found that NFL cities have warmed by an average of 2.8°F since 1970.
Let’s do some actual thinking here.
- No mention of Urban Heat Islands and metropolitan growth.
- The 1970’s was the period of the global cooling scare.
- The average daily temperature can swing 20–30°F in a single afternoon.
This is what Kluger considers an emergency? At this rate, we’ll reach Florida beach weather in Buffalo sometime around the year 2500.
And even if this warming trend were accurate, have these geniuses considered indoor stadiums, cooling technologies, or the simple fact that NFL players are, by definition, peak human athletes? I promise you, a linebacker is more worried about getting blindsided by Aaron Donald than whether the temperature is 85°F instead of 83°F.
Hot Weather Is Dangerous—Unlike Football?
Kluger gravely warns us about the risks of heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Oh, you mean the risks that football players have always faced in summer training camps?
This is the same sport where:
- Players suffer concussions, broken bones, torn ACLs, and spinal injuries regularly.
- A quarterback played an entire game with a broken jaw.
- Some guys have been knocked unconscious mid-play.
But no, the real danger is the thermometer creeping a few degrees higher. Right.
Also, he conveniently ignores the fact that cold weather is far more dangerous than heat. The most common causes of weather-related deaths in the U.S. are cold exposure and hypothermia. But since “global warming” is the villain, you won’t hear that from TIME.
More Heat Waves = More Snowstorms?
Kluger also tries to scare us with stories of a Buffalo Bills game buried under snow in December 2024.
Now, stay with me here—he claims that hotter temperatures caused more snow because the Great Lakes didn’t freeze. So let me get this straight:
- Warmer weather makes things colder.
- More heat leads to blizzards.
- The Great Lakes didn’t freeze because of climate change… but they still managed to dump tons of snow.
- POLAR VORTEX STRETCHING something, something, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb.
You almost have to admire the mental gymnastics.
By this logic, turning up your air conditioning makes your house hotter.
NFL Stadiums Need to “Go Green” (For Some Reason)
Of course, no climate propaganda is complete without plugging “green” sports stadiums. Kluger suggests that the NFL must “adjust” to climate change, as if the league isn’t already raking in billions and handling bad weather like professionals.
Here’s an idea: if the climate warriors are so concerned, why don’t they boycott the Super Bowl? After all, it’s powered by evil fossil fuels, with fans flying in on CO₂-spewing jets, eating methane-emitting hamburgers, and cheering under carbon-intensive stadium lights.
Oh, right. They won’t, because all of this is performative nonsense.
The Real Takeaway: It’s All a Grift
Let’s be honest—this article isn’t about football. It’s about shoehorning climate change hysteria into every aspect of life. The game could be played on the surface of the Sun, and these people would still find a way to blame SUVs and gas stoves.
Meanwhile, NFL teams are doing just fine:
- Players train in state-of-the-art facilities with climate control.
- Coaches adjust for heat like they always have.
- The league makes billions, regardless of the weather.
And here’s the real kicker: the NFL is actually expanding into hotter regions. There’s a team in Las Vegas, a city that gets 120°F summers. Why? Because none of these climate scares matter in real life.
Final Score: Reality – 49, Climate Hysteria – 0
At the end of the day, the only thing heating up is the nonsense coming from mainstream media. Climate change isn’t ruining football—bad officiating and Roger Goodell are.
So, Jeffrey Kluger, thanks for the laugh. Maybe next time, try blaming climate change for Tom Brady’s retirement, the Cowboys’ annual playoff choke, or the Jets still being terrible.
That’d be more believable than this nonsense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoXpdXucO3w
Any questions?
Time has been banging on about climate change for a very long time, in very contradictory ways. Illustrated using only real Time covers starting in 1973 in fun essay ‘Fire and Ice’ in ebook Blowing Smoke. After finishing the essay, I cancelled my Time subscription.
It’s a real shame as to what happened with Time Magazine. The Time/Life Science series of books from the early to mid 1960’s was very well done.
I had those books — kept for many years.
Me, too.
I think they had to fight US culture on some of the content of those books, then they never noticed when they won, then they’ve spent 50 years fighting ghosts and straw men. I hope we don’t replicate that on AGW. IF US culture is getting around to noticing the truth THEN what happens to the people (both prevalent POVs) who have dedicated time and resources to the fight? Both POV champions are now socially and economically invested in a conflict that stops mattering to everyone else.
I was interviewed by a Time reporter a couple decades ago regarding hurricanes. At the end of the interview she asked me sotto voce ‘what about climate and hurricanes?’ I assured her that we hadn’t seen any long-term climate effects on either hurricane number or intensities. My remarks did NOT make her article.
Time articles on geomagnetic reversals and seafloor spreading from the 1960’s originally kicked off (pun intended) my career in geology – as well as gold panning in the local creeks to satisfy a prospecting urge. I didn’t recall Time being alarmist, but then again below is an extract from June 17 1966 on geomagnetic reversals:
Man appeared on earth after the last reversal, and he has never been exposed to a significant increase in cosmic radiation. But he soon may be put to the test. Current data, Heezen feels, points to a gradual weakening of the magnetic field, a possible prelude to a reversal in a few hundred to a few thousand years. This would mean a sudden increase in cosmic bombardment of the earth’s surface. “I don’t want to be an alarmist,” he says, “but we may be next.”
Why do scientists blot their copybooks with these alarmist grabs?
The Earth magnetic field reverses regularly, so our ancestors, while no Homo Sapience, but still biologically very similar, have endured through many.
Lake Erie does freeze over completely – in some years. On average, toward the end of December, it is just about 20% ice covered. December 1, 2024 and any year for the first full week, Lake Erie is almost ice free.
My first encounter with Lake Effect Snow was in ~1960, near Erie PA.
Time jumped the shark long ago…
“NFL cities have warmed by an average of 2.8°F since 1970.”
“cities”
UHI?
Will teams like the Vikings, Packers and The Bills notice?
Photo of tubby guys with no shirts and team-color chest paint here.
“…no matter how often the climate doomsday cult appears to have officially reached peak absurdity, along comes another…” Miliband idea.
Ed Miliband is poised to announce billions in new subsidies for wood-burning power plants to prevent Britain losing a critical source of electricity…
Miliband to hand taxpayer billions to wood-burning power stations https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/07/miliband-hand-taxpayer-bn-wood-burning-power-station-drax/
Is your local forest safe?
How crazy is this: DRAX sits on top of a coal field, but it burns wood chips shipped over from the United States!
This has to be one of the dumbest Net Zero ideas evah!
I would love to see Trump stop that trade in wood chips..
.. under the excuse of saving US forests. 🙂
They are also building a £4.3bn HVDC transmission cable to bring electricity from Scottish wind farms to Drax.
By the way – CR this is a great read, nice article, thanks
eg “After all, it’s powered by evil fossil fuels, with fans flying in on CO₂-spewing jets, eating methane-emitting hamburgers, and cheering under carbon-intensive stadium lights.”
Wonderful.
To be fair, the methane comes AFTER eating the hamburger.
More like hydrogen sulfide. Methane, by the way, is odorless.
There is a very simple reason for this kind of trash reporting. The CAGW clowns have no science to back up their claims. If they did it would plastered all over the mainstream media 24/7. Without proper science the alternative is to scare the crap out of all the sheep who live and breathe according to what they hear, read and view from the mainstream media. We are whipping them and they know it.
The deadender magazine for deadenders.
In Kansas City, we’re LOVING this climate change…we win all the Super Bowls now. I’m sure it must be AGW and not Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes…
If there’s anything that’s detracting from the NFL and NBA, it’s too many time-outs that prolong the actual games with too much dead time. This was a problem with Major League Baseball until it introduced at pitch clock and several other rules changes that have succeeded in shortening the games by 20-30 minutes so that genuine action can be seen. Temperatures have little or nothing to do with games since they’re going to fluctuate outdoors regardless and have no effect in indoor stadiums and arenas.
They should change the Delay of Game rule. Right now, you get penalized yardage and repeat the down. Umm why repeat the down? Delay of game should be loss of down. Get on with the game.
There’s this chestnut:
The U.S. coast is in an unprecedented hurricane drought – why this is terrifying
The Washington Post August 4th 2016
And this:
The Polar Vortex Explained YouTube
“I promise you, a linebacker is more worried about getting blindsided by Aaron Donald”
Uhh, Aaron Donald is a defensive player. Linebackers are defensive players. Are his own linebackers worried about being blindsided by him?
I think he meant quarterback.
Also, Aaron retired after the 2022 Superbowl LVI where he essentially ended the game with a victory for his team (LA Rams) by wasting Cincinnati QB Joe Burrow on a 4th & 1.
https://www.espn.com/nfl/playbyplay/_/gameId/401326638
The NFL is ruining football, not climate change. They keep adopting all sorts of leftist, “woke” nonsense to appease the leftists who neither watch, nor care about, football, and I’m sure a nod to “climate change” is probably part of their PR package.
“OMG, It Was Hot in October!“Umm no it wasn’t.
The average temperature across the entire world in October.was 14C.
What good is a global average temperature? None whatsoever.
The alarmists say there is global warming.
Do you have a better way of proving that’s not the case than giving the actual global temperature ?
Yes. Show temperatures in locations that have not warmed. That proves it’s not global.
Charles,
In the past few days, we in Melbourne Australia have been told that US football will be played here a couple of times soon. Rams versus someone. Nobody asked we locals if we wanted this. It was a secret gummint deal that cost we taxpayers a sum of money – but the amount is undisclosed, company confidential type of reason. This was followed by a deal with NBA to also play some games here. Here, because Melbourne stumped up more money than rival, Sydney. Amount undisclosed again. Tickets reputed to cost over $1,000 a game.
The burning of jet fuel that you mentioned is about to increase.
People are strange. Melbourne has its home grown Australian Football League with its own rules, nothing like gridiron. Stadium crowds of up to 80,000 a location pay to go each week of the season to the Aussie football, spending a lot of money with a religious zeal, reserving week days to whinge about government not spending enough on fixing potholes in roads or paying for more doctors and nurses etc. It is weird, the spending priorities of people. Geoff S
I agree, Geoff. You don’t want American football as much as Americans don’t want Aussie football. I don’t get it either. They’re doing games in Mexico City, and London. The jet lag on a US team to fly to Oz and back in just a couple days has to be staggering.
Who says Americans don’t want Aussie rules football? I think any sport where an announcer can say: “That’s a proper clothesline” is going to be popular in the US.
BTW, Aussie players have come to dominate the position of punter in US football. So some folks down under are paying attention.
I read this kind of stuff on The Conversation some months ago, focusing on Australian sports, including the Brisbane Olympics in 2032. It seems climate change is turning sports like cricket upside down, and everyone has to adapt. Brisbane, where I live, also has to be ready for the heat when the Olympics come. They’re being held in late July, early August, which is actually winter here. While things can get unusually warm at any time, and we did indeed get an unusual heatwave late August last year, winters here, while hardly freezing, continue to have plenty of cold days and nights for at least a couple of months. Last winter and the ensuing spring have been followed by, so far, an occasionally very hot, generally hot (and very wet) summer, certainly not the hottest we’ve had. But it seems winter is certainly going to be hot in Brisbane in seven years time, so everyone had better be ready.
It’s been awhile since I watched any NFL game. I may be wrong, but aren’t NFL games typically held in air conditioned stadiums?