Progressive agendas used to be confined to the news and opinion pages of print and electronic media. Now they're spilling over onto the sports pages. Case in point: today's Washington Post sports section includes a lengthy feature story as part of a "Game Changer" series pushing the climate change agenda.
The headline over the story by Rick Maese reads: "Waning Winters." The subhead reads: "In the Netherlands, an iconic skating race — and a way of life — faces extinction from climate change."
Maese's story surrounds the "Elfstedentocht" (11 cities tour), a 135-mile ice skating race over frozen canals in the Friesland province. This race has been going for 110 years, drawing two million visitors and 3,000 journalists. The forecast for this year's race is grim because of global warming, he reports. Weather and ice conditions determine when the race is skated and the Dutch are still waiting for this year's event to happen.
Maese writes the Netherlands "is no longer a romantic wintry wonderland, and there hasn’t been an Elfstedentocht since 1997, marking the longest drought ever between races. Climate change has endangered the race and is slowly dousing hopes across the province."
Despite evidence of a Dutch natural ice skating competition in 2018, Maese sees the "canal" as half-empty:
"The threats that climate change poses to the sports world are not theoretical, and they aren’t all looming far down the road. Scientists, sports enthusiasts and event organizers around the globe have already noticed an impact, from changes in the ocean that affect water sports and fishing, to extreme heat that has taken a toll on event scheduling and athlete training, to rising sea levels and intensifying storms that endanger communities and livelihoods."
Maese says last year was the fourth-warmest global surface temperature since 1880, and he makes additional points to support his theory of doomed winter sports. He says warmer temperatures have altered the Iditarod dog-sledding race in Alaska, there are fewer frozen ponds safe enough for outdoor hockey in the U.S. and Canada, and half the ski season could be wiped out by 2050. He assures readers such threats to sports events are "not theoretical."
This doomsday pessimism is placed much higher in the story than Maese's qualifier that "the Netherlands have never been reliably frigid." The Elfstedentocht began in 1909, and in its first 50 years there was insufficient ice on the canal for racing 39 times. Then there were far fewer automobiles and factories and no talk of greenhouse gases or so-called global warming. In the intervening years there was also fear-mongering about another ice age. Maese is undeterred by these holes in his story.
Aside from the media's part in hyping so-called global warming, American sports enthusiasts are enjoying great powder out West. Snowpack in the Rocky Mountains is very deep, and spring run-off forecasts put some regions in the Southwest at 170-300 percent of median.
Also, a new study finds that the Arctic region was 4.6 degrees Celsius warmer in the 1930s than in recent years. And a few weeks ago, the Midwest suffered one of its coldest arctic blasts in two decades.
So much for the Post's hot air and cold science.
