Sports offers a new arena for climate change concerns

By Sal Ruibal, USA TODAY

If you're among the estimated 86 million people who will visit a U.S. beach this summer, the impact of climate change on sports and recreation is becoming very apparent.

 

Hurricanes are increasing in number and strength, beach erosion is wiping out dunes and waves are becoming too big for surfing and sport fishing, some climate experts say.

 

Higher ocean water temperatures are causing coral bleaching and the death of reefs that are the homes of many living creatures as well as popular sites for divers.

 

For oceans activist David Helvarg, the time for alarm has come.

 

"The (hurricane) destruction in 2004 and 2005 was no exception," says Helvarg, who heads the Blue Frontier Campaign and recently authored the book Fifty Ways to Save the Ocean. "We need to change Earth Day into Ocean Day. About 95% of the planet's living creatures are in the water. The rising temperatures in our seas can have major consequences for all of us."

 

As ocean temperatures change, Helvarg says, extreme weather events proliferate. That puts much of the nation's prime recreational real estate ? everything from the famous and picturesque greens at Pebble Beach in California to the "pipeline" surfing waves at Oahu's North Shore ? in danger.

 

The global implications for life ? and sport ? beyond the beach are just as serious.

 

Thailand's Phi Phi Island is literally on the other side of the world from the USA's eastern seaboard, but the interconnectivity of the planet's weather systems and the effects of climate change link North Carolina's Outer Banks surfers to local diving leader Prem Tinsulanonda.

 

Prem's dive boat takes customers to some of the world's most beautiful undersea attractions, most near the bigger and better-known island of Phuket in the Malacca Strait.

 

Phuket and many of the nearby islands were hit hard by the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami, which killed more than 4,000 locals and tourists.

 

"The tsunami was a wake-up call for many of us," Prem says. "We came to understand how fragile our ocean can be.

 

"Things that happen far away can make a big change on us because we are all connected by the water. How we treat the sea is not just a Phi Phi problem but one for the world because something bad in one area can quickly become a tragedy in another, even on the other side of the world."

 

Around-the-world sailor Sebastien Josse has seen almost all of the planet's oceans from behind the wheel of a sailboat.

 

From his current perspective as skipper of ABN Amro Two in the nearly completed Volvo Ocean Challenge, Josse says: "It is the health of the sea that determines the well-being of the land. Man has created the means to damage the sea, so man must make it right."

 

 

It amazes me that the world and everything in it is Cyclic. I think we have created an atmosphere that is condusive to all these "Super" Hurricanes, erratic wave activity, and erosion by over population and lack of concern over the environment. This is Mother Nature's way of combating that. Send in some super storms and balance out the equation again by lowering the population. Pretty Ingenius! What do you think?

Not the hurricane argument again. Global Warming has had absolutely no bearing on hurricanes world wide. One might point to the increase worldwide from the 30s, 40s, and 50s to today. Well, we didn't have satallites then so we damn well didn't know how many storms there truly were.

Not the hurricane argument again. Global Warming has had absolutely no bearing on hurricanes world wide. One might point to the increase worldwide from the 30s, 40s, and 50s to today. Well, we didn't have satallites then so we damn well didn't know how many storms there truly were.

 

 

so how can you say definitively?

 

 

/devil's advocate

Can I say without a doubt? No. But I can say that hurricane numbers across the world have not increased at all. And if logic says global warming is global, then why is the Atlantic the only basin that is increasing according to these jokes of hurricane researchers.

It's not so much the number of overall hurricanes increasing, it's the fact that the intensity of those hurricanes are. That makes a huge difference.

It's not so much the number of overall hurricanes increasing, it's the fact that the intensity of those hurricanes are. That makes a huge difference.

Find me any factual information that says that. Stats. Cause I've done my research and no, that is not the case.