July 16, 2020: College Football at Risk - But Not Our Showerheads!

 

7/16/20:  Many Trump supporters believe that the COVID numbers they are seeing have been faked. Scientists are lying. Doctors and nurses and healthcare professionals are lying. Democratic governors and mayors are lying. But would the NCAA lie when the college football season is endangered?

 

The N.C.A.A. on Thursday updated its guidelines for bringing back college sports this fall, and they included universal masking on all sidelines, daily coronavirus symptom checks and social distancing on and off the field.

 

But if there are going to be sports this fall, the pandemic has to be more under control. And it’s not looking good right now.

 

“Today, sadly, the data point in the wrong direction,” Mark Emmert, the president of the N.C.A.A., said in a statement. “If there is to be college sports in the fall, we need to get a much better handle on the pandemic.”  

College sports now at risk. 

The Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, made up of 11 historically black colleges, had already joined the Patriot and Ivy Leagues in suspending fall sports. The Big East had announced that “its schools would exclusively play in conference for men’s and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s cross-country, volleyball and field hockey, following in the footsteps of the Big Ten and the Pac-12.” 

Even the mighty SEC is unsure. Sports like volleyball, soccer and cross-country would be postponed until at least September. 

Football? No one knows.

 

Sports Illustrated was blunt, noting that pessimism had taken root in NCAA circles, with the nation “speeding in the wrong direction in terms of combating the coronavirus pandemic.” One casualty this fall might well be “an endeavor millions of us want and every college athletic department needs.” That is: college football. 

“If the season dies, we know who had the biggest hand in killing any chance of it happening: Donald Trump.” 

When he inevitably gets around to Twitter-ranting about what has happened to the sport, Trump should instead do what he never does – accept some accountability for the state of affairs. By blowing the summer he’s jeopardized the fall, doing more to endanger the college football season than anyone in America.

 

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Gutting  the “Bill of Rights” for the environment. 

STILL, it could be worse. You could live in low-lying areas along the U.S. coast. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has just released a detailed study of coastal flooding, noting that sea levels have risen thirteen inches since 1920. 

That doesn’t mean people along the coast need to walk around in waders. It does mean scientists have plentiful evidence of climate change – and the real problem isn’t Joe Biden and his threat to America’s windows (see: 7/15/20). Thirteen inches might not sound like much. Small differences can be problematic. Corpus Christi, Texas had only three days of tidal flooding in 2000. Charleston, South Carolina had two. In 2019, they suffered 18 and 13 days of flooding, respectively. According to NOAA, Charleston had only 13 days, total, in the first fifty years records were kept. Eagle Point, Texas reported 64 high-tide flooding days last year.

Coast flooding in Newport Beach, California.

 

Nor was that the only bad news when it came to climate change. Even Fox News felt bound to report: “The World Meteorological Organization said it expects global temperatures will rise ‘at least’ 1 degree Celsius (1.64 degrees Fahrenheit) in each year of the next five years, far above levels not seen since the Second Industrial Revolution.” 

That’s a poorly worded sentence, if my retired-teacher-self ever spotted one and circled it in red. If true, we’d all be cooking our brains in the next twenty years. What WMO really said was that we could expect an increase of 1 degree Celsius in the next five years, not every year. There’s also a 20% chance that global temperatures will rise by 1.5 degrees Celsius in that period. 

There’s a 100% chance that President Trump won’t do anything about the problem, except make it worse.

 

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IN OTHER BAD NEWS, methane emissions hit a record high in 2017. Methane can be up to 86 times more harmful in the atmosphere than CO₂. Nevertheless, Trump appointees at the Environmental No-Protection Agency have worked hard to roll back rules passed by the Obama administration to curtail methane emissions. 

Scientists are increasingly worried. “Terrified” might be a better word, except scientists don’t use words like “terrified,” and try to stick to science: 

Emissions of methane, a potent ingredient in global warming, have hit an all-time record high equivalent to putting 350 million more cars on the world’s roads, according to new research.

 

Left unabated, that level of methane emissions could help heat the earth to dangerous temperatures before the end of the century.

 

…The results of the study, conducted by scientists from several institutions including NASA, Yale and Stanford, were published Tuesday…. Methane emissions are largely driven by coal mining, oil production, natural gas production, landfills and cattle and sheep ranching.

 

As soon as Trump fans see the words “cattle and sheep,” they revert to talking about liberals who want to take away guns and farting cows. 

And now gaseous sheep! 

Leading environmental groups have accused the president and his fossil fuel buds of gutting a core rule, meant to protect the nation’s air, water and resources. For half a century, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has required the government to consider “environmental and community concerns before approving pipelines, highways, drilling permits, new factories, or any major action on federal lands.” Now protections will be relaxed. Polluters will be able to skirt the rules and Trump’s E-no-PA administrators will turn a blind eye. 

The Sierra Club is opposed to the changes. So are the Wilderness Society, the League of Conservation Voters, Union of Concerned Scientists, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Colorado Wild Public Lands and Independence Pass Foundation, and just about every other environmental group you might name. The Wilderness Society compares NEPA to a “Bill of Rights” for the environment.

 

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S.O.S.: Save Our Showers. 

SPEAKING from the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday, the president explained his decision to roll back almost every regulation designed to protect the environmental that he could think of. 

“Shower heads,” he said. 

“We’re bringing back consumer choice in home appliances so that you can buy washers and dryers, shower heads and faucets,” he said. “So, shower heads,” he continued. “You take a shower, the water doesn’t come out. You want to wash your hands, the water doesn’t come out. So, what do you do? You just stand there longer or you take a shower longer? Because my hair – I don’t know about you – but it has to be perfect. Perfect.” 

Dishwashers, too.

 

“Dishwashers,” Trump said. “You didn’t have any water, so you – the people that do the dishes – you press it, and it goes again, and you do it again and again. So, you might as well give them the water because you’ll end up using less water. So, we made it so dishwashers now have a lot more water. And in many places – in most places of the country – water is not a problem. They don’t know what to do with it. It’s called ‘rain.’ They don’t have a problem.” 

Yes! It’s called rain! Who knew! 

Trump also bragged about bringing back the old incandescent lightbulbs – because Trump isn’t worried about the environment. 

Just his hair.

 

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NEW CASES of coronavirus hit a bleak new milestone:

 

72,045.