Hot enough (to cancel the Test match cricket) for ya?

According to scientists at NASA (who wouldn’t, one assume, have any reason make this up) there’s never been this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the recorded history of the planet.

You look at the graph. The last 70 years it’s spiked 90 degrees. It’s spiked like Spike Lee spiking.

If the earth were on a heart-rate monitor it’d be like the Darryl Hannah’s mermaid in Splash when she gets jiggy for Tom Hanks: Beep-beep-beep-beeeeeeep!

Now, I don’t really understand how these scientist types know what they know but it’s clear that they know what they know.

And what they know is this: atmospheric CO2 has increased a metric freakin’ shit-ton since the Industrial Revolution, or roughly when we started pumping shit into the air to make stuff and go places fast.

“Admittedly,” admit the Eggheads, “the Earth’s climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years alone there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the end of the last Ice Age (7,000 years ago) marking the beginning of the modern climate era — and of human civilisation.”

However: “Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth’s orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.

“The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is extremely likely (greater than 95 percent probability) to be the result of human activity since the mid-20th century and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented over decades to millennia.”

Unprecedented.

I mean… why wouldn’t you believe them?

I am buggered by all the Yabbie pumps in the poor defunct Murray-Darling why people will not believe these particular experts, but will take their doctor’s word for it to get an orange spot checked out.

How can you believe that these boffins have conspired with one another to come up with these numbers?

Because of an ulterior motive, possibly to do with continued funding for universities.

What?

Now! Again! I don’t know how these people know this stuff. And it’s my tip that you don’t know how they know this stuff, unless you’re an expert in samples from ice cores from very ancient times, and such forth.

But. It. Is. Happening!

And humans are causing it, it’s a flat-out stone fact. And as someone called Nelly sang in the hit song Hot in Herre, it’s getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes.

And so on.

Happening.

Now! What in the name of dear sweet Dennis Lillee does all this have to do with sport in our great southern land?

Simple: there’s a chance it could root it. Like, for good.

If we keep getting hotter at the rate we’re getting hotter, then sport is like all those poor fish.

Brown bread.

Consider: Once upon a time, wasn’t that long ago, the Adelaide Test match was played on Australia Day, January 26th.

And if you have been paying attention to the meteorological reports, you’ll note that dear sweet Adelaide enjoyed – or more to the point did not enjoy – a record temperature nudging 47 degrees, which is hotter than Saddam Hussein drinking lava in Hell.

Damnably hot. Stupid hot.

So hot you’d fry nostril hairs breathing it in.

And given this Brisbane Test on now has two mandated drinks breaks per session – and it only got up to (an admittedly sticky-as-dog-snot) 32 degrees – would they have even played the Test match were it played today Adelaide?

Even day-night?

(Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

Would they run the Melbourne Cup in 47 degrees? Makybe Diva wouldn’t run on a track too hard in November of 2005. The Diva wouldn’t run in 47 degrees. Nothing runs in 47 degrees except camels in Dubai. And then they die.

If Winx had have run at Moonee Valley in October in 47 degree heat, Winx would have died.

Okay, could have. I’m not a vet. But do you think Chris Waller runs Winx or any of his animals in 47 degrees?

Not happening.

Every year we have an Australian Open and it gets to 47 degrees on the court. Jim Courier measures it, says something Seppo and toothy, Darn it, sure is hot!

And it’s still okay, I suppose. They still play. But if it’s 47 degrees in the atmosphere of Melbourne, what would it be on court with Jimmy?

Sixty degrees? 70?

“Someone could die!” went the Daily Tele’s banner blurb after an NRL trial some years ago, might’ve been 1992, in which a doctor had warned heat stroke is a thing and it is bad.

Mal Meninga was sweating so much he could’ve provided a week’s water for a Somalian village.

The Brumbies are going to play a trial in Canberra on Saturday night after a day that’ll reach 39 degrees, and they had best be hydrated up the kazoo. They will need dinkum fluid injections. Drips.

Even waterboarding.

I was in Canberra last week, it was 41 degrees five days in a row. All you could do was sit in the river up to your neck out Kambah Pool, your only concern keeping your stubbie lid top just above the surface, near your lips.

Stupid hot. Maggot hot.

Granted I played golf one of those days, because, well, I am in mad dumb lust for the game of golf.

But it was not pleasant. You’d drive laps of trees in the cart to keep cool. Shade was like mouth-to-mouth resuscitation from the lungs of baby Jesus.

Look, I dunno. And chances are you dunno. But there’s enough people who do know that it’s happening and humans are causing it and if we don’t do anything and very blinking bloody soon it’s going to stuff the cricket and the Melbourne Cup and Australia!

History tells us that to get laidback Aussies off their arse, you threaten their lifestyle.

The Japanese bombed Darwin, we rallied.

The gays couldn’t get a fair go, we rallied.

Well, friend, our lifestyle – and sport is a huge part of Australian lifestyle if not the most important part – is threatened by the fact it’s getting bloody hotter every bloody year.

Glaciers are melting very quickly. The Brazilian rainforest, the lungs of the planet, is being chopped down by immoral greedy fools who’ll be damned by their grandchildren.

And if we don’t do something soon the 2050 Melbourne Cup will be run inside an air-conditioned mall in Dubai.

Or something I don’t know.

But it’s bloody hot and getting hotter, and if you don’t believe it you’re wrong.