Climate Change: An Extreme Sport?

Although human ingenuity has yet to be harnessed to stop the advance of climate change, its coming into play in the sports industry.

Maybe as the ski industry dies off from lack of snow, it will be replaced by a new sport – "Extreme Sports Thru Extreme Weather – Feel the Burn!"

Believe it or not, that’s the tagline for a new extreme sport being promoted by ESPN in partnership with Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project. 

They are launching ESPN 5, dubbed "The Cinco," which will focus on new adrenaline-soaked extreme sports competitions made possible by climate change. Thanks climate change!!

This is too funny:

"Initial programming will include a dizzying array of top-flight events, such as hurricane wind-surfing, dirtboarding (previously known as snowboarding), dry riverbed kayaking, blizzard soccer, hurricane sandbag-tossing events, and the reality show-inspired event, "The Amazing Race… for Water."

"After learning that this past decade was the hottest decade on record in the continental United States, ESPN knew that it had to be at the forefront of bringing extreme weather sports to our incredible fans," says Joe Slobotnik, senior vice president for sustainability at ESPN. "The possibilities for extreme sports are endless thanks to the prospect of rising temperatures, more severe hurricanes, and wildly uncontrollable weather patterns. Feel the Burn!"

"For too long, people have connected climate change with polar bears, melting ice caps, hurricanes, and other boring stuff, instead of the awesome new sports carried by The Cinco," says Jonathan Swift of The Climate Reality Project. "The American public no longer wants to see winter athletes competing in the snow, or baseball games on a warm summer day. What people really want to see is the world’s fastest athletes outrun wildfires in the West, run ultra marathons on just dirt-based energy bars, and play beach volleyball-in Iowa!"

With the growing popularity of the X Games franchise, The Cinco will debut the "V Games" later this summer.

Here’s the really funny part. The "televised spectacular has already received crucial underwriting from some of the world’s largest supporters of extreme weather sports, such as Exxon-Mobil, Koch Industries, TransCanada, and many others. A complete list of programming will be made available closer to the event."

April Fools!