The article by Wall Street Journal, journalist Bret Stephens, titled "Global Warming as Mass Neurosis" (subscription may be required) is a very interesting article about how many environmental groups proclaiming the Apocalypse is coming with all of the pollution and the polar ice caps melting. Some call it climate change, others global warming, but regardless of what you call it, Bret Stephens asks, is it real?
The article was meant to comment on Global Warming, which Stephens says was coined in congressional testimony by NASA's Jim Hansen sworn testimony to congress in June of 1988, a decade ago. A couple points worthy of highlighting:
- the Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years…
- …3,000 robots in the world's ocean show there has been slight cooling over the past five years.
- the previously reported hottest year on record was not 1998, but actually 1934,
- the 10 hottest years since 1880 are all before 1954.
Now my take on this article is that of "well I hope he's right" and of course the evidence supporting Stephens' article in that the past few years have been especially cold winters. But with that knowledge out there, it is still hard for me, personally to ignore the brown, orange, red, and yellows of the Wall Street Journal weather map indicating the very high temperatures around the nation, especially in the historically green and light greens in the Northeast of the nation where I reside.
So, despite the claims of the former VP that global warming is well understood by the scientific community and even though David is not able to tell whether we are living in or outside the definition of normal weather patterns just by looking at the Wall Street Journal weather map, THE DATA SAYS THIS IS A HOAX.
What is clear though, is that being green is useful to business. It reduces costs and improves employee productivity which increases revenue per employee. Our report, The Power of Green, shows clearly that there's advantage in being green and being seen to be green. Is the ocean rising – sure, but why is that abnormal? Our definition of 'normal' is not the same as the experience of beings that have been here for millenia and not just a few decades. Remember, we once had an ice age covering 2/3 of North America in mile-thick ice.
Is the world about to burn up in the sky – not. — Peter
