Profiting on Climate Change - Regardless of Your View

摘要

Two points of view about climate change were covered in the May 18 and June 22 issues of The NEWS. The first argued there is a crisis caused by man-made global warming. The second asserted that global warming is not man-made and isn't even a concern. What if there is a third perspective that could actually make the other two points of view align rather than conflict? And what if it could also increase our profits? In my previous life, I taught statistics to corporate audiences. We look at snapshots in time and trends over time. We take that data and analyze it to make good decisions. That's the idea anyway. Climate change data shows that, yes, there is a change over time; the temperatures are rising, and ice caps are melting. A fundamental concept to statistics is that there is variation in everything. That includes temperatures and polar ice caps. As long as variation stays within a reasonable and consistent tolerance over time, and without unusual patterns, the change isn't statistically significant.