Année : 2012

L’article sur la tempête Sandy sur Wikipédia, est largement éditée par un amateur sans formation météorologique passionné par le sujet pendant sa période de chômage et… sceptique sur le changement climatique.
Ainsi il supprime toute mention sur le réchauffement climatique cette entrée de wikipedia car il n’y croit pas… La vérité finira bien par en sortir mais sans doute quand la page sera redevenu une page « froide » de Wikipedia comme le dit l’un des éditeur de la page :

“it sounds more like, ‘We’ll keep all mention of global warming out of the discussion until after nobody’s interested in this storm any more.’ This isn’t so much “waiting for new information to come in.” This is “waiting for majority rule to overcome the will of the few.” The few are what kept global warming off that page for so long.

Meet The Climate Change Denier Who Became The Voice Of Hurricane Sandy On Wikipedia

Ken Mampel, an unemployed, 56-year-old Floridian, is in large part the creator of the massive Hurricane Sandy Wikipedia page. He’s also the reason that, for nearly a week, the page had no mention of climate change.

« All I am is a contributor. I have no title, I’m just a Joe Blow, » says Ken Mampel, a currently unemployed 56-year-old living in Ormond Beach, Florida. He’s also largely responsible for the Wikipedia article about Hurricane Sandy. If it isn’t already, that article will eventually become the single most-viewed document about the hurricane. On the entire internet.

In an unpaid but frenzied fit of news consumption, editing, correction, aggregation, and citation, Mampel has established himself as by far the most active contributor to the Wikipedia page on Hurricane Sandy, with more than twice the number of edits as the next-most-active contributor at the time this article was written.

And Mampel made sure that the Hurricane Sandy article, for four days after the hurricane made landfall in New Jersey, had no mention of « global warming » or « climate change » whatsoever.

Meet The Climate Change Denier Who Became The Voice Of Hurricane Sandy On Wikipedia | Popular Science.

The Cost of Cool
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

THE blackouts that left hundreds of millions of Indians sweltering in the dark last month underscored the status of air-conditioning as one of the world’s most vexing environmental quandaries.

Fact 1: Nearly all of the world’s booming cities are in the tropics and will be home to an estimated one billion new consumers by 2025. As temperatures rise, they — and we — will use more air-conditioning.

Fact 2: Air-conditioners draw copious electricity, and deliver a double whammy in terms of climate change, since both the electricity they use and the coolants they contain result in planet-warming emissions.

Fact 3: Scientific studies increasingly show that health and productivity rise significantly if indoor temperature is cooled in hot weather. So cooling is not just about comfort.

Sum up these facts and it’s hard to escape: Today’s humans probably need air-conditioning if they want to thrive and prosper. Yet if all those new city dwellers use air-conditioning the way Americans do, life could be one stuttering series of massive blackouts, accompanied by disastrous planet-warming emissions.

We can’t live with air-conditioning, but we can’t live without it.

La suite de l’article sur Air-Conditioning Is an Environmental Quandary – NYTimes.com.