A Lot of Hot Air over ‘Global Warming and the Channel’

Wouldn’t you know it, we had to leave the channel to really get readers’ steam up.

It’s rare that channel issues get your blood boiling and rarer that the issues we cover on the pages of eWEEK’s Channel Insider drive readers to impassioned responses. And that remains the case.

Channel Insider columnist Pedro Pereira’s commentary Feb. 5, Global Warming and the Channel,” has generated a lot of hot air, negative and positive, in posted commentsand e-mails to the author, but readers are sounding off on global warming, which was merely a backdrop in Pereira’s piece noting a new channel opportunity.

Picking up on the newsFeb. 2 that the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s had produced what many (including John McCain) call the definitive report declaring that the warming of the planet is real and man-made, Pedro opined that the fix to global warming would likely come from new technology solutions that would relieve humanity’s energy consumption, and VARs would be the foot soldiers in the fight.

In the process however, Pereira came down on the side of those who never disputed that warming of the planet or its man-made origins, and boy did that get readers hot.

Pereira’s response to his objectors:

I’m encouraged by the response, even if a good deal of it is negative, because this is an important issue. The salient point of my column, and one that I believe was missed by some of the folks who offered feedback, is that the channel has an opportunity to make money here. Regardless of how you feel about global warming, the fact remains that energy costs are high, and if solution providers can help their customers cut some costs out by helping them go green, that’s all good.

Now, some folks objected to my injecting my own opinions on global warming into the column. There was a lot of animosity directed at Al Gore, and some readers accused me of basing my whole perspective on climate change on Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” documentary. The truth is I have been attuned to environmental issues since early in my career as a reporter. I’ve done stories on the ozone layer and other greenhouse issues, naturally occurring atmospheric radiation, nuclear issues and Superfund cleanup sites.

My perspective on global warming is based on a career-long interest in the subject. When I decided to write the column on the channel’s role in helping to potentially arrest global warming, I knew I had to come clean about my own stance. It is an opinion column, after all, and it came from a place of honesty.

One parting thought: Some readers called global warming a “fraud.” I think we can argue the causes of climate change, though the world’s preeminent scientists agree human activity has something to do with it. But one thing is sure: It is happening, and there is measurable proof. There are some folks living in islands in the South Pacific who wouldn’t dispute this. Their homes and villages are literally drowning as a result of rising sea levels caused by melting glaciers.

My own parting thought: Everyone be cool. My inbox is already full of vendor hot air.