We’re Doomed. Unless We’re Not.

“Just three months ago scientists issued a report with a dire warning: Utah’s Great Salt Lake, after decades of drying that had only accelerated in recent years, was on track to disappear in five years. Now a record snowpack, fueled by more than 800 inches of snow during the season in some locations, offers a glimmer of hope for the Western Hemisphere’s largest salt water lake and an important economic driver for the state.

“The Great Salt Lake reached its record low in November when it dipped to 4,188.6 feet above sea level, having lost more than 70 percent of its water since 1850 according to the report published in January by researchers at Brigham Young University. As of Wednesday, however, the lake had risen 3 feet in a little more than five months, primarily because of snow and rain dumped directly into the lake by a seasonlong series of water-loaded storms. Salt Lake City has seen its seventh-snowiest season on record and among the most snow of any major US city, with 87.3 inches.”

I’m not here to debate climate change, just to point out that the media are adept at dire warnings and negative interpretations, but we need to take a longer, more considered view. Just a week or so ago the Times ran a story that the Great Salt Lake was doomed—as part of that paper’s normal hysteria about everything.

I’ve had clients who believed they were going out of business, about to be bankrupt, who wound up having a record year of profits.