Just read What's Happenin Climate Change Week post and joanneleon's fascinating details of making her way through the storm ravaged areas to pick her son up from college. Brought to mind the aftermath of the many huge storms we have had on the Gulf Coast the past 10 years.
Checked in on 350 New Mexico Facebook page and found linked this interesting article :
Opinion, arguments & analyses from the editors of Scientific American
Did Climate Change Cause Hurricane Sandy?
Snip
Greg Laden, an anthropologist who blogs about culture and science, wrote this week in an online piece: “There is always going to be variation in temperature or some other weather related factor, but global warming raises the baseline. That’s true. But the corollary to that is NOT that you can’t link climate change to a given storm. All storms are weather, all weather is the immediate manifestation of climate, climate change is about climate.”
Now, as promised: If you still don’t believe scientists, then believe insurance giant Munich Re. In her October 29 post at the The New Yorker, writer Elizabeth Kolbert notes:
Munich Re, one of the world’s largest reinsurance firms, issued a study titled “Severe Weather in North America.” According to the press release that accompanied the report, “Nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America.” … While many factors have contributed to this trend, including an increase in the number of people living in flood-prone areas, the report identified global warming as one of the major culprits: “Climate change particularly affects formation of heat-waves, droughts, intense precipitation events, and in the long run most probably also tropical cyclone intensity.”
Insurers, scientists and journalist are beginning to drop the caveats and simply say that climate change is causing big storms. As scientists collect more and more data over time, more of them will be willing to make the same data-based statements.
Many of us have accepted this for years now, but when will we reach a consensus among the voting public?
More work to be done, but future events leave us with serious choices. Check out this article from 'The Nation' :
We Are All from New Orleans Now: Climate Change, Hurricanes and the Fate of America's Coastal Cities
Mike Tidwell
October 29, 2012
Snip
Higher sea levels create other conditions that will only enhance hurricanes. In 1985, Hurricane Gloria made landfall north of New York Harbor. As a Category 2 storm, it could have had a serious surge tide. But it was a relative dud, causing only minor flooding. New York got lucky because the storm struck at maximum low tide. But with three feet of sea-level rise, we will be creating what amounts to permanent high-tide conditions in the New York region and everywhere else, guaranteeing that future storms like Sandy will become surge-tide heavyweights.
What can we do? Three major options: (1) abandon our coastal cities and retreat inland, (2) stay put and try to adapt to the menacing new conditions or (3) stop burning planet-warming fossil fuels as fast as possible.
Retreat, of course, is no one’s first choice. But adapting means committing fully to the New Orleans model. It means potentially thousands of miles of levees and floodwalls across much of the East Coast. And that’s just to handle the rising sea. For hurricane surge tides, the only solution might be to build those major floodgates across New York Harbor, the Potomac Rivers and elsewhere. But are we truly ready to become New Orleanians, casting our lot behind ever-higher, unsustainable walls? Once we commit to fortified levees and massive floodgates, there’s no turning back. It’s an all-or-nothing proposition, as New Orleans has graphically demonstrated.
In truth, we must combine some level of adaptation with the third option: switching away from fossil fuels and onto clean energy. Clean energy is less expensive, less risky and overall much better for us. It’s the option that treats the disease of global warming, not just the symptoms. Only by dramatically reducing greenhouse gas pollution—by putting a price on carbon fuels and ushering in real gains in wind and solar power and efficiency—can we slow the sea-level rise and potentially calm the growth in hurricane intensity.
Perhaps now, after seeing the full wrath of Sandy, the next president will move from total silence to real action.
Now Bill McKibben has this interesting action toward donating to storm victims and raising awareness of major climate culprits:
Donate to Sandy relief—and make polluters pay too
Hurricane Sandy has caused massive destruction and millions are struggling to recover. As we contribute to relief efforts, we also need to connect the dots.
Climate change is loading the dice for extreme weather events like Hurricane Sandy -- and that climate change is driven by the fossil fuel industry. Big Oil, Coal, and Gas profit from polluting our atmosphere and then spend millions to block climate solutions. If there were any poetic justice, this hurricane would be named Hurricane Chevron or Hurricane Exxon, not Hurricane Sandy.
So, as we donate to disaster relief we’re also calling on Big Oil to do the same. We’re asking them to take the millions they’re spending to buy climate silence this election and donate it to climate relief instead. It's time to make polluters pay for the damage they help create.
Please join us by signing on and donating to the Red Cross to support disaster relief.
All in with that!
Curious, where do you live, and what's the outlook for climate change impacts on your area?