2012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Posted on 31 October 2012 by John Hartz
This is a round-up of selected news articles and blog posts about Hurricane Sandy, its impacts on North America, and its relationship to climate change. This bulletin supplements the regular SkS weekly News Round-Up which is posted on Saturday of each week.
Sunday, Oct 28
- Hurricane Sandy: Climate Change Activists Offer Stark Reminder Before Storm Hits by Lucas Kavner, The Huffington Post, Oct 28, 2012
- The #Frankenstorm in Climate Context by Andrew Revkin, Dot
Earth, New York Times, Oct 28, 2012 - Shallow Waters and Unusual Path May Worsen the Surge by Kenneth Chang $ Henry Fountain, New York Times, Oct 28, 2012
- Frankenstorm: Has Climate Change Created A Monster? by Adam Frank, NPR, Oct 28, 2012
Monday, Oct 29
- Hurricane Sandy mixes super-storm conditions with climate change by Kevin Trenberth, The Conversation, Oct 29, 2012
- In Hurricane Sandy's Fury, The Fingerprint Of Climate Change by Tom Zeller Jr., The Huffington Post, Oct 29, 2012
- Sandy versus Katrina, and Irene: Monster Hurricanes by the Numbers by Mark Fischetti, Scientific American, Oct 29, 2012
- Extremely Dangerous Hurricane Aims at New York City and Mid-East Coast Areas by Lauren Morello , Colin Sullivan and ClimateWire, Scientific American, Oct 29, 2012
- Hurricane Sandy Puts More Than $87 Billion Worth Of Homes At Risk by Morgan Brennan, Forbes, Oct 29, 2012
- Aliens, Sandy And The Coming Global Superstorms by Kenneth Rapoza, Forbes, Oct 29, 2012
- Weather or Climate: What Caused Hurricane Sandy? by Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience, Oct 29, 2012
- 'Storm Like No Other': Ongoing Coverage as Powerful Hurricane Sandy Makes Landfall by Common Dreams staff, Common Dreams, Oct 29, 2012
- For New York, the Issue of Steps Not Taken by Mireya Navarro, New Yorkl Times, Oct 29, 2012
- What lessons from hurricane Sandy? by the Editorial Board, The Christian Science Monitor, Oct 29, 2012
- We Are All from New Orleans Now: Climate Change, Hurricanes and the Fate of America's Coastal Cities by Mike Tidwell, The Nation, Oct 29, 2012
- On ‘Frankenstorms,’ Climate Science and ‘Reverse Tribalism’ by Andrew Revkin, Dot Earth, New York Times, Oct 29, 2012
- Yes, Hurricane Sandy is a good reason to worry about climate change by Brad Plumer, Ezra Klein's WonkBlog, Washington Post, Oct 29, 2012
- Hurricane Sandy's Economic Impact Likely To Be Immense by Marilyn Geewax, NPR, Oct 29, 2012
- On Not Scaring Ourselves to Death: Moving Beyond the Adrenaline Rush of a Good Storm to an Energy Revolution by Daphne Wysham, Institute for Policy Studies, Oct 29, 2012
- Slow-moving hurricanes such as Sandy on the rise by Michael Marshall, New Scientist, Oct 29, 2012
- Did Climate Change Supersize Hurricane Sandy? By Chris Mooney, Mother Jones, Oct 29, 2012
Tuesday, Oct 30
- Amid Hurricane Sandy, climate change talk is in order by the Editorial Board, Newark News-Ledger, Oct 30, 2012
- How Superstorm Sandy Became a Snowstorm by Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience, Oct 30, 2012
- Sandy Deals New York City Flooding, Fire And Blackouts by Scott Neumann, NPR, Oct 30, 2012
- Sandy leaves NYC subway system, infrastructure licking its wounds by James Eng, NBC News, Oct 30, 2012
- Obama declares major disaster in NYC, NJ as Sandy kills 28, causes major flooding and fires by Miguel Llanos, NBC News, Oct 30, 2012
- Television News Outlets Ignore Climate Change During Sandy Coverage. Should We Really Be Surprised? by Stephen Lacey, Climate Progress, Oct 30, 2012
- Global Warming Systemically Caused Hurricane Sandy by George Lakoff, The Huffington Post, Oct 30, 2012
- Climate Change Takes The Campaign By Storm: Countdown Day 7 by Howard Fineman, The Huffington Post, Oct 30, 2012
- Hurricane Sandy spins up climate discussion by Jeff Tollefson, Nature, Oct 30, 2012
- Hurricane Sandy Pushing Obama, Romney to Break Climate Silence by Common Dreams staff, Common Dreams, Oct 30, 2012
- Can climate change gatecrash the race for the White House? by Tom Mitchell, Shaping Policy for Development, Oct 30, 2012
- Change and Sandy: Why We Need to Prepare for a Warmer World by Bryan Walsh, Ecocentric, Time, Oct 30, 2012
4050 deaths and counting (not including the 30 deaths in the Caribbean) 7) Damage running into tens of billions of dollars, the final tally will only be known after several months, perhaps longer The following claim is a red herring and misses the point, "NYC has a long and proud history of being hit by big storms / weak hurricanes" Yet the 100 plus year old transit system has never seen flooding like this. But don't take my word for it: ""The New York City subway system is 108 years old, but it has never faced a disaster as devastating as what we experienced last night," said Joseph Lhota, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or MTA." [Source] I find Dale's indifference given the scale of this calamity to be troubling. Superdenial indeed.[DB] As commenter bill notes below, you need to evaluate Grinsted et al 2012:
"We demonstrate that the major events in our surge index record can be attributed to landfalling tropical cyclones; these events also correspond with the most economically damaging Atlantic cyclones. We find that warm years in general were more active in all cyclone size ranges than cold years. The largest cyclones are most affected by warmer conditions and we detect a statistically significant trend in the frequency of large surge events (roughly corresponding to tropical storm size) since 1923. In particular, we estimate that Katrina-magnitude events have been twice as frequent in warm years compared with cold years (P < 0.02)."
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/10/10/1209542109
Add in the warmest 17 years in the instrumental record are all the most recent 17 years...