Discussion on:

Resilience lessons from Hurricane Sandy

A lot of the problem is that people think climate equals weather. Climate is a moving average of weather conditions occuring over a long time span. There are always extreme weather events that occur from time to time. It is healthy to be skeptical but skepticism should be based on open and honest debate.

What is not acceptable is politicizing science, meaning that if we were to vote on whether global warming is real or not would be a pointless excersize. We in the US have managed to elect the least science literate folks as well as the least qualified to lead.

It does help to talk about what is going on with the weather. The idea that more CO2 in the atmosphere collects heat is a start. Hurricanes are driven by heat and wind, two forms of energy that contribute to the intensity of the storms. Another bit of data is that late season hurricanes are not as rare as they were. An indication of change is when a previously normal range of temperature and precipitation become erratic due to going way over or under the normal range with increasing differences going on year over year.

Sandy is a destructive storm. It could be a fluke or it could be a trend; we can only know by observing the conditions. The weather satellites that helped provide the warning about Sandy are have a finite life and are getting close to the end; adding more weather satellites will help improve weather forecasting as well as to monitor small changes that can accumulate to a great effect. If the satellites fail and not replaced then we will be back to less accurate monitoring that would probably fail to give as much warning as the current system did.

Hey Chris!
Thanks for the Connect. Here's my proof of climate change-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2012_North_American_derecho.

Forget the science! That's way beyond most engineers understanding.

I've been living in Virginia for 52 years now and I have never seen anything like this summer's Derecho storm. HELL,... I'd never heard of an El Derecho before then! Talk about HAARP and Upper atmosphere convective heating! WOW! My wife and I stood outside at dusk and watched the willow tree next door blow all its branches VERTICAL. Looked like a Bad Hair Day.

I'd say as a species, We've done a pretty good job of ticking off Mother Ma Nature. She'll of course have the last laugh.

Cheers!

Mark

It was by no means the first on the east coast. The last large one happened in New York state in 1998. It extended into parts of Canada and Pennsylvania.

Smaller ones happen every year. They just look like a small nasty storm line on the nightly news radar.

To blame the June one on global warming is a bit over the top.

in order to drag out their idiotic idea about climate change or global warming.

Such storms, and even bigger ones, have occurred during our lifetimes, and, even before any one could conceive of the idea of man-made global warming. The earth has had global warming periods in the past, and way before the automobile, and before electricity, and before the demand for powering any part of the world economies.

But, NO!, the environmental wackos, mostly the liberal kind, will use any crisis or any storm, to predict doom and gloom. Never mind that their science has been debunked, time and time again, by real science.

The ecological record is replete with evidence that the earth's climate is constantly evolving. The liberals are really the "flat earther's" on this one, thinking that the climate should be static and not changing. For them, business is the "sea monster" which exists on the periphery ready to swallow up any unsuspecting traveler. Glacial ages and warming periods occur with regular frequency. The Americas were once covered by ice interspaced by vast inland seas. Yes, the dinosaurs are real. It's too bad that liberals are like the dinosaurs and don't realize that their days are numbered. They are really insane.

...have already been duped by the Head-In-The-Sand Climate Change Denial politics. Oh well: Shiller had it right... "Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens". Not surprised when you consider how many of these same posters staunchly defend big business which SO doesn't give a rats about them.

'Against stupidity the gods themselves fight in vain.'

I have an appropriate response to that.

Wenn eine sachliche Debatte

Wow the system censored german. Impressive.

This is the third, and final, option liberals/Democrats/Socialists (take your pick) use when all else fails!

First, of course, is that ANYTHING screamed loudly enough, long enough, and often enough, MUST be true (whether it is or not)!

Second, when you can't refute the argument, or the facts, attack the accuser!

Third..... you already know!

most of what the proponents of "global warming", are the ones politicizing science for political gains. It's junk science, motivated by the desires of many to take even more power from the people and to allow the government to control the economy.

The ones in denial, are the people who insist that, they must have their way over real science.

100+ years ago, the popular establishment narrative would have been "Look how God is punishing us - You'd better do what we tell you or else!". Today, it's "Global warming is causing this - You'd better do what we tell you or else!".

Little has really changed.

Sadly, extreme weather occurrences will continue to rise in frequency and strength.

Sadly, they will also continue to fall in frequency and strength, cycling over the ages, as they already have, for EONS!

I have a feeling that CO2 is misunderstood here. Here goes as simply as possible...

As CO2 levels rise in the atmosphere (and they have been), long wave radiation (heat) is more efficiently kept from radiating out into space at night. CO2 acts like an insulating blanket that doesn't allow the same amount of energy out of the earth's atmosphere at night compared to the amount it receives from the sun each day. Even if the sun cycled into a period of least output, a certain level of CO2 if high enough, would still disallow the planet to balance heating and cooling. There are other feedback features that make our climate change problems worse.

Daytime temperatures overall in the past 100 years or so have not risen that much world wide, now measured around 1.4 degrees F on average, but the warming trend is accelerating. If you look closely at weather data, you'll find that nighttime lows have been more impacted. Nighttime lows have warmed more on average than daytime highs.

Water covers over 2/3rds of our planet's surface and gains/releases heat at much slower rates than land areas. Luckily, large bodies of water act as global temperature moderating units. Unfortunately, the oceans are also warming. Not as much or as fast as the atmosphere, but warming none the less. Warming water expands, causing some sea level rise.

The overall warming has also caused land and sea ice to melt off at increasing rates. Melting land based ice (glaciers) adds to sea level rise. Most glaciers around the world have been shrinking. Weather pattern changes have allowed a very few glaciers to expand at certain mountain elevations, but even these are losing volume at lower elevations. Sea level rise will eventually pose increasing problems for most low lying coastal areas. Any storm surge will be exacerbated by sea level rise, regardless of tides.

Sea level rise is not a theory. It's not spiritual. It's not political. It's not magical. But it is measurable and it is a fact. So even if storms don't get any more powerful, storm surge spillover will become a more frequent threat to vulnerable coastal communities. Highly populated low lying coastal areas may want to look at what the Netherlands have done to keep the frequently stormy North Sea out of their lands.

I'm sadly disappointed that the Megalopolis has not already undertaken serious engineering steps to lessen or even prevent the catastrophic type of damage that Sandy managed to deliver. Sandy was a very large category 1 hurricane. What would have resulted from a category 3, 4 or 5 on a similar path? No one could possibly imagine or want to see.

CO2 released by burning carbon based fuels and worsened by deforestation (forests, especially the tropical kind, scrub CO2 from the atmosphere), have been the major causes of increasing atmospheric CO2 levels during the last 100 years by far. The CO2 doesn't come from any other source in consequential amounts.

There are other very complicated cyclical causes that drive climate change through the ages, but during this short 100 or so year period, we have fully engaged an extremely interesting terrestrial experiment that pits human activity against formidably deadly and destructive forces of nature.

No matter the cause, sea level rise and climate change will increasingly produce random and powerful life threatening events that we must rise to meet and beat. Hardening our frail infrastructure, building sea barriers and realistic planning and execution will go a long way toward protecting against loss of life while making recovery feasible along our coasts for generations to come.

Costs of building the required protective systems would be great, but not nearly as great as the immeasurable costs in life and property that destructive storms, like Sandy and others, can and will cause in the future if nothing is done.

by those in the religion of global warming.

GIGO....

Which means that, when you start out with flawed data, and with flawed analysis, and flawed results, everything else that follows, will reflect the junk science results.

If one were to manipulate the numbers for economic activity, and all of the analysis were to be deliberately skewed to show a great economy with massive new employment, then, people might start believing those numbers, even when the reality on the ground tells them something different. Same with junk science, where there are people who have an agenda, which necessitates that, the data and the models for analysis be made to fit a predefined set of results. CO2 levels have been falsely magnified to make them fit the narrative of the global warming junk-scientists. When you start out with a false premise, you will end up with blatantly wrong analysis and conclusions.

Having spent the evening checking out statistics on previous storms, I don't see any evidence that they are getting worse. In fact, they seem to be getting a lot better. As they used to say in the old cigarette comercials, "Milder - much milder." Sure you can skew the results any way you wnat if you cherry pick your data - but look at all the data you can find for as large an area as you can, and you will get a more accurate picture. For example, take a look at Texas Hurricane History by David Roth of the National Weather Service (I know this is just one area, but I mention it because the data is very complete, and it's just a starting point for looking all around the globe). You can focus on recent history and say that the number of hurricanes has quintupled over the past 20 years (from 1 in the 1990's to 5 in the 2000's), or you can go back a little further and see that we had 8 in the 1940s and 8 in the 1880s...which presents a totally different picture. From another perspecitive, the death toll of Sandy presently stands at 72 (though it can only go up). Compare that to the Lower Texas Coast Hurricane of 1553 (1700) or the Galveston Hurricane of 1818 (over 1,000) Global Warming must have been REALLY bad back then, ya think? If you want to see some real devastation, look at the 1900 Galveston Hurricane...8,000 dead! Eight thousand!! Sandy was a gentle breath of air compared to that. Here in Florida where I live, we've had a number of hurricanes in the past that were far worse than anything we've seen recently. Storms just SEEM worse now because coastal areas are much more built up than they were in the past, so the damage is correspondingly greater. I don't want to be accused of name-calling, but what can I say about people who are completely blind to historical facts?

And always will. Everytime a big storm happens, we have to listen to the BS about climate change as if storms have never occurred.

Hurricane Sandy losses are a direct result of stupid people building things stupidly in stupid places.

The Bible itself warns against building on sand, and millions along the Eastern Seaboard ignored the wisdom of millenia. Don't blame fossil fuel use for the consequences of your own dumb decisions.

I can't believe so many of the commenters here who try to conflate a weather event with climate change. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING! Climate is the long-term average weather of an area. H. Sandy was a WEATHER event, a storm, and not even unprecedented at that. Of course the high tides were a problem - a full moon near Perigee means higher tides, and the storm surge was simply added to that.

From what I have read, the climate scientists are reluctant to make Sandy the poster child for global warming. The reason is as you pointed out, there were several factors that made this hurricane nastier than it would have been normally. The other reason is that the factors that show evidence of global warming are seen in longer time periods than a single event.

Personally, I thought the calls to blame the storm on global warming to be as irrisponsible as saying that god is punishing the US for becoming gay friendly. Both statements happened and both reflect the lack of skeptical thinking.

Smartplanet should re-label itself as idiotickumbya. This hack opinion piece is beyond the pale. Let me clue you folks into something. The climate on earth has been changing since its inception. There is no evidence that people adversely influence the natural cycles and the evolution of the earth's cycles and climate. End of story.

You left wing wackos would apply strangleholds to businesses and have us return to stone age living all on the premise of your misguided religion.

I believe that the state of Chris Nelder's brain is such that when the comments section turns roundly against him he believes that "paid shills" are descending upon him.

Mr. Nelder - read these comments carefully. See how many are critical of you, and how these comments get the most thumbs up.

This is a very poor piece of hyper-velintating politicized science you have presented here. If the comments are this negative on a Smarter Planet web site, just imagine how poor they would be on a more mainstream web site.

It looked like you were breaking through to the mainstream with Financial Times and Slate pieces. Now that is appears to be over. Perhaps the poor quality of your research explains why.

You can do better. Please do.

You know what? The Earth doesn't care about politics. It's going to do what the physical parameters lead it to do. It doesn't matter how many people are for or against something when it comes down to it. Mother Nature bats last and she doesn't pay attention to the riffraff.

It doesn't sound like one.

Sea walls are cheaper than solar power. By multiple orders of magnitude.

Do you see how little sway your "nature bats last" nonsense has over the public? Even Obama won't tout AGW anymore. People are not buying "nature bats last" anymore.

The NYC response to Sandy will be the development of better sea walls. Not an abondonement of fossil fuels.

Before running off for easy politically motivated answers, it seems like quite a number of questions need to be answered. I looked at the NOAA precipitation data, and amount of rainfall on the NYC during Sandy's landfall was miniscule. Likewise the persistent wind speed was very low. It was hardly a "hurricane" at all and the effect more like a tsunami. Most of the damage was caused by the "storm surge" which was mentioned but not emphasized pre-landing. I have read some of the explanations of the surge, like the low pressure, but have not heard of a comprehensive model of why this storm produced a record surge. Also, why is it taking so long for the water to drain now that the storm is over? Surely, you're not claiming that the earth's oceans rose 13 ft in one day, and only on one side of the Atlantic Ocean due to icebergs melting? Question, question, question.

A geologist from NYC predicted that the location the city was built on made it very vulnerable to even a modest storm surge from a weak hurricane. Irene last year was a warning.

In short, it was the multi front attack of the water that did it. The water built up in Long Island Sound because of the persistent east wind. What is at the end of Long Island Sound? NYC.

The same happened in the Hudson River Basin at the same time. With water coming from both sides the city did not stand a chance.

This guy predicted everything that happened.

http://www.propertycasualty360.com/2012/10/29/nyc-the-most-dangerous-place-in-the-world-for-stor

On your last question. You are now seeing the bath tub effect holding the water.

The ineffective seawalls that could not hold back the water are now holding the water in place in many areas.

A great example was LaGuardia Airports runways sitting in 8 feet of seawater with 3 lonely fire trucks sitting at the end of a runway pumping the water over the seawall and back into the harbor.

Great article with great ideas for moving forward! Some folks would say let's study this for a bit longer say 2000 or 200,000 years so we make the right decisions. Doing any or all of the things you mention would make the United States a better place to live. Thanks!

Sandy and the climate conversation:

"The message that climate change did play a role in Hurricane Sandy isn't getting the attention it should, Mann said.
"The climate change discussion needs a tipping point I call it a Cuyahoga River moment," Mann said, referring to the polluted Ohio river that caught fire in 1969 and sparked an environmental movement. [Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted]"

http://www.accuweather.com/en/features/sandy/will_sandy_change_the_climate/1000613

That fire was not a reflection of man changing the climate. It was one of man ruining the ecology with very real, very dangerous pollutants.

The environmental laws written after that incident and others changed the look of the nations environment for the better.

Sandy cannot be attributed to climate change. Anyone who makes that leap is ignorant of what just happened and how it was predicted.

Too bad global warming proponents are now obsessed with the CO2 output of US power stations while turning a blind eye on the toxic soup being pumped into the atmosphere by the ever increasing use of dirty burning coal in India, China and now Germany.

The dirtiest burning coal power plants in the US are cleaner than the coal power plants in India and China and just as clean as the new German coal power plants that burn dirty soft brown coal.

Since when does one medium sized hurricane end the debate on climate change. Just because it hit New York?
If we really did have global warming then the temperature difference between the poles and the equator would be getting smaller. Thus the driving force for greater weather events would be shrinking. Claiming that the hurricane is an indicator of global warming / climate change (unless that means that the climate is getting colder at the poles:) is counter to your own argument.
The climate on earth has been changing since the first time it coalesced from a cloud of dust. Please tell me when the climate of the earth was at its optimum so that you can differentiate it from now. After the last ice age? How about after the ice age before that? Maybe the ice age before that one?
The current politically left emphasis on climate change has been nothing more than a club to beat up western civilization in general and the United States in particular. At the same time it is being used as a club to keep developing nations from using their natural resources and keep them dirt poor.
As for the "scientific community" they, especially the IPCC, have some real credability problems as it has been revealled that they have been manipulating and cherry picking their data for years.
I deny your anthropormophic climate change becuase there are too many other studies that link climate change directly to solar cycles with a much higher degree of accuracy. Which do you think has more influence on climate; the sun or human activity? I will pick the sun.

bb_apptix ... (et. al. : ) ... how are you accounting for the melting of the polar ice caps? Do the melting arctic icecaps indicated a 'trend'?

Thanks.