Will Sandy change the climate change conversation?

If you were listening to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's press briefing Tuesday (Oct. 30) as New York City began to tally the damage from Hurricane Sandy, you may have been surprised by what you heard.

"There has been a series of extreme weather incidents. That is not a political statement. That is a factual statement," Cuomo said. " Anyone who says there's not a dramatic change in weather patterns, I think, is denying reality."

Yesterday he added, "I think part of learning from this is realizing that climate change is a reality."

Former President Bill Clinton told a crowd Tuesday: "All up and down the East Coast, there are mayors ... being told, 'You've got to move these houses back away from the ocean. You've got to lift them up. Climate change is going to raise the water levels on a permanent basis. If you want your town insured, you have to do this.'" Add to the mix Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who endorsed Barack Obama for president on Thursday (Nov. 1), saying Obama is the better candidate to deal with climate change, which he said may have contributed to the superstorm.

High-profile figures like Bloomberg, Cuomo and Clinton speaking candidly and practically about climate change suggests a change of pace among public officials. But will the dialogue on extreme weather and climate that has emerged in Sandy's wake alter the national conversation (or lack thereof) on climate change? Or will that discussion recede with Sandy's floodwaters and the week's news cycle?

What made Sandy so destructive?

Hurricane Sandy was an unusually large and destructive storm, breaking records in rainfall, flooding, barometric pressure and, potentially, costs. The storm surge breached New York City's hundred-year-old sea walls and flooded the underground network of subway tunnels -- the most destructive event in the subway system's 108-year history, according to Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman Joseph Lhota. [See Photos of Sandy's Aftermath]

But how much of the storm's size and devastation can we tie to climate change?

Experts don't have the answer to that question. They do say, however, that climate change had at least some influence.

"This was a complex storm, so we do need to be cautious about linking it to climate change," said Jonathan Foley, an ecosystem researcher who is director of the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment. "Only some of its components may have been due to climate change."

The storm had several ingredients, Foley explained. Sandy's late-season formation may have been influenced by a shifting climate, but its meet-up with an early North American winter storm had no climate change connection. A high-pressure blocking event, which may have been climate change-related, steered the storm toward the East Coast rather than out to sea. Unusually high tides amplified Sandy's storm surge and flooding, but the tides had nothing to do with climate change. And the fact that those four events happened simultaneously was just an unfortunate coincidence.

Warmer temperatures, which allowed the storm to carry more moisture, and higher sea level are likely to have amplified Sandy and its effects, said Michael Mann, a climate researcher at Pennsylvania State University. The 13-foot coastal surge, which includes both storm surge and high tide, in New York City's Battery Park was the highest in at least two centuries. The higher sea level -- a foot higher than when the city's protective sea walls were built a century ago -- can be attributed to climate change, Mann said.

"Someone set the fire with meteorology, but climate change added the fuel," Foley said.

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]

Foley agreed. "We're having the same conversation we've been having since the 1988 drought, the 1993 floods, Hurricane Katrina, the heat waves in Europe. Public attention seems to max out at a couple weeks."

Many have noted the near-absence of a climate discussion in the 2012 presidential race. Foley said that's not surprising because it's a no-win proposition for both candidates. President Barack Obama already is seen having the support of most voters who are concerned about climate change, and the matter doesn't seem to be a major concern for Mitt Romney's supporters.

"When one political party has the official position that climate change is a hoax, when we're politically divided as to whether we should even accept the science, it's difficult to have a meaningful discussion," Mann said.

But Foley hopes that, after the election, Hurricane Sandy will spur a long-term discussion about climate change and extreme weather events.

"This is an opportunity to have a conversation about how vulnerable we are to natural disasters," he said. "We need a good, balanced discussion, but with a sense of urgency."

For New York's governor, that sense of urgency may have already arrived.

"A fundamental rethinking of our built environment," and the long-term modifications that might be needed to protect New York City from coastal flooding, "is a massive, massive undertaking," Cuomo said yesterday. "But it is a conversation I think is overdue, and a conversation I think we should begin."

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• 8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World
• Hurricane Sandy: Photos of a Frankenstorm
• Video - Predicting the Future of Our Climate

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[NotAGolfer]

Sea level has been rising for the last 22,000 years, since we've been coming out of an ice age. It's been rising at the same pace for hundreds of years. Storms happen, and when we've only had good records for less than 100 years, and when instrumentation for recording extremes has gotten better and better, records are sometimes broken. Sandy only tied the 1938 hurricane, in terms of pressure at landfall, and we have better instruments now to record and catch the absolute lowest pressures. Plus, we have instruments now that let us know the pressure while the hurricane is out at sea, which weren't available then. Keep perspective, people. Don't let the media, and the establishment with an agenda, convince you to turn over your freedom to bureaucrats who will "keep you safe."

[julianpenrod]

This is all crucial for the New World Order. They intend to enslave mankind and, if establishing a state of universal, perpetual crisis is necessary, they will use it. This only prepares the gullible to accept it when they declare unending catastrophe. If they are permitted to be believed, they will arrange an explosion at a nuclear reactor and require people not even to go outside, or they will carry out an above ground nuclear explosion and claim a meteor hit the earth and establish martial law "to keep the peace".
It was a week at least of build up to this event, and Sandy was described as "unconventional" every step of the way. But at no time did any climate change adherents mention that this fit the bill for the supposed massive storms that global warming was supposed to bring! Not one! Because many if not most climate change adherents are themselves New World Order moles, making sure the discussion on claimte change doesn't go near chemtrails changing the environment, and preparing the public for the coming age of unceasing disaster. But they knew this was a fraud!
Defenders of the New World Order will contradict this, but, as with all who promote a lie, they have nothing they can defend their point with. As a result, they utilize non argument methods in their replies, such as arrogance, contempt, non validated dismissiveness, viciousness, mockery, vulgarity.

[julianpenrod]

The fact of the matter is, this was all a fraud, a fabricated "disaster". It's not difficult to do, simply simulate those aspects of "disaster" that most people are going to view, and make sure to evacuate populations from where more massive "damage" is going to be engineered! Not that there wasn't a storm, that was arranged through chemtrail contamination of the air, but the "effects" were man made.
In New Jersey and New York, there was no damage to the electrical grid, the electrical companies simply shut the power down. In New York, they admitted it. In New Jersey, cables were left hanging from poles for days. That's illegal if they are live. They cordoned them off, but left them hanging. The start of the outage was equally suspicious. Power went off in New Jersey for about a minute, but then came back up! The system compensated. But the companies took that as their "excuse" that the gullible would buy, and they then shut all power completely for days. Even streetlights and highways lights were out, and they aren't fed by overhead power lines! And there were many people, evident New World Order supporters, who had power, even while the rest of their neighborhood didn't. If there were as many generators going as the number of anomalously lighted houses required, there would be constant noise and the smell of emissions in the air. There weren't.
"Flooding" is no problem to simulate. Mahwah, New Jersey has been doing it for years, opening the floodgates of their reservoir when it got only a little above half full, inundating lower lying communities like Wayne. They started it about ten years ago, but have been doing it steadily since.
Not even that they need to actually flood an area. They simply make sure those who aren't New World Order operatives are evacuated, by force if necessary. Then they won't be there to report what actually is going on. Like the Mantoloking bridge being attacked. They'll make sure some moles who "managed to stay behind" supply reports that corroborate the "official story", and the malleable will believe it. Remember, the police killed the man on Danziger Bridge in New Orleans, to keep him from seeing that they were going to dynamite the levees!
But, everywhere, the evidence was more than obvious this was all manufactured to inconvenience the public. For the first four days, there were no more than a few public utility trucks to be seen, and most were vans, not ones with cherry pickers. Trees were allowed to sit, even leaning on power lines, for days. But the fact they were leaning on power lines means the lines weren't broken. Stores deliberately let supplies of flashlights and generators deplete. They made no move to replenish, even after roads were opened. Even after the power came back, cable connection stayed out for more than a day. It's all supposedly pole work, why the delay with cable? But, then, the reality is the power was turned off with the flick of a switch, and cable connection, which could get the truth out and combat the official lies, was delayed until the gullible were impressed. And they made sure to limit the working gas stations to only one in an area. All others were ordered closed. Christie lied that most gas stations lost power and couldn't pump and didn't have generators to pump gas. With three gas stations on corners of an intersection, why would one have power and not the other two? And gas stations want to make money! They would make sure to have generators to pump under all circumstances! What's more, there were gas stations that worked even thr first day after the storm, meaning they still had power! They stopped the next day, even though gas could have been supplied them!
And this "storm" was, in fact, caused by chemtrails. "Meteorologists" were predicting it with pinpoint accuracy as much as a week out! And Western Maryland experienced a "wet snow" during the event. This was what Northeast New Jersey experienced on Halloween 2011. But the snow was not normal water, it was a heavier chemical than water coming from the chemtrail chemicals in the clouds. Just like last year, this "snow" was described as breaking tree limbs because the trees still had leaves on them, "making them too heavy". Leaves are light! Especially dry leaves! One person could hold aloft a bag with all the foliage from a single tree! It is patently impossible that a tree branch that held snows in the past could not hold snow and a scattering of leaves now!
And what trees did fall over, and weren't knocked over in fabricating the event, had root structures no more than twice the diameter of the trunk. This comes from root systems being poisoned by the chemicals coming out of the skies.

[MemeMine]

Science only says it "could" happen, never have they said it "WILL" happen. READ their reports!
All evidence points to exaggeration and real planet lovers are happy a crisis wasn't real after all so get ahead of the curve:
*In all of the debates Obama hadn't planned to mention climate change once.
*Obama has not mentioned the crisis in the last two State of the Unions addresses.
*Occupywallstreet does not even mention CO2 in its list of demands because of the bank-funded carbon trading stock markets run by corporations.
*Julian Assange is of course a climate change denier.
*Canada killed Y2Kyoto with a freely elected climate change denying prime minister and nobody cared, especially the millions of scientists warning us of unstoppable warming (a comet hit).

[Forty-Four]

Why does this question come up after every bad storm? Storms happen. Yes the climate is changing, but it is natural....it happens over thousands of years and eventually it will cool back down into the next ice age (assuming that man does not destroy himself (or the earth) by then).

[makemyday2da]

Always the naysayers who live in denial! "... but it is natural....it happens over thousands of years..." Explain why, then, this past decade or so has it become so much more pronounced and obvious - not to mention more serious. FYI, this IS destroying the earth - not 1000's of years from now, either.