Let me first say I am not keen on Global Warming being the root cause of every natural disaster in the twenty-first century, and I refuse to drink the Al Gore kool-aid in that regard.

However, I am also not a Global Warming denier, as it seems pretty logical that the innovations from the twentieth century due to industrialization and population explosions through both world wars should cause a major change in our atmosphere.  Logic dictates the more people on earth consuming in industry/post industry nations equals more damage to our ozone layer.  This should be especially true when we dropped nuclear bombs in the 1940’s that probably did more damage to the ozone layer than anything else!

But I digress; the impact of Global Warming is clearly an issue…though a debatable one as to how much.  More specifically, how much did Global Warming play a part in the impact of Hurricane Sandy?  It seems easy to point fingers at first due to the odd path of the hurricane and its unusual power….but closer examination would show places like New Jersey and New York City to be very ill-prepared for a hurricane in the first place.  Again it seems awful convenient to blame global warming for such a horrible outcome, but it seems no objective study has been put to the front lines to speak on the occasion.  Sources like the Huffington Post have multiple stories crying climate change from obvious sources of bias in politics and the climate advocacy industry (1). The best and most objective article from Ariana Huffington’s left-leaning news site was labeled “Climate Partly to Blame”, which takes responsibility to the accuracy of the situation, pointing out the record-breaking storm surge discovered in New York’s Battery Park (2).  Blogs and opinion pieces ranging from UC Berkley  to the New York Times echo the stretched claim of Sandy being a Man-Made Disaster, while others do reason down the claim as saying Global Warming does have impact on the severity of the storms as well as their frequency.

I do not disagree with those who can site 90+ years of evidence that hurricanes have become more frequent …..but I will speculate that the study of these storms likely began becoming reputable during that 90 years (3)!  Humanity has been polluting since the late 19th century with the bulk of it coming during both world wars in the 20th, but the study of Hurricanes was not likely to be prevalent until the late 1970s to the early 1980s.  I am cautiously skeptical on how much the climate has really changed over the century according to these people versus the common logic that a century of pollution has had a AN effect on our climate.  In short, I believe in the effect based on the evidence, the storm surge and frequency since the late 80s….not in the quantitative amount of it.

So did Sandy have an effect from Global Warming?  Of course; logic would suggest so due to how much humanity has grown in 100+ years.  But Sandy was not guided over New York City by Global warming nor was the damage solely the product of it either (while evidence may suggest otherwise, their simply isn’t enough to say this is a matter of fact.  See the big hurricane of 1938, the 1944 Great Atlantic Hurricane, Hurricane Carol 1954, Hurricane Gloria of 1985 and Hurricane Bob of 1990, to name a good amount).  One writer made a pretty sensible claim towards the end of their article, noting:

“Of course, climate change did not create Hurricane Sandy, Mann said. Hurricanes and tropical storms would occur with or without global warming. But many climate models suggest that such storms will become more intense as the planet warms ….Several researchers mentioned that the geography of New York made it more susceptible to storm surges. The long and narrow shape of the Long Island Sound, for example, helped to channel the storm surge and make it bigger. Additionally, areas like Battery Park were built from landfill and thus are low-lying and flat.”

New York more susceptible to Hurricanes, no kidding?  Does not take a scientist to discover a city of 8 million people densely populated on a set of varying islands low to the earth trapped within a cove of land to be absolutely pummeled by a big ole cloud of rain, wind, and lighting.  Hell, Staten Island is a perfect example; a mostly flat chunk of land known for being New York City’s Dump was absolutely pummeled by rain.

Truth is, the Northeastern States are not prepared to handle a hurricane….in fact I’d argue no state seems to be able to handle one.  Our cities infrastructure are outdated and our cities built ill-equipped to handle such storms (take New Orleans…a city built BELOW sea level).  It still raises great questions for debate as to severity of storms in the last century based on human pollution.  Sandy is no different, and should spark a debate in the right direction as to how cities across the country can prepare better for these circumstances.  One suggestion; bury the power lines!  Those darn things shouldn’t be up anyways, and can have a better chance of being sealed off underground away from water than hanging up ready to be blown away.  Also, and this one is much more of a general human error; don’t build your houses on the water.  Honestly, what do you expect to happen?

Let us just be a bit more insightful about these disasters, and not get caught up in the moment choosing to point fingers at big, easy targets.

Sources:

1)  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/hurricane-sandy-global-warming

2)  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/06/hurricane-damage-climate-change_n_2081960.html

3)  http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2012/10/30/was-hurricane-sandy-caused-by-global-warming