Global warming costs being felt in New York will demand action
Lewis DiuguidIt sounds like an opening line from a comedian: Almost nothing is worse than an irritated New Yorker. Superstorm Sandy has created more than a million of them. But nobody’s laughing.
New Yorkers and other people on the East Coast who were slammed by Sandy have felt firsthand the costly effects of climate change. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo isn’t tiptoeing around the issue as he blamed man-made global warming for the billions of dollars in damage that the storm did.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s endorsement of President Barack Obama also was because of the storm being pinned to climate change and Obama’s efforts to do something to reduce man-made greenhouse gases to corral the problem. Industry has ignored the problem up to now with many naysaying Republicans because global warming is not a cost they want to bake into production.
New Yorkers are likely to get on board against climate change now because they are the ones who are absorbing the costs in deaths and injuries, massive power outages, mass transit being off line, their inability to get to work, lost wages, long lines and impossible waits at gasoline stations, flights being canceled, closed restaurants and businesses, and the stock market closing.
These are just a few of the costs that will continue to mount as global warming builds with rising ocean levels and more water vapor in the atmosphere. The effects are more radically violent weather in hurricanes, tornadoes and droughts. The mega-storms already have centered on coastal areas here and globally as their sweet spots.
The question is how much will folks like those angry New Yorkers take before they’ll collectively blow long and loud enough to force political and industrial change.
Mark Hastert
6 months, 3 weeks agoIt may be too late to reverse the effects of global warming but action can keep them from getting worse. Every year the Acqua Alta in Venice and elsewhere gets worse. The US is going to lose coastal developed areas yet the naysayers continue to resist. If we continue to develop more clean energy, increase our fuel mileage and look for ways to clean up the mess there will be new technologies, new opportunities, and thousands of new jobs.
JR Beillenhouser
6 months, 3 weeks agoThis has nothing to do with Climate Change. Keep banging the drums Lewis, but while you are at it look at facts.
We have had fewer hurricanes the last several years.
Scientists have recently concluded that there has been no global warming for 16 years (after a period where there was 16 years of warming).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released—chart-prove-it.html
Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. one of the biggest proponents of Global warming notes:
” The data does suggest a plateau, he admitted, and without a major El Nino event – the sudden, dramatic warming of the southern Pacific which takes place unpredictably and always has a huge effect on global weather – ‘it could go on for a while’.
Like Prof Curry, Prof Jones also admitted that the climate models were imperfect: ‘We don’t fully understand how to input things like changes in the oceans, and because we don’t fully understand it you could say that natural variability is now working to suppress the warming. We don’t know what natural variability is doing.’”
In other words, he agrees that for 16 years that there has been no global warming and the computer models they are using are not accurate.
So if CO2 is the culprit, how can it possibly occur that we would continue to throw 16 years of CO2 into the atmosphere, without it affecting the temperature? unless warming continues soon, it becomes statistically improbable that CO2 plays the big role that you claim it does.
Steven Fetter
66223
6 months, 2 weeks agoBefore we spend trillions to convert from an carbon powered economy to a “clean energy” economy, I hope we consider:
Are we sure that the temperature is rising? If so, is it due to humans using carbon based energy sources? If so, will it continue to rise or level off? Is a warmer planet all bad and nothing good? Most people I know consider anything north of the Mason-Dixon line as a cold place and would like to move to a warmer climate when they retire.
Most people will drive across town to save .$05 in per gallon gas costs. Most people’s (and businesses) second largest expense, after housing, are their energy costs (gas/electric/heating/cooling). Are we prepared to subject our economy to the higher costs associated with the current alternative fuels?
How clean is clean energy after accounting for all the land, infrastructure, and maintenance that will be needed for it? If we do nothing, will our life be better with cheap, efficient energy than with the unknown cost of unproven technologies?
I am not sure we have a choice of anything but carbon based fuels for the foreseeable future.
Phil Cardarella
6 months, 2 weeks agoToss a frog in a pot of boiling water and he will jump out. Place him in a pot of cool water and raise the temperature gradually and he will cook.
Alas, we are supposed to be smarter than frogs — but a lot of people have a vested interest in keeping us dumb.
Yes, there have been storms before. And droughts and floods. And the earth is warming — not evenly, but pretty steadily.
It might be a coincidence that we are also dumping CO2 into the atmosphere — and have been doing so in increasingly amounts since 1820 or so.
But, why not err on the side of caution?
After all, why not have higher fuel standards? I drove a car in France that gets 50-60 MPG — and is as stylish, roomy and as peppy as those in the US that get 20 MPG. Why NOT cut your fuel costs by 2/3?
Efficiency standards — even those imposed by such things as carbon taxes and cap & trade (a GOP idea, back in 1970’s) — do NOT raise energy costs when used in conjunction with more efficient equipment. And, renewable energy can reduce the carbon footprint. Yes, the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow — but both China and Germany are willing to invest heavily in both while we just chant “Drill, baby, drill!”
We are not ever going to be a “carbonless” society, and no one advocates that. But, the idea that we have to go on until the last drop of oil is pumped and the last lump of coal is mined before we begin to use our God-given brains to address energy conservation?
That’s just “Dumb, baby, dumb!”