A Sandy Start

Hi all. Not the best note to start this blog on, but Hurricane then Tropical Storm then Tropical Depression then extra-tropical low Sandy is at the top of most people's news minds today. Hard to overstate the damage done, but I'll pass that for a suggestion for outsiders to donate to relief efforts that will soon enough be under way. Texting "REDCROSS" to 90999 will bill you $10 for donating to the Red Cross for example. There are certainly many other channels.

Sandy is another big weather/climate event in this past year to have brought out the Global Warming alarms and climate change monitors. I would read CJR's piece on interpreting it all. Yeah, it's happening, but be careful in attribution to extreme events. Biggest, clearest impact in this current situation is on wave heights and storm surge with the sea level rise (See end of article). The rest is murky at best.

It will be interesting to see how Sandy impacts another aspect closely tied with human caused climate change, and that is the cornucopia of limited (or non-renewable) and slowly renewable resources. As an example, I have been following the MetaFilter thread (warning: large) and there have been some mentions of the need to buy new cars to replace water totaled vehicles. Of course, cars aren't the only thing: houses, businesses, etc. To rebuild, lots of resources will be required, all pulling from the same limited pool.

For now, we can probably take the hit as long as everyone works together (donations, again, fairly good idea). Detroit will likely be boosted by it due to a short term increase in demand for new automobiles. For later and long term planning: what's a more sustainable set up that can stay stable even in the worst of environments and weather conditions? Clearly, a lot of work to do, and having really thought about these things since the aftermath of Deepwater Horizon, I really don't know where to begin other than small acts, which can add up, but scalability is a big unknown...

I'll leave on that note. Later.