The Media Finally Gets It: There's a Link Between Sandy and Climate Change

The worst of Sandy is over, and now comes the part where we all try to make sense of the steamroller that just flattened us. On U.S. shores alone, Sandy left 57 dead, did “tens of billions” of dollars worth of property damage, left 8 million people without power, and ground some of the nation’s most reliable transit systems to a halt. TV news is fond of pointing out that it was the worst disaster since 911 to hit New York City.

In short: not something we want to see again anytime soon. But scientists are in the news today pointing out that we probably will. Despite the fact that this was a storm made powerful by exceptionally unfortunate circumstances—conjoining storm systems, a full moon, warmer-than-usual waters—climate change is increasing the chance that we’ll see a repeat performance. For the first times in years, mainstream media outlets are flooding the airwaves, pointing out the link between a warmer world and nastier storms. Even politicians are making noise about climate change.

Here’s NBC’s Nightly News:

And here’s Bill Clinton, with an appropriately Clintonian quip or two about climate change and Romney:

From CNN’s report:

We should not be surprised. That’s the view of many climate scientists as they survey the destruction wrought by the superstorm that ravaged the Northeast this week. The melting of Arctic ice, rising sea levels, the warming atmosphere and changes to weather patterns are a potent combination likely to produce storms and tidal surges of unprecedented intensity, according to many experts.

Rachel Maddow and Connecticut governor Daniel Malloy discussed preparing to invest in adapting to climate change:

It made the late shows:

Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg made the link, too.

Via the Huffington Post:

Cuomo said on Tuesday that he told President Barack Obama it seemed like "we have a 100-year flood every two years now. These are extreme weather patterns. The frequency has been increasing,” he said. Of protections like levees in Lower Manhattan, Cuomo said, “It is something we’re going to have to start thinking about … The construction of this city did not anticipate these kinds of situations. We are only a few feet above sea level.” “I don’t know how practical it is to put gates on PATH tubes and subway tunnels,” Bloomberg said in a separate press conference. “What is clear is that the storms we’ve experienced in the last year or so around this country and around the world are much more severe than before.”

There’s ample evidence that rising sea levels and warmer ocean waters ripen conditions for nastier storms. And though no one disaster can ever be attributed directly to climate change, not even frankenSandy, climate scientists say that extreme events like her will become more routine as global warming continues its advance. It is, as CNN pointed out, a glimpse of what the storms of the future may well look like.