It's Global Warming, Stupid
businessweek.com
businessweek.com
It would greatly help the "we must do something" crowd if they spent some time working out exactly what that "something" would be, posting it for public comment and refining as needed.
I am sympathetic to the idea that leveling off and eventually reducing global CO2 emissions would be a sensible thing to do, but the key word there is "global". China is already the world's leading emitter by a good margin and will likely continue to increase their emissions, regardless of what happens in the West. Indeed, if we make energy and its uses more expensive here, the likelihood is that at least some of those emissions will simply migrate to China, where they will be cheaper but likely greater for the same degree of production.
I have yet to hear a proposal that is likely to both have an effect that justifies its cost (carbon taxes are wildly regressive, and removing that feature is tricky!), and is not absurdly unlikely to ever come to pass.
The cap and trade bill mentioned in this article fails the first test, I believe.
Another note: while China is the world's leading emitter, they also have contributed the most to abatement of emissions according to some (example: http://www.dbcca.com/dbcca/EN/_media/Global_Policy_Tracker_2...) Let's not forget that the US did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, while China did (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_the_Kyoto_Pr...).
Another way to look at this is a simple cost-benefit analysis: is the cost (I mean more just than the monetary face value) of having a regressive tax more than the cost of potential issues that result from not addressing emissions? If so, we should do it anyways.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/10/sandy-and-top-20-n...
For me the question is what kept damages from Sandy down, is it because a) it really wasn't that bad, or b) it really was that bad but East Coast resources, modern construction, and recent experiences with Katrina, etc., minimized damages?
Regardless, I find articles written a day or two after an event, by a layman, attributing causality to that event fairly vacuous.
By contrast, study the infographic linked below. Florida was hit by Charley, Frances, Jeane, Rita, and Wilma in the span of two years (2004-2005). These were all category 1 or 2 storms at landfall. They weren't nearly as large as Sandy, but we're talking five separate storms of greater intensity. Some of them made landfall or passed over densely populated South Florida regions. In total, these storms added up to around $75b in damages; a mark I wouldn't be surprised if Sandy passes. Individually, none of them passed the $20b mark.
Sandy did tremendous damage in the northeast for a weak category 1 hurricane. No single factor is to blame. There are many:
* Sandy was large... LARGE
* Sandy hit an extremely densely populated area
* Coastal topology in the region made it susceptible to storm surge
That last point can't be made strongly enough. Once again, we see that it is the water (ocean) that poses the greatest threat. The wind and rain are bad, but even a small amount of water can pass wind and rain damage by a long shot. It also takes far more lives.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-01/rising-tide#...
It is pretty much an established fact that climate change affects the environment, and that part of the change is caused by humans. Considering the increasing rate at which the environment is degrading, it is not completely unreasonable to think that climate would be affected.
edit 2: i am blind