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October 31st, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda From Climate Central’s Andrew Freedman:
As officials begin the arduous task of pumping corrosive seawater out of New York City’s subway system and try to restore power to lower Manhattan, and residents of the New Jersey Shore begin to take stock of the destruction, experts and political leaders are asking what Hurricane Sandy had to do with climate change. After all, the storm struck a region that has been hit hard by several rare extreme weather events in recent years, from Hurricane Irene to “Snowtober.”
Scientists cannot yet answer the specific question of whether climate change made Hurricane Sandy more likely to occur, since such studies, known as detection and attribution research, take many months to complete. What is already clear, however, is that climate change very likely made Sandy’s impacts worse than they otherwise would have been.
There are three different ways climate change might have influenced Sandy: through the effects of sea level rise; through abnormally warm sea surface temperatures; and possibly through an unusual weather pattern that some scientists think bore the fingerprint of rapidly disappearing Arctic sea ice.
If this were a criminal case, detectives would be treating global warming as a likely accomplice in the crime.
Warmer, Higher Seas
Water temperatures off the East Coast were unusually warm this summer — so much so that New England fisheries officials observed significant shifts northward in cold water fish such as cod. Sea surface temperatures off the Carolinas and Mid-Atlantic remained warm into the fall, offering an ideal energy source for Hurricane Sandy as it moved northward from the Caribbean. Typically, hurricanes cannot survive so far north during late October, since they require waters in the mid to upper 80s Fahrenheit to thrive.
Scientists said about 1°F out of the 5°F East Coast water temperature anomaly may have been due to manmade global warming. Warmer seas provide more water vapor for storms to tap into; this water vapor can later be wrung out as heavy rainfall, resulting in flooding.
The most damaging aspect of the storm was the massive storm surge that struck the coastline from Massachusetts to Maryland. Global warming-related sea level rise gave the surge a higher launching pad than it would have had a century ago, making it more damaging than it otherwise would have been. This is only going to get worse as sea level rise continues as a result of warming ocean waters and melting polar ice caps and glaciers.
The storm surge at The Battery in Lower Manhattan was the highest ever recorded at that location. It surpassed even the most pessimistic forecasts, with the maximum water level reaching 13.88 feet above the average of the daily lowest low tide of the month, known as Mean Lower Low Water, including a storm surge component of 9.23 feet. That broke the official record of 10.5 feet above Mean Lower Low Water set in 1960 during Hurricane Donna, as well as a record set during a hurricane in 1821.
A water vapor satellite image of Superstorm Sandy on Tuesday, Oct. 30. Credit: Stu Ostro/Facebook.
Or, to put it in simpler terms, the water level reached 9.15 feet above the average high tide line.
Katharine Hayhoe, a climate researcher at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, said manmade climate change likely contributed to the storm surge at The Battery in Lower Manhattan, with 1 foot 3 inches of long-term sea level rise recorded at that location, the result of manmade sea level rise, sinking land, and ocean currents. She said the manmade contribution to the storm surge may have been a small amount.
But to the Metropolitan Transit Authority or Con Ed, the main electric utility in Manhattan, each inch of sea level rise matters a great deal.
If a similar storm were to strike New York in 2050, it would cause even more damage, since sea levels are expected to be considerably higher by midcentury. In fact, a recent study found that sea level rise has taken place at an accelerated rate at locations north of Norfolk, Va., and if this pace continues the Northeast could see much higher sea levels than other parts of the East Coast by midcentury.
A 2012 report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that sea level rise has likely increased extreme coastal high water events around the world.
By warming the seas and the atmosphere, global warming is also expected to alter hurricane frequency and strength, making North Atlantic hurricanes slightly more powerful, while reducing the overall number of storms during coming decades. Detecting such changes in the observational record is difficult, considering the varying ways people have kept tabs on hurricanes prior to the era of hurricane hunter aircraft flights and satellite imagery? A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that warmer sea surface temperatures are tied to an increase in stronger Atlantic hurricanes.
“Blocked” Weather Pattern
In addition, an unusual weather pattern in the northern hemisphere steered the storm in an unprecedented direction, as it made a dramatic — and for many East Coast residents, catastrophic — left hook right into coastal New Jersey. The east to west movement, which is exactly the opposite of how weather systems normally move in this area, helped maximize the storm surge, since a strong easterly air flow struck the coast at a right angle.
Satellite loop from the University of Wisconsin, showing Hurricane Sandy as it made landfall in New Jersey.
Original source: http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/11686
The upper air flow over the Atlantic Ocean was jammed by a powerful area of high pressure near Greenland and a storm system in the Central Atlantic, leaving the storm no escape route away from the U.S. Such patterns are known as “blocking” events, and they have occurred with increasing regularity and intensity in recent years. Blocking patterns have been linked to several noteworthy extreme weather events, such as the deadly 2010 Russian heat wave and Pakistan floods, the 2003 European heat wave, and the March heat wave of 2012 in the U.S.
In this case, the blocking pattern occurred at precisely the wrong time — when a hurricane was moving out of the Caribbean.
Weather Channel hurricane expert Bryan Norcross wrote about this on Oct. 26. “The freak part is that a hurricane happens to be in the right place in the world to get sucked into this doubled-back channel of air and pulled inland from the coast,” he said. “And the double-freak part is that the upper-level wind, instead of weakening the storm and simply absorbing the moisture — which would be annoying enough — is merging with the tropical system to create a monstrous hybrid vortex. A combination of a hurricane and a nor’easter.”
Some, though not all, scientists think the more frequent blocking events be related to the loss of Arctic sea ice, which is one of the most visible consequences of manmade global warming. The 2012 sea ice melt season, which ended just one month ago, was extreme, with sea ice extent, volume, and other measures all hitting record lows. The loss of sea ice opens large expanses of open water, which then absorbs more of the incoming solar energy and adds heat and moisture to the atmosphere, thereby helping to alter weather patterns. Exactly how sub-Arctic weather patterns are changing as a result, however, is a subject of active research.
Some researchers who warn that climate change is already being felt in extreme weather events, such as Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., are not yet convinced of the Arctic connection. Others, such as Hayhoe, think it is a “plausible theory” that is worth investigating, although she noted there is evidence that Arctic warming may cause more blocking during the winter rather than during the fall.
James Overland, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who recently published a study on how Arctic sea ice loss is altering the weather in the Far North, said it’s not clear whether Hurricane Sandy was just a freak event or a sign of things to come. “What was highly unusual to me was the slowing down of the jet stream that normally turns hurricanes out to sea, allowing Sandy to directly [make] landfall,” he said in an email conversation. Yet, he said it’s important to recognize that there is still a huge role played by randomness, or chaos, in global weather patterns. “Having looked at a lot of weather maps, I don’t think it’s entirely legitimate to make a big possibility for an Arctic connection with Sandy rather than the chaos default,” he said.
And while climate change has undoubtedly altered the background conditions in which all weather systems are born, scientists said that natural variability still plays a very large role, and may have been the dominant factor with Hurricane Sandy.
Martin Hoerling, a researcher at the Earth Systems Research Laboratory, also in Boulder, is a proponent of this view. “Great events, like this meteorological one, can happen with little cause(s). Individually, neither the tropical storm nor the extratropical storm that embraced it, were unusual,” he said via email. “What makes this a rare, perhaps once in a lifetime event, is the fortuity of their timely (“untimely” as far as most are concerned who sit in harms way) intersection.”
Regardless of the chain of events that led to this disaster, Hurricane Sandy is almost certain to wind up being one of the top 10 costliest hurricanes on record, and it comes soon after Munich Re, a global insurance giant, warned of increasing natural disaster losses in the U.S., a trend the company said is related to global climate change.
And regardless of unequivocal linkages between this particular storm and manmade climate change, questions related to future human-caused changes — how they will make this type of event more likely and destructive, through a combination of sea level rise, extreme weather trends, and vulnerability of coastal populations and infrastructure, deserve to be asked and may be much easier to answer.
Also on HuffPost:
President also said, “What I can promise you is that the federal government will be working as closely as possible with the state and local officials and we will not quit until this is done.”
President said “there’s help available to you right now.” He also said people can call 1-800-621-FEMA or visit disasterassistance.gov for federal assistance.
President says focus is on New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and that they are “still monitoring” West Virginia. Says those four states “bearing the brunt” of difficulties.
Watch the live press conference here.
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@ MikeBloomberg : All NYC Public School teachers, administrators and staff will report to work Friday. Look for updates from @NYCSchools #SandyNYC |
Con Edison has a page to view the status of power outages across affected areas in New York. It can be accessed here.
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@ NYGovCuomo : Latest from @ConEdison, majority of #Manhattan should have power by Fri/Sat. Outage MAP, upd. every 15 mins: http://t.co/gzWNTcF2 #sandy |
HuffPost’s Tom Zeller Jr. reports:
In a twist that many climate activists will no doubt enjoy, the scheduled release Wednesday of an 18-month investigation into the impacts of climate change on national security by experts at the National Research Council — sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency — has been delayed because of Hurricane Sandy.
Read the full story here.
A tiny percentage of the people unable to board the 19,000+ flights canceled or rescheduled in the wake of Hurricane Sandy likely read the contract that is now determining what sort of help their airline is obliged to give them. Called “Contracts of Carriage,” the legal agreements airlines make with their passengers are involved, arcane and designed to limit corporate liability.
In the case of a “Force Majeure” event, otherwise known as an “Act of God”, few airlines assume responsibility to do anything but offer passengers refunds or traveler certificates. This means that many of the passengers inconvenienced by the storm are probably up an unmentionable creek and likely to stay there for some time.
— HuffPost Travel blogger Kate Hanni, Founder, FlyersRights.org
Read the full story here .
The New York Times reports:
A Randolph, N.J., couple who were active in pharmaceutical circles and in the equestrian world were killed when a tall tree fell on their pickup truck as they drove through Mendham Township on Monday night at the height of the storm.
Read more here.
New York City schools will remain closed through the remainder of the week in the days following the passage of Superstorm Sandy through the country’s most populous city.
Classes are canceled for students Thursday and Friday, with hopes of reopening to the city’s 1.1 million students by Monday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said during a press conference Wednesday afternoon. Teachers and administrators will return for the workday Friday.
Read the full story here.
Click here.
Mayor Bloomberg announced that students will not be called back to school this week, though he asked teachers and administrators to report for work on Friday.
He apologized to parents who had to miss work in order to take care of children, but said that many schools had been damaged by hurricane Sandy, and that safety had to be a priority.
New York mayor told a press conference that the city cannot cope with the number of private cars that are trying to drive on the streets in the wake of the subway shutdown.
He announced that from Wednesday evening, all East River bridges will be available only to high-occupancy vehicles – meaning that any car crossing a bridge will need to have a minimum of three people in it.
He also announced plans to implement a scheme where drivers could pick up pedestrians who needed to get into Manhattan to meet the carpool requirement.
President Barack Obama and Gov. Chris Christie surveyed the devastation in Long Beach Island from the president’s helicopter, Marine One, during the president’s visit to New Jersey on Wednesday. The traveling press observed from a separate chopper and shares the following details via the White House pool report:
After eight minutes in the air we appeared over the Atlantic City skyline, with the casinos rising along the Shore. Your pooler witnessed a soccer game going on and initially not a great deal of devastation. The Atlantic City boardwalk seemed in tact near the main drag by the casinos. North things got hairier.
Note: Your pooler does not claim to be an expert on New Jersey or its shore. So we don’t have much to compare this to.
Further north we could see more sand blown inland onto city streets (we don’t know which municipality), as well as a handful of Caterpillar-style tractors appearing to be clearing areas.
After about eight minutes of flying over marshland, we reached what we are told is Beach Haven on Long Beach Island. The town is about five blocks wide. Streets look muddy and sandy from ocean to bay. Standing water is everywhere. Some whole streets are underwater. Pool can see boarded up and blown out windows but so far no flattened homes. Every so often there will be a car driving on the one main north-south road, which appears to be clear of sand.
At Ship Bottom, things look better. Roads only have sand on them within two blocks of the ocean. Streets are under water at the bayfront at what looks like loading docks for boats. There are a handful of what were once walkways to the beach that have been torn apart. Other walkways to the beach remain.
At Harvey Cedars (where your pooler spent a lovely Independence Day weekend in July 2011) damaged was less, perhaps due to the wider beach. Again there is sand on somme roadways but less than at Beach Haven. The beach front homes seem to have survived the storm.
The helo turned to the west and for a while flew over the bay before reaching the mainland.
Here your pool saw a lot of marshland. The helo flew over an inland community on the bay where there were a lot of big houses and some standing water in the streets but no significant damage that we recognized.
Next up is Seaside Heights, a community that is the worst off that we’ve seen so far. Roads are either covered in sand or water.
There was a carnival and a large pier that look like the storm took giant bites out of the ends of them. Houses flattened – not whole neighborhoods but scattered here and there. Wood fragments everywhere. The boardwalk gone except for lonely posts here and there. The whole town looks like a beach with houses sprouting out from the middle of their first levels.
Then a fire, which appears to have taken out about eight homes to the ground. It is burning as we pass by.
Beachfront homes with the decks yanked off.
A bridge to the mainland knocked down at one end, with cars still on it.
The next town to the north, Point Pleasant Beach, again has sand and water everywhere. It is about four blocks inland before you can see concrete on the roads.
Someone has written “ROMNEY” in large letters in the sand at the north end of Point Pleasant Beach.
We pass over a harbor. The boats seem to be in okay shape. Flying back south on the bay side of Long Beach Island. The water level is high, lapping at the bottom of homes. On the mainland bay shore again there are homes and parts of homes turned into wood piles. The island’s bay shore seems to be in better shape.
There’s a two-span bridge to Long Beach Island that looks to be in tact, though on the island side there looked to be mud on the road.
Heading south, more water on mainland roadways near the bay. Entire sections of several hundred yards each of the north-south road closest to the bay are underwater but there are vehicles traversing it.
Perhaps it was tough to catch from the helo, but pool did not see very many trees down. Not many leaves left on the trees either.
The last 10 minutes of the ride were relatively uneventful. Pool passed over mainland towns, a trailer park which seemed to have survived unscathed and a golf course with the appropriate amount of sand on it. There are entire subdivisions that look like no storm hit.
–Sabrina Siddiqui
Reuters reports:
NEW YORK Oct 31 (Reuters) – More than half of all service stations in the New York City area and New Jersey were shut on Wednesday due to power outages and depleted fuel supplies, frustrating attempts to restore normal life in the wake of powerful storm Sandy, industry officials said.
Reports of long lines, dark stations and empty tanks circulated across the region on Wednesday, with some station owners unable to pump fuel due to a lack of power, while others quickly ran their tanks dry because of intensified demand and logistical problems in delivering fresh supplies.
Read the full story here.
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@ ConEdison : #ConEdison Customers in Manhattan and Brooklyn who are served by underground electric equipment should have power back within three days… |
The New York University Langone Medical Center, which was forced to evacuate more than 200 patients Monday night during Hurricane Sandy, didn’t want Mayor Michael Bloomberg to shut it down in advance of Hurricane Irene last year, an executive told CNN at the time.
NYU hospital CEO Robert Grossman “felt very strongly. He really did not want to do this. This came from the mayor’s office,” Andrew Rubin, vice president for medical center clinical affairs and affiliates at the hospital, said on CNN in 2011. “I think the mayor wants to play it very safe and there’s no right answer,” Rubin said. “It’s just weighing two bad choices.”
WATCH:
Bloomberg made the opposite decision prior to Hurricane Sandy. NYU says the city government made the call to keep the hospital open this week but wouldn’t say whether NYU agreed with the decision. Bloomberg’s press office hasn’t responded to written questions about the evacuations of the NYU hospital, Coney Island Hospital or Bellevue Hospital Center during or in the aftermath of the storm.
The NYU facility is located in an evacuation zone and sits along the East River. The hospital lost power because of Hurricane Sandy, and its backup generators failed Monday night. Patients, including 20 infants from the neonatal intensive care unit, were moved to other New York hospitals.
–Jeffrey Young, HuffPost
Pedestrians photograph the flooded West Street entrance to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, officially known as the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel, in New York, U.S., on Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012. Atlantic superstorm Sandy may cut U.S. economic growth as it keeps millions of employees away from work and shuts businesses from restaurants to refineries in one of the nation?s most populated and productive regions.
Photo by Peter Foley, Bloomberg / Getty Images
Including the big power outage at the one-minute mark.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) released an update on coastal erosion via Twitter Wednesday, noting that several beaches on Long Island’s South Shore have been heavily impacted by Hurricane Sandy.
Far Rockaway Beach was “almost completely washed away,” with its boardwalk destroyed. That section of the shoreline is located just east of Breezy Point, where at least 80 houses burned as a result of the rising floodwaters.
Moving eastward, Long Beach was crippled by similar circumstances, with the city flooded in the process. Ocean Parkway, which serves as the main thoroughfare between Jones Beach and Gilgo Beach, was also “threatened & overwashed.”
Jones Beach is one of the U.S.’ most heavily-visited beaches. In July 2012, Travel + Leisure listed it as No. 9 in the nation, with 5.1 million annual visitors.
(– Chris Gentilviso, HuffPost)
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@ HowardBeckNYT : Another source confirms what my colleague @richsandomir just tweeted: Mayor to announce cancellation of Knicks-Nets game. |
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Wednesday signed an executive order postponing Halloween until Monday, Nov. 5.
In a statement, the governor said he made the decision “to minimize additional risks to lives and the public safety as we begin the process of rebuilding and recovering from Hurricane Sandy.”
Click here for Christie’s full statement.
— Timothy Stenovec, HuffPost
Via ABC News:
New York City’s Bellevue Hospital and its remaining 700 patients have struggled along in the aftermath of Sandy — with failing power, partially lighted halls, no computers, making it difficult to locate patients within the facility, hospital staff told ABC News today.
When Sandy hit the New York area Monday night, Bellevue almost lost its generators. At least one got repaired just in time to stave off an evacuation, but it’s been a struggle to keep the hospital going. Now an evacuation is expected — making Bellevue the second of the city’s public hospitals to be taken off line because of precarious and failing conditions that could endanger patient health.
“It’s Katrina-esque in there,” one nurse told ABC News.
Full story here.
DNAinfo reports:
SOUTH BEACH — Police dogs and dozens of cops are scouring Staten Island for two boys who became separated from their mother on Father Capodanno Boulevard during Hurricane Sandy Monday evening.
The boys’ and mother’s identities have not been released, but police confirmed they are from Staten Island. They were officially listed as missing Tuesday.
For more, go here.
President Obama is greeted by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie upon arriving in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on Oct. 31, 2012 to visit areas hardest hit by superstorm Sandy. Americans sifted through the wreckage on Wednesday as millions remained without power. The storm carved a trail of devastation across New York City and New Jersey, killing dozens of people in several states, swamping miles of coastline, and throwing the tied-up White House race into disarray just days before the vote. (JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The IRS is giving taxpayers and tax preparers hit by Hurricane Sandy an extra week to file returns and make payments.
The tax agency says the relief will apply mainly to businesses in the storm-impacted Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states whose payroll and excise tax returns and payments are normally due on Wednesday. The deadline will be extended until Nov. 7. No action is required by the taxpayer to obtain the extension.
Read more here.
Hurricane Sandy has killed at least 24 New Yorkers, including an off-duty police officer who drowned rescuing his family, a 13-year-old Staten Island girl who was crushed by debris, and an elderly woman whose oxygen machine lost power, the Associated Press reports.
Officials say they fear the number of lives lost will continue to increase as recovery efforts continue.
According to another Associated Press report from Wednesday morning, at least 59 deaths have already been attributed to the superstorm since it began impacting the East Coast over the weekend. On Tuesday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said the storm had left at least six dead in New Jersey.
In New York City, stories of heroism and tragedy are beginning to emerge.
For the full story, click here.
Source Article from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/31/climate-change-hurricane-sandy-global-warming_n_2050516.html
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