Hurricane Sandy Speaks

Sea water floods the Ground Zero construction site, Monday in New York

There are estimates that I might cause $20 billion in damages in the US in addition to the $2+ billion in costs in the Caribbean. That’s a lot of money — enough to give every human on the planet $3. But it is only a fraction of the $600 billion the oil and gas industry is spending this year alone [2012 Harvard study, pg 8]  in exploration and new production. That $600 billion investment in fossil fuels will bring far greater storms than I.

It will bring extreme weather no human has ever witnessed. And it will be an “investment” in extreme weather lasting more than a hundred years

So don’t curse me if your home is flooded, your life disrupted or worse. Hurricanes and tropical storms are the nature’s pressure relief valves. It’s not our fault we’ve been amped up on fossil-fuel ‘steroids’ you’ve put into the atmosphere. Everyday millions more tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) are added trapping ever more of the sun’s heat. A tonne of CO2 is about three barrels of oil.

Every tonne of CO2 ‘lives’ in the atmosphere for 100 years. That means every barrel of oil, tonne of coal or cubic foot of gas burned adds more CO2, trapping more and more of the sun’s heat for the next 100 years.

It’s curious you’d spend $600 billion on additional sources of fossil fuel when there is already more than enough production capacity to push CO2 levels from current the 390 parts per million (ppm) to far above 450 ppm. It’s a curious investment when your experts and leaders say they want to return to a safer level of 350 ppm.