Posts Tagged ‘hurricane sandy’
Sandy: “I Helped Re-elect President Obama”
Destroyed beachfront in New Jersey
I am aware that my arrival last week helped re-elect President Obama.
Superstorms like me don’t play politics but it should be clear by now that your refusal to tackle global warming has serious consequences. Higher sea levels and amped-up hurricanes like me are just two of them. There is an awful price to pay for burning coal, oil, and natural gas I’m sorry to say.
Putting hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere is trapping more of the sun’s heat energy. CO2 is the planet’s natural heating blanket but those extra hundreds of millions of tonnes of CO2 has made that blanket thicker. And it is getting thicker every year.
Nearly 200 people were killed in the 10 days I traveled from Jamaica to Canada. Most of the deaths were American. The US remains by far the largest emitter of CO2. With a fraction of the world population, the US is responsible for nearly 30 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions from 1860 to 2009. On a person by person basis, Americans have one of the biggest CO2 ‘footprints’.
CO2 emissions per person by country. Courtesy: SIMON DONNER, (Maribo)
Some of you have known for a long time how dangerous CO2 is. The first international conference to address the climate-disrupting impacts of burning coal, oil, and natural gas was held 24 years ago. Called “The Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security” your politicians and scientists concluded:
“humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences could be second only to a global nuclear war”.
They accurately warned of a dangerous temperature increase without action to reduce emissions. (Conference summary statement)
Knowing all this your oil, coal and gas corporations were allowed to grow to become the world’s most powerful and profitable industry. You gave, and continue to give, those corporations who are making the planet less habitable billions of tax dollars in subsidies.
Now there is so much CO2 in the atmosphere the entire planet is .8C (1F) hotter and that temperature will at least triple. This additional heat energy being trapped by the extra CO2 amounts to exploding 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day 365 days per year. This has spawned more and more destructive extreme weather events. This ‘new normal’ will only worsen as more CO2 is released.
The refusal to tackle global warming has led to nearly 400,000 deaths and more than $1.2 trillion is being lost every year mainly due to damage to food production and from extreme weather linked to climate change. Air pollution caused by the use of fossil fuels is also separately contributing to the deaths of at least 4.5 million people a year. These deaths and costs will only worsen with every additional tonne of CO2.
In human terms CO2 is forever. Your countries’ emissions today will disrupt the climate of your children, grand children and great grandchildren. To minimize the severity and intensity of flooding, droughts, destructive storms and crop failures your CO2 footprint needs to grow smaller and virtually disappear over the next few decades.
The US CO2 footprint has been getting smaller in recent years. The recession, closures of old coal plants and more natural gas has resulted in fewer emissions. Others are doing their part. The British are 18 percent below their emission levels in 1990 and aim to get down to 34 percent by 2020. The US is still well above its 1990s levels. This ongoing failure to act has cost the US its global leadership position.
Studies show the US could become an advanced, 21st century economy thriving on 100 percent renewable energy sources by 2030. The entire planet could run on 100 percent renewable sources by 2050.
This does not appear to be your future. The fossil fuel industry is too powerful and has instilled a fear of change amongst many of you. What you should be truly fearful of is the worsening of powerful storms that kill, the floods that destroy and droughts that will cause hunger for your children and your children’s children.
As you sow so shall you reap.
Sandy Says: “Bigger Superstorms Coming Unless Dial Down Thermostat”
Temperatures in Alaska, Current and Projected (in degrees F) Source:U.S. Global Change Research Program 2009
I was born just over a week ago and more than 100 people have died in the US and Caribbean region as a result. For the rest of today please take care as I will continue to bring strong winds, heavy rains and snowfall from North Carolina to well into Canada. Some of the worst flooding hit Haiti in the hours after I’d passed by.
You should also know there are more superstorms (more properly anthrostorms) like me coming. Not today or next week but in the near future. The climate is now supercharged with extra heat energy. I’ve called it like being on steroids. The climate is 0.8C (1F) warmer. That’s the average increase over the entire planet. Many places are much warmer such as the Arctic where it is 2 to 3C warmer on average now.
In a few decades the entire planet will be 2 to 3C warmer — a 300 percent increase over today. That means an incredible amount of additional heat will be trapped in the atmosphere in order to raise temperatures that much.
Storms and extreme weather are powered by heat energy. I don’t want to think what will be coming.
It doesn’t have to go that way.
Believe it or not, the reality is that humanity is in control of the global thermostat. The increase in temperatures in the air and oceans is mainly due to emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). Those emissions of CO2 come from burning coal, oil, and gas and cutting down most of the world’s forests (trees take CO2 from the air to grow).
The US could shift from energy sources emitting CO2 to 100 percent renewable energy sources by 2030 studies have shown.[Scientific American article] The entire planet could run on 100 percent renewable sources by 2050.
[Related links:
FORBES GREEN TECH | 10/30/2012 @ 3:39PM Copenhagen Shows How Cities Can Become Clean Tech Leaders
Don’t Curse Me, I Have Been Pumped Full of Fossil-fuel Steroids
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.
Anthrostorm Sandy Speaks: My Landfall Near Atlantic City
Natural disaster trends 1900-2009; 2011 and 2012 are off the chart
Earlier I called myself a hybrid storm: part nature, part human. That’s not quite right. Humans and Hurricanes are part of nature. We both thrive on this planet thanks to sunlight, water and carbon dioxide (CO2). Hurricanes and tropical storms have been around for millions of years. In the last 50 years things have changed. The oceans are warmer. This week the waters off the US east coast were 3 degrees C warmer than normal.
The air is warmer at 0.8C (1F) and there is 4 to 6 percent more moisture. This is a fundamental change. The amount of extra heat-energy is like exploding 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day 365 days per year. This is one of the reasons why I am such a large and powerful storm.
All this extra heat is result of human activity — burning fossil fuels and clearing forests. You call these changes human-induced climate change or global warming. I am, in part, a result of human-caused climate change. And so were my 19 brother and sister hurricanes and tropical storms this year.
So what to call us? We need new words. Some call this time of major human impacts on the planet “The Anthropocene”. A big word to describe a big change: the era when humanity is influencing every aspect of life on the planet.
We are the Anthrostorms of the 21st century.
Don’t Forget Haiti, Cuba, Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and Jamaica
Hard to believe I was born only a week ago south of Jamaica. I grew very quickly over the hot Carribbean sea and last Wednesday swept into Jamaica west of Kingston with winds of 130 kph. Damage was extensive cutting power to half the country. One person died.
Last Thursday I was in Cuba, another poor country that can least afford to be damaged. Cuba is well organized to cope with powerful hurricanes. Just 35 deaths through 16 hurricanes and tropical storms since 2001.The US has fared far worse with fewer storms.
But I was a Category 2 when I arrived over Santiago, Cuba’s second largest city. Eleven people died, 3000 buildings destroyed, 30,000 lost their roofs. A billion dollars in damages. It will be a long recovery. The power is still out today.
Many more pixs from Cuba here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ipsnews/
In the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic more people died and thousands of homes were damaged.
Worst off was the most vulnerable of all: Haiti.
More than 50 people died in the southern Haiti including the area around Port-au-Prince. This where most of the 370,000 Haitians who are still living in flimsy shelters because the 2010 earthquake destroyed their homes. My flooding and high-winds destroyed many of those shelters as well their crops.
I hope you will help them. They have no resources to recover. Please remember no matter what comes in the next two days they will still be worse off.
Historic SuperStorm Sandy Heading for New York City
Sandy here again. Early this morning I turned north-northwest and am about 500 km (300 mi) southeast of New York City. I am probably the largest storm on record, spanning 3,200 km (2000 mi). I wanted to stay out at sea but a massive band of cold air and low pressure over the Great Lakes region has pulled me in this direction. The coming collision between very cold and moist, warm air will make me more powerful and dangerous: a historic SuperStorm.
It’s impossible to say for certain if the record melt of sea ice in the Arctic is responsible for this. I do know that most of the Arctic sea ice melted this year. Ice reflects the sun’s energy but the dark ocean absorbs it. In order for the Arctic ocean to freeze again the heat has to be released into the air. Right now there are record amounts of heat energy getting into atmosphere up there.
This has been happening every fall for the last few years. It is no surprise that all that extra heat being released has been disrupting weather patterns. The jet stream – the west-to-east winds that are the boundary between the cold Arctic and the warm mid-latitudes – is slowing down, moving north and become more erratic.
Arctic Ice Melt Sept 2012
Another factor that’s pushed me into the US northeast is a massive dome of high pressure located southwest of Greenland. Without this high-pressure block I probably would have resisted the pull of the low pressure system and stayed out to sea. That high pressure system has been locked in place for weeks – weather geeks call it a ‘blocking event’. It delivered a record span of warm temperatures and a record melt of the Greenland ice sheet.
I’ve used the word ‘record’ a lot. That’s because the climate has shifted into uncharted territory because more heat and moisture is being trapped in the atmosphere by an ever thicker blanket of CO2. This summer’s record heat and drought in the US is just one example of this “uncharted territory”.
Things are going to keep changing. Storms like me may get bigger. We may come more often, or we may just show up in places where we don’t usually go. There is no way to know.
All you can be sure of is that the climate of the past 20 and more centuries is gone. I am part of the new normal.
Message from Hurricane Sandy: “People call me Frankenstorm, SuperStorm, WeatherBomb…”
Hi, this is Sandy. People are calling me ‘Frankenstorm’, ‘Superstorm’ and even ‘Weatherbomb’.
I don’t mean to hurt anyone but the record moisture in the atmosphere and heat in the ocean has given me uncontrollable power. I probably will cause billions of dollars of damage in Washington, New York City Boston and other parts of the Northeast. And I will kill some people, I already have. At least 66 people died when I swept through Jamaica and Cuba a few days ago.
I am a force of nature but you have to understand this is not all my fault.
I was born a only a week Monday in the warm waters of the southwestern Caribbean sea as a cluster of thunderstorms — what you call a tropical depression, the first stage of a hurricane. One unusual thing about my birth was that it was so late in the hurricane-tropical storm season. But this is happening more and more often as the climate becomes warmer and large parts of the ocean stay warmer longer.
The air and sea are warmer because hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning coal, oil, and natural gas are now in the atmosphere. You should know that CO2 is the planet’s heating blanket that has kept the planet warm by trapping some of the sun’s heat.
Those hundreds of millions of tonnes of CO2 you humans have put in the atmosphere means the CO2 blanket is thicker and capturing more heat from the sun. The amount of extra heat-energy being trapped is like exploding 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day 365 days per year.
Most of that extra heat has gone into the oceans which is why land temperatures around the world have only risen 0.8 degree C (1.0F) on average. The oceans are getting warmer and warm water expands – that’s why pots boil over. That’s one reason why sea levels are rising. The other reason is melting glaciers and ice sheets.
Warmer air can also hold more moisture. Measurements show there is now 4 to 6 percent more water vapour (moisture) in the air making rainfalls heavier.
I was born in water 28C (80F) or better. To grow stronger I need warm water and lots of moisture in the air. There was plenty of both last week and by Monday evening my wind speeds were strong enough to be called a tropical storm. By Wednesday I was stronger still and named Hurricane Sandy, the 10th hurricane of 2012. There have been 19 tropical storms so far making this year tied for third busiest hurricane season in history.
Hurricanes live on warm water and moist air which is why I lost strength going over the mountains and hills of Jamaica and Cuba. But the huge area of near-record warm waters from Florida all the way up the east coast gave me the energy to stay at hurricane strength and grow in size. In fact I’ve become so big I may be one of the biggest ever recorded.
This should not be a surprise. More heat trapped by the extra CO2 means more fuel for storms and more moisture for heavier rains and more flooding than in the past. Higher sea levels means storm surges will be more damaging.
Hurricanes and typhoons are a way in which the Earth has re-distributed heat for millions of years. Think of us as giant pressure-relief valves. With more heat in the atmosphere it shouldn’t be surprising that we’ve become bigger and more powerful.
I said I was a force of nature, many say an Act of God. But that’s no longer true is it?
