Sandy storms into US political agenda

The devastating impact of Hurricane Sandy has forced the US political class to lift its taboo on discussion of climate change. While the usual naysayers have sought to explain away its latest manifestation, it will be increasingly difficult to sustain a climate of denial in the face of relentless extreme weather.

Tom Mitchell

HURRICANE Sandy has parked the issue of climate change on the lawn of the White House whether the candidates competing for the keys like it or not.

In October, both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney stressed their commitment to developing oil and gas to improve energy security. Climate change was not mentioned. This position is senseless.  The US Midwest has just experienced the worst drought in 60 years, one which has seen economic growth depressed by 0.4% GDP as a result and higher food prices resulting from a 13% drop in corn production. As the East Coast slowly emerges from the deluge and debris brought about by Hurricane Sandy, the job of counting the cost has only just begun.

The evidence suggests the US public has already woken up to the need for a change - 70% now believe the climate is changing and a greater percentage than before want a switch to clean energy. Ignoring numbers like that may be more difficult now for both campaigns.

Scientists recently concluded that the drought was made 20 times more likely by climate change and it seems the US public agrees. So the message for the politicians is as clear as it can be - more oil and gas equals more extreme weather and other climate change impacts, all of which equal greater economic losses.

The US public is concerned about the potential for climate change to increase the number and severity of extreme weather events.  Why then is the US so reluctant to take a leading role in the international fight to tackle climate change and why are the presidential candidates focused on outdoing each other on support for fossil fuels? Clearly there are some strong vested interests at play and maybe climate change is just seen as too risky as a campaign issue.

Despite significant progress to reduce emissions at state and city level, the US has done its best to block progress in international climate negotiations. It has consistently acted alongside Saudi Arabia and other oil states to ensure agreements are not reached, withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol and delayed climate finance support to developing countries. Now climate change has served up the October surprise. Hurricane Sandy - dubbed the Frankenstorm and linked widely to climate change in the US media - has brought widespread flooding and sizeable economic losses.  Insurers are already talking of more than $16 billion; more seriously the human cost is not yet fully known.

So first, let's be clear on the science. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report Managing the risks of climate extremes and disasters for advancing climate change adaptation (SREX), of which I was an author, said: 

 It is likely that there has been a poleward shift in the main Northern and Southern hemisphere extra-tropical storm tracks. Hurricane Sandy is an example, as was Hurricane Irene, which hit the same area last August. The IPCC also concluded that there is stronger confidence for a further poleward shift in the future, so the evidence is that Sandy and Irene are just the start. 'Studies indicate a northward and eastward shift in the Atlantic cyclone activity during the last 60 years with both more frequent and more intense wintertime cyclones in the high-latitude Atlantic.'  A set of studies attribute this trend to climate change. There is less evidence on the intensity and frequency of such hurricanes.

 It is likely that there has been an increase in extreme coastal high water related to increases in mean sea level. The record storm surge from Hurricane Sandy is probably the most destructive element, with the surge exceeding warnings in some places. In other words the potential for coastal flood damage from extreme weather is greater than before.

It will take time for scientists to assess whether Hurricane Sandy was made more likely by climate change. What we do know though is that indications from the IPCC report suggest that Sandy-like hurricanes and related extreme storm surges will become more common.

Hurricane Sandy has put climate change on the election agenda even if the candidates didn't want it. The important thing now is what happens next. Tackling climate change must become a focus of the next administration, just as healthcare was for Obama's first term. Continuing a fossil fuel focus and ducking international leadership on climate change is effectively a slow-motion robbery of the future. 

The impacts of climate change have already become so serious in some developing countries that they are fighting for a financial mechanism to pay for climate-related losses and damage in the climate negotiations. They are also petitioning the UN General Assembly to request a hearing by the International Court of Justice on who should be held accountable for the damages caused by climate change. The leaders of this action fully expect the US and other industrialised countries to be the defendants.

Does the US president really want to be put on trial in this way? Bold action from the US on tackling climate change would help to stop all this. Whether they are in Baltimore or Bangladesh, the future ability of people to batten down the hatches is dependent on a grown-up response from America's top politicians.           

Dr Tom Mitchell is Head of Climate Change at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), an independent UK-based think-tank on international development and humanitarian issues. He is also a Senior Adviser in the Climate and Development Knowledge Network, in which he oversees the research and knowledge management components. This article is reproduced from the ODI website.

Merchants of doubt deny climate change connection to Hurricane Sandy Steve Horn MANY serious, thought-provoking post-mortems have ensued in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which recently tore through the heart of the financial capital of the world. The disaster will cost the city roughly $60 billion to repair, according to an Associated Press report. Figures such as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, former President Bill Clinton, writer and activist Bill McKibben, environmental reporter Mark Hertsgaard, and numerous others all have connected the dots between the tragedy in New York City and its excerbation at the hands of climate change.  On the other side of the spectrum, no matter how bad the tragedy, it seems, climate change denial will continue apace by the 'merchants of doubt'. Hurricane Sandy was no exception this time around. Patrick Michaels of the Koch-funded Cato Institute - who recently authored a report described by Greenpeace USA's Connor Gibson as a 'Counterfeit Climate Report to Deceive Congress' - denied any connection between climate change and Sandy, going so far as to raise the spectre of 'global cooling'. 'It's also consistent with a planet with colder temperatures as well as one with warmer ones,' he told Andy Revkin of the New York Times. 'More important, events like this are inevitable on a planet that has an ocean with the geography of the Atlantic (meaning a Gulf Stream-like feature), a large north-south continent on its western margin without a transverse mountain range to inhibit the merger of tropical warmth with polar cold, and four seasons in the temperate latitudes.' Revkin neglected to mention that Michaels told CNN in August 2010 that 40% of his salary comes straight from the coffers of the oil and gas industry, which fuels the climate change denial echo chamber. In similar fashion, back in 2006, Michaels denied any connection between climate change and Hurricane Katrina. Marc Morano - a climate change denier who gleefully lauded President Barack Obama as 'George W Obama' for his inaction on tackling climate change in any meaningful way at last year's United Nations climate conference in Durban - also inserted his own polemical take on Hurricane Sandy, stating:   'These new "Tabloid Climatology" claims by activists attempting to link any weather event to man-made global warming are disgusting. The "new normal" for climate activists is their ever shifting claims as they morph the entire AGW [anthropogenic global warming] argument to focus on extreme weather. They are exploiting any weather event to promote their religious-like cause and a storm like Sandy is shamelessly used to gin up fear.' Fox News, as always, served as a key piece of the climate change denial machine's echo chamber. This time around it gave denier Joe Bastardi the megaphone on The Sean Hannity Show, where he denied any connection between climate change and Hurricane Sandy: 'Let me tell you, this storm was long overdue...Get used to it along the east coast...We are in a perilous time because the Atlantic's warming, the Pacific's cold, it's the 1950s all over again. The next 5-10 years we're probably going to see several more storms along the eastern seaboard. It has nothing to do with global warming, it has everything to do with nature and then we'll go back to where we were in the '60s and '70s.' Above and beyond this trifecta denying any connection between Hurricane Sandy and climate change, the Climate Depot website has compiled a long list of statements from the denier world. The Media Matters website also showed that Fox News repeated the 'no connection' trope on multiple occasions. If one thing's for certain, Sandy has made evident that no climate change-amplified catastrophe is too tragic for the tobacco playbook team to deny the ongoing climate crisis.

Steve Horn is a research fellow with DeSmogBlog.com, from which this article is reproduced.

*Third World Resurgence No. 264/265, August/September 2012, pp 13-14