Did Climate Change Help Create ‘Frankenstorm’ Sandy?

While the knuckle dragging Neanderthals and reality denying members of the Republican Party base continue to refuse to accept that global warming is real, some of the less reality untethered are questioning the correlation between man made impacts on climate and nature in general and aberrant climate events such as the looming Hurricane Sandy "Frankenstorm."  After enduring the hottest summer on record and having witnessed unprecedented climate events perhaps reality is catching up with  freckles mankind.    A piece in Think Progress looks at this issue.  Here are highlights:

As the East Coast braces for a possible direct hit from Hurricane Sandy, meteorologists are closely watching the storm’s “freak” formation. They’re calling it “unprecedented and bizarre,” a “perfect storm,” and a “frankenstorm” that could cause historic storm surges, last for multiple days, and cause over a billion dollars in damage.

After hitting Jamaica and heading toward the Bahamas, experts say it’s likely that Sandy could swing into the Northeast and hit the coast somewhere between Washington, DC and Boston, impacting people all along the Atlantic seaboard. Projections for Sandy’s path are still uncertain, but models show that the threat is increasing.

A confluence of factors are coming together to make the storm unprecedented. As Sandy moves through the Atlantic, it is expected to combine with an early winter storm from the continental U.S., causing pressure to drop — potentially reaching pressure levels of a category 3 or 4 hurricane with winds over 115 miles per hour.

Brian Norcross of the Weather Channel described the storm this way on his facebook page: “This is a beyond-strange situation. It’s unprecedented and bizarre. ”

Another factor under consideration is climate change. Like a baseball player on steroids, our climate system is breaking records at an unnatural pace. And like a baseball player on steroids, it’s the wrong question to ask whether a given home run is “caused” by steroids.

As Kevin Trenberth, former head of the Climate Analysis Section at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, has written, all superstorms “are affected by climate change”:

The air is on average warmer and moister than it was prior to about 1970 and in turn has likely led to a 5–10 % effect on precipitation and storms that is greatly amplified in extremes. The warm moist air is readily advected onto land and caught up in weather systems as part of the hydrological cycle, where it contributes to more intense precipitation events that are widely observed to be occurring.

The climate change link may be more than just more precipitation. A 2010 study found “Global warming is the main cause of a significant intensification in the North Atlantic Subtropical High.”

Coastal areas may be hit with storm surges of up to 6 feet, potentially reaching the highest levels ever recorded. The storm could last as long as 4-6 days, bleeding into the election.

The storm comes at a unique time politically. In August, the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida was disrupted by strong rain and flooding caused by Hurricane Isaac. Two days later in his acceptance speech, Mitt Romney mocked President Obama’s pledge to deal with climate change and “slow the rise of the oceans” — causing uproarious laughter among delegates.

“The climate has shifted to a new state capable of delivering rare and unprecedented weather events,” explained meteorologist Jeff Masters earlier this year.

Hybrid of Hurricane Sandy/Winter Storm Threatens East Coast

Back in November, 2009, Hampton Roads was hit with what locals call the Nor'Ida storm - a situation where remnants of Hurricane Ida came up the east coast and collided with a northeaster coming down the coast.  The photo above shows what happened to our home in Hampton.  Noe, forecasters are predicting a similar event may occur as Hurricane Sandy moves up the east coast - the only good news for Hampton Roads is that the worse part of the scenario may hit further north hitting New York or New England.   Should Hampton Roads get hit again, the boyfriend and I have done all we can to prepare: a whole house generator and three industrial sump pumps to deal with potential rising water.  Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot:

Much of the U.S. East Coast has a good chance of getting blasted by gale-force winds, flooding, heavy rain and maybe even snow early next week by an unusual hybrid of hurricane and winter storm, federal and private forecasters say.

Though still projecting several days ahead of Halloween week, the computer models are spooking meteorologists. Government scientists said Wednesday the storm has a 70 percent chance of smacking the Northeast and mid-Atlantic.

Hurricane Sandy in the Caribbean, an early winter storm in the West, and a blast of arctic air from the North are predicted to collide, sloshing and parking over the country's most populous coastal corridor starting Sunday. The worst of it should peak early Tuesday, but it will stretch into midweek, forecasters say.

"It'll be a rough couple days from Hatteras up to Cape Cod," said forecaster Jim Cisco of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration prediction center in College Park, Md. "We don't have many modern precedents for what the models are suggesting."

It is likely to hit during a full moon when tides are near their highest, increasing coastal flooding potential, NOAA forecasts warn. And with some trees still leafy and the potential for snow, power outages could last to Election Day, some meteorologists fear. They say it has all the earmarks of a billion-dollar storm.

Cisco said the chance of the storm smacking the East jumped from 60 percent to 70 percent on Wednesday. Masters was somewhat skeptical on Tuesday, giving the storm scenario just a 40 percent likelihood, but on Wednesday he also upped that to 70 percent. The remaining computer models that previously hadn't shown the merger and mega-storm formation now predict a similar scenario.

Needless to say, I hope the forecasters are wrong and that the storm stays far offshore.

Religiosity By State - a/k/a States to Avoid

Gallup has new polling results that ranks the 50 states by levels of religiosity. Not surprisingly, the most religious states also correspond with the most economically and culturally backward states. Virginia ranks 20th, although given the manner in which The Family Foundation dictates policy and religious based legislation to the Republican Party of Virginia, one might believe that we're in Mississippi instead.

For LGBT Americans and progressive businesses, the chart may provide a handy rule of thumb of states to be avoided if at all possible.

The Correlation Between Ignorance of U. S. History and the Bible Belt

		USA Residents
		On July 4th we celebrate Independence Day. From which country did the United States win its independence?
		Great Britain	Unsure	Other countries mentioned
Row %	Row %	Row %
USA Residents		74%	20%	6%
Region	Northeast	84%	10%	6%
	Midwest	74%	21%	5%
	South	68%	26%	6%
	West	75%	18%	7%
Household Income	Less than $50,000	63%	30%	7%
	$50,000 or more	86%	9%	5%
Race	White	82%	13%	5%
	Non-white	56%	35%	9%
Age	18 to 29	60%	33%	7%
	30 to 44	75%	15%	10%
	45 to 59	79%	17%	4%
	60 or older	76%	19%	4%
Age	Under 45	67%	24%	9%
	45 or older	78%	18%	4%
Gender	Men	81%	12%	7%
	Women	67%	28%	5%
July 2010 Marist Poll National Residents "N=1004 MOE +/- 3%" Totals may not add to 100 due to rounding.

Given the Thomas Jefferson quote in the immediately previous post about the need for an educated citizenry for democracy to flourish, the chart set out above is down right frightening. It's one thing not to know foreign geography - although it does make understanding world news a challenge - and something all together different not to know the basic history of one's own country. One thing I also could not help but notice is the fact that the level of ignorance in respect to accurate American history corresponds in large part directly with the geographic area withing the Bible Belt. This region - land of creationism, self-lauded patriotism, anti-gay intolerance and the Southern Baptists who constantly condemn public education - amazingly likes to pride itself on being the "real America." And the area with the best knowledge of history? Godless New England where most states now allow gay marriage. Perhaps a little less gay bashing and more serious education would do the Bible Belt some good.

Catholic Population in New England Plummeting

I previously wrote about the decline in the percentage of Americans who consider themselves Christian and also the increase in the portion of the Americans who label themselves as having no religion. Buried within that larger story is the steep exodus of individuals from the Roman Catholic Church in New England, once the Catholic bastion within the country. As the Boston Globe reports, the decline in the number of Catholics is rather staggering and in my mind reflects a trend that will continue in many parts of the country unless and until the Vatican (1) does the right thing and cleans house within the corrupt hierarchy and (2) begins to bring the Church into the 21st century. Personally, I do not see either development occurring any time soon and certainly not under the Nazi Pope, Benedict XVI. Nonetheless, eventually the decline of the Church in the west will hurt the Church's cashflow position and as it has throughout history, the Church will change when the loss of money gets sufficiently bad. Here are some highlights from the Globe:

*

The Catholic population in New England, long the most Catholic region in the country, is plummeting, according to a large survey of religious affiliation in the United States. . . . The American Religious Identification Survey, a national study being released today by Trinity College in Hartford, finds that the Catholic population of New England fell by more than 1 million in the past two decades, even while the overall population of the region was growing. . . . the six-state region is now 36 percent Catholic, down from 50 percent in 1990.

*

In Massachusetts, the decline is particularly striking - in 1990, Catholics made up a majority of the state, with 54 percent of the residents, but in 2008, the Catholic population was 39 percent. At the same time, the percentage of the state's residents who say they have no religious affiliation rose sharply, from 8 percent to 22 percent.

*

The study did not ask New Englanders why they ceased identifying with Catholicism, but the researchers said it was probably some combination of the general secularization of American society with alienation among some Catholics over the sexual abuse crisis and other issues.

*

Silk said the study found that Irish-Americans, along with people of Jewish ancestry and Asian-Americans, are disproportionately represented among those who report no religious affiliation. "The other thing is that New England Catholics have become sort of like New England Protestants - not particularly attached" to religion, he said.