Quote of the day

Mark Fischetti of Scientific American addressed the question of the hour:

If you’ve followed the U.S. news and weather in the past 24 hours you have no doubt run across a journalist or blogger explaining why it’s difficult to say that climate change could be causing big storms like Sandy. Well, no doubt here: it is.

The hedge expressed by journalists is that many variables go into creating a big storm, so the size of Hurricane Sandy, or any specific storm, cannot be attributed to climate change. That’s true, and it’s based on good science. However, that statement does not mean that we cannot say that climate change is making storms bigger. It is doing just that — a statement also based on good science, and one that the insurance industry is embracing, by the way.

Drill, baby, drill….

Related articles

• “Coming as it is just a week before Election Day, Sandy makes the fact that climate change has been…” (underpaidgenius.com)
• Did Climate Change Supersize Hurricane Sandy? | Mother Jones [Class M] (scienceblogs.com)
• Chat about climate science and Sandy with Stanford’s Noah Diffenbaugh (boingboing.net)
• How global warming helped transform Sandy from a hurricane into a Frankenstorm (qz.com)
• Climate Change Sandy Says to US: ‘Take That, Idiots!’ (arctic-news.blogspot.com)
• Will “Frankenstorm” Hurricane Sandy End Climate Silence? (yesmagazine.org)
• Hybrid Hell (slate.com)
• 5 Things Hurricane Sandy Reveals About Global Warming (popsci.com)