Natural disasters always bring out the vilest people in society, like looters, who seek to capitalize on the misfortunes of others but sometimes they bring out the crazy elements of our society who wish to link a particular event to their conspiracy theories.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg came out this week to do just that – They think Hurricane Sandy and the floods caused by its tidal surge are linked to Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).
“New York governor Andrew Cuomo and mayor Michael Bloomberg both pointed to climate change as the culprit for Sandy’s ravages as they addressed the scale of the destruction on Tuesday morning.”
“At a press conference in Manhattan on Tuesday, Cuomo said he had told President Obama that ‘we have a 100-year flood every two years now’. “
“He added: ‘There has been a series of extreme weather incidents. That is not a political statement. That is a factual statement. “
“Anyone who says there’s not a dramatic change in weather patterns, I think is denying reality.”
“Bloomberg echoed the sentiment, saying: ‘What is clear is that the storms we’ve experienced in the last year or so around this country and around the world are much more severe than before.”
“When the governor was asked if officials were contemplating building a levee in the city’s harbour, he replied: ‘It is something we’re going to have to start thinking about.”
“The construction of this city did not anticipate these kinds of situations. We are only a few feet above sea level.”
Sigh.
Here are two graphs that should hopefully bring the Sandy/AGW theories back to reality by using real data.
First, Hurricane strikes are not correlated with CO2 – From Steven Goddard’s Real Science blog:
Second, While the NY Governor states that Manhattan is only ‘a few feet above sea level’, the ocean level has risen by only a few centimeters over the past 20 years, not meters! 5 cm of ocean level increase is not enough to flood NYC’s subway system.
I guess the Governor forgot that NYC flooded from a hurricane surge in 1821 and I don’t think we were driving SUV’s then.
“Water levels in the city’s financial district reached a record 13.88 feet (4.2 meters), the highest the area has seen since the hurricane of 1821, which only brought 11.2 feet (3.4 meters) of water ashore.”
Our elected leaders should spend their valuable time addressing the problems in their areas of responsibility and not using a natural disaster to spread the false gospel of the AGW cult.
cosmoscon 
“Our elected leaders should spend their valuable time addressing the problems in their areas of responsibility and not using a natural disaster to spread the false gospel of the AGW cult.” I agree like sending supplies over to Staten Island.
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of FNC’s The O’Reilly Factor:
FORMER VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE: The storms are getting stronger. The stronger storms are getting more frequent. And, you know, this is the second time
in two years, that part of Manhattan has been shut down. And, you know, that didn’t used to happen like this. But the evidence is now so overwhelming.
(…)
JOE BASTARDI, WEATHERBELL ANALYTICS: That’s stunningly ignorant or stunningly deceptive, what Al Gore said. In the 1950s, from 1954 to 1960s, ten major hurricanes ran the Eastern Seaboard, six hit the Carolinas northward in two years, in ’54, ’55, including Connie and Diane, which caused unbelievable flooding in 1955. Hurricane Carol, 1954, 15 feet of water up Naraganset Bay. The 1938 hurricane, which had 186 mile an hour winds gusts at Blue Hill, Massachusetts, blew down two billion trees, caused a 50-foot surge of water across Long Island. If that storm had been 60 miles further west with the landfall at the battery, there would have been 20 feet of water into New York City.
He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, And, ever since he shot his mouth off about Katrina, we’ve seen total global tropical activity go to record low levels. Just because something happens in your backyard two years in a row, it has nothing to do with the total picture.
(…)
I’ve been saying for years that we were returning to the cycle of the 1950s, that the Pacific, which by the way is at record-breaking cold levels — how about them apples? — the Pacific is cooling, the Atlantic is warming, the Atlantic warm cycle lasts another 10 to 15 years.
What aggravates me about these people is Dr. Bill Grey of Colorado State made this prediction in the late ’70s, that we were going into this very cycle, people laughed at him, here it comes. The Atlantic is warm, the Pacific is cold, the action shifts to the East Coast of the United States like it did in the 1950s for 10 to 15 years, and then we cool the Atlantic and we go back the other way.
We’re throwing billions and billions of dollars away when people are starving in the streets of this country. We’re trying to fight a ghost that’s not there. And yet, we look at people, our economy is in the tank because of all this. And, yeah, it’s aggravating to me because there’s no need for it.
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-wilmouth/2012/11/01/ex-accuweathers-bastardi-slams-gores-stunningly-ignorant-statement-hu#ixzz2B2KTvz1O
Excellent job, Cosmo! AGW is yet another fraud that seems to have a life of its own.
If you haven’t seen it, check out the O’Reilly Factor clip from last week (Tuesday? Wednesday?) which Larry Walker references above (it’s likely on YouTube by now).
It was a spectacular take-down, and worthy of a post all on its own.
Keep the faith, brudda…