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Then came Hurricane Sandy.

“,” The Columbia Journalism Review

It should come as no surprise that as Hurricane Sandy spiraled up the
eastern seaboard, a variety of media outlets sought to explain the
so-called super storm’s relationship to climate change. A few did well,
but generalizations about extreme weather continue to mar this type of
coverage.

Take Rebecca Leber’s
to bash the press for ignoring climate change at Climate Progress.
“Despite the hysteria surrounding Hurricane Sandy,” she wrote, “not one
major newspaper has reported the scientifically established link that
carbon pollution fuels more extreme weather.”

That assertion about an established link is misleading. In reality, climate change fuels some extreme weather in some places, and the links are not very well understood.

OCTOBER 31
“?” Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science Blog

While Sandy was both historic and disastrous for the Northeast, there
was one other historic side of the story that is actually positive: the
forecasts for the track of Sandy were spot-on.

“,” The New York Times

In the early days of Twitter, there was a very big debate about whether
reporters should break news on Twitter. That debate now seems quaint.
Plenty of short-burst nuggets of news went out from reporters on Twitter
on Monday night and they were quickly followed by more developed
reports on-air or on the Web. There were abundant news posts from of Reuters, of NPR and
of The New York Times, among many others, but there were also tweets
from ordinary people relaying very important information about their
blocks, their neighborhoods, their boroughs. I knew what was happening
to many of my friends as far away as the District of Columbia and as
close as the guy up the block. There is no more important news than
that.

NOVEMBER 1
“,” The New York Times

Mr. Bloomberg, a political independent in his third term leading New
York City, has been sharply critical of Mr. Obama, a Democrat, and Mitt
Romney, the president’s Republican rival, saying that both men had
failed to candidly confront the problems afflicting the nation. But he
said he had decided over the past several days that Mr. Obama was the
better candidate to tackle the global
that he believes might have contributed to the violent storm, which
took the lives of at least 38 New Yorkers and caused billions of dollars
in damage.

“The devastation that Hurricane Sandy brought to New York City and much
of the Northeast—in lost lives, lost homes and lost business—brought
the stakes of next Tuesday’s presidential election into sharp relief,”
Mr. Bloomberg for Bloomberg View.

“Our climate is changing,” he wrote. “And while the increase in extreme
weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or
may not be the result of it, the risk that it may be—given the
devastation it is wreaking—should be enough to compel all elected
leaders to take immediate action.”

“,” Bloomberg Businessweek

Yes, yes, it’s unsophisticated to blame any given storm on
climate change. Men and women in white lab coats tell us—and they’re
right—that many factors contribute to each severe weather episode.
Climate deniers exploit scientific complexity to avoid any discussion at
all.

Clarity, however, is not beyond reach. Hurricane Sandy
demands it: At least 40 U.S. deaths. Economic losses expected to climb
as high as $50��billion. Eight million homes without power. Hundreds of
thousands of people evacuated. More than 15,000 flights grounded.
Factories, stores, and hospitals shut. Lower Manhattan dark, silent, and
underwater.

“,” Dot Earth

For millions of people in the New York metropolitan region and adjacent areas by the extraordinary hybrid storm once known as Sandy, arguments about are secondary.

Arguments about —while important—are down the list, as well, even with a
presidential election days away. After all, that debate is perennial.
(Go ; plug in hurricanes where you see drought and the pattern will feel familiar.)

While
scientists and campaigners debate what mix of factors shaped this epic
storm, what’s indisputable is that much of the disaster that unfolded as
it came ashore was the result of human actions and decisions—ranging
from where we’ve chosen to build or subsidize development to how
seriously our governments take the need to build with the worst in mind
(as always, of course, with budgets in mind).

This post is
truncated by the troubles I’m having getting online in a blacked-out
part of the Hudson Valley, but I want at least to start a discussion of
the prime question of the moment: What are the political, economic,
societal and personal traits that caused one of the world’s wealthiest
and most sophisticated cities to end up () with flooded tunnels, subways and neighborhoods and widespread flood-triggered loss of electricity?

NOVEMBER 2
“Waiting for Someone to Call,” ���ϳԹ���

In the post-Sandy recovery, these juxtapositions are truly alarming.
Downtown Brooklyn is alive and happening; Coney Island, seven miles
away, is a set from The Day After Tomorrow. North of Montauk
Highway, which runs west-to-east on Long Island, it’s business as
usual—bagel shops, blue skies, box stores—only with less gas, dark
traffic lights, and more kids on the street, since schools are closed.
South of Montauk, where numerous canals and inlets divvy the shore up
into miniature peninsulas, trees lie on power lines, boats sit askew in
yards, and the National Guard stands watch. On Wednesday, in many
places, standing water still surrounded houses.

“,” The New York Times

Elsewhere in the building, Sandra Leon, 35, a mother of two, kept an eye
on her door fearing another attempted break-in. Victor Alvarez, 60,
waited for any word of his wife, Lucet, who suffers from schizophrenia
and had disappeared into the wreckage-strewed neighborhood. And Marilyn
Smalls, 48, sipped a room-temperature Corona that she had liberated from
a gas-station trash bin the day before, along with sodas and bags of
beef jerky—which drew neighbors knocking, as word of the haul got out.

Perhaps more so than in any other place in the city, the loss of power
for people living in public housing projects forced a return to a primal
existence. Opened fire hydrants became community wells. Sleep-and-wake
cycles were timed to sunsets and sunrises. People huddled for warmth
around lighted gas stoves as if they were roaring fires. Darkness became
menacing, a thing to be feared.

“,” Star-Ledger

For all of Hurricane’s Sandy’s power and fury, it also spawned a
silent killer that could become one of the storm’s deadliest legacies.

Carbon monoxide poisoning has claimed at least five lives in New
Jersey since Monday, mostly from the fumes of gas- or diesel-powered
generators.

NOVEMBER 3
“,” CNN

On her way to pick up her New York City Marathon bib number Friday,
longtime New Yorker Lauren Mandel was having second thoughts of running
in the iconic race.

Just four days after
Superstorm Sandy hit her city, she was wracked by a knot in her stomach
as she got closer to the convention center serving as the hub for race
participants.

“Walking past …
generators heating up tents for people to eat pasta tomorrow night when
there are people who haven't eaten a hot meal in five days” left her
with the feeling: “This is so inappropriate and this is so wrong,” she
said.

“,” The Associated Press

“,” The New York Times

Some New Jersey voters may find their hurricane-damaged polling sites
replaced by military trucks, with—in the words of the state’s
lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno—“a well-situated national guardsman
and a big sign saying, ‘Vote Here.’” Half of the polling sites in
Nassau County on Long Island still lacked power on Friday. And New York
City was planning to build temporary polling sites in tents in some of
its worst-hit neighborhoods.

—Joe Spring