Incompetence, stupidity, diversion, blame shifting, and false solutions to imaginary problems
Guest post by Paul Driessen
“Superstorm” Sandy killed more than 100 people, destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, and left millions without food, water, electricity, sanitation or shelter for days or even weeks. Our thoughts and prayers remain focused on its victims, many of whom are still grieving as they struggle with the storm’s wintry aftermath and try to rebuild their lives.
Unfortunately, too many politicians continue to use the storm to advance agendas, deflect blame for incompetence and mistakes, and obfuscate and magnify future risks from building and development projects that they have designed, promoted, permitted and profited from.
Sandy was “unprecedented,” the result of “weather on steroids,” various “experts” insist. “It’s global warming, stupid,” intoned Bloomberg BusinessWeek. “Anyone who says there is not a change in weather patterns is denying reality,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared. We must protect the great NY metropolis from rising oceans, said the Washington Post. This storm should “compel all elected leaders to take immediate action” on climate change, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg pronounced.
Unfortunately for the politicians and spin-meisters, the facts do not support this obscene posturing.
North America’s northeastern coast has been battered by hurricanes and other major storms throughout history. A 1775 hurricane killed 4,000 people in Newfoundland; an 1873 monster left 600 dead in Nova Scotia; others pummeled Canada’s Maritime Provinces in 1866, 1886, 1893, 1939, 1959, 1963 and 2003.
Manhattan got pounded in 1667 and by the Great Storm of 1693. They were followed by more behemoths in 1788, 1821, 1893, 1944, 1954 and 1992. Other “confluences of severe weather events” brought killer storms like the four-day Great Blizzard of 1888. The 1893 storm largely eradicated Hog Island, and the 1938 “Long Island Express” hit LI as a category 3 hurricane with wind gusts up to 180 mph.
Experts say such winds today would rip windows from skyscrapers and cause a deadly blizzard of flying glass, masonry, chairs, desks and other debris from high-rise offices and apartments. People would seek safety in subway tunnels, where they would drown as the tunnels flood.
Sandy was merely the latest “confluence” (tropical storm, northeaster and full-moon high tide) to blast the New York-New Jersey area. It was never a matter of if, but only of when, such a storm would hit.
People, planners and politicians should have been better prepared. Instead, we are feted with statements designed to dodge responsibility and culpability, by trying to blame global warming. The reality is, even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rose to 391 ppm (0.0391%) today, average global temperatures have not changed in 16 years, and sea levels are rising no faster than in 1900. Even with Hurricane Sandy, November 2012 marked the quietest long-term hurricane period since the Civil War, with only one major hurricane strike on the US mainland in seven years. This is global warming and unprecedented weather on steroids?
In Hurricane Sandy’s aftermath – with millions freezing hungry in dark devastation – Mayor Bloomberg sidetracked police and sanitation workers for the NYC Marathon, until public outrage forced him to reconsider. While federal emergency teams struggled to get water, food and gasoline to victims, companies, religious groups, charities, local citizens and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie worked tirelessly to raise money and organize countless relief efforts.
Most outrageous of all, though, was how ill-prepared the region was for another major storm – and how many political decisions had virtually ensured that any repeat of the 1893, 1938, 1944 and other storms would bring devastation far worse than would likely have occurred in the absence of those decisions.
In one of the most obvious, architects, city planners, mayors and governors alike thought nothing of placing generators in the basements of hospitals and skyscrapers built in areas that are barely above sea level. Past storms have brought surges12 to 18 feet high onto Long Island, and studies have warned that a category 3 direct hit could put much of New York City and its key infrastructure under 30 feet of water. Sandy’s 9-foot surges (plus five feet of high tide) flooded those basements, rendering generators useless, and leaving buildings cold and dark. Perhaps if Mayor Bloomberg had worried less about 32-oz sodas and seas that are rising a mere foot per century, he could have devoted more time to critical issues.
The mayor has also obsessed about urban sprawl. However, when new developments mean high rents, high taxes and photo-op ground breakings, he has a different philosophy.
Mr. Bloomberg’s Arverne by the Sea initiative transformed what he called “a swath of vacant land” into a “vibrant and growing oceanfront community,” with “affordable” homes starting at $559,000. (The land was vacant because a 1950 storm wiped it clean of structures.) The new homes were built on 167 acres of land raised five feet above the surrounding Far Rockaway area. Those Arverne homes mostly survived Sandy. But the high ground caused storm surges to rise higher and move faster elsewhere than they would have on Rockaway lowlands that are always hit head-on by northward moving storms.
If Sandy had been a category 3 hurricane like its 1938 ancestor, the devastation would have been of biblical proportions – as winds, waves and surges slammed into expensive homes, businesses and high-rises, and roared up waterways rendered progressively narrower by hundreds of construction projects.
Lower Manhattan has doubled in width over the centuries. World Trade Center construction alone contributed 1.2 million cubic yards to build Battery Park City, narrowing the Hudson River by another 700 feet. The East River has likewise been hemmed in, while other water channels have been completely filled. Buildings, malls and raised roadways constructed on former potato fields, forests, grasslands and marshlands have further constricted passageways for storm surges and runoff.
As a result, storms like Sandy or the Long Island Express send monstrous volumes of water up ever more confined corridors. With nowhere else to go, the surges rise higher, travel faster and pack more power. It’s elementary physics – which governors, mayors, planners and developers ignore at their peril.
No wonder, Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Cuomo and other politicos prefer to talk about global warming, rising seas and worsening weather – to deflect attention and blame from decisions that have put more people in the path of greater danger. Indeed, the very notion of packing more and more people into “sustainable, energy-efficient” coastal cities in the NY-NJ area is itself madness on steroids.
Worst of all, politicians are increasingly and intentionally obscuring and misrepresenting the nature, frequency and severity of storm, flood and surge risks, so that they can promote and permit more construction in high-risk areas, and secure more money and power. They insist that they can prevent or control climate change and sea level rise, by regulating CO2 emission – while they ignore real, known dangers that have arisen before and will arise again, exacerbated by their politicized decisions.
As a result, unsuspecting business and home owners continue to buy, build and rebuild in areas that are increasingly at risk from hurricanes, northeasters and “perfect storms” of natural and political events. And as the population density increases in this NY-NJ area, the ability to evacuate people plummets, especially when roadways, tunnels and other escape routes are submerged. Let the buyer beware.
Sandy may have been a rare (but hardly unprecedented) confluence of weather events. But the political decisions and blame avoidance are an all-too-common confluence of human tendencies – worsened by the dogged determination of our ruling classes to acquire greater power and control, coupled with steadily declining transparency, accountability and liability.
How nice it must be to have convenient scapegoats like “dangerous manmade global warming” and insurance companies – today’s equivalent of the witches whom our predecessors blamed for storms, droughts, crop failures, disease and destruction. It’s time to use the witches’ brooms to clean house.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
MattN says:
December 29, 2012 at 12:44 pm
““Manhattan got pounded in 1667 and by the Great Storm of 1693.”
Huh??”
What, “huh”? Read it before it’s edited away: (The wikipedia link is in the text above as well)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_hurricanes
I just posted this at Skeptical Science. Lets see if they leave it posted hey?
It’s under the Topic: Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting.
“I think that what will “wake the sleeping masses” is for at least some of the predictions from modelling (and alarm) to actually happen, and for weather to actually become “extreme”.
Hurricane Sandy was not unusual in any way when compared historically, nor is any weather event that is blamed on AGW nowadays.
Thanks Boswarm, for the link to that article in The Age too.
(did you really use the word “allowing”??)
That article sums up my stance on AGW pretty well. (especially what it says about the use of the word “denier”.)
I am indeed one of the “sleeping masses” and I am very much awake already, thank you.”
Anthony, thank you so much for all your work!
The infrequent Black Swan event is less likely to be understood and/or forecast or its effects anticipated. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Black Swan and Antifragile.
Charles H says:December 29, 2012 at 12:39 pm
Have the alarmists also full control of the media or is it just that the media want a good story?
Yes, the vast majority of the media are true believers and relish reporting these events as proof of CAGW. The few that question the dogma won’t speak out for fear of getting their heads handed to them.
Jim
So they say with global warming these events will become more common? Then the only logical response is to not rebuild in these areas. I would like to see a Federal bill forbidding use of federal funds to rebuild in any areas that flooded.
Doug M, surge barriers would cost about $6B for the Verrazano Narrows and a billion or two for the other two ocean entrances. But your point is valid that a surge barrier around Manhattan would cause greater floods elsewhere. Specifically NJ would have to choose between ocean view and dike view along much of their coastline and other areas would not be savable.
brilliant.
we are not prepared for the storms of the past
much less the storms of the future
if agw is true then the next 30 years of extreme weather cannot be mitigated. adapting is necessary whether agw is true or not. if its
“WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate on Friday approved a $60.4 billion aid package to pay for reconstruction costs from Superstorm Sandy”
A supposed emergency aid package that is loaded with pork – spending either unrelated to Sandy, or not for immediate needs. Only between $9 and $12 billion will be spent in 2013 – the majority for spending that should go thru normal appropriations channels. It has been piled into this bill so they can bypass those basic controls.
Much of the spending is to rebuild in the same highly likely to be destroyed again areas.
And why are we making essentially grants – why are we providing handouts and not low interest loans for much of this work? Those people and communities have chosen to build in an area known to be disaster prone. They chose not to obtain adequate insurance. And now they want all Americans to pay.
I am all for as much emergency relief as is necessary to address emergency issues. Spending that won’t occur for a year or much more is not an “emergency.” All such non-emergency spending should be prohibited from being attached to any emergency relief bill.
It is the duty of Governments and Local Authorities to prepare and deal with the climate hazard’s relating to the land areas under their jurisdiction. In California they have to prepare for earthquakes, in the mid-west it is Tornado’s. As a Brit looking from afar New Orleans city fathers had allowed the sea defences to fall into disrepair…something our Dutch neighbours accross the North Sea cannot afford to do. In New York the climate hazards appear to be bad storms, heavy snow falls and freezing temperatures most winters. It is therefore Mayor Bloomberg’s job to have plans in place…not blame it on fictional AGW.
Powerful stuff Anthropogenic CO2.
Humans change 0.00004563% of the atmosphere, adding 0.117% to the total CO2 levels, resulting in hurricanes, disappearing polar ice, droughts, violent storms, floods, crumbling glaciers, rising seas and other unspeakable horrors.
Michael of Brisbane says:
December 29, 2012 at 1:20 pm
Better be careful. With contrarian views, you won’t be able to post at SS very long. Even if you can back up your posts with published literature, it seems that the controllers at SS are not intersted in real science.
So its time to relocate the centre of power to the ravaged beaches and institute a man your desk for the duration rule?
Or bury the guilty neck deep before the incoming tidal surge?
We are in this mess of lies, because we never found useful employment, beyond politics, for the witchdoctors. Rational thinking and reasoning our way through problems, what little we do of it, left the natural born shaman types without an outlet. Look what we made them do.
Now its,”If you don’t elect me a storm will strike”.
Other than that sarcasm, the convenience of blaming the weather on acts of other men, allows our politicos time to steal all they can and leave someone else to clean up the mess and or take the blame.
Of course once they get too evasive even the real dummies will wonder, what do we need you for?
It’s always about status. High-status people always get what they want, and low-status people always have to pay for it. Takers and makers, though not in the way the high-status people use those words.
High-status people enjoy living on beaches for some reason that I can’t begin to comprehend. What’s so special about sand? If you want sand in your yard, you can live on high ground and put sand in your yard.
But then I’m a low-status person and can’t hope to understand the superior ways of superior people. So I’m going to pay for the high-status people to rebuild their billion-dollar McMansions over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. I’m not allowed to say that flood plains are places where floods happen.
Overhead power lines – for a developed country, it’s pathetic.
martinbrumby says: December 29 2012 at 11:59 am
Just a query from a Civil Engineer in the UK.
How come no tidal barrier has been proposed?
And why, at least, aren’t critical subway / tunnel entrances provided with storm surge barriers?
Cost? Peanuts compared with the losses that Sandy caused. And obviously better value than pouring taxpayers’ money into Ruinable Energy projects (that don’t work).
Unbelievable. I can’t believe that Civil Engineers haven’t pointed this out years ago. No doubt the politicos didn’t see it as a vote winner?
===========================================
It has to do with the execrable quality of elected officials in this country, every one a sow’s ear. New Orleans was even worse- a ticking time-bomb waiting for a big storm to set it off. The levee could have been storm-proofed at modest expense. Now NYC. The political leaders will say AGW to deflect the blame, of course.
,
Kirkmeyers said, ” They have become glorified stenographers for entrenched politicians, greedy bankers and globalist power brokers. ”
Those above are the ones who deserve their farce tax increases. Not the stressed out 200k+ people (many small business) who work 60-80 hours a week. Miss quality time with their spouses, kids and relatives. Use the least amount of public services. Face a high divorce rate and often stress related health problems.
It is UNFAIR for them to be tapped hard by this government that has become a wastefully spending hungry volcano demanding endless sacrifices.
A good piece by Paul Driessen, and good choice by Anthony Watts.
The thing about Superstorm Sandy is that it was forecasted. I did this in August and called it a full moon storm. Moreover, the astronomic signatures of this hybrid storm are those that we will see more often in a climate regime of global cooling.
And, as Charles H. says, “Most of the effects of this storm were eloquently predicted by weather organisations such as Weatherbell at least a week prior to the event. The fact that nobody heeds those who have superior knowledge is no surprise.”
This is the entire point. I gave three months warning of the storm and other organizations gave at least a week. The powers that be in New York & New Jersey did not listen to the long-range, nor the short-range warnings. They sat on their hands.
The mid-Atlantic and Northeast (again) are never prepared. The states and cities of New York and New Jersey are coastal so I agree with Driessen when he writes that, “Incompetence, stupidity, diversion, blame shifting, and false solutions to imaginary problems,” are responsible for the mess.
In fact, Drieesen is being too kind, “No wonder, Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Cuomo and other politicos prefer to talk about global warming, rising seas and worsening weather – to deflect attention and blame from decisions that have put more people in the path of greater danger. Indeed, the very notion of packing more and more people into “sustainable, energy-efficient” coastal cities in the NY-NJ area is itself madness on steroids.”
I say it is worse than that.
What happened, and the excuse of the lie of ‘man-made global warming’ is far worse than madness on steroids. What we have here are complete, full-blown idiots posing as leaders. It’s Gilligan serving as captain of the USS Enterprise and Gomer Pyle running Starfleet Command.
Meanwhile, it was reported that the U.S. Senate approved a $60.4 billion package to pay for reconstruction costs from Sandy with Republican efforts to trim the bill’s cost.
Now, on both the causes of climate change and Superstorm Sandy, the Republicans are right. And the aid package was amazingly hiked up beyond reality (most likely to use as graft for bogus claims and to grease friendly politico hands.)
This storm’s aid package should really be somewhere in the neighborhood of less than three billion dollars. The Jersey shore was hit hard, but it could have been much, much worse.
And Mayor Bloomberg should pay for the rest of the damage to New York himself since he and his staff ignored the long-range AND the short-range forecasts of the superstorm.
Superstorm Sandy was a warning of what’s to come from solar-forced climate change. This change is that of Global Cooling – far, far worse than global warming could ever be.
Global warming, I remind everyone, is GOOD for the world, but global cooling is NOT.
It has been my long-range climate forecast for all of us to expect increasing hybrid storms like Superstorm Sandy that pack enormous pressure, featuring heavy precipitation and blasting winds along with extremes of temperature (cold forced storms) to become more commonplace in the decades ahead – especially in the 2020s and 2030s.
The infrastructure, energy, power and supply needs to effectively handle and survive a climate regime of global cooling is what true leaders should have been working and preparing for.
But, that won’t happen until the generational establishment now in charge are removed from their positions along with the lie of ‘man-made global warming’ being finally flushed down the toilet never to resurface ever again.
Also, kudos to Drieesen for noting the piss-poor land-use planning of New York City:
“The East River has likewise been hemmed in, while other water channels have been completely filled. Buildings, malls and raised roadways constructed on former potato fields, forests, grasslands and marshlands have further constricted passageways for storm surges and runoff.”
This is spot on. What land use planners, especially in New York, always forget is the weather.
How that is so simply boggles the mind. Just how, in heaven’s name, can you plan without taking into account the most important factor of all?
Moreover, all that CONCRETE is NO GOOD when cities receive heavy precipitation from storm surges. It seems that the planners in New York forget that Manhattan is an island.
It is coastal. When there are storms like Sandy there is nowhere for fast surging water to go but into subway stations, into basements of homes and office buildings. These hybrid storms destroy rooftops, force buildings to fall apart and crumble. These storms saturate everything in its path with flood-ravaged tunnels, avenues, streets and roadways.
The years are coming when Mother Nature (that’s the law of physics that govern climate and weather) will speak with a more frequent voice in the name of Superstorm Sandy.
And, according to my long-range outlook, get used to hearing, seeing and experiencing these hybrid storms. These are very dangerous storms that signal what living under a global cooling climate regime will be like. It’s not a pretty picture.
The day is coming when those who put down global warming will pray for its return and all they will hear and feel are the blasting winds, the colder temperatures and heavy precipitation of global cooling and they will burn as many carbon sources as they possibly can to stay warm and survive.
Those who should pay the bills for all the damages are the same people who propagandized the outright lie of ‘man-made global warming’ and who haven’t learned the facts of life every Boy Scout is taught straight out of the gate:
“Be Prepared.”
– Theodore White, astrometeorologist. sci
mpainter says:
“It has to do with the execrable quality of elected officials in this country…”
True enough, most are not worth spit because they are beholden to special interests. The money that should have gone into storm mitigation was wasted instead on outrageous pay, pensions, and benefits for relatively unskilled workers like police and firefighters, who get most of their skills via on the job training. Any average person in reasonable health could do those jobs, and it requires even less skill, ability and health to be a paper pushing government bureaucrat. These people have become monkeys on the backs of hard-bitten taxpayers.
It is still going on. More than $60 billion is slated to be sent to the areas impacted by TS Sandy. But reading the bill’s language, a large part of that money will be payola for special interests, and will have nothing to do with storm damage. And as another commenter pointed out, that single expenditure will completely wipe out the expected revenue from Obama’s ‘tax the rich’ scheme. So the money isn’t even collected yet, and it’s already been spent. And it is certain that Obama’s people will have their hand out for more at every opportunity. They have learned to game the system. That means they have learned to steal from the productive workers.
Sooner or later there will be a financial storm that will make TS Sandy seem like a walk in the park.
I’ve caused a bit of a kerfuffle Camburn! Tom Curtis has replied with a long post.
Boy oh boy! Sensitive much?
(giggle)
I used to read SkS every day.
I don’t read it much any more though. In fact I’ve just posted again saying that I’ve lost confidence in them as being balanced and scientific, so I suppose they will ban me now.
As we all know, ‘global warming’ can be blamed for almost anything bad which happens.
For incompetent politicians and bureaucrats. who failed to do what they should have done; and faced with the aftermath of a normal extreme weather event, global warming has been a godsend in providing fantasy excuses..
I cannot believe how I’ll- prepared the developed world is for known natural phenomena. I completely agree with your comments, it’s a disgrace. Living in a country that has received it’s fair proportion of natural disasters in the last decade, it is obvious that our politicians have no clue as to proper risk management and mitigation, preferring the posturing of people who have no qualification in the areas that speak about.
“…kirkmyers says: Excellent article. Too bad the bought-and-paid-for corporate-owned media scribblers won’t pick it up. Which is no surprise: They have become glorified stenographers for entrenched politicians, greedy bankers and globalist power brokers…”
Yes, this comment hits the nail on the head. CAGW zealots will look everywhere but right in front of them for anything to explain and justify their idiocy. It is a tragedy that articles such as Paul Driessen’s won’t find their way into mainstream broadcast/print. Such honest plain-speaking is not welcome aboard such a ship of fools; it goes against the manifesto, chafes the doctrine and frightens the horses.
Having experienced myself over the Christmas break just what it is like to be on the receiving end of the barely concealed hatred CAGW zealots deploy without hesitation against anyone (even family) who might publicly express severe doubts about the man-made global warming scare (in this case, my attacker was my own brother-in-law – a university professor, no less), I sometimes despair of common sense ever being regained in the face of such madness from climate alarmists.
Here’s a recent WOWT comment that describes the practicalities of a barrier. (Too bad there’s no Robert Moses around to make this happen.)
Reblogged this on pdx transport and commented:
Key quote: “placing generators in the basements of hospitals and skyscrapers built in areas that are barely above sea level”
While every Midwest mud puddle is declared a protected wetland, the New York Metroplex is asphalted, cemented, tiled, urbanized, industrialized and rendered unnatural and hazardous to humans and other living things.