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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Roberts" data-source="post: 5808" data-attributes="member: 126">NYC was built on low ground between Hudson and East (and Harlem and Bronx) rivers. The freak couple hundred years storm caused the record storm surge. Climate experts warn against reading too much into one or two storms but there are changes in weather (high pressure) patterns being blamed for different storm paths and behavior. Typically Atlantic side tropical storms veer off to the east, but this time a high pressure area pushed it west to join another low pressure system. Double trouble. But Atlantic tropical storms do veer inland too. I recall Hurricane Hazel back in 1954 tearing off our garage doors (northern NJ).    While I am surely repeating myself, this global warming issue gets smooshed together as a single question, "is the globe warming or not?", while that is objective and provable (it's always been warming or cooling). The larger and disputed questions are; "are humans alone responsible for the temperature change?" and "would taxing carbon, stop the temp change?". Even correlation with human activity does not prove human causation, and politicians have been trying to use changing global temperatures as an excuse to gain more control over the private economy for decades. Some of us recall when the scare was about global "cooling". Note: I have other questions, like what temperature should the planet be? And who gets to decide? If we determine that global warming needs to be mitigated there are surely more effective strategies than taxing carbon. A good treatment of the economics surrounding this was presented in the second Freakonomics book. I would advise a lot of caution before actively altering the global temperature. At least the carbon tax, won't do much other than slow the global economic growth.  =========I apologize for this veer, I grew up in NJ and still have friends in the area... I hope the attention you have received from the federal government persists past the election. Mayor Bloomberg is already walking back his mismanagement of the marathon, his "let them eat cake" moment. If anything this storm should impress us all with the merit of a more robust power distribution with either buried, lines or hardened above ground lines. Many of the worst issues still facing NY and NJ come from power outages. Gas stations in FL that routinely experience hurricanes and power outages are wired for generator power by law. Up in the NE area such widespread power outages are not expected so preparations not required. Good luck, it will take some real time and work to clean this mess up. At least the region has the wealth to rebuild, unlike so much of New Orleans after Katrina that didn't come back.JR</blockquote>

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