(USA Today) 7:44PM EDT October 30. 2012 – Put the perfect storm atop the nation’s most populous region, and the result is the human misery and havoc that Sandy wrought in the Northeast: Nearly 40 people dead so far, and more than 7 million without power. An estimated $20 billion in property damage. Record flooding in New York City that shut down the stock exchange and the subway. Devastation along the New Jersey coast. And, to boot, a blizzard along the spine of the Appalachian mountains.
All of this overshadowed the presidential campaign, one week before Election Day. But that’s not to say the superstorm doesn’t have a policy dimension. Even before Sandy churned ashore near Atlantic City on Monday, a debate was raging in scientific and government circles over whether the monster hurricane/nor’easter was a spawn of global warming.
Climate change activists pointed to Sandy as exactly the sort of extraordinary event forecast to occur as the atmosphere and the oceans grow hotter. Skeptics shot back that major hurricanes hit New York in 1821 and 1938, long before fossil-fuel emissions were a factor.
So, freak storm or climate change?
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