The US Economy Seems Hurricane Proof
The Real Lessons of Hurricane Sandy
Technology and human ingenuity can defuse natural disasters that once killed thousands. The recovery from Hurricane Sandy is turning out to be more spectacular than the storm itself. Nature’s fury can be awesome – but man’s resilience and inventiveness is more awesome still. --Fraser Nelson, The Daily Telegraph, 2 November 2012
Hurricanes can cause tremendous destruction and terrible fatalities. But in the U.S, with its massive and diversified economy, history shows little discernable macroeconomic impact from hurricanes. Even hurricane Katrina is difficult to recognize in macroeconomic activity measures and the latest severe example in Sandy is unlikely to prove different. --James Pethokoukis, AEIdeas, 1 November 2012
Viewed narrowly, Hurricane Sandy is a success story. Start with the forecast. Americans were given a week’s heads-up that Hurricane Sandy would track north, and then, instead of veering safely out to the Atlantic, would come ashore somewhere near New Jersey. Then there’s the emergency response. Now the recovery is already underway. Add it all up? America is growing more skilled – and getting better fast – at emergency response to disasters of growing geographical reach, cost, and complexity. --William Hooke, Living in the Real World, 31 October 2012
The only strategies that will help us effectively prepare for future disasters are those that have succeeded in the past: strategic land use, structural protection, and effective forecasts, warnings and evacuations. That is the real lesson of Sandy. --Roger Pielke Jr., The Wall Street Journal, 1 November 2012
Hurricanes can cause tremendous destruction and terrible fatalities. But in the U.S, with its massive and diversified economy, history shows little discernable macroeconomic impact from hurricanes. Even hurricane Katrina is difficult to recognize in macroeconomic activity measures and the latest severe example in Sandy is unlikely to prove different. --James Pethokoukis, AEIdeas, 1 November 2012
Viewed narrowly, Hurricane Sandy is a success story. Start with the forecast. Americans were given a week’s heads-up that Hurricane Sandy would track north, and then, instead of veering safely out to the Atlantic, would come ashore somewhere near New Jersey. Then there’s the emergency response. Now the recovery is already underway. Add it all up? America is growing more skilled – and getting better fast – at emergency response to disasters of growing geographical reach, cost, and complexity. --William Hooke, Living in the Real World, 31 October 2012
The only strategies that will help us effectively prepare for future disasters are those that have succeeded in the past: strategic land use, structural protection, and effective forecasts, warnings and evacuations. That is the real lesson of Sandy. --Roger Pielke Jr., The Wall Street Journal, 1 November 2012
What we have in this mad eco-dash to depict storms as monsters is a secular version of the age-old backward practice of treating natural disasters as judgments upon mankind. --Brendan O’Neil, The Daily Telegraph, 30 October 2012
It’s been a tough year for global-warming activists. Temperature trends, based on global numbers collected by U.K. officials, show warming stalled for the past 16 years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is in disarray. Disbelief in the alleged “consensus” on the scale of anthropogenic global warming is on the rise. Political interest has been waning. As gloom descended over the warmist camps across the continent, their overheated claims flickering dimly like dying campfires, their cause lost, there suddenly rose in the East a powerful force. Look! What’s that on the horizon? A mighty blast of good news! FRANKENSTORM!!!!!!!!! --Terence Corcoran, Financial Post, 30 October 2012
Scientific American has put up a detailed explanation of why hurricane Sandy may be linked to anthropogenic climate change: a chain of events that, critically, involves the North Atlantic Oscillation nudged towards a negative state by the melting of Arctic sea-ice. On the other hand, Realclimate explained in 2007 that climate change was threatening the Mediterranean region with more severe droughts because climate change would nudge the North Atlantic Oscillation towards a positive state. The IPCC model suite of 2007 would show these trends very clearly. This seems harder to understand than the wave-particle dualism, but the explanation is easy: both arguments are realizations of a certain sort of climate noise. –Eduardo, Klimazwiebel, 1 November 2012
Scientific American has put up a detailed explanation of why hurricane Sandy may be linked to anthropogenic climate change: a chain of events that, critically, involves the North Atlantic Oscillation nudged towards a negative state by the melting of Arctic sea-ice. On the other hand, Realclimate explained in 2007 that climate change was threatening the Mediterranean region with more severe droughts because climate change would nudge the North Atlantic Oscillation towards a positive state. The IPCC model suite of 2007 would show these trends very clearly. This seems harder to understand than the wave-particle dualism, but the explanation is easy: both arguments are realizations of a certain sort of climate noise. –Eduardo, Klimazwiebel, 1 November 2012
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