[View the story "Weather is personal. Climate is not. (Or is it?)" on Storify ]Weather is personal. Climate is not. (Or is it?)
Everyone moans about the weather; it's a fundamental right. Will Superstorm Sandy commence a new era of collective moaning about climate? Maybe that would be a good thing.
Storified by Molly Peterson · Wed, Oct 31 2012 09:13:49
Among the most essential of human experiences is bitching about the weather.
#atlanticcity #boardwalk from #hurricane #sandy #instafamous #picofthedayDrama
In every place I’ve ever lived, a quicksurf of regional zeitgeist finds an unshakeable core belief among people thattheir extreme weather is the worst. (And of those places - Washington, D.C., Boston, San Diego, San Francisco, among them - only New Orleans had a point.)
Certainly those in the path of Superstorm Sandy have joined this club.
Hurricane To-Do List - The World v. New York couldn't be more accurate. Tho I'd add "Complain and tweet." #sandy http://pic.twitter.com/tYg0modwCallie Schweitzer
To me, what's always interesting is how personally people take weather. The way people address a storm, as though it's a particularly insane or destructive person, with an ax to grind, even, rather than a confluence of circumstances making up an event.
Hey Hurricane Sandy, guess what.. I hate you. And you smell. -Nick TangorraNick Tangorra
#sandy why are you bringing snow to #ohio....I hate you and #snowBelle
And of course, we journalists do it too; we do it perhaps the most, which is a mistake, since
maudlin overwriting diminishes human suffering instead of honoring it. But we're the ones who, for example, give a storm supernatural characteristics, and not just anger, but wrath.
A 'freakish and unprecedented monster' that's Hurricane Sandy...scary stuff! @mikeamor7 with more @7NewsBrisbane http://pic.twitter.com/YKZV7rTPKay McGrath
AP Photos: Capturing Sandy's wrathAP photographers braved the worst from former-hurricane Sandy to capture the most compelling images of the storm. (Oct. 30)
So much respect for @USPS, they delivered mail yesterday and today despite the menacing weather due to #Sandy.Patience Moyo
How Sandy was dubbed 'Frankenstorm' – This Just In - CNN.com ...4 days ago ... Naming tropical storms has been common practice for decades, in no small part because it helps meteorologists raise awar...
As personal as weather feels, climate change lacks that same emotional pull. We all want to own the worst weather. Nobody wants to own climate change. Nobody brags about how climate change is worse where they are, or bigger. Best to abandon it; a successful response to a natural disaster has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.
Boat On the Tracks near MNR's Ossining StationMTAPhotos
Well, usually. I wonder if Sandy's landing in New York, in New Jersey, will alter that cognitive dissonance in some way. New York is a transportation hub; a commerce center; a people magnet; a spot at which we expect to take our national heartbeat, and even our international one. Just about everyone has someone living in New York or New Jersey who they care about, and it's been that way for centuries, since the Dutch set up New Amsterdam.
Lord have mercy the airport!! #LGA #sandynycnapiermakeup
A school of NYC yellow cabs. #SandyNYC #FrankenstormKarlFrisch
Environmentalists and activist groups are "connecting the dots" on climate change and Sandy, a
complicated enterprise , to be sure, since, as
Kerry Emmanuel says in Slate , the nature of the game is such that you can't say one event or another is climate-caused.
Is #Sandy a global warming superstorm? @sciam connects the dots http://bit.ly/XUmvW5Greenpeace USA
Maybe cable news networks
are being slow about covering climate connections to Sandy. But other media outlets are not: they're trying to devote time and space to a
nuanced explanation. Could this be the beginning of people taking climate personally, the way they take weather? I sort of think that would make a difference to the climate-change-activist movement, which can fall into abstraction. Today in my newsroom, someone passing me by said, "I sort of want to come back in 200 years, and see how all of this climate change stuff comes out!" He was kidding, and it was funny AND not.
I particularly like what
The World did today, taking on emerging science to talk about how "warming in the Arctic, like what we saw this summer, is resulting in big disruptions in weather much farther south, including often pushing waves of the jet stream way down into the temperate zones, like where this storm is happening." Peter Thompson talked about a study that found "a close correlation between a warming Arctic and an increase in the kind of “blocking” systems that forced Sandy toward land." GIve it a listen and see what you think:
Sandy and Climate Change - What's the Connection?"Superstorm" Sandy is just the latest in a wave of extremely unusual weather events to hit the US and the rest of the world in recent yea...
And as for Twitter: well, sure. It's still doing what it does best. Which is giving comedians a place to try out jokes in 140 characters or less. As an environment reporter, I'm gonna enjoy climate jokes, even dumb ones.
Please don't let all the freak storms and climate change lead you to believe in freak storms and climate change.Dana Gould
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