Hurricane Sandy Sez: Welcome To The New Normal

The message should be pretty clear by now.  This is the new normal.  What was once an anomaly will now be a regular occurrence.  It is not important now whether it is man made, sun spots, ocean cycles or divine malfeasance.  It is getting warmer, and the atmosphere is a heat engine.  Warmer means more energy to drive storms and ocean currents.  The water will be warmer, and the storms will be stronger, and the sea levels will be higher.  That means more wind, higher storm surges, more flooding, more damage.  If the pattern manifests itself as a Sandy-style storm every year--and it doesn't matter what fools like Joe Bastardi think; a 10 or 20 year cycle will be just as disastrous as a 1000 year cycle--then there will be no more New York City, at least not where it is now.  There is massive damage, disease, wreckage and suffering.  The news coverage may have been pretty much toast after a month, but the damage will take 10 time longer to repair than most people think, and if there's another storm next year and the year after that, billions of dollars of real estate along the Atlantic coast will be a wasteland.  If I were Binghamton, I'd be pretty worried about New York City showing up one day and taking all my shit and sending me packing off to Saskatoon at the point of 50,000 NYPD guns.