Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Regular coastal towns and cities and sea level rising

Seeing this piece by Andrew Revkin Can cities adjust to a retreating coastline? reminded me to also look closer to home. We all too readily forget that NYC is not a typical problem of a coastal communitiy…so what do planners in smaller towns face? How do they choose responses, for instance, if an engineering report […]

Reader (and Statistician) Jan Galkowski’s Quick Primer on CO2 and Climate Change

This weekend’s open thread here on AB produced an awesome post by reader, statistician and obvious genius Jan Galkowski on the significance of last week’s report on the level of CO2 now in the atmosphere.  Here’s part of the thread, including Mr. Galkowski’s post: Rjs / May 11, 2013 4:54 am in case you missed […]

Climate change, NY State bonds, and risk

The New York Times points us to a possible first in the state government bond market. My initial reaction was to wonder about flood insurance risk assessment by state, and wether our conversation might go beyond FEMA into more real areas of risk assessment. Mostly we seem to spend our time not avoiding risk but […]

Updates on atmospheric methane and volume measurements of Arctic sea ice

Here is a link filled update on the rise of atmospheric methane and a decrease in volume of Arctic sea ice from reader rjs. Today we’d like to make note of an interesting development in the arctic during January. Below we have 3 images of methane concentrations above the Arctic Ocean from 3 ten day […]

Coastal damage to be more common and extensive?

From The Guardian comes this news: Marcia McNutt, who last week announced her resignation as director of the US Geological Survey, told a conference that Sandy had left coastal communities dangerously exposed to future storms of any size. “Superstorm Sandy was a threshold for the north-east and we have already crossed it,” McNutt told the […]

What natural disasters like Sandy teach us about taxes and government

Left out in the wake of the election and material, Linda’s post is still relevant as we continue to clean up, repair and replace damage done by Hurricane Sandy and the Nor-easter.. I would like to see more information on plans for future ‘unique’ storms and ways to handle some of the unique problems encountered […]

Hurricane Sandy and choices for the future

by David Zetland   David Zetland is a senior water economist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and maintains a blog on water issues at Aguanomics Hurricane Sandy and choices for the future I live in the Netherlands, where living below sea level for many years has driven the Dutch to take flooding and storm surges […]

Hurricane Sandy and climate change

Reader Jan Galkowski sends this caution about promoting Hurricane Sandy as the result of climate change.  The following is taken from an e-mail to me yesterday: There’s a lot being written about Hurricane Sandy in connection with climate change. It is likely that this hurricane was exacerbated by human induced climate change, notably the excessively […]