Are Super Storms linked to Climate Change?

Until recently, I was never too invested in the unfortunate realities of the Earth’s changing climate, and the consequences of humans rapidly destroying the environment with pollution, but then oceanographer Phil Orton came to talk to us alongside the Hudson river, and I began to take the topic of climate change more seriously. However, after he spoke to our class, I was left with more questions than answers.

Growing up in New Jersey, my grandparents have owned a beach house down the shore, and the only major natural disaster that I can remember living through was hurricane Sandy. For the past decade, I have believed that the superstorm that ravaged ocean county was a result of climate change, but Phil had a different perspective on the event.

Hoboken was one of New Jersey’s cities that was affected the most by hurricane Sandy, leaving the area with more flooding than it has seen since the eighties, as Phil shared with us. One of Mr. Orton’s main goals in his studies has been to successfully map the projections of storms like Sandy, based on the data that he and his team has collected on the rising of sea levels, increase in the oceans temperatures, etc. As Sandy approached the riverfront of Hoboken, Phil was on the job, instructing the people for their safety with his educated predictions for how the storm would play out. Those from New Jersey can undoubtedly relate to the hardships brought to the state by Sandy, and Phil worked tirelessly to adjust his maps with the unprecedented statistics of the event, but when it was all said and done, there was no proof of the extremity of the hurricane being linked to climate change. How could it be that an entire state has been led to believe that the phenomenon of superstorm Sandy is the fault of environmental pollution when the data shows nothing of the sort?

While I am in no means as well versed as Phil Orton, I suspect that in the case of Superstorm Sandy, there may have been a case of coincidence in timing. Environmental awareness has accelerated since the 2010s, and in 2012, Sandy hit the shores of the east coast. The sheer amount of water that surfaced in areas like Hoboken and Seaside Heights was unlike anything that oceanographers had seen before in New Jersey, and immediately the culprit that lined up with the aftermath was climate change. If the water levels are rising, then of course it’s going to be easier for these Superstorms to flood over the neighboring land, right? While the common consensus is that our careless damage to the environment is to blame, and storms will only become more destructive, Phil assured us that climate change is not the cause. 

In a perfect world, and science especially, a hypothesis should be first thought up, and then tested. However, oftentimes can be seen the case where an event occurs and an observation is made, resulting in a hypothesis being drawn from only one instance. The same has happened trying to debunk the mystery of Sandy. Unfortunately, I feel as if the assumption that climate change is causing more intense natural disasters has drawn more attention away from an already under supported movement. Phil himself put forth his passion to combat climate change because of the world’s delay to acknowledge the true dangers of our environment’s degradation, and if the general public is too focused on the wrong consequences, environmental awareness can’t be fully taken seriously. This may be the explanation for beach goers rushing to raise their houses in fear of a second Sandy, when in reality the focus should have been on keeping the oceans clean. Sure, climate change is just beginning to be seriously studied and understood, but if the data isn’t delivered effectively, environmental awareness will not have enough support until it is too late. 

Nicholas Forcellati

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Molecules, Models, and Magic: The Exciting World of Computational Chemistry

Vrinda Modi I often spend time in a little cubicle in McLean in the freezing corporate cold wrapped in a blanket in the Hoboken summers sipping on free coffee from the office above. It almost always tastes like chalk, but the routine is so embedded in me. Hence, this is the perfect opportunity to talk a little more about my research in computational chemistry here at Stevens and the advances I expect in the next few years. This field excites me because it bridges my interest in chemistry with modern computing techniques, a powerful tool for advancing our understanding of chemical reactions and molecular interactions. This means we are a dry lab – running simulations on computers. No chemicals, no PPE, just models and algorithms. But why does computational chemistry exist in the first place, especially when chemistry is so rooted in physical matter? The answer is efficiency. Modeling molecules on a computer saves us from ordering chemicals, waiting for deliveries (a delay in chemistry t...
Read more

Scaling the Potential of Vertical Farming Going into 2025 and Beyond

Image
  Matthew P Kearney Scaling the Potential of Vertical Farming Going into 2025 and Beyond      Vertical farming may seem like something out of a futuristic movie, but they are very real in today’s agricultural industry. Vertical farming may promote a stronger relationship between urbanization and sustainable crop production. Based on recent innovations across agriculture and technology, vertical farming has the potential to revolutionize our current farming system. Through the development of vertical farming-based production lines, cities and otherwise unfarmable areas can be provided with fresh, local, and pesticide-free produce. Vertical farming and other adaptations of agriculture are not new ideas, but instead a historic and human process.      These technologies are ready to meaningfully address global food security through the technological and computational advancements in agriculture. Vertical farming has a promising future, which becomes a case...
Read more

Knot Your Average Problem: How do Tongue Ties Impact Oral Myofunctional Health?

Image
  Hadia Hussain      Knot Your Average Problem: How do Tongue Ties Impact Oral Myofunctional Health? Sitting in the nursery of the dental office where I worked, I reviewed Baby V’s medical history and reports from the Emergency Department at Jersey City Medical Center. I found it odd that, despite multiple visits and clear signs of malnutrition, no physician had been able to diagnose the cause. Baby V, at a low weight of 12 pounds was struggling with difficulty nursing and bottle feeding, excessive gassiness, colic, clicking sounds when feeding, milk dribbling out of the mouth, and mouth breathing—but doctors had dismissed these signs, labeling him as "healthy."  It didn’t make sense as his low weight raised serious concerns.  According to Pediatric specialists Jenny Olson, DNP, and Sarha DeVrieze, ARNP, at the UnityPoint Clinic, a 9-month-old baby boy should weigh anywhere in between the range of 17 to 25 pounds. Baby V's situation was clearly a ...
Read more