It's Global Warming, Stupid

Flagged as inappropriate for HN, but if we're going to have this discussion:<p>It would greatly help the "we must do something" crowd if they spent some time working out exactly what that "something" would be, posting it for public comment and refining as needed.<p>I am sympathetic to the idea that leveling off and eventually reducing global CO2 emissions would be a sensible thing to do, but the key word there is "global". China is already the world's leading emitter by a good margin and will likely continue to increase their emissions, regardless of what happens in the West. Indeed, if we make energy and its uses more expensive here, the likelihood is that at least some of those emissions will simply migrate to China, where they will be cheaper but likely greater for the same degree of production.<p>I have yet to hear a proposal that is likely to both have an effect that justifies its cost (carbon taxes are wildly regressive, and removing that feature is tricky!), and is not absurdly unlikely to ever come to pass.<p>The cap and trade bill mentioned in this article fails the first test, I believe.

Here is a political scientist with a strong climate science background discussing how Sandy is at this moment, is #17 in terms of all time damage, but could move into the top 10.<p><a href="http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/10/sandy-and-top-20-normalized-us.html" rel="nofollow">http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/10/sandy-and-top-20-n...</a><p>For me the question is what kept damages from Sandy down, is it because a) it really wasn't that bad, or b) it really was that bad but East Coast resources, modern construction, and recent experiences with Katrina, etc., minimized damages?<p>Regardless, I find articles written a day or two after an event, by a layman, attributing causality to that event fairly vacuous.

So, what happened in 1938, when a storm of similar power swept through the region? Was that also global warming?

Ok there Jim Norton.