Hurricane Sandy

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Increasingly frequent and severe weather events have starkly illuminated weaknesses in the 20th century electric grid. But problems with the grid go beyond susceptibility to failure during severe weather events.[read more]

extreme weather events

US insurance companies are well aware of the rising costs of increasingly frequent and more intense extreme weather events. Yet most are ill-prepared.[read more]

New Yorkers are all too familiar with the devastation that followed, and the disruption that spread far beyond the water’s reach. As the immediate crises are resolved, our attention is now on the complex challenge of long-term resilience.[read more]

Technology is an amazing thing. As Hurricane Sandy approached the Northeast last month, I watched and read as friends in the area tweeted pictures and thoughts on the situation. I didn’t have to worry if they were okay, as many were able to post hourly status updates with items such as: “Still okay, still have power. Just wish we...[read more]

As noted in recent blog posts by Forbes contributor William Pentland and the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin, it’s instructive to look at where the lights stayed on during Hurricane Sandy to understand what makes certain places more resilient than others. While 8.5 million customers lost power during Sandy, a small number of facilities (...[read more]

One idea advanced by proponents of anti-price gouging laws is that after disaster strikes people should put aside their usual self-interests, join in with the community, and share in the burden of recovery. What these proponents often miss is that normal market adjustments will support a sharing in the burden of recovery, even among...[read more]

Storm surges from Hurricane Sandy caused flooding in dozens of Northeastern towns and cities. Experts say that sewage backups and overflows caused by the flooding unleashed a toxic soup into the streets. Other contaminants, like gas or oil, were caught up in the storms destruction, mixing gray and black water into local water supplies.In...[read more]

Gas Prices via Shutterstock

With New Jersey about to end the odd-even gasoline rationing imposed in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, we have an opportunity to consider whether this kind of response actually produces better outcomes than the price increases by which the market would normally balance supply and demand. Most of the defenses of "price gouging" that I've seen, including Matthew Yglesias's recent posting in Slate, tend to focus mainly on its supply-side aspects.[read more]

In the inevitable discussion about the relationship between climate change and Hurricane Sandy, there's been much focus on the storm surge. Hallelujah. There are a lot of ways climate change could influence tropical cyclones. In the past, most of the public discussion had focused on warmer water temperatures driving more intense storms...[read more]

As Hurricane Sandy battered the East Coast last week, meteorologists and climate scientists were repeatedly asked to explain what role climate change played in amplifying the storm. Overall, we know that climate change has stacked the deck so that this kind of event happens more frequently. That answer, however, prompts a deeper, more unsettling question that many want to know: is climate change worsening some recent extreme weather events like super storm Sandy?[read more]

Hurricane SandyThe Main Stream PressIn my post on Friday, Fear and Facts about Nuclear Plants and Hurricanes, I quoted nuclear opponents and nuclear supporters about the hurricane's probable effects on nuclear plants. I concluded that opponents and supporters were publishing only in friendly venues. Both sides were Preaching to the...[read more]

Debris in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Photo Credit: Sunset Parkerpix.

Experts used to discuss climate change in terms of computer models and scientific forecasts. Now Americans are talking about it in its most urgent terms: people’s lives. When climate change intensifies extreme weather like hurricanes and droughts, our families—and our homes, jobs, neighborhoods, and plans for our children—feel the brunt.[read more]

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When it rains, it pours. First came Sandy, the incarnation of the Rumsfeldian “unknown unknowns.” Then came the political hurricane, with three-term New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg endorsing Barack Obama for his second.Bloomberg’s endorsement is unusual for a number of reasons, not least because the famously tri...[read more]

There’s a lot of good reasons to have some advanced energy distribution systems at the ready in your home, community and throughout the grid. If a tree falls on a wire and no one is there to hear it, it will be like it never happened at your house. At least you’ll have enough power to recharge your iPad until the utility company gets...[read more]

The term Big Data is becoming the buzz word du jour in IT these days popping up everywhere, but with good reason – more and more data is being collected, curated and analysed today, than ever before.Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter announced last week that Twitter is now publishing 500 million tweets per day. Not alone is Twitter publishing...[read more]