But are the pounding rains and gusting winds that are ravaging the east coast this week a freak combination of weather events or a symptom of climate change?

While it may be impossible to directly attribute Hurricane Sandy to global warming, some scientists say it fits a growing trend of more extreme storms attributable to the changing climate. And, according to an article in The New Yorker, the storm is making the absence of any substantive debate about climate change in this year’s presidential election all the more glaring: 

Coming as it is just a week before Election Day, Sandy makes the fact that climate change has been entirely ignored during this campaign seem all the more grotesque. In a year of record-breaking temperatures across the U.S., record drought conditions in the country’s corn belt, and now a record storm affecting the nation’s most populous cities, neither candidate found the issue to be worthy of discussion. 

Read more here: Watching Sandy, Ignoring Climate Change

(Photo Credit: www.thoughtcatalog.com, Williamsburg, Brooklyn)