Hill Heat

A popular metaphor for understanding how global warming pollution causes more extreme weather is how steroids created the Home Run era of modern baseball.

The metaphor usually goes: “Climate scientists compare global warming to steroids and extreme weather to home runs. While we can’t attribute any single home run to the use of steroids in baseball, we can attribute to such performance enhancing drugs the increased frequency and magnitude of long balls.”

But that’s not where the metaphor should stop.

Perhaps we can’t attribute any single home run to steroid use, but we can attribute immune system damage, liver damage, gynecomastia, testicular atrophy, ventricular thickening, premature epiphyseal fusion, and fetal disorders to steroid abuse.

The influence of manmade greenhouse gases on our climate system is systemic and cumulative. It’s not just changing the frequency of extreme weather events; it’s changing what weather is.

Frankenstorm Sandy wasn’t just a home run powered by global warming—it was a home run hit by a climate system with systemic damage caused by global warming.

Stories about the influence of carbon pollution on the history-making Frankenstorm Sandy have had a remarkable pattern:

• Albert Sabate, ABC News/Univision: Hurricane Sandy: What’s Climate Change Got To Do With It?
• Kevin Spak, Newser: Is Sandy the Face of Climate Change?
• Mark Fischetti, Scientific American: Did Climate Change Cause Hurricane Sandy?
• Chris Mooney, Climate Desk: Was Hurricane Sandy supersized by climate change?
• Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker: Is Climate Change Responsible For Hurricane Sandy?
• Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience.com: Weather or Climate: What Caused Hurricane Sandy?
• Lloyd Alter, Treehugger: Hurricane Sandy, AKA the Frankenstorm and Climate Change: Is There A Connection?
• Maggie Koerth-Baker, Boing Boing: Did climate change cause Hurricane Sandy? The answer depends on why you’re asking
• Will Bunch, Attytood: Too soon to talk Sandy and climate change?
• Andrew Restuccia, Politico: Hurricane Sandy: The next climate wake-up call?
• Joseph Stromberg, Smithsonian.com: Can We Link Hurricane Sandy to Climate Change?
• Ed Kilgore, Political Animal: Should Climate Change Activists Sandy-gogue?
• Lawrence Karol, Take Part: Frankenstorm Sandy: Has Climate Change Bred a Monster?
• AccuWeather.com: Climate Extremes: Sandy a Result of Climate Change?
• Robin Young, Here & Now: Was Hurricane Sandy Caused By Climate Change?
• Stephen Lacey and Joe Romm, Climate Progress: Did Climate Change Help Create ‘Frankenstorm’?

Equivocation in the face of calamity will neither spur action nor better inform the public.