Climate change and superstorm Sandy: Perfect together

New Jersey's shore is obliterated.  Large patches of New York City remain without power.  But the real headline about Hurricane Sandy may be about climate change.

One of the reasons why Sandy's impact was so devastating in New Jersey, New York City and other areas of the Eastern Seaboard is because man-made pollutants are changing the earth's climate for the worse. For instance, the oceans are roughly 1 degree Fahrenheit warmer than they were a few decades ago.  Though that doesn't seem that impressive, that is actually a huge change with far-reaching consequences given that 70% of the earth's surface is ocean.

"They are warmer even down to the deepest depths," said Brenda Ekwurzel, a scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, in an interview with MSN.  "Oceans are bearing the brunt of climate change."

Warm ocean temperatures acts like an energy drink on hurricanes, giving them more power to cause even more destruction than they would have otherwise.

Another reason why Sandy packed such a brutal punch was because the levels of the world's oceans are rising.   The area from the Gulf of Mexico to the U.S East Coast and Canada's Maritime Provinces is rising 4 times faster than the rest of the world, making the area more vulnerable to flooding in the event of serious weather events, according to Ekwurzel.  Water levels around New York City are nearly a foot higher than they were a century ago.

Scientists are unsure whether climate change causes more severe weather events, but does that really matter if the storms that do occur are as devastating as Sandy or worse?. Sadly, the presidential candidates have had little to say about climate change. This is an issue that people can no longer ignore.

"The deniers will keep denying—even with the evidence in hand—after all their position is based in politics which as we've seen this year, often have loose footing in fact," writes Adrianna Quintero on the blog of the Natural Resources Defense Council.  " For the rest of us who want to evolve beyond fossil fuels, dirty air and fear of the next superstorm, drought, or freakish unprecedented extreme weather event, we don’t need more proof, we need action."