As someone who came to New Jersey specifically to study sea-level rise and catastrophic storms, Ben Horton felt superstorm Sandy had presented him with a gift, albeit a grim one… There was so much interest in science explaining why Sandy caused so much damage late in the hurricane season,” said Mr. Horton, a British native who is a professor of sea-level research at Rutgers University. “It provided a focus for us.”… Three years since Sandy caused historic damage to the region, scientific learning and research on sustainability, climate change and coastal studies have had a renaissance. Tens of millions of state and federal dollars have flowed to projects pertaining to climate change, and interest among students to study the topics has been high at area universities since the storm made landfall on Oct. 29, 2012… And at New Jersey’s largest public university, the Rutgers Climate Institute opened in 2013. A paper co-authored by Mr. Horton was referenced by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address earlier this year.
Conspicuous Compassion
In a story Jan. 16, The Associated Press reported that the odds that nine of the 10 hottest years have occurred since 2000 are about 650 million to one… The story also reported that 2014 was the hottest year on record… An earlier version of the story quoted Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis as noting that the margin of error makes it uncertain whether 2014 was warmest, or the second, third or sixth warmest year. She said that regardless, the trend shows a “clear, consistent and incontrovertible” warming of Earth. That reference to the margin of error was dropped in later versions.