Paul Constant of The Stranger:

Everything about this video is amazing. The most obvious thing to notice is the fact that a Republican audience’s immediate response to the question, “What about the climate?” is boos and chants of “U!S!A! U!S!A!”

But look at Mitt Romney’s fucking face when the protester kicks in. His smile freezes in place, his eyes go dead, and he starts nodding and oscillating. He has no idea what he’s supposed to do. He has no idea what he’s supposed to say. So he just circles his head back and forth, like a busted Roomba, with that fucking smile plastered on his face. Then, after an appropriate amount of time passes, he just starts his speech where he left off. He can’t even acknowledge what just happened. There’s nobody home behind that face, which means that Romney can’t answer the question, so he just lets the ravenous, angry crowd answer for him.

From NBC News:

New Jersey state officials say they are extending the deadline for mail-in ballots and will deploy military trucks to serve as polling places on Election Day in storm-battered communities.

Republican Secretary of State and Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno said Thursday county clerks’ offices have been ordered to remain open this weekend to help process mail-in ballots.

Voters will be able to go to the clerks’ offices through Tuesday to fill out mail-in ballots and hand them in.

Requests for mail-in ballots are typically accepted by mail up to a week before an election and in person until 3 p.m. the day before an election.

Guadagno says it’s unclear how many of the state’s 3,000 polling places have electricity but she will know better Friday. More than 1.7 million electric customers are without power.

Meanwhile in NY, the deadline to vote by absentee ballot has been extended:

Attention All New York State Voters:

Extension of Absentee Ballot Application Deadline. The State Board of Elections has approved an extension of the Absentee Ballot deadline for all voters in the state from October 30th to November 2nd. Therefore, for all absentee ballot applications sent by MAIL or FAX, they now must be received no later than Friday, November 2nd. The IN PERSON deadline remains Monday, November 5th.

Extension of Absentee Ballot Receipt Deadline. The State Board of Elections has approved an extension of the deadline for absentee ballots to be received and counted from 7 days after Election Day to 13 days after Election Day. Ballots must still be postmarked no later than Monday, November 5th, however they now have until November 19th to arrive at the local Board of Elections.

For the latest information concerning the Board of Elections in the City of New York please follow this link:
http://vote.nyc.ny.us/html/temp_hours/temp_hours.shtml

County Board of Elections Poll Site Changes due to the storm.

From the NYC BOE:

The Board of Elections in the City of New York staff has been working diligently around the clock to make sure that we are prepared for Election Day. Hurricane Sandy and the loss of electricity have made our task more challenging. Our central phone bank (866 VOTE NYC) is not functioning properly and our Manhattan and Staten Island offices have been closed since Monday due to loss of power. Our offices in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn are now open and operating between the hours of 10AM and 9PM. Since the Manhattan Borough is closed due to loss of power, temporary office has been set up in Manhattan at the Borough’s Voting Machine Facility. Our Staten Island office is closed, however, we are working closely with building management to serve the voters of Staten Island as soon as possible. The processing of absentee ballot applications has been delayed by the storm but our staff are working diligently to process all absentee ballots that will be distributed by USPS overnight mail. Other NYC agencies have assigned some of their workers to assist in our efforts and we appreciate their assistance. We will keep voters informed of developments in our Election Day operations by posting updates on our website and periodically issuing news releases. For additional information, please visit our website at www. vote.nyc.ny.us.

Bronx
1780 Grand Concourse, 5 Fl
Bronx, NY 10457
Tel: 1.718.299.9017

Brooklyn
345 Adams Street, 4 Fl
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Tel: 1.718.797.8800

Queens
126-06 Queens Boulevard
Kew Gardens, NY 11415
Tel: 1.718.730.6730

Manhattan Borough office is closed. Operations temporarily relocated to the Manhattan Voting Machine Facility
450 West 33rd Street, 10Flr
New York, NY 10001
Tel: 1.212.465.0503

Staten Island Borough office is closed until further notice.
1 Edgewater Plaza, 4 Fl
Staten Island, NY 10305
Tel: 1.718.876.0079

From Scientific American:

Hurricane Sandy has emboldened more scientists to directly link climate change and storms, without the hedge. On Monday, as Sandy came ashore in New Jersey, Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, tweeted: “Would this kind of storm happen without climate change? Yes. Fueled by many factors. Is [the] storm stronger because of climate change? Yes.”

Raymond Bradley, director of the Climate Systems Research Center at the University of Massachusetts, was quoted in the Vancouver Sun saying: “When storms develop, when they do hit the coast, they are going to be bigger and I think that’s a fair statement that most people could sign onto.”

A recent, peer-reviewed study published by several authors in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science concludes: “The largest cyclones are most affected by warmer conditions and we detect a statistically significant trend in the frequency of large surge events (roughly corresponding to tropical storm size) since 1923.”

Greg Laden, an anthropologist who blogs about culture and science, wrote this week in an online piece: “There is always going to be variation in temperature or some other weather related factor, but global warming raises the baseline. That’s true. But the corollary to that is NOT that you can’t link climate change to a given storm. All storms are weather, all weather is the immediate manifestation of climate, climate change is about climate.”

From ABC:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Obama will travel to New Jersey tomorrow to view the destruction wrought by Hurricane Sandy on the state. Scheduled to appear with Governor Chris Christie, Obama has suspended personal appearances at campaign events to respond to the storm.

Speaking at the Red Cross headquarters in Washington today, Obama said his thoughts and prayers were with those who lost loved ones in the devastating hurricane, which has claimed at least ten lives in New York City alone.

“Obviously this is something that is heartbreaking for the entire nation,” he said, “And we certainly feel profoundly for all of the families whose lives have been upended, and are going to be going through some very tough times over the next several days, perhaps the next several weeks and months. The most important message that I have for them is that America is with you. We are standing behind you.”

Today is the first day of Fall in the northern hemisphere. As we usher in the first day of fall after a summer of record heat and drought, not only will the fall foliage be endangered, but a planetary emergency of epic proportions also awaits us as scientists have announced no sea ice will be left in a decade if we continue on the path we’re on:

“Between 1979 and 2012, we have a decline of 13 percent per decade in the sea ice, accelerating from six percent between 1979 and 2000,” said oceanographer Wieslaw Maslowski with the US Naval Postgraduate School, speaking at the Greenpeace event.

“If this trend continues we will not have sea ice by the end of this decade,” said Maslowski.

…

One consequence of the melt is the slow but continuous rise in the ocean level that threatens coastal areas.

Another result is the likely release of large amounts of methane — a greenhouse gas — trapped in the permafrost under Greenland’s ice cap, the remains of the region’s organic plant and animal life that were trapped in sediment and later covered by ice sheets in the last Ice Age.

Methane is 25 times more efficient at trapping solar heat than carbon dioxide, and the released gases could in turn add to global warming, which in turn would free up more locked-up carbon.

…

Some see the Arctic melt as a business opportunity — a chance to reach the oil and gas riches under the seabed, and a path for ships to shorten the distance between ports and saving time and fuel.

According to the US Geological Survey, within the Arctic Circle there are some 90 million barrels of oil — 13 percent of the planet’s undiscovered oil reserves and 30 percent of its undiscovered natural gas.

The accelerating rate of climate change not only endangers the ecosystem, but also endangers businesses and democracies. This isn’t hyperbole, folks. It’s high time we all start leading more environmentally conscious lives as individuals invested in planetary citizenship.