From where I live, on the Upper (upper) West Side of Manhattan, getting to the park on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge would normally be trivial. Take the 2 or 3 express train down, go under the East River, get off at Clark Street in Brooklyn, walk a few blocks. But here's the problem with doing that today: The line ends at 34th Street -- about 70 blocks from my house, but still about 50 blocks and one river from Brooklyn.

My normal commute is from the bedroom to the living room, somewhat less difficult than, say, those trying to make their way in from Brooklyn. So in order to get a sense for what a commute might be like -- or, really, what getting around the city at all is like -- I decided to live-blog a trip to Brooklyn Bridge Park, using whatever transportation methods I can.

The next time a hurricane is approaching and the people on TV who tell you what to do before a hurricane tell you to fill up your gas tank: Fill up your gas tank.

In the gas lines. twitter.com/jeffjarvis/sta…

— Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) November 1, 2012

In New Jersey, three things are in short supply: electricity, gasoline, and patience. Predictions that Sandy would result in increased gasoline supply due to fewer drivers were completely wrong -- primarily because the scale of the storm far exceeded expectations. Cute experiments aside, gasoline has been the go-to method of generating power in blacked-out areas. Add in crippled public transit and that means demand has soared, leading to scenes like the one above.

From Reuters:

New York taxi and car service companies started pulling vehicles off the road on Thursday as the fuel crunch deepened, with the vast majority of storm-hit service stations in the greater New York area now out of gasoline or without power.

Power outages and fuel shortages have forced many gasoline stations to shut, and now threaten efforts in New York and New Jersey to get back to business after Hurricane Sandy.

Many homes and businesses that have lost power are also reliant on gasoline and diesel run generators, including many of the Wall Street banks in lower Manhattan. …

"Did you ever think you'd see this again?" one driver was heard saying through his car's open window.

On Tuesday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) made a weird comment about climate change:

Is this -- a storm like this that is so strong and so unusual -- a global warming incident? I think what is clear is the climate is changing, nobody knows if it is a [cyclical] or secular thing. I think each of these storms we have to learn to see if we can do some things better the next time.

Bloomberg has long been a leader on climate change, including helping to found C40, a group that focuses on how a shifting climate will affect cities. In light of that, questioning the cause seemed out of character.

Last night, he returned to form -- and explained his somewhat nuanced position more fully.

Yesterday, Wen Stephenson, a former Boston Globe editor (and occasional Grist contributor), described how the paper's inaction on climate change prompted him to focus on activism from outside the media. Perhaps he should have stuck around a bit longer.

Josh Tyrangiel is the editor of Bloomberg Businessweek. This morning he tweeted:

Our cover story this week may generate controversy, but only among the stupid.buswk.co/PIUzUl via @bw

— Josh (@Tyrangiel) November 1, 2012

This cover story:

The scale and destruction of Hurricane Sandy has made the issue of climate change impossible to ignore. It's as if the media and politicians are at last free to discuss something they have been keeping secret -- which is basically the case.

Post-superstorm, cell charges are waning and urban dwellers are getting cranky. Or are they? It seems there's some good neighborly cheer happening amidst the flood waters, as drawn here by Kate Beaton.

Yesterday, we brought you the sad story of the Brooklyn Grange's lost beehives. Today, there's more bad news on the urban farm front in New York City. From Brooklyn to Manhattan, some farms fared OK while others were entirely drowned.

The New York Observer reports:

The Red Hook Community Farm was under more than two feet of water during the storm, executive director Ian Marvy told us. Even the crops that remain after flooding are a total loss and cannot be sold or donated because of water pollution. The farm also lost two bee hives; it’s unclear how much of the equipment can be salvaged.

It is likely that flood waters also destroyed Battery Urban Farm in Lower Manhattan. Phones were not working and emails to staffers went unanswered, but reports of extensive flooding on the streets surrounding the farm leave little doubt that the agricultural operation is more than likely done for the season, if not longer.

It was a pattern that played out consistently across the city: the bees, birds and the plants withstood the gale’s winds, but not even the most diligent preparations could stop the floods.

It's day 38 of the Keystone XL pipeline blockade in East Texas, and that means more treetop activists, more scuffles with police, and more arrests -- including that of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.

Today was what blockaders are calling their 11th action -- the construction of a new pair of tree perches more than 100 miles south of Winnsboro, where the main protests have taken place.

Meanwhile, in Winnsboro, Jill Stein and others successfully delivered supplies to activists who may or may not actually be delaying the pipeline's construction. From the Tar Sands Blockade:

Jill Stein was joined by seven others, including three blockaders and four members of the press. They were delivering fresh fruits and vegetables, canned proteins, trail mix, and Halloween candy. They were not warned of imminent arrests; and the arresting officers did not self-identify as police. Instead, the impression the officers gave was that they were private security working for the Canadian oil corporation, TransCanada.

NEWS FLASH: You will not be killed in a nuclear explosion, probably, at least not from muchostorm Sandy.

Shortly after the worst flooding receded, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in New Jersey had raised its action level to "alert." Everyone (not everyone, really, but the sort of people who easily bug out) bugged out. An "alert," we'll mention, is one notch above "literally nothing is happening" and a notch below "hm, this isn't good." An ABC story from yesterday suggested that there were "Problems at Five Nuke Plants," but that alert was the worst of the problems. Don't read that article, especially if you're the sort of person who easily bugs out.

And anyway, that alert is over. From the New York Times' Sandy liveblog:

With Hurricane Sandy’s surge receding, the Oyster Creek nuclear plant, in Lacey Township, N.J., ended its “alert” at 3:52 a.m. on Wednesday and returned to normal operations, meaning a shutdown for refueling that began a week before the storm. …

The storm disrupted the grid at several reactors and forced their shutdown, but only Oyster Creek reached the “alert” stage, a status that requires notification of various government agencies but no public action.

So that's that.

During the most heated point in the debate over the Keystone XL pipeline last year, the state of Nebraska was poised to act as spoiler. The pipeline as initially proposed ran over Nebraska farmland, but also -- critically for the region -- over the Ogallala Aquifer, a pristine water source widely tapped for drinking and irrigation.

Given the significant possible damage to the aquifer from a spill, TransCanada, the Canadian company that hopes to build the pipeline, proposed an alternate route. That new route avoids the Nebraska Sand Hills, a region that acts as a sort of sponge for the aquifer. Mother Nature Network describes it:

[The Sand Hills] may not be as well-known as the Mississippi Delta, the Everglades or the Chesapeake Bay, but they harbor one of the most pristine wetland ecosystems in the entire Lower 48 states. Not only is the area home to swaths of unspoiled prairie and wetlands -- which themselves are home to a diverse menagerie of wildlife -- but it also serves as a capstone for the Ogallala Aquifer, a giant underground freshwater source that provides nearly one-third of the country's irrigation groundwater. …

As much as half of the region's annual rainfall percolates down to the Ogallala Aquifer, which contains an estimated 1 billion acre-feet of groundwater below the Sand Hills.

An uncontrolled spill of thick, corrosive tar-sands oil would be a massive disaster. Here's the new route proposed by TransCanada, threading the needle on the Sand Hills.

"We understand. We get it."

The words of the CEO of Southern Company, Thomas Fanning, when asked about climate change. Oops, wait. Not climate change. He said that about how his company was helping ConEd restore power in New York. Here's what he said about climate change:

I don't think that the data supports that the storms are more frequent or unusual than they have been in the past. But the point is right now we are not dedicated to getting into an ancillary argument. We gotta get the power back on. That is our business at this point.

That's great. Let's get the power back on. But climate change as "an ancillary argument" is like a defense attorney suggesting that the real issue was the failure of the tree to step aside for the car, not the ancillary argument of his client's drunkenness.