Insurers declared last year was the costliest on record for natural disasters, sparking media speculation that disasters and their costs would only grow more burdensome as the world warms.
While 2017 did see $330 billion in damages, mostly from hurricanes hitting the U.S., those losses should be put into context. When economic growth is taken into account, natural disaster costs have actually been declining.
That’s according to new data from University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke, Jr. Pielke’s been tracking natural disaster costs for years and has shown exactly why disaster costs should not be used to make arguments about global warming.
I updated my global disasters as pct of global GDP dataset using data from:@MunichRe (’90-’17)@AonBenfield (’00-’17)@WorldBank (GDP)@OMBPress (deflators)
From 1990-2017 losses as pct of GDP fell by about 1/3 (linear trend)
That’s good news
⬇️ pic.twitter.com/E6pUPU1RKC— Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) January 24, 2018
Natural disaster costs as a percentage of economic activity, or gross domestic product (GDP), have fallen by one-third since 1990.
However, nominal natural disasters costs from extreme events, including hurricanes, fires, and earthquakes, has grown over time. Costs have grown because of inflation and also because of population growth.
The global population has exploded since 1990, and with that growth comes more houses and infrastructure in areas prone to disasters, like heavy rainfall, flooding, tornadoes, and hurricanes. All the while, there’s no evidence natural disasters have become more frequent or intense.
Florida is often invoked as an example of this. Florida was hit by the “Labor Day” hurricane in 1935, the most intense storm to make U.S. landfall on record. The storm devastated the Florida Keys and killed more than 400 people, but only did $6 million in damage — indexed for inflation, that’s about $107 million.
In the wake of 2017’s Hurricane Irma, a less intense hurricane than “Labor Day,” Florida residents had filed $5.8 billion in insured losses by November, according to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation.
Read more at Daily Caller
If it wasn’t for social media, and every activist with a cell phone, we wouldn’t be inundated with breathless predictions of apocalypse every time some town has a sunny day. Without these anecdotal exaggerations inflated by the lock-step-left media, reality would render leftist climate activists as totally insignificant.
Propaganda and science don’t mix well, that’s why the left needs to continually pump billions of taxpayer dollar dollars into research with pre-determined outcomes.
“lock step left media”
I can hear their drill sergent
“LEFT LEFT LEFT LEFT….”
Back in the winter of 1964/65 areas in Northern California/Southern Oregon was hot a massive flood that started when cold arctic alaskan air dumps lots of snow then it was followed by a Pineapple Express which turned the snow to rain as a results a flood and back then Al Bore was still a insignificant little microbe and DiCaprio was’nt born and the goverment cared more about the voters instead of a bunch of Tree Hugger idiots
What an amazingly stupid article. When you can predict a hurricane 4 days out of course you will take steps to minimize damage. Who had that capability 70 years ago?
Four days warning is nice, it saves lives. But nobody moves their buildings inland.
The USA is famous for violent weather, always was, before fossil fuels. Combine that with humans tendency to locate near water. Combine that with American free will policies, build where you want,just buy insurance.
Linking insurance claims to inflation is a no-brainer, moron.
Andrejewski
You are fooling no one
If you want to continue using my acronym
To somehow lend dignity to yourself
I’ll laugh with everybody else
Am I annoyed by it ?
I consider it to be the
Identification of your character.
Dignity for myself? LOL
You are simply a first class idiot.
BTW, found any evidence yet fot that (cough cough) theory of yours?
And regarding damage to buildings – there are better building codes today plus tractors and machinery is locked away and buildings are boarded up when you are given so much prior notice.
Like I said – stupid article.
Those building codes make new buildings more expensive but not necessarily storm proof. Claim totals go up with re-building expenses, a big chunk of which is compliance with ever-increasing regulation.
Inflation costs (relative costs) were figured into the article.
This is just another in the endless sream of moronic articles written by non-scientific ideologues which this site peddles.
Yes, relative costs where figured in the article. The article is saying costs are going down. That is consistent with the fact that the number of storms are decreasing as well as their intensity.
There has definitely been “endless stream of moronic articles written by non-scientific ideologues.” Here is an example, not found on this site. An article was written about the number of bird species that have become extinct since 1970. Of course they blamed it on anthropological climate change. However, in the same period of time the human population doubled. That is a more reasonable explanation for the extinctions than a 0.85 degree C change in temperature.
When ever theres a natiral disaster they blame it on Global Warming like with Hurricanes Katrina,Sandy,Harvey and Irma and the usial B.S. from the leftist news media reptiles and the mindless banter for Greenpeace,NRDC,EDF,Al Bore and Leonardo DiCaprio