A recent article in UnHerd by John Rapley, in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, claims that climate change has intensified extreme weather and increased the economic cost of weather disasters.
To quote:
The American economy is ill-prepared for the rising frequency and intensity of such compound weather events. Of the 10 costliest extreme weather events to have ever happened in the U.S., six occurred in the last decade, the result of climate change intensifying weather patterns.
Is there any of evidence of this assertion though?
Far from Hurricane Milton being the storm of the century, as widely alleged in the media, it was no more than a middling Cat 3 storm, a run of the mill event as far as Florida is concerned. In terms of intensity, it ranked only 75th strongest in U.S. recorded history.
It was the third hurricane to hit Florida this year, following Debby and Helene, but there is nothing unusual about this. Moreover, the official record dating back to 1851 provides no evidence of hurricanes becoming more frequent:
Also, the U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concluded in its annual review of hurricanes earlier this year that “there is no strong evidence of century scale increasing trends in U.S. landfalling hurricanes or major hurricanes“.
So, if hurricanes are not getting more frequent or powerful, why are economic losses increasing?
Simply because as a society and as individuals, we have more stuff to lose. The population of Florida has exploded over the years, particularly in coastal areas, which are most vulnerable to hurricanes. That means more homes and infrastructure.
And as they become wealthier, people own more assets. They no longer live in wooden cabins, but luxury homes. They own cars, the latest gadgets and designer clothes. On top of that, rising real wages mean that repairing the damage from a hurricane will now cost considerably more than in the past.
A weather disaster that may have cost $500 million 30 years ago could cost a billion now, even when the effects of inflation are allowed for.
Professor Roger Pielke Jr. is one of the leading experts on the cost of disasters, having studied the topic for 30 years or more. A recent peer-reviewed study of his found that when changes in asset values are factored in, what he refers to as “normalised” values, there is no long-term trend in losses from Atlantic hurricanes hitting the U.S.
Katrina stands out as the costliest in recent times, but even that did not compare with the 1926 ‘Miami’ Hurricane, which effectively wiped the city off the map:
Pielke also looked at losses from floods and tornadoes in the U.S., and both show a marked decline in losses.
Another Pielke study analysed global weather losses, of which he reckons 60% are accounted for by U.S. hurricanes! When measured as a percentage of GDP, the long-term trend is down:
Rapley makes the mistake of relying on NOAA’s Billion Dollar Disaster Database, which does not take account of increasing wealth and GDP. Instead, economic losses are only adjusted for CPI.
Indeed, another peer-reviewed paper by Pielke this year has described the NOAA database as flawed and misleading.
America has always been ravaged by hurricanes and other weather disasters. But it now has the resources, technology and money to bounce back from them.
A nation that had to deal with the Miami hurricane or Katrina can surely cope with Milton.
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Ah, neo-imperialism rears its ugly head yet again. Blackburn’s copping it too, like Oldham last year. I fear these divisive and discriminatory policies will do a lot of damage. (Wasn’t there concern about a discrimination of sorts in Palestine too?)
We came out of restrictions in Oldham on July 4th last year and went back into even tougher ones (banning outdoor contact of any kind) on July 24th. We’ve been in restrictions ever since. Not that anyone cares, the ‘experts’ want us locked up longer and harder. We eventually carried on with our lives, managing to get away in holiday in august to Greece, seeing family but my business is in events so I’ve been excluded from support and unable to work for 16 months. But let’s keep us all locked down because it’s worked so well so far.
It’s a lie if so. Where is the evidence that lockdowns saved thousands of lives, even if we ignore everything else. And by SAGE’s own figures from last July, lockdowns were expected to cost 75,000 lives in non-covid deaths in the UK alone (could this be an underestimate now?)
“The ‘vaccine’ is working”? We’re not even as low as last summer yet. Unless they’re over-counting deaths more now. If they don’t end all restrictions imminently, the “vaccines” haven’t done what was promised. Simple as.
In any case, isn’t PHE’s neutrality compromised by its relationship with the pharmaceutical industry?
Yes. It’s more Boris Johnson I’m thinking of. “Vaccines and drugs are the way out of this”. They haven’t been yet. And I still see no proper exit plan. Just dissembling, prevarication, procrastination, deferment. What will it take in their world? zero covid? the money running out? revolution? And I don’t trust them not to do this for other bugs, as long as Rasputin is running things.
more a(n experimental) pseudo-vaccine then…
Why have a passport when the vaccine doesn’t actually stop you getting it?
The reasoning behind a lot of the COVIDIOCY doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. “Luckily” the MSM is not there to scrutinise and the past can always be forgotten or changed.
Make any restrictions on care home residents voluntary. Now. Surely a cruel and unusual punishment to forcibly prevent care home residents seeing their loved ones until they are dying.
Stuff the government scumbags – stuff the government filth.
The cruelty being visited on care home residents is the blackest of the black evils that are being visited upon us. No punishment is too bad for the perpetrators, but ideally they should receive the same treatment. For life. And let that life, or rather barely-living death, be a very long one.
Hmm. Cruel, but probably fair. We can never get back what they’ve taken from us.
Cruel and the victims are exactly the people that all this faux-virtuousness is meant to protect. You may or may not prolong their lives, but you definitely make their final months or years infinitely more miserable, for them and their families. But no-one calls them out on it. Despicable.
So “vaxports” still to be required for sporting events – or will it be like last year’s farce where non-“elite” sport is not included?
What’s going on in Canada? Surely doctors have a duty to tell victims the ingredients of “vaccines”, where they came from, the number of reported and estimated adverse reactions and deaths associated with them, alternatives such as ivermectin, vitamin D etc., the agenda of people pushing them.
You think doctors have integrity?
Canadian doctors? In any case, the hippocratic oath was effectively lost years ago (and will get worse when old people start getting pressured into being euthanised. As opposed to just taking experimental gene therapy drugs. In winter). And I heard that in recent decades UK doctors have been paid more. For doing less. My main problem though is that they are mostly not nutritionally trained. It seems that the drugs companies call the shots…
“It seems that the drug companies call the shots.”
Never was a truer word spoken. Why do I feel we are governed by Pfizer et al?
So the MIT team suggested that data should be made more difficult to find because lockdown sceptics were too good at interpreting it? So that’s what we’re up against – very worrying!
Speaking of data, did you notice that big jump in UK deaths three weeks after the first full week of UK “vaccination”? Incompetence, subterfuge or worse to administer these experimental drugs to the most vulnerable at the worst time of year? Now hide that data!
Some of those supporting citizen science, suddenly don’t think it’s such a good idea, when it can be used to prove them wrong.
A good response to this over at Off-G, for those who haven’t seen it…
https://off-guardian.org/2021/05/13/anthony-fauci-has-no-clue-and-no-authority-to-lecture-on-what-is-good-for-india/
I looked at the Sridhar scaregarbage. Mention of ‘cases’, but not corpses.
On the same page (scroll down) is a link to a story about an Edinburgh mum who died after receiving the snake oil.
Go figure.
Lockdownsceptics continues to run scared of tackling the main vaccine issue. Hancock knew in late December the jabs were killing the frail-elderly and seriously ill. 5,000 excess care-home deaths occurred in Eng&Wales in the 6 weeks from mid December, and another 20,000 in the wider community. These deaths were directly caused by the jabs. Hancock, in late December, slapped an embargo on all post-jab deaths data. Death certificates were forbidden to contain any mention of Cvd vaccination. FOIs requesting simple numbers for post-jab deaths have been blanked by PHE, NHS and ONS. The blackout was rigorously enforced and the death jabbing went on. This was murder, pure and simple, of the very people, – the only people, in fact – who were at any risk from the virus. This murdering, and the cover up of it, was done for money, for protection of the trillion-dollar scam.
Can you tell us more? Links?
If the evidence is there a private prosecution should be brought against Hancock and the others for murder or manslaughter, crowd funded.
Nah, just kidnap him and force him into a two-week lockdown in a terraced house in Wigan with Dianne Abbott, nothing to do but watch Channel 4, and he’ll soon change his mind about the whole thing.
Just top him
Looking at this Round Up, what’s striking is the increasing level of absurdity being perpetrated by the Covmaniacs. It’s clear that the significance seekers (like Sridhar) and the power corrupted and big money are desperate to keep the tattered Scary Fairy flying at all costs.
It will be a real test of the levels of stupidity in the community to see how much of the crap is gobbled up as nourishment.
And you believe them? Sounds almost absurd as the Korean story of Kim-Il-sung only ever scoring holes in one at golf.
I tend to your view.
I have come to the conclusion that the UK public – despite all the Battle of Britain / Cradle of Democracy rhetoric – is one of the most gullible and dim populations on the planet.
It may not have always been the case, but it is now.
That said – it’s not ‘the NHS’ that’s the problem, it’s the political manipulation and management of it that feeds off the gullibility.
Nope the problem IS the NHS.
Bad ideas have bad outcomes and subsidising poor health is probably the worst idea going.
Possibly but one of the frightening things has been the effectiveness of the government’s propaganda. We’ve been bombarded wherever we go, on TV, the radio, in print, website advertisements and postings on social media, all devised by psychologists and advertisers. It’s a disgrace but I’m not surprised the average Joe has succumbed.
Clapping for your cullers seems akin to thanking the train driver at Auschwitz.
Well quite apart from the veracity of the claim the statement makes no sense anyway as it equivocates between “confidence in the health system” and “how their governments handled the pandemic”, two quite different things.
I really don’t believe anything that “college” says. They are Gates funded and employ Ferguson. It seems like classic propaganda to me, the sort of vacuous statements the Soviets used to put out. They are hardly going to say that the public’s faith it’s shaken are they? And the comparison with foreign countries is classic self-aggrandisement so as to foster that sentiment which feels “things could always be worse, like over in foreignovia”.
word-meaning inversion seems a common theme amongst those calling themselves progressive…
I tend to find the word “social” now inverts the meaning of the next word.
Not sure if any of you watch the Highwire but, if you’ve got a spare hour or two yesterday’s episode is worth a look. The highlight is an interview with Dr Richard Fleming who discusses the gain of function virus research and it s funding, SARS-CoV-2 and vaccines.
He apparently fell foul of the US FDA a few years back but I tend to view that as a positive sign nowadays.
“You are free to do as we tell you! You are free to do as we tell you!”
go back to bed america
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL8dHf16CEs
Bill Hicks _ Revelations (1992)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkmbIAhoWrQ
Bill Hicks – Rant In E-Minor (1997)[FULL] Comedy Gold
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2awMrjOIzJo
Shock/horror/panic: In the whole of the West Midlands there have been 30 reported cases of the Indian variant.
WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE,ECT,ETC,ECT,BLAH,BLAH,BLAH, AD INFINITUM.
“Some understandable mistakes were made, and comprehensive lessons have been learned to ensure that we will be better prepared next time. Goodnight.”
Anyone want a news related laugh? Here you go.
https://www.lboro.ac.uk/news-events/news/2021/april/public-health-leaders-honoured/
Wasn’t he going to Do Something About Obesity? Principally by employing the same idiots who were in charge of the massive increase in obesity and diabetes and their woeful low fat diet? And he looks to have gotten even fatter himself.
I thought this was hilarious, even more so if you think it is Bozo in bed with Princess Nut Nut (but them I’m easily amused)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_FOS1GvZOY