An excoriating report on the widely-quoted U.S. billion-dollar disaster database produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is about to be published in the new Springer journal Natural Hazards. The findings from this database have fuelled climate alarm for decades, and it is widely quoted by scientific journals, media and politicians. President Biden recently attributed all weather and climate related disaster costs in the U.S. during 2022 to human-caused climate change, citing the NOAA database. But in what is termed the first independent review of the work, science writer Roger Pielke Jnr. calls it an “egregious failure of scientific inquiry”. His inquiry is said to show that the database falls “comprehensively short” of meeting NOAA’s own requirements for traceability of sources and objective presentation of data.
The public assertions made by NOAA using its data are “flawed and misleading”, specifically claims attributing losses to human-caused climate change. “NOAA’s claims to have achieved detection and attribution are not supported by any scientific analysis that it has performed,” notes Pielke. Similarly flawed are NOAA’s claims that increasing annual counts of billion dollar disasters are in part a consequence of human-caused climate change. Pielke, a political science writer and former university professor, notes that since 1980, U.S. losses per disaster on a linear trend are down by about 80% as a proportion of gross domestic product.
Needless to say, none of this gets in the way of the catastrophisation of weather and natural disasters that underpins the alarm and hysteria promoting the collectivist Net Zero project. In common with many other state-funded meteorological organisations around the world, a scientific gloss is given to unfalsifiable pseudoscientific claims of climate collapse. Pielke observes that the NOAA official responsible for overseeing the database has stated that climate change is ”supercharging many of these extreme that can lead to billion dollar disasters”. Such comments are parroted by mainstream media with the Guardian recently commenting on NOAA disaster figures claiming “experts” warn that deadly weather events “are being turbo-charged by the climate crisis”.
Not according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, points out Pielke. It has only “low confidence” for the emergence of signals of climate impact drivers from river floods, heavy precipitation and pluvial flood, landslide, drought, fire weather, tropical cyclones, hail, severe weather storms and heavy snowfall. “That is,” observes Pielke, “each of the elements of the billion dollar disaster database.” NOAA is said to make strong claims of detection and attribution, “but provides no analyses in support of these claims”.
Any claim that NOAA’s disaster dataset indicates worsening weather or disasters is “incomplete at best and misleading at worst”. When losses are considered in the context of exposure changes such as much larger concentrations of population, continues Pielke, it becomes clear that the relative impact of extreme weather events in the U.S. has diminished over the past decades, “which is the exact opposite of claims made by NOAA… and the President of the United States, among many others”.
Objectivity seems to be a problem at the politicised U.S. weather service, as does traceability of sources. Pielke considers the case of hurricane Idalia, which made landfall in Florida in September last year. NOAA has increased its loss estimate from an initial $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion, despite official November 2023 estimates of insured losses of just $310 million. The past practice of NOAA has been to double insured losses to arrive at an estimate of actual financial damage. What is the basis for NOAA’s estimate of Idalia damage being 12 times current insured losses, asks the author.
NOAA states that it factors in various indirect costs to arrive at overall loss estimates, including business interruption losses and wildfire suppression activities. But it fails to identify its sources, charges Pielke. He picks up on the fact that “livestock feeding costs” are added to the disaster mix. “Livestock feeding costs are not considered a disaster cost in conventional disaster accounting methods – it is unclear what other sorts of indirect costs might be included in the NOAA tabulations,” writes the author.
A more serious complaint appears to surround the retrospective addition of disasters to the recent historical record. Between late 2022 and an update published in mid-2023, 10 new events were added and just three deleted. There is said to be no documentary justification provided for these changes. Pielke also discovered that between 1980 and 2007, smaller disasters up to $2 billion in losses were fairly constant, and then sharply increased from 2008.
NOAA adjusts its past loss totals for inflation and this leads to additions to the database once they pass $1 billion. But Pielke spotted that there were no changes in the period 1980-2000, and a net annual increase of two between 2001 to 2023. The graph above, of course, is classic climate alarmist fodder. The discontinuity seen since 2008 is suggestive of a change in disaster accounting methods. “However, the lack of transparency into the creation of the dataset makes it impossible to know the reasons that may underlie this discontinuity,” concludes Pielke.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Dear Mr American. Can you please take all the US democrats policies we’re forced to put up with in Europe due to present-day Europe being largely composed of only very theoretically independent US satellite states back and and finally own up to your own dog food? This stuff is yours and not ours and we wouldn’t have to endure it if the corrupt political elites you installed weren’t forcing it on us because you want that.
Playing the man not the ball, rw.
He might just retort that the appalling uk and eu polities copying these dismal policies were elected by us over here…
I thought it was a pretty accurate article.
Totally agree
You in English is both second person singular and second person plural and this is “you American” [politicians] and not “you, Joshua Trevino”. I stopped the article at the point where it was proposed that the Democrats and Kamala “child of immigrants” Harris are basically a European fifth column in the Land of the Free™ and I don’t plan to read the other parts of it.
I think it’s fair to say a lot of bad things emanate from the US Dems, but there’s also more resistance in the US to US Dem type ideas.
That our overlords live freer than we do isn’t particularly surprising. When someone like Joe Biden declares “transwhatnot” to be “the civil rights issue of our time”, all the German government du jour will reply to that is “Yessir!”
I tend to agree. Almost all UK, and for that matter European, problems emanate for the US. We’ve been under attack from a woke mind virus whose origin can be found in the bowels of Democrat thinking and promoted by American Influence. And it’s difficult to imagine that the US doesn’t have its mucky paws all over the globalist project as well. They are certainly far from blameless.
But Americans still have the Free Speech that we don’t have. America has traditionally been a right of centre Country. Whereas Europe has been a Social Democracy. ——-Should Harris win and continue the Biden/Obama/Clinton socialist experiment by handing over the running of the USA to the UN then all of us are in big trouble. The only hope that this does not happen is if Trump wins another term.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon had the measure of government over 150 years ago. I recently re-read this and was astonished by just how prescient his words sound today:
“To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.”
I have to agree with this person. He’s surely gone full-on ‘Stalin’ and there’s no sign of it letting up;
”Misogyny – Terrorist
Rioting – Terrorist
Hurty X Post – Terrorist
Actual Terrorism – Mental Health
Make it make sense!
Dear Police, please don’t arrest me.”
Meanwhile, regarding this whole ”extreme misogyny” Horlicks, who better to comment then our Jim Davidson? Now there’s a blast from the past, but he speaks 100% truth;
”Jim Davidson lays into Yvette Cooper’s plan to add extreme misogyny to terrorism offences.
He notes Labour don’t know what a woman is. He notes Labour “brushed grooming & rape gangs aside.”
Jim comments on “unvetted illegal men” coming into the country.”
https://x.com/DaveAtherton20/status/1825858454075953347
They say everybody has a book in them. I’d say Starmer should think of authoring; ”How To Be A Perfect Hypocrite, For Dummies”
https://x.com/alexharmstrong/status/1825832724759777302
And he’s a pervert/paedophile apologist. Good job I’ve got receipts so I don’t get extradited and sent to jail;
”This is a Reminder of what “MORALLY BANKRUPT” looks like …
A British Prime Minister that deems the British People to think this acceptable…
Child Sex Offenders :- NO PRISON
Social Media Posters :- PRISON”
https://x.com/tarquindemeza/status/1825810341952978956
Mogs, the late Great Christopher Hitchens was responsible for the the complete quote you cite: “Everyone has a book inside them, which is exactly where it should, I think, in most cases , remain.”
Having just attempted to read his Trial of Kissinger I wish Hitchens, C had taken his own advice!
It’s not that he is necessarily wrong, or over-enthusiastic about what is clearly one of his many passions, it’s just not easy to read the book, nor to sort the wheat from the chaff
In my experience, (and I’ve read 90% of his works), there’s a lot more wheat than chaff, and the highest quality wheat too. Try ‘No One Left to Lie To.’ Neither ‘Slick Willy’ nor Kissinger dare even attempt to sue, realising that Hitchens had them bang to rights.
Maybe I should have started Kissinger after reading some historical background to the events he discusses, so the rant came with context
Even without reading the book, most on here will realise Kissinger was on of the founding Globalists of the New World Order.
Hitchens’ ‘The Trial of Henry Kissinger’ focussed on the latter’s conspiracy to commit murder, war crimes and treason. NWO considerations weren’t on the menu.
Kissinger also played a part in the Chinese one child policy. Globalist to the core.
Or how about “The Beadie Eyed Parasite Chronicles”
“Actual terrorism” = Mental Health, ——Hilarious. or it would be if it was not so PATHETIC.
An “extreme misogyny” law isn’t intended to protect “ordinary” women who are at risk of physical harm …… working class women who are the main victims of immigrant/ethnic minority violence, let alone the poor women who are semi-slaves in the Muslim community and at real risk of violence from male family members if they dare transgress Islam’s code of behaviour.
It’s intended to protect left wing, middle class champagne socialists and activists (like Yvette Cooper) from the hurty words which “ordinary” working class white men may use about them.
“ Britain’s informal and unwritten constitution of custom and tradition…”
But Britain does have a formal written constitution, Magna Carta – and the 1688 Great Bill of Rights too.
Both simply ignored. We’ll see how much notice is given to the US Constitution after 1 000 years of erosion by legislation and ideological rot.
Under Magna Carta the King ceded his sovereignty to the people, which is why no subsequent Parliament can be bound by an Act signed by the Monarch passed as a Bill in a previous Parliament.
And that means there is no legal obligation to obey any Act of Parliament, but because the State has the monopoly in violence we are forced to comply or suffer.
Under Magna Carta the King ceded his Right to collect taxes without consent. So we cannot legally be obliged to pay taxes – but see above… State monopoly on violence.
So what’s the solution?
“The proper business of the Courts could not be conducted if every citizen who conceived himself insulted could immediately bring an action for defamation without cost to himself. Fish-porters and charwomen pass through life exchanging frank opinions about each other’s characters, but never, so far as is known, feel the itch to bring an action for defamation. […]
“There will always be a certain delay in the Courts so long as the Crown and Parliament decline to equip them with an adequate supply of judges and shorthand-writers.”
So by making frank opinions a criminal offence unless they support the Party Line, 2TK will unleash a mass wave of nouveau-criminals, and a shortage of criminal barristers to try them.
[1] A P Herbert, “Is Magna Carta Law?” Uncommon Law, Methuen 1935 (parody).
This “Evil irrelevant Europeans responsible for Kamala Harris … !!1” article is also a great opportunity to retell the following brilliant joke I read in the Spectator on Saturday (form slightly improved by me).
Midnight in the Kremlin. Witching hour. Putin has had the ghost of Stalin summoned to ask him for advice. “Comrade Stalin,” he addresses him, “German tanks are approaching Kursk! Can’t you help me? What shall I do?” Stalin makes him wince by patting him heavy-handedly on the pack, roars with laughter and replies “Absolutely no problem, Vladimir! Just do what I did! Beg for as many tanks and planes in the USA as you can get and send the Ukranians in with them as cannon-fodder!”
That’s 46 years of Communist reign of terror, with countless people put to death in gruesome ways all over eastern middle Europe which was largely turned into a depopulated wilderness where flourishing farms used to be, all brought to you courtesy of the champions of the free world because, whatever Stalin’s many faults might have been, at least, he wasn’t German and we got the richer part of Germany to exploit in the bargain!
It will get to the point in this country where all we are allowed to say is “Good Morning, isn’t it a lovely day, isn’t everything in the garden lovely”? Everything else will be HATE SPEECH
“You should have looked at the news with horror, like right-minded people”
What a wan*er. Maybe she was watching in horror everyday when they mentioned how many illegals have arrived who we know nothing about, and that British taxpayers have the pleasure of supporting. What is not to like!
I did look at the news with horror ….. at the pro-Hamas-terrorism Marches in London which were allowed to continue week after week despite blatant intimidation and threats of violence, which the police and terrified Establishment did nothing to stop.
Never forget that Speaker Hoyle unilaterally changed Parliamentary Procedures to suit Two-Tier-Keir and the Labour Party because he was SCARED for MPs’ and their families’ safety.
If there is ever a revolution….These traitors in the HO will have their asses torn out!
” It is less true of American right-populism, which does have a coalition and an elite niche, to an extent; whether it is robust versus the regime will be tested in full if Kamala Harris ascends to the Presidency”
Well lets hope she doesn’t win huh!
Don’t forget the US has the 2nd Amendment as a default insurance policy against a rouge state, ironically which they already have.
“There will be a separate essay someday on elite negative reactions to a visible member of a regime-disapproved cohort: a Southerner or a Texan, for example.”
Or Andrew Bridgen!
All the nostalgic Haddockian talk of Magna Carta in these comments won’t hide the impracticality of fighting back against a creeping authoritarian regime. The impracticality is: money. Day-to-day authoritarianism is not imposed by a uniformed bully travelling down from London to personally deliver “guidance” from some single dictator or central cabal: that is more the style of the Mafia or County Lines or the Home Office. Rather, it is the perfectly ordinary-looking chap in the council office who says “I am not allowing you to do this” or “You must do that”. In principle, you can say, “SEZ WHO?” in court as a “judicial review”, but unless you have £500,000 up front you won’t get past a lawyer’s secretary, let alone a hearing in the Supreme Court over the constitutionality of the legislation that the original chap was implementing, by “just obeying orders”.
However, there is hope in that there are situations that can be fought by crowdfunding or benefactors or publicity. For example, some 74,000 rail passengers may have been unlawfully prosecuted within the Single Justice Procedure, and “silent praying” may turn out to be constitutionally protected. Doubtless the FSU will be involved in forthcoming cases too, as I can’t see Two-Tier Starmer is too weak to tackle the problem of creeping authoritarianism, or is even part of it.
My question is really regarding the role of the judicial system.
Are these arrested people really innocent until proven guilty? Do they have a fair trial? Do they have good representation?
I am not sure.
Keir Stalin branded them as Faah Rite (knowing nothing about their political allegiances – if they have any) and they have been called criminals by various Ministers/MPs and the MSM …… before any trials were held.
Someone is innocent until proven guilty, so no, none of them have had a fair trial.
If Trump does not win this election, the USA will be flushed down the same toilet britain has just been flushed down.
America does not want to descend into globalist hell. That is why we are voting for President Trump. For some reason the majority of Brits I know hate Trump. I will never understand why.