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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“By the time you read this, the $110 billion behemoth may be a smoking ruin – the biggest casualty yet of ‘Go woke, go broke’.”
Now that would put a smile on my face.
Anyway, congratulations on all you have done Toby. Even if you haven’t helped to kill them they are certainly severely wounded. Let this be a warning to others.
Well done and thank you.
I’ve taken steps to remove paypal from my financial life.
They were already stepping on civil liberties, but their threat to steal customers’ cash because they offended paypal in some unspecified manner is just too much.
Am I . . . Spartacus?!?
Looks like paypal are running scared….
https://summit.news/2022/10/13/paypal-appears-to-be-desperately-offering-bribes-of-15-to-stop-droves-of-people-cancelling-accounts/
Expose have just released the same news.
Wonderful.
Turned out I hadn’t used Paypal for ages anyway. Should have cancelled it years ago.
“Dan Schulman, the president and CEO of PayPal, gave an interview earlier this year entitled: ‘The thing that separates good companies from great ones: trust.’”
No it isn’t, it’s reputation – ask Jeremy Ratner. Reputation keeps existing customers, attracts others by recommendation, and keeps and attracts investors.
Getting a reputation for not being a reliable provider of a service which can be withdrawn instantly for spurious and subjective reasons will neither keep nor attract customers.
Spending shareholders’ money on ideology that loses customers, reduces shareholder value will neither keep nor attract investors as the pompous Mr Schulman has now found out.
This also shows the best company/market regulator is not Government nor bureaucracies, but the consumer.
I love the title of this article, I certainly don’t think it’s ‘too vainglorious’, and at the same time all of us who closed our PayPal accounts in protest can share in taking the credit. (I had to get a password reminder before I could close my account, which I had rarely ever used.)
In the Spectator article Toby Young said: “On the one hand, PayPal’s demise would send a message to the financial services sector that trying to police your customers’ speech is a terrible idea. But on the other, lots of small depositors would lose their money.”
I think small depositors should withdraw their money from their PayPal accounts before they lose it. It’s not Toby Young’s fault that PayPal cannot be trusted.
Not a penny left in mine.
It was amazing to me, when in the process of shutting down my PayPal account at just how many standing payments I’d set up went via PayPal! Even The Spectator…
I look forward to seeing Paypal’s scalp dangling from your belt, Toby.
I have a grand total of 50p in my PayPal account, and rarely use it.
Am I more of an embuggerance to them if I keep this account open?
I don’t think PayPal would notice that you have only 50p in your account, but they have definitely noticed how many people have closed their accounts since Paypal started to attack people’s freedom in the last few weeks.
Count me sceptical. They are far too entrenched now in the online shopping world and without real competition there- merchants and customers just love its ease of use and reach.
MasterCard folded its competitive effort because of that, not that they’d been more trustworthy.
I love your line on whether they’ll now fine themselves for that misinformation…
You may well be correct JB but they will have had a good kicking.
Cancelled my 25 year old PayPal account after they cancelled Toby and others. Hope they go under if they don’t learn their lesson.
I find it really upsetting that I can only cancel my PayPal account once …. and I’ve done it.
I’m consoling myself by googling “boycott PayPal” several times a day
Surely the AUP breaches human rights and in the EU/UK would be illegal and hence null and void. Making themselves judge, jury and executioner even for goings most of us disagree with and are criminal, e.g. money laundering or fraud means that they are subjecting people to arbitrary justice. Actually just looked article 12 UNDOHR. no one shall be subject to arbitrary interference…?
The Daily Sceptic isn’t the only journalism and “skeptic” site that’s been de-platformed or demonetized by PayPal. The conservative investigative journalism site UncoverDC.com also had this happen to them …. almost three years ago! PayPal or Twitter have never un-suspended this site and its founder, Tracy Beanz.
Apparently I’m the only journalist who thought to do a story on this. In my recent Substack dispatch, I interview Tracy Beanz, who talks about some of the ‘workarounds” she employed to get around this brazen censorship.
Her site is also called a “Covid conspiracy” site. This piece of disinformation is of interest to me as I have written many of the Covid stories UncoverDC.com published. Nobody else would publish many of these stories. And I can’t think of a sentence I would change in any of them.
https://billricejr.substack.com/p/shes-still-standing
Hats off to you and Tracy Bill. Not many of your type remaining.
I sent 2 mails to PayPal’s CEO & to corporate affairs asking clear questions about their policies & impact for me as an account holder. Response? NOTHING. The arrogance of these Bit Tech companies is breathtaking.
So I closed my account directly. In the process I applied another Daily Sceptic commenter’s advice to “..select the option to have them delete all your data too then you can leave a comment.”
My departing comment was this:
“I’m thoroughly disgusted by PayPal’s anti-free speech policy. Why would you use a financial service provider which can block your account at any time without providing any reasons, and then steal $2500- from you as a “fine” for your supposed transgression. My decision has been confirmed by ZERO response to my several emails to PayPal asking them if there was a reasonable explanation for recent actions. So much for customer service. Not to mention transparency. From now on, I shall be telling everyone I know to close their PayPal account.“