“The world is presently in an era of unusually low weather disasters. This holds for the weather phenomena that have historically caused the most damage: tropical cyclones, floods, tornadoes and drought. Given how weather events have become politicized in debates over climate change, some find this hard to believe. Fortunately, government and IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) analyses allow such claims to be adjudicated based on science, and not politics.”
The above is a statement by Roger Pielke, jr. It is important to note that he cites the IPCC’s bible of catastrophic man-made global warming. Their bible says there is no proven connection between severe weather events and global warming. Pielke, jr. is not a skeptic—he is a warmer.
Pielke, Jr. points out the gap between facts and what the alarmists tell the public.
As a skeptic, I am continually frustrated by how successful the alarmist and their cohort, the media, have been in selling the public with bombast. The media, because they know crisis sells newspapers or because they are, by and large pro big government, have done wonders squelching the actual data.
Paul Driessen sums up our dilemma in his posting “Monumental, Unsustainable Environmental Impacts” when he says:
“In the Real World outside the realm of computer models, the unprecedented warming and disasters are simply not happening: not with temperatures, rising seas, extreme weather or other alleged problems.
The process of convicting oil, gas, coal and carbon dioxide emissions of climate cataclysms has been unscientific and disingenuous. It ignores fluctuations in solar energy, cosmic rays, oceanic currents and multiple other powerful natural forces that have controlled Earth’s climate since the dawn of time, dwarfing any role played by CO2. It ignores the enormous benefits of carbon-based energy that created and still powers the modern world, and continues to lift billions out of poverty, disease and early death.”
Pielke discussed weather disasters in a presentation he made in Sydney. The presentation posted on Riskfrontiers.com is titled “Weather-related Natural Disasters: Should we be concerned about a reversion to the mean?”
“Every six months Munich Re publishes a tally of the costs of disasters around the world for the past half year. This is an excellent resource for tracking disaster costs over time. The data allows us to compare disaster costs to global GDP, to get a sense of the magnitude of these costs in the context of economic activity. Using data from the UN, here is how that data looks since 1990, when we have determined that data is most reliable and complete.”
“The data shows that since 2005 the world has had a remarkable streak of good luck when it comes to big weather disasters, specifically:
- From 2006 to present there have been 7/11 years with weather disasters costing less than 0.20% of global GDP.
- The previous 11 years saw 6 with more than 0.20% of global GDP.
- From 2006 to present there has be zero years with losses greater than 0.30% of global GDP.
- The previous 11 years had 2, as did the 6 years before that, or about once every 4 years.
- According to a simple linear trend over this time period, global disasters are 50% what they were 27 years ago, as a proportion of GDP.”
The chart below, by Pielke, shows the decline in global tropical cyclones landfalls at hurricane strength.
The chart below shows the days between major hurricane landfalls in the US mainland is at or near record levels.
From 1900 to 2017, (117 years), 78 hurricanes category 3 or above have made landfalls in the US. It has been over 4000 days since October 2005 when a category 3 made landfall in Florida.
Charts showing a drop off in numbers, worldwide of droughts and floods are also available. The warmer’s climate model temperature predictions are much exaggerated over the actual recorded temperatures. They know that, but they still think we should believe the models and not the actual measurements.
And they tell us the science is settled.
The evidence is in. Weather has been getting better rather than worse. Yes, there still are hurricanes and droughts and floods, but the numbers have declined. Media rather play everything up but remember, the facts do not support them. Unfortunately, I do not think that bothers them.
Nothing is certain. Are we likely to have a category 3 or greater hurricane landfall this year or in the future. The answer has to be yes. But the frequency of severe weather has been declining and that seems to contradict all the hype about the rising CO2
cbdakota
Climate Change Sanity 