Alexej Buergin writes in WUWT Tips and Notes about a report from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) that puts climate alarmism’s claims of increased natural disasters in perspective:
The “World Disasters Report 2014″ of IFRC notices the lowest number of catastrophies in 10 years and 22,500 dead (average 100,000).
That is the exact contrary to what the climatariat says. I have not yet found an article in English; a German version is here:
Here is the Google translation and an excerpt – Anthony
The number of natural disasters in the past year was the lowest for ten years, not more. The proceeds from the “World Disasters Report 2014” produced by the Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) published in Geneva on Thursday. Accordingly, last year 337 natural disasters were recorded, almost half of the peak level 2005 The death toll stood at 22,452, well below the average for the decade of 97,954 victims.
From the WDR2013 Microsite, it seems technology is helping to overcome disaster:
The World Disasters Report 2013 examines the profound impact of technological innovations on humanitarian action, how humanitarians employ technology in new and creative ways, and what risks and opportunities may emerge as a result of technological innovations.
The responsible use of technology offers concrete ways to make humanitarian assistance more effective, efficient and accountable and can, in turn, directly reduce vulnerability and strengthen resilience. Finding ways for advances in technology to serve the most vulnerable is a moral imperative; a responsibility, not a choice.
Munich Re’s profits will reflect that good news.
Do WWF have shares in the insurance companies? Looks like a win win position for them.
Actually, it is not the best of news for insurance companies. After a number of successive years of low losses, the sector starts to attract capital since investors start new re-insurance companies think it is “easy money”. This leads to insurance rate wars and lower profits. Eventually, something happens to wipe out the less intelligent of the species and the rating environment reverts.
Yes, I remember my dad invested in some startup insurance company around 1960, only to have it go bankrupt after the Columbus Day Storm that hit the Pacific Northwest in 1962.
When Munich Re in particular, ‘talks-up’ Global Warming’ & Climate Change scaremongering to justify premium increases, then ‘good news’ for mankind will help drive down future premiums.
Just like credit default swaps ended up providing return-free risk in 2008.
For Al Gore and Bobby Kennedy Jr, a catastrophic news item.
Al Gore has got his money, disasters can’t reach him anymore. I suspect he has even developed a Moses-like ability to halt catastrophic sea level rise at his beach property.
Good thing O and Kerry do not read about inconvenient truths.
But the world hasn’t been warming for the past 18 years, so that is why … ooops … does anyone have a cure for cognitive dissonance?
Guess these guys didn’t get the memo to inflate the numbers……
But you can bet they will, just like nasa does with satellite data (temperatures)
And half the people believe it
That is for one year. Do they also provide decade or longer data that would show a trend?
this reinforces what Warren Buffett said last spring. Effects of #climatechange, if any, has no impact on #BerkshireHathaway insurance business: #WarrenBuffett http://www.cnbc.com/id/101460458
Honestly, screw the warmists. This is good news, period.
A sampling of the half-truths, cherry-picked 1 year weather portrayed as Climate, misinformation, and outright fabrications from the alarmists who wrote the National Climate Assessment for the Obama Administration.
Hurricanes
North Atlantic hurricanes have increased in intensity, frequency, and duration since the early 1980s.
There has been a substantial increase in most measures of Atlantic hurricane activity since the early 1980s, the period during which high quality satellite data are available.,, These include measures of intensity, frequency, and duration as well as the number of strongest (Category 4 and 5) storms.
Floods
Flooding may intensify in many U.S. regions, even in areas where total precipitation is projected to decline.
Change in Other Storms
Heavy snowfalls during winter storms affect transportation systems and other infrastructure.
Winter storms have increased in frequency and intensity since the 1950s, and their tracks have shifted northward over the United States., Other trends in severe storms, including the intensity and frequency of tornadoes, hail, and damaging thunderstorm winds, are uncertain and are being studied intensively. There has been a sizable upward trend in the number of storms causing large financial and other losses.
Heat Waves
Heat waves are periods of abnormally hot weather lasting days to weeks. The number of heat waves has been increasing in recent years. This trend has continued in 2011 and 2012, with the number of intense heat waves being almost triple the long-term average.
=========================
The fact is Climate Change is now a political phenomenon. It is NO LONGER one based on honest scientific method. The unprecedented Pause in global temperatures demands that climate science re-assess previously stated conclusions. Proper application of the scientific method now calls for a rejection of the IPPC past claims, a rejection of any clear linkage between CO2 and global temperatures, and certainly any linkage to extreme weather event frequencies or intensities.
I know the above is “preaching to the choir” here for regular WUWT readers-commenters. As AW does with this post, we must continue to push back against the now False political machinations of Climate Change as still somehow grounded in science.
I just don’t see what Obama hopes to accomplish. The more he pushes the alarmist policy, the more his political opponents stand to gain from it. The tactical thing for Obama now would be to tone down the doomsaying, in order to reduce his alienation from the common people in this matter, and thus help a new Democratic president into office. Whatever Obama does now and in the remaining time of his presidency, can quickly be unravelled by a Republican successor.
Does Obama really think we are in a now-or-never situation regarding the “climate crises”? I can hardly believe it. Whatever he is, he is not stupid. It seems that his persistency in promoting an insane climate policy is more a result of stubborn spitefulness, than of a calculated political strategy.
“Whatever he is, he is not stupid. It seems that his persistency in promoting an insane climate policy is more a result of stubborn spitefulness, than of a calculated political strategy.” It’s not about climate to him. It IS a calculated political strategy. Read Rules for Radicals and you’ll understand. Control the peoples’ fundamental needs…like energy….and you control the people. No conspiracy theory needed to see what’s happening. This is a UN goal as well.
Climate cannot leave the political discourse until a replacement is found.
Do not be surprised if you find out that President Obama has investments in “green” energy companies. Companies that just happened to get a big government contract.
alexwade, you DO know about rules for Presidents and investments, right?
markl has it right… Note well the bit about ‘ no conspiracy needed.’
Yes and all their statements are easily discounted….now try to get that in print.
Once again I urge all to cancel subscriptions and turn offABC/NBC/CBS world opinion tonight. They can’t exist if no one is listening.
But 2013 ended up with an unprecedented number of catastrophes and deaths once the time of observation correction and homogenization correction were applied.
I’ve always wondered why they keep lying to themselves?
It wasn’t unprecedented, goofy you. Besides, according to the creed, there “should” be more and more every year.
Two words. Mobile phones. When someone out at sea or halfway up a volcano can ring home and say “Hey, guys, better get out, there’s some serious shit happen—” it’s inevitable that the death rate will drop enormously.
I agree, just as we have been seeing before modern mobile phones became widespread ie Doppler radar, land line phones, radio, TV etc. All this in the face of increased population. Humans are wonderful at great escapes.
Jon Jermey
October 18, 2014 at 1:07 pm
“Two words. Mobile phones. When someone out at sea or halfway up a volcano can ring home and say “Hey, guys, better get out, there’s some serious shit happen—” it’s inevitable that the death rate will drop enormously.”
Cutting out the middleman – the lying controlled (state) media.
Yes, technology such as mobile phones helps reduce impact, but it may also increase the number of incidents reported.
Unhappy news for the malthusian warmunists, but they can pin their hopes on ebola going viral.
I think we’ll start to see the return of real science if it does. Sure, someone will blame it on global warming. But it will be a real problem, with real fear, requiring real solutions.
It hasn’t been blamed on global warming? Let me be the first……where’s my check?
They just need a way to blame ebola on western civilization. I know, just like AIDS, the CIA made it
Add these ‘proxies’ too. It’s worse than we thought!
“In the long run, we’re all dead.”
Warren Buffett
OMG!
OMG!
If fewer than expected horrible civilization-ending natural disasters failed to happen by now, the missing ones will all occur next year. These missing events have all been stored up … wait for it … in the deep ocean.
Holy cow! We’ll all be dead! Well, the good news is this assumes we survive ebola…so we can go out and die in horrible natural disasters.
No news is good news, and there’s no worse crises than not having one.
So curious that disasters peaked in 2005. That is the same peak you see in the temperature graphs if you first remove all of the adjustments and use a centering method smooth and to preserve the extremity’s placement in time. I did that to HadCRUT4 and yep, top in 2005.
But low extremes in temperatures also have a history of having terrible disasters. Wonder if this tends to occur following the 30 year ups and downs with the middles inbetween relatively tame?
“lowest number of catastrophies and deaths in 10 years”
Tragic. Climate change is so pernicious and evil even nature is screwed up and failing to match the science.
First it was missing heat, now it’s missing catastrophies…where will Trenberth find them?
In all fairness, I don’t think he misses them. I can’t imagine Trenberth writing something like: “We can’t find any increase in deaths from natural disasters, and it’s a travesty that so few people die.”
No, there is a limit to vilification.
I guess it’ll be our turn to say, “Just look out your window,” come year-end.
No need to look out of the window. I have reached a state of autarky regarding natural disasters; a look in the mirror is quite enough.
Thanks for posting this encouraging report. The world IS becoming a better place for more and more of our fellow human beings.
Let us hope that the Red Cross does not fall for the temptation to “adjust” the disaster statistics in the future, if they feel that the public is getting too complacent. They are highly qualified persons in this line of work, who might just possibly be loooking for a new job some day.
Oh dear, last sentence should be; “THERE are highly qualified persons in this line of work, who might just possibly be loooking for a new job some day.”
As written, it reads like the Red Cross are the qualified “adjusters”, which was not the intention at all.
It is obviously just a pause in the number of deaths and catastrophes.They are there, probably hidden in the oceans or somewhere. We haven’t been able to model them properly. But they are there. Trust us. Please. Our funding depends on it.
LOL!
The responsible use of technology offers concrete ways to make humanitarian assistance more effective, efficient and accountable and can, in turn, directly reduce vulnerability and strengthen resilience. Finding ways for advances in technology to serve the most vulnerable is a moral imperative; a responsibility, not a choice.
This looks to me like a fight back against a green anti-technology agenda in Germany.
Our Greens concentrate their dwindling and dying forces 100% on saving multiculturalism and genderism ATM. No word about environment, impending Global Warming meltdown, threatened beetles or anything. They dare not mention some poor critter dying anymore because the moment they do they are called hypocrites for killing Red Milans and bats with windmills.
Well wait a minute now. If you homgonize, add a disaster here, take one away there, combine with most measures of cherry-picked disasters, cross referenced with apple picked disasters, and extrapolate expected outcomes using a mixture of data from 18 different sources and filter though various highly complex statisitical software, average it all up, add cream and sugar, create a graph in MS Excel, and you’ll find the past year is the worst ever.
Don’t forget: you have to find that one tree whose rings show that disasters are increasing.
Alx
Gulp!
I hadn’t realised how bad it is.
How settled the science is [Mod – should that be ‘was’?]!
How near frying we all are.
Please don’t fry before reading my humble expression of – gosh, shock-horror!
Mod – goodness; /sarc (to the power 1.5, likely)
Even my cat knows better than that – no – Not /sarc!
Auto
If your comment is in the form of I told you so, or isn’t it sweet that we were right all along, give it a rest. It would be nice to see some real comments.
Download 2013 report here: http://www.ifrc.org/PageFiles/134658/WDR%202013%20complete.pdf
Definite downward trend.
10 years worth.
234 to 236 (Pages) have the tabulations.
But a moral question looms…..how much climate cooling do we enjoy to prove the warmists wrong? Personally I kind of hope a couple of degrees warmer is the outcome…..old age I guess.
+1
I like warmer.
I doubt warmer is what is coming in the next few -12-25 – years.
But I hoe it does warm a bit.
Crops. Old folk. Traffic. Etc.
Auto
Well without having read all of this thread and at the risk of repeating what has been said…
Wait for them to attribute the dearth of storms to AGW !
Current observed climate equilibrium has it’s benefits.
Can we press pause?
covering all the bases:
18 Oct: The Weather Network: Scott Sutherland: Tornadoes are clustering in the US, and climate change may be to blame
If you’ve been keeping track of the news about tornado outbreaks in the US over the past few decades, you may have noticed a trend – fewer outbreaks, but at the same time each one appears to be worse than the last. According to a new report, it’s probably not your imagination. In fact, it could be due to climate change…
Now, a study by scientists from NOAA – the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – is showing evidence of this trend.
“When people ask, ‘Are we getting more tornadoes, are we getting fewer tornadoes, are they later, are they earlier?’ – the answer to everything is yes,” said Harold Brooks, the lead study author from NOAA’s Severe Storms Laboratory, according to Ecowatch.com…
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/tornadoes-are-clustering-in-the-us-and-climate-change-may-be-to-blame/38102/
“World Disasters Report for 2013 – lowest number of catastrophies and deaths in 10 years”
Add this to the growing list of disasters for the AGW Hoax.
Do Ebola deaths count in the World Disasters Report? If so, could that be the reason world leaders seem so caviler about stopping the disease from spreading around the world? Nah, they couldn’t be that evil. But that doesn’t mean that if the death count balloons, they won’t use the numbers to sound the alarm on climate change.
I’m going to guess that we have fewer climate refugees too.
Catastrophe is the prayed for parousia of the alarmist climate change cause.
When the parousia doesn’t arrive they become despondent.
John
Capitalism works. Lets give it a chance.
A note for Canadian readers. CBC’s “Doc Zone” is running “Weather Gone Wild: Surviving a World of Superstorms” Thursday Oct 23, at 9 PM. http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/features/is-the-weather-really-getting-wilder
Can we do a pre-emptive counterstrike against this propaganda? We can use this report to counter the “documentary”. While we’re at it, lets throw in the “Climate Cooking” video by Dr. Sally Baliunas, discussing the history of people’s reactions to extreme weather…
Wait, you missed this extreme event by the leader of Australian Greens just a couple of weeks ago to an enthusiastic National Press Club:
http://christine-milne.greensmps.org.au/content/news-stories/npc-taking-power-back
A few gems:
“The intensity of extreme weather events is increasing.”
“…heatwaves kill more people each year than the road toll”.
“In 2050, if we do not act now, extreme bushfire days in Australia will quadruple. Every extreme bushfire day we have now will multiple by four.”
“Our oceans are becoming warmer and more acidic as they absorb more greenhouse gases. Our coral population has declined by half in the Great Barrier Reef since the 1980s, and this is further stressed by invasive species and of course the dumping of dredge spoil and coal ships using the Great Barrier Reef as a coal highway.”
“Already the white lemuroid possum is facing extinction, with only four individual animals left, and the koala is being wiped out because of extreme heat conditions in South West Queensland.”
“The area for transmission for vector-borne diseases such as dengue fever is spreading south-wards from Far North Queensland and could come down as far as Sydney, covering around 5 million Australian homes.”
“…the Climate Council report released yesterday says that $200b worth of infrastructure including 250,000 homes are at risk from flooding and massive storm surge as a result of sea level rise.”
I think this must go close as the most extreme alarmist rant of 2014. And there is no doubt that these Milne events are on the increase and threaten Hollywood’s Scream and Horror genre as world leader in scaring the world shitless. What will get you first? Dengue fever or a Pacific king tide?
Interesting that these are absolute values as well. Normalize this to population and it would sound even better.