Reposted from Not A Lot Of People Know That
FEBRUARY 20, 2021
By Paul Homewood
Stewgreen has tracked down the NOAA climate disaster website, which the BBC used for their video yesterday.
It is evident just by looking at it that the whole thing is totally fraudulent. First a look at the map:
When a hurricane hits a populated stretch of coast, which is almost invariably, it is inevitable losses will be big. But while last year was a busy year for hurricanes, we do know that the frequency of US hurricanes has not been unusual in the last decade, and if anything the long term trend is down. (Though it is worth noting that the 1980s and 90s were below average, making the choice of 1980 as a start date statistically inappropriate):
However, the vast majority of these wrongly named “climate” disasters are either tornadoes, hailstorms or severe weather (which are almost all thunderstorm/tornado outbreaks).
Again, we know that tornado activity has declined significantly since the 1970s. But we are expected to believe that tornadoes and thunderstorms nowadays are far more catastrophic than in the past.
The answer to this riddle lies in how NOAA determine what a billion dollar disaster is. The key is this sentence:
The U.S. has sustained 285 weather and climate disasters since 1980 where overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion (including CPI adjustment to 2020).
So, they rightly allow for inflation, but is that enough?
The simple truth is that Americans have much more “stuff” than they did back in the 1980. Bigger houses, more cars, latest technological gadgetry, expensive furniture and clothes, and all the rest of it.
If a house burns down, the cost of rebuilding it and replacing contents will have increased by much more than inflation since 1980.
The same goes for local infrastructure and services.
The best way to monitor this is by looking at GDP, not CPI, which says that $1 in 1980 is now worth $3.32:
GDP however has risen from $2857bn in 1980, to $21433bn in 2019, which is 7.3 times as big.
We can see the impact of rising wealth better by looking at constant GDP, which has been adjusted for CPI:
This index of GDP, which measures real growth, has jumped from $6.5 trillion in 1980 to $18.3 trillion, nearly trebling.
So when a billion dollar disaster in 1980 is equivalent to a $3 billion one now.
We can also look at house price trends. The chart below is deflated using CPI, so again reflects real prices, rather than monetary ones. It has risen from 81.78 to 134.88, a factor of 1.65:
Out of the twenty two billion dollar disasters last year, supposedly a record, nine were below $2 billion. There is absolutely no doubt at all that if they had occurred in 1980, none of them would have cost more than a billion.
Hurricanes
We can actually make a direct comparison between the 1985 hurricane season and last year; both had six hurricanes.
In 1985, only three of the hurricanes enter the list, with a total cost of $9bn. In comparison, all six of last year’s appear, plus Tropical Storm Eta, with a combined cost of $40.1. The average cost per hurricane has risen from $3bn to $5.7bn. This is strong evidence that it is increasing wealth which is driving the rising cost of disasters, not the impact of climate.
Figures don’t lie, but liars can figure.
Actually, it’s all about putting forth “science” in order to pass legislation to address the crisis of Climate Change. The Green New Deal and Tesla and trillions of going to the usual culprits.
Biden, in fact, may become the first person to become a billionaire in office while his family may top a trillion dollars net worth. At least it’s a goal they have.
I see the problem with this logical, and detailed analysis with its charts graphs and math … it’s far too complicated for the low information voter (ht Rush) to comprehend. Until the REAL scientists come up with soundbyte slogans like NOAA and NASA such as “the hottest _ _ _ in History” … “The planet is dying” … ad nauseam … then capitalism and Industrialization will lose. The Marxists are better at sloganeering for simpletons.
The Marxists are not better, they just have control of the propaganda organs of the State, the Leftwing Media, and have a much easier time promoting their message, and drowning out the opposition’s message.
If one could find the data, I think it would be instructive to also look at the costs of a disaster that have increased far more than inflation – such as medical care for the injured, the cost of replacing/repairing a building (what with regulations and appropriate “gifts” to the union bosses and politicians), etc.
Add in lawyers and frivolous lawsuits.
Even without resorting to intangible differences, it is a simple fact that homes in the US today are on average far larger than what was being built for a single family in decades past.
There have been other periods of time when homes were built larger than had previously been the case, such as northern state homes in the period after the civil war.
But I believe the era of McMansion home construction that began in the first years of this millennium represents a size and style of single family residential construction that is pretty much unprecedented, at least in the US.
Most importantly, there are many more homes now. The chance of a tornado striking a populated area is much, much greater than it was in the not too distant past. Tornadoes that in Dorothy and Toto’s time would have just plowed up Kansas farmland will now destroy hundreds of homes. More than one will be taken to Oz.
Serious question – is there anything illegal going on here?
Are the BBC breaching some broadcasting standard?
Is NOAA doing anything illegal?
There must be some way to discourage them.
You’ll find that government agencies (BBC and NOAA) adjust the laws to suit their agenda. Consider the recent presidential election, for instance.
The BBC has definitey been breaching any standard of fairness and accuracy.
However doing so is not illegal.
Unethical, yes but illegal, no.
The only way to “discourage” government agencies is to limit or eliminate their funding. The current bunch in DC would rather defund law enforcement than any over-reaching government agency that supports increasing their power.
The GOP should have defunded NOAA in the last decade. With the proliferation of meteorological companies and interest in meteorology, the era of big government should be over.
Government grows and grows. Rarely does it shrink.
If the US federal budget was even frozen, and merely kept constant for a single year, it would be the biggest “cut” in modern history.
Budgets do not shrink.
Federal agencies do not go away.
Every dollar of federal outlay has a dedicated constituency, and even serious talk of freezing the budget for any of those outlays will be very predictably and assuredly met with an immediate and vocal howl of condemnation and opprobrium.
It has been tried.
Good luck wit’ dat.
Recall Trump and his “plan to starve your grandparents to death”, when he proposed cutting one of the redundant agencies that supplied some of the funding for Meals on Wheels?
Or Paul Ryan pushing granny over the cliff, literally and graphically portrayed in a widely aired TV commercial?
ICYMI:
https://youtu.be/E_VA_4_S6Hk
Paul Ryan never again spoke of cutting any budget for anyone, ever.
In fact he became the worse enemy and impediment to budget sanity in the entire government for the balance of his political career.
Even when he knew he was retiring, he never again, even once, showed any shred of a spine.
“My grandmother has not spoken to me since.”
-Paul Ryan
“I cried, but then I went to the tanning bed and forgot all about it.”
-John Boehner
40 years ago water damaged cars, whiteware and the like were fixable at a reasonable cost as it was just about all mechanical, these days they are written off by the insurance companies as the cost to them of replacing control panels and wiring are higher than replacement. No wonder then that their costs are going sky high, but while that may be the case virtually all of them report decent profits which would indicate that their underwriting formula for losses versus premiums received works for them which is all they care about.
The rest is scare mongering by pressure groups.
One icy day recently another driver wasn’t quite able to stop in time and grazed my rear end. So, replace one obvious torn (plastic) panel, labor, and paint. I figured about $1000. Imagine my surprise when there were about ten parts to replace. The bill came to around $2000 and it didn’t seem to me that any of it was padded. (Mind you, if I had to pay the bill, there were a few parts I wouldn’t have replaced because they’re mostly invisible and it’s an older car.)
So one car repair at about twice the cost of what it would have been a decade ago. Why? It seems that even the bodywork is more complicated than it used to be. As far as I can tell, the purpose of the extra parts is aerodynamic to help the car meet EPA fuel economy standards.
The point is, as pointed out in the article, that things are more sophisticated and therefore more expensive to repair. It appears that applies even when you wouldn’t think it would at first glance.
Taking a VW Golf in the UK as roughly comparable, not withstanding the increase in complexity, size and all other improvements, in pure £ note terms a new Golf costs about five times as much now as it did in 1980. The other thing damaged or destroyed by floods and storms houses have similarly increased. Contents though is a bit different a state of the ar colour TV (20″ Teletext) £500 barely a change and white goods are the same.
Thing is we all have more stuff, who had an iPad, iPhone, Laptop, a TV in every room, a car ech and all the rest?
Here is evidence of 50 years of failed apocalyptic disaster forecasts …
https://realclimatescience.com/fifty-years-of-failed-apocalyptic-forecasts/
Do I have a 51? Anyone …. 51, 51 going going ….
We have a 51, over there in California:
Given the N. Hemisphere cold-generated climate alarmist crisis, plus the fact that the ocean acidification crisis was dead on arrival due to not having anything to do with acid, here it comes:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2021/02/22/white-supremacists-and-neo-nazis-becoming-a-transnational-threat-un-secretary-general-says/?sh=312f1d80a54e
…… and we were all wondering. What a shame that we can’t have medieval solutions for these medieval progressive parasitic cretins.
Well, trust the UN to blame their failures on “white supremacists”. Was he not informed that Antifa styles itself after Nazis storm troopers and BLM has made no secret of its Marxist roots. Unless I miss my guess, they were the general source of 99% of the rioting and are both from the Left. The only other source of social unrest have been the Democrats and MSM, who encouraged it from the start.
The UN and the Secretary General ARE leftists.
I thought I had made that clear. Yes, of course the UN is “Leftist”. Socialism is a special kind of willful ignorance and the ultimate power trip for its leaders.
I bet if you called a meeting of all the radical, rightwing groups in the United States, you couldn’t fill a football stadium with them.
White supremacists and radical rightwing groups are being blown out of proportion by the propagadists on the Left, as a pretext for the Ruling Left to crackdown on the Right.
Conservatives and Republicans have nothing to do with White supremacists or any other radical group.
The Leftwing Liars say all conservatives and Republcians are White supremacists (even the nonwhites?). They have told this lie for decades because they have nothing to offer the public but fear of the other guy. So they lie and lie and lie some more about Republicans and conservatives.
Btw, that “armed insurrection” that supposedly took place at the US Capital is just another lie put out by the Leftwing Media to try to demonize the Right.
It turns out that out of the several hundred people arrested at the Capital Building Jan. 6, most of the charges against them are misdemeanors for tresspassing. About 15 of the people inside had weapons which were described as anything from a club, to a helment, or a shield, but none of them were armed with firearms. Two people were charged with firearm violations but they were outside and were not charged with threatening anyone but with violating Washington DC’s carry laws.
Note that there were tens of thousands of demonstrators at the Capital Building, yet only about 200 of those went into the building, and we are not sure that all 200 of them were Trump supporters.
The number of people who entered the Capital Building on Jan 6, was about 200 out of the 50,000 present. Radical crazies in the Republican Party are very small in numbers, and if they are radical, they are not really considered to be Republicans, by Republicans, ony by the Democrats.
Tom
“The Leftwing Liars say all conservatives and Republcians are White supremacists (even the nonwhites?”
Do you have a reference to verify for this statement? I don’t think it is true.
Try this one Simon:
The leader of the Proud Boys is half-black, half-Cuban:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrique_Tarrio
Check him out and don’t forget to note the hatchet job being done on him.
That’s a joke by the way. Simple Simon believing anything other than what could be taught to a parrot.
Pretty Polly
Pretty Polly
Orangemanbad
Orangemanbad
Climate
Climate waaaahh
Climate waaah waaah waaahhh
Thank you for your reference (but not for your childish put down) but it is not really relevant. I think you are kinda missing my point. I was asking Tom to validate why he thinks the left think conservatives and Republicans are all white supremacists. I don’t think he is correct. Maybe you can supply a link?
well, I don’t have a link handy. I didn’t think I would need one since it’s apparent to anyone paying attention that the Left demonizes the Right continuously as being White Supremacists or racists or worse.
Biden doesn’t get up there and say *all* conservatives are White Supremacists but he implies it all the time. Everyone in his administration, and in the Democrat party does it. This narrative has been decades in the making and the Democrats are just continuing the lies.
A wall around the Capital. Thousands of troops deployed. The Defense Department is starting a witch hunt for White Supremacists in the U.S. military. The Department of Justice is going to start investigating domestic rightwing groups. The guy Nancy Pelosi put in charge of investigting the Jan 6 Capital Building incursion sees White Supremacists everywhere he turns.
The Democrats in Congress are demonizing the Republicans in Congress as being racists and White Supremacists. AOC said she feared for her life on Jan. 6, from fellow Republican congress members.
It’s all part of the Left’s plan to demonize the Right and retain political power for themselves.
I bet the Democrats would love to have an excuse to declare Martial Law. Then they could lock up all their detractors. They claimed Trump would do something like that, but the radical Democrats are much more likely to try something stupid like that.
Of course, that would lead to a real civil war.
When the Democrats push it that far, the other side is not going to stand for it.
The Democrats should not push it that far. They should limit themselves to harsh rhetoric.
” I didn’t think I would need one since it’s apparent to anyone paying attention that the Left demonizes the Right continuously as being White Supremacists or racists or worse.”
It’s true politics in the US is very divided and that both sides vilify each other, but I don’t believe it is true that politicians on the left say if you are right you are a white supremacist. nd it is certainly not true Biden has ever stated or implied this. It is true he has condemned the Proud Boys and other right wing White Supremacists, but so have others on the right and so they should.
“The Democrats in Congress are demonizing the Republicans in Congress as being racists and White Supremacists.’ If this is true then you must be able to find a link to this?
“bet the Democrats would love to have an excuse to declare Martial Law.” Your opinion but I doubt it is a real thing. Why would they?
“When the Democrats push it that far, the other side is not going to stand for it.” And that is the problem. The Dems believed Trump and his supporters pushed it too far on Jan 6 and surely you do too Tom. No one could support what that rabble did… could they? So where does it stop.
“The Democrats should not push it that far. They should limit themselves to harsh rhetoric.”
In my world that is what they are doing. Biden is being very controlled, particularly if you compare what he says to the racial stuff Trump has said. I can give you many Trump racial taunts. Here’s one about Mexicans… “They’re sending people that have a lot of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.
Your turn Tom. find me a quote from Biden where he states or implies Republicans/conservatives are white supremacists?
A minor, non-unarmed incursion into the capitol by a small number of outraged citizens is NOT an “insurrection” nor does it even qualify as a “riot”. What they did was wrong and they should be punished but it was NOT some “white supremacist” uprising. When the media and people like you overreact and blow it completely out of proportion, that alone is proof of Tom’s point!
What “racial stuff” did Trump say? It’s all made up nonsense and “dog whistles” that only leftists can hear. Makes one wonder who are really the “dogs”.
That “racist” comment by Trump you quote is anything but. It’s the truth. Trumpo was corectly pointing out that many ofm those crossing the border ARE criminals, drug dealers and rapists. He was clearly not saying that all of them are. In any case all ARE breaking our immigration laws.
Once again you prove Tom’s point by parroting the media’s lies.
So why did Trump make the statement when the overwhelming number of people who come across the border are not drug dealers or rapists? He did it to stir up the racial distrust that was waiting for someone like him. He did it for political gain even though it caused severe harm and distress to a race of people. Let me turn that round. Soldiers from the US during the second world war were rapists and thieves. While it is undoubtedly true you would rightly wonder why anyone would want to make such a statement? The same goes for Trump. He knew what he was doing and it wasn’t pretty.
A minor, non-unarmed incursion into the capitol ”
That is one way to re write history. It was an outrageous assault on democracy that resulted in the deaths of 5 people and trauma to a great many more.
Only one of those deaths was due to the “riot” and it was done by a policeman/woman shooting an unarmed individual. 3 of them didn’t even occur on the Capitol grounds. They just happened to occur on Jan 6. The fifth is questionable. There is no evidence that the victim was even struck with a fire extinguisher. let alone that such an action killed him. Believe the lies of the left wing media all you want they are still falsehoods.
There is some question as to how the Capital policeman died. Nobody seems to know or wants to give out information. He may have died of natural causes, for all we know. The stonewalling of the circumstances of this officer’s death appears a little bit suspicious to me.
Eventually we will get the answers. And I’ll bet many of the answers aren’t anything like how the Leftwing Media is presenting things today.
“He did it to …” And you are a world famous mind reader.
He said it to help explain why border control is significant and important to the people of the U.S.
“So why did Trump make the statement when the overwhelming number of people who come across the border are not drug dealers or rapists?”
That’s where you are going wrong, Simon. Trump said *some* of the illegal aliens were criminals and rapists. That is literally true.
If you read the actual words Trump said, instead of an interpretation of his words given by a biased political partisan, then you would see the truth.
Trump never said all illegal aliens are criminals and rapists. That is the distortion given by the Leftwing Media, and the one you have incorporated as being true.
You are invited to provide a Trump quote that refutes my claim. Don’t bother looking, because there is no such quote.
Great for CTM and others to find these “Reality Check” articles and post them here at WATTS. The other side has abandoned all pretense of searching for actual and factual data and are going with only the CAGW religion.
You Americans must be very brave. The population of Florida has literally doubled since 1980. The elderly must be particularly brave running into the path of hurricanes. Oh, hold on, twice as many people, each having twice as much stuff. Looks like less death due to natural disasters, and each person is losing less of their stuff. Move along folks, nothing to see here, we’ll manufacture some new headlines for you next week.
I moved to Florida because it’s too cold up north.
“long term trend is down” This is why they began naming every low pressure system that moves across water from June to November, all the better to scare people.
I think I’m losing the plot…
I found that video almost as soon as it came out and I’m pretty positive it was tagged, as the BBC does with sizeable, boxy-square-shaped links to their ‘Topics’ sections of both:
Reality Check ##
and also, obviously,
Climate Change
Mr Trump used to have his own ‘Topic’.
Wasn’t he The Lucky One. Out here in the Real World it would be called stalking, harassment or trollery and if they persisted (they continue to obsess about him after 4 years) ‘someone’ would be behind bars by now.
## Reality Check is the BBC in-house version of a Fact Checker.
(Groan, I feel sick even vaguely recalling the dross that goes past there)
It’ll be where facebork get a lot of their ‘stuff’
No matter, the turkeys all lap it up, getting themselves nicely oven-ready for Christmas
But now, those links and plenty more are all gone and there is a very large blank space on that page – very unusual for the BBC :-/
“nicely oven-ready for Christmas”
Hey C’mon man, there’s nothing wrong with lapping up National Socialist fascism. Well, as long as the gas is renewable.
Seems like they’re clutching at straws, the reality is, it’s much, much better than it was.
Biggest natural disaster today…. earthquakes.
Btw, some serious Guatemalan volcanic activity at the moment.
Taking coastal damage as just one example, not only are individual homes in the hurricanes’ paths more expensively designed w/r/t features and ft2, but there are a lot more of those McMansions being built (where they shouldn’t be).
Does using GDP account for more people living on the coast, as well as greater populations in places where other disasters are occuring?
No, if you mean you want to use GDP as a deflator. Coastal building is growing more than GDP.
Look at the associated deaths, not the cost to wealth. A life is a life – you can’t adjust it up or down. If the number of deaths is rising, we need to be concerned and take action (like better and more tornado shelters). If the number of deaths is falling, then we are already taking appropriate steps or severity of weather is decreasing.
New Orleans was an outlier – the deaths were mostly the result of stupid politicians and bureaucrats, and a city partially built under the sea level.
Splitting hairs but it wasn’t built under sea level, it headed that way after the fact.
In 10,000 years maybe it will be subterranean and the only USA city safe from the ice age
in 1900 could we see and report the storms we now count that form in the ocean and dissipate in a day or 2 without coming anywhere near land?
Only if a ship happened to run into it. However ships made a point of avoiding those areas where such storms were likely to form.
Nine Year Kerry sez the storms are gettin’ bigger and bigger….and more of ’em too….maybe a small benefit is windpower increase….and washes dirt off the solar panels….eh?…..and the exodus out of S. Florida in Teslas will be thing to behold.
When assessing the destructiveness of hurricanes, one has to also take into account the huge increase in the number of homes and people that are right on the coast.
Back in 1980, most of the seashores in the Eastern US were sparsely inhabited, although by then a multidecadal increase in such habitation had already started and was accelerating.
Go back a few decades prior to 1980, and the seashores had few year round residents.
Also, the southern belt of states, in particular Florida, used to be nearly uninhabited as compared to today.
The difference in Florida from when I first lived here for a Summer in 1977, was already dramatic when I moved here for college in 1982.
While I was in college, just during those years from 1882 to 1987, the area around north Tampa had explosive residential and commercial growth.
It was the beginning of the era of developers constructing entire communities all at once, which often had a population equivalent to a small city.
The first one I was aware of was Tampa Palms, where a dense housing community was built on what had been a uninhabited cattle ranch literally in the middle of nowhere.
Nowadays, such construction here is an everyday ongoing activity.
But back then, it was unheard of and more or less unprecedented.
It is true inflation has increased the value of goods and services and property, and also that people have on average far more stuff than in decades past, and much of that stuff is pricy.
Homes are on average larger…often far larger.
And places where people did not used to live in large numbers now have tens of millions of people…many of them directly in harms way from what are known to be devastating events which are known to recur on a regular basis.
There is probably not a single mile of coastline from Brownsville to Cape Hatteras that will not be struck directly by a hurricane over the next 100 years, and yet there are few stretches of that entire coastline that are not built up.
New Orleans is a town which has large sections of the city below sea level, and the city was flooded from a glancing blow from a hurricane. It sits in the most hurricane prone stretch of coastline in the entire world, maybe in the entire universe. And yet when it was wrecked, few even spoke of relocating the city instead of rebuilding it in place. Indeed it was rebuilt largely as it was, and although the levees and locks and flood control structures were vastly ungraded, they were not built to be able to save the city in the event of a direct hit from a powerful hurricane.
At a time when some were warning that hurricanes would be stronger in the future than ever, and that the ocean was going to rise ever faster, the city was rebuilt at a cost of many tens of billions of dollars, and was not even built while planning for the past, let alone the future.
Plus, half the crap that alarmists say is exaggerations and the other half is lies.
Back in 1977, I was helping out at the plant store in Fort Lauderdale that my sister and brother in law were operating.
They were renting a house in Delray, about (a long drive) north of the plant store.
I can vividly recall the drive from Ft Lauderdale to Delray along the Florida Turnpike in those days.
There was very literally nothing but cypress swamp along both sides of the road back then, for pretty much the entire drive.
On that same stretch now, it is an unbroken swath of densely packed multimillion dollar homes, many of which are within resorts and golf courses.
By the time I moved to South Florida in 2002, that entire stretch of the state from Fort Lauderdale and especially Delray was unrecognizable.
I mean it was impossible to see one thing that was still as it was.
Oh…except one thing: The ocean is still exactly where it was back then.
An increase in population and number of homes is also occurring in the Midwest, increasing the probability that tornadoes encounter populated areas.
The sad thing is that this has been known for decades. I was doing hurricane modeling over three decades ago. Insurance companies are interested in total cost in nominal dollars, but it was considered obvious that when comparing years, one adjusts for both inflation and change in inventory of buildings. That’s a simplification, the actual modeling takes into consideration changes in building codes over time. Nominal costs go up due to inflation, nominal costs go up because people are building more on the coast, and go up a little less than the value of the buildings because of improved building codes.
Getting the details right was a lot of work but the concept was well-known. The fact that NOAA adjust for inflation but not anything else either means they are clueless or deliberately deceiving. I started to say lying, but is not lying because the values are not wrong they’re just misleading, because they want you to think that climate is responsible for more more damage. No, humans are responsible for more more damage because they are putting up buildings in the paths of hurricanes.
I also did some tornado modeling a little more recently, so yes I’m a very aware that the frequency of tornadoes is down and the severity is highly variable but there is no discernible trend up.
And don’t get me started on forest fires. Incompetent forest management is not a climate problem.
Stephen, I agree with you, except that deliberately deceiving is actually lying.
This Layman’s inflation equalizer is to take the reported value of something (a new house, a new car, the damage, wages etc,) in any given year, divide by 20. Then multiply by the price an ounce of gold today.
There was a time when a $20 gold piece, an ounce of gold, was only worth twenty dollars.
(Back in those days someone might make $10 a week and new car might cost “only” $200.)
I believe the NOAA should be required to describe what they think is the difference between a climate disaster and a weather disaster. All they have listed are weather-related disasters. Published research shows that bad weather phenomena have not grown more frequent since the beginning of the 20th Century (Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. and others, anyone?). This is just an example of the Federal government lying to you, again.
Simply the expanding bullseye effect, Lomborg has a really good chapter on this in his last book