From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Roger Pielke Jr has long challenged the fraudulent “billion dollar” disaster disinformation campaign.
Now he has gone one step further with this peer reviewed paper:
Abstract
For more than two decades, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has published a count of weather-related disasters in the United States that it estimates have exceeded one billion dollars (inflation adjusted) in each calendar year starting in 1980. The dataset is widely cited and applied in research, assessment and invoked to justify policy in federal agencies, Congress and by the U.S. President. This paper performs an evaluation of the dataset under criteria of procedure and substance defined under NOAA’s Information Quality and Scientific Integrity policies. The evaluation finds that the “billion dollar disaster” dataset falls short of meeting these criteria. Thus, public claims promoted by NOAA associated with the dataset and its significance are flawed and at times misleading. Specifically, NOAA incorrectly claims that for some types of extreme weather, the dataset demonstrates detection and attribution of changes on climate timescales. Similarly flawed are NOAA’s claims that increasing annual counts of billion dollar disasters are in part a consequence of human caused climate change. NOAA’s claims to have achieved detection and attribution are not supported by any scientific analysis that it has performed. Given the importance and influence of the dataset in science and policy, NOAA should act quickly to address this scientific integrity shortfall.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44304-024-00011-0
Roger has also written an explanatory post here.
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But for its lack of integrity, NOAA wouldn’t have any integrity at all.
“Scientific integrity and U.S. “Billion Dollar Disasters”
This – for some weird reason – evoked a connection in my odd mind. Where any [and aren’t they all negative?] ‘climate change’ claims are made there should be some form of public warning, such as…
“The National Gambling Support Network helps people struggling with gambling, and people who are worried about someone else’s gambling.” [ with very dodgy science and reporting… ]
https://www.gambleaware.org/
The real question for any climate modeller is: do you feel lucky, punk? They obviously do, or they put up a semi-convincing front, at least. Yet, every time with every prediction, the face of mainstream climate science has flatly said hello to the flat floor of reality. Thud.
The failure rate has not changed, much. The excuses of course will continue to vary. It all comes back to the modelling where policies are concerned. And the Attribution crew are muscling in…
Funny. The mental image I got was a few DEI hires spinning the giant “Wheel of Weather Disaster Losses”.
Let’s see if I have this correct. I purchased my house 30 years ago for $100,000 and if it burned to the ground back then, it would be a $100,000 disaster. Today if it burns down, it’s a $1,000,000 disaster because “climate change”?
Surely, like here, it’s the increase in land prices over time? Although, here in London available land is not that easy to come by hence…prices are at a max and more. The banks are still somewhat flaky.
What makes houses so expensive here is the lack of supply and an ever growing population, duh. Yes, the elites know that….
A wind or solar farm works better…
Housing costs are also closely related to government restrictions on new construction. Chances are, if there is a housing shortage, government has a direct role. Boomtowns are the exception.
“Surely, like here, it’s the increase in land prices over time?”
Doug S is right, dollars are an inflated comparison over time. A better measure is GDP, which somewhat considers population growth and monetary devaluation.
If you price the disasters in bitcoin how does it look?
Here in Canada, the second largest country in the world with suitable land and lumber stretching into infinity, we have among the most expensive housing prices in the world. Housing prices here are a result of WEF policy enacted through various levels of government. Vast quanties of and is held in trust for lage corporations, regulatory insanity adds enormously to our costs, all goods cost more in Canada, simply for phe privilege of being sold here, banks and developers hold property to keep prices high in market downturns. In Canada, many own nothing but are strangely unhappy.
Absolutely.
The costs of weather related disasters will steadily increase with time as the world gets more prosperous. If, by some magic, the weather and climate were exactly constant over the years the costs would still increase in the same way.
When disaster costs are normalised against GDP there is no trend.
If the NOAA study does not normalise against GDP or other similar measures, then it is fraudulent. Which it probably is….
Chris
Why not use the price of an ounce of gold?
The hurricane that leveled Galveston Texas was estimated to have caused $35.4 million dollars damage throughout it’s path … in 1900.
In the US then a $20 gold piece or a $20 bill had the value/buying power of 1 once of gold and remained so for decades.
And today an ounce of gold is priced at $2300, while the US $20 bill still buys US $20 worth of product.
Whoopsies!
From the 1940’s to today every 30 years the dollar loses 90% of its value. 1940 house 6K, 1970 house 60K, 2000 house 600K, 2030 house well 6M, same house.
This from the paper suggests the possibility of lack of due process.
“The sharp discontinuity in the counts of $1-2 billion events starting in 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.”
Nature apparently takes everything, their ad is “Anthropocene newsletter — what matters in anthropocene research, free to your inbox weekly.”
Lots more damageable stuff out there than 1980. So even with the same amount of “severe weather”- there must be more loss of stuff.
Don’t forget the government programs which encouraged/insured development in storm paths
It’s no wonder that loses have increased.
Don’t forget Bidenflation. You have to adjust the price of everything for Bidenflation.
The value of all residential and commercial real estate in the US is about $60 trillion.
This is what Swiss Re said about natural catastrophes in 2021
“There has been an upturn in flood losses over the last 20 years……… the main driver of flood losses has been exposure accumulation due to economic growth and urbanisation. However, many other factors such as aging or lack of flood control infrastructure, ‘soil sealing’ in urban areas, more rainfall from tropical cyclones and climate change effects also impact outcomes.”
They certainly didn’t jump immediately to climate change. I’m sure strativarius could give us anecdotes about ‘soil sealing’ in London.
https://www.swissre.com/institute/research/sigma-research/sigma-2022-01.htm
Although ‘attribution’ is a generally valid way of looking at data and has to be seen in context with measured data i feel it is grossly misused in climate science. Simply because it is the easiest step to get to a desired result if you are pushing an agenda.
So, whenever i read an article, ‘attribution’ is high on the list of red flags, especially if the article weaponises it to push a narrative which is almost always the case in the msm.
Look, it is not rocket surgery or brain science, heavy development in regions that routinely have “severe weather” will incur greater financial losses. F*cking idiots.
What would have been the monetary damage Katrina caused if New Orleans wasn’t there (and below sea level)?
Then there’s the Battle of Fallen Timbers. It got it’s name from the trees leveled by a previous tornado.
“The Battle of Fallen Timbers (20 August 1794) was the final battle of the Northwest Indian War, a struggle between Native American tribes affiliated with the Northwestern Confederacy and their British allies, against the nascent United States for control of the Northwest Territory. The battle took place amid trees toppled by a tornado near the Maumee River in northwestern Ohio at the site of the present-day city of Maumee, Ohio.”
What if it present day Maumee, Ohio?
These billion-dollar disasters should also be having a major effect on the planet’s populations. After all, they’re happening in all corners of the globe, so the negative effects upon agriculture should be felt, and food shortages and famines should naturally occur causing higher rates of infant mortality, pandemics and reduced life spans. In fact, despite the UN’s monthly predictions of doomsday being just around (an ever-receding) corner, the opposite is occurring. So maybe we need more of these disasters since they seem to stimulate humankind’s resiliency, creativity and resourcefulness.
I feel NOAA and NASA have been dishonest and squandered a good deal of our money. Both departments should have their budgets halved and given a year or two to think about how to perform their mission. If they can find no room for improvement they should be dismantled and we can start over.
The greenies refer to an amplification cycle of the greenhouse effect to explain global warming and now it appears that the amplification cycle is also good for counting billion-dollar disasters that don’t exist.