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Economic impacts from floods have been increasing over recent decades, a fact often attributed to a changing climate. On the other hand, there is now a significant body of scientific scholarship all pointing towards increasing concentrations and values of assets as the principle cause of the increasing cost of natural disasters. This holds true for a variety of perils and across different jurisdictions. With this in mind, this paper examines the time history of insured losses from floods in Spain between 1971 and 2008. It assesses whether any discernible residual signal remains after adjusting the data for the increase in the number and value of insured assets over this period of time. Data on insured losses from floods were sourced from Consorcio de Compensación de Seguros (CCS). Although a public institution, CCS compensates homeowners for the damage produced by floods, and thus plays a role similar to that of a private insurance company. Insured losses were adjusted using two proxy measures: first, changes in the total amount of annual surcharges (premiums) paid by customers to CCS, and secondly, changes in the total value of dwellings per year. The adjusted data reveals no significant trend over the period 1971–2008 and serves again to confirm that at this juncture, societal influences remain the prime factors driving insured and economic losses from natural disasters.
In some respects, the campaign to convince people that climate change is a threat may have been too successful, such that people have come to believe things that the science cannot support. For instance, a 2007 New York Times/CBS Poll found that of the three- quarters of people who believed that weather over the past few years had been stranger than normal, 43 percent attributed that weather to “global warming” and a further 15 percent to “pollution/damage to the environment.” Yet, as most scientists will explain, weather events and even climate patterns over a period of years simply cannot be attributed to greenhouse gas emissions. Detecting changes in climate requires decades of observations. A very cold winter or two does not disprove a decades-long warming trend, and a series of damaging hurricanes is not evidence of a human influence.
Some advocates, including some scientists, seek to have things both ways when they assert that a particular weather event is “consistent with” predictions of human-caused climate change. The snowy period of early 2010 along the U.S. East Ccoast saw those opposed to action suggesting that the record snow and cold cast doubt on the science of human-caused climate change, while at the same time those calling for action explained that the weather was “consistent with” the forecasts from climate models. Both lines of argument were misleading. Any and all weather is “consistent with” predictions from climate models under a human influence on the climate system. Similarly, any and all weather is also “consistent with” failing predictions of long-term climate change. Simply put, weather is not climate. Given the degree of politicization of the climate debate, we should not be surprised that even the weather gets politicized.
By the same token, it should come as no surprise that many in the public hold views about climate science that are way out in front of the scientific consensus on climate change as represented by the reports of the IPCC. The result is that when people learn what the science actually says, there is a risk that they will learn that their views are in fact incompatible with what the science can support, leading to a belief that the science has been overstated in public debate.
The full IPCC Special Report on Extremes is out today, and I have just gone through the sections in Chapter 4 that deal with disasters and climate change. Kudos to the IPCC -- they have gotten the issue just about right, where "right" means that the report accurately reflects the academic literature on this topic. Over time good science will win out over the rest
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- A few quotable quotes from the report (from Chapter 4):
- "There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change"
- "The statement about the absence of trends in impacts attributable to natural or anthropogenic climate change holds for tropical and extratropical storms and tornados"
- "The absence of an attributable climate change signal in losses also holds for flood losses"
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"Some authors suggest that a (natural or anthropogenic) climate change signal can be found in the records of disaster losses (e.g., Mills, 2005; Höppe and Grimm, 2009), but their work is in the nature of reviews and commentary rather than empirical research."
It is of course perfectly acceptable for people to challenge data and analyses on the possible relationship of human-caused climate change and disaster losses, and ideally they will do so in the academic literature. But when existing peer-reviewed studies are fundamentally misrepresented in popular discussions, no one's interests are served.
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- Climatewire reports uncritically a claim coming from Swiss Re that "the financial toll of global weather disasters amounts to between 1 and 12 percent of U.S. gross domestic product annually." This totals $160 billion to almost $2 trillion.
Reality Check: The actual number for global losses as a percent of US GDP is closer to 0.1%, with the maximum about 1.2% in 2005. The total cost of all hurricanes since 1900 in normalized dollars is about $1.4 trillion. The media (in general) rarely question numbers given to them from the reinsurance industry and on disasters and climate change have a strange aversion to the peer reviewed scientific literature. Innumeracy.
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- NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco and NCDC head Tom Karl write in Physics Today about the 14 "billion dollar disasters" tabulated by NOAA for 2011 and ask "Why did we see such expensive damage last year?" Their answer, predictably, includes "climate change" and is followed by a lengthy exposition on why NOAA needs more money.
Reality Check: Lubchenco and Karl somehow failed to note that NOAA and NCDC have cautioned against drawing any such conclusions from the "billion dollar disasters." And even though Lubchenco and Karl cite the recent IPCC Special Report on Extreme Events, they also somehow forgot to mention this part: "Long-term trends in economic disaster losses adjusted for wealth and population increases have not been attributed to climate change, but a role for climate change has not been excluded." Deceiving.
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In recent decades, economic damage from tropical cyclones (TCs) around the world has increased dramatically. Scientific literature published to date finds that the increase in losses can be explained entirely by societal changes (such as increasing wealth, structures, population, etc) in locations prone to tropical cyclone landfalls, rather than by changes in annual storm frequency or intensity. However, no homogenized dataset of global tropical cyclone landfalls has been created that might serve as a consistency check for such economic normalization studies. Using currently available historical TC best-track records, we have constructed a global database focused on hurricane-force strength landfalls. Our analysis does not indicate significant long-period global or individual basin trends in the frequency or intensity of landfalling TCs of minor or major hurricane strength. This evidence provides strong support for the conclusion that increasing damage around the world during the past several decades can be explained entirely by increasing wealth in locations prone to TC landfalls, which adds confidence to the fidelity of economic normalization analyses.
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A reviewer wisely noted that looking for linear trends in such data was probably not particularly useful in any case -- and we much agree, however, a detection of trends is (for better or worse) established by the IPCC as a means to detect of changes in climate. Those looking for meaningful trends in TC behavior (regardless of cause) should be aware that even assuming large changes in storm behavior, such trends would not be detectable for many decades or longer. Thus, our findings should not be too surprising.
An unvarnished translation would be -- "This graph means virtually nothing."
In addition to inflation, patterns of population growth, nature of economic development, accumulation of wealth all play a role in how extreme events distant in time would lead to economic impacts had they occurred with the same underlying societal conditions. (To understand why inflation is important but less so than other adjustments, in this paper in PDF compare the inflation-adjusted hurricane losses in Figure 3 and normalized hurricane losses in Figure 4.) As I wrote in my initial post on this topic, for 1980 there is certainly 4 (and maybe 5 or more) other events that occurred in 1980 but would exceed a billion dollar threshold had they occurred in 2011. So by adding one event to 1980, NOAA has recognized the general problem, but has not come close to actually dealing with it.
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NOAA has quietly added 19 new disasters to their tally since 1980, apparently having discovered a quantity called inflation. The modification of their tally is (it seems) in response to a blog critique which was followed up by a Washington Post blogger. The new "billion dollar disaster" figure is at the top of this post, with the 19 new additions from NOAA in red.
Regular readers will know that I think that the print media overall has done a pretty good job on covering the science of climate change, if not always getting the politics right. They will also know what I think about the "debate" over climate change and extreme events (above). But every once in a while I see a story that is so breathtakingly bad that it is worth commenting on. Today's installment comes from Justin Gillis at the New York Times and was published on Christmas Eve. The article is so bad that it might just be the worst piece of reporting I've ever seen in the Times on climate change.
At Real Climate Stefan Rahmstorf has a non-responsive response to my earlier critique of the RC11 paper on the Russian heat wave. While he does not address any of my substantive critiques, he does walk back his earlier statements about attribution (video interpretation shown above;-).
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1. Red Herring - Stefan claims that he is accused of:
"hyping up the number of [heat] records."
With this, he is introducing a red herring as his idealized ball and urn stuff is probability 101. It is not the paper's mathematics that are problematic, but its argument and conclusions. -
2. Avoidance - By following the red herring, Stefan ignores the four cherry picks that I discussed in my critique: Linear trend, station, data set, and non-linear trend. But you don't have to believe me -- NOAA scientists have put up a devastating critique of RC11 here -- a web site that I see Stefan failed to acknowledge, link to or offer a response to.
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A new paper out today in the Hydrological Sciences Journal shows that flooding has not increased in the United States over records of 85 to 127 years. This adds to a pile of research that shows similar results around the world. This result is of course consistent with our work that shows that increasing damage related to weather extremes can be entirely explained by societal changes, such as more property in harm's way. In fact, in the US flood damage has decreased dramatically as a fraction of GDP, which is exactly whet you get if GDP goes up and flooding does not.
I do not expect research to change anyone's views on the topic or alter the debate over climate change and extreme events. The debate has moved well beyond that which can be resolved empirically.
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A new paper out today in the Hydrological Sciences Journal shows that flooding has not increased in the United States over records of 85 to 127 years. This adds to a pile of research that shows similar results around the world. This result is of course consistent with our work that shows that increasing damage related to weather extremes can be entirely explained by societal changes, such as more property in harm's way. In fact, in the US flood damage has decreased dramatically as a fraction of GDP, which is exactly whet you get if GDP goes up and flooding does not.
I do not expect research to change anyone's views on the topic or alter the debate over climate change and extreme events. The debate has moved well beyond that which can be resolved empirically.
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Yesterday, Governor Pete Shumlin of Vermont made these remarks:
I find it extraordinary that so many political leaders won’t actually talk about the relationship between climate change, fossil fuels, our continuing irrational exuberance about burning fossil fuels, in light of these storm patterns that we’ve been experiencing. Listen, since I’ve been sworn in as governor just seven months ago, I have dealt with—this is the second major disaster as a result of storms. We had storms this spring that flooded our downtowns and put us through many of the same exercises that we’re going through right now. We didn’t used to get weather patterns like this in Vermont. We didn’t get tropical storms. We didn’t get flash flooding. It wasn’t—you know, our storm patterns weren’t like Costa Rica; they were like Vermont.
A quick look at the following paper from 2002 -- "Climate Variability and Socioeconomic Consequences of Vermont's Natural Hazards: A Historical Perspective" (here in PDF) by Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux (Vermont's state climatologist), reveals this information:
One of the most pervasive hazards that impinges upon and marks the Vermont landscape is flooding. Flooding can be categorized as one of two types: flash flooding, which has a rapid onset of six hours or less from the time of the initiating event; and flooding that has a more gradual onset. Rarely does a year elapse without a flooding event of a significant magnitude being reported in at least one of Vermont’s fourteen counties or perhaps statewide, making this the number-one hazard across the state. Between 1955 and 1999, floods accounted for $16.97 million in damage annually.
In the past year, the world has seen a large number of extreme weather events, from the Russian heat wave last summer, to the severe flooding in Pakistan, to the recent tornadoes in the U.S. In a Yale Environment 360 forum, a panel of experts weighs in on whether the wild weather may be tied to increasing global temperatures.
Do you think there is growing evidence that human-caused global warming is contributing to more extreme weather events worldwide, and on what do you base your conclusion? Please cite an example or two of recent extreme weather events that you think either affirm, or refute, the contention that anthropogenic global warming is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme events.
In The Climate Fix I lauded Germany's forward-looking energy policies, in which they had decided to use the technologies of today as a resource from which to build a bridge to tomorrow's energy technology (German readers, please see this translated essay as well). Germany's government has now burned that bridge by announcing the phase-out of nuclear power by 2022.
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The politics of Merkelism are based on two principles. The first is that, if the people want it, it must be right. The second is that whatever is useful to the people must also be useful to the chancellor.
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I have quickly calculated the implications for carbon dioxide emissions of the German decision, based on a projection of the 2020 electricity mix from RWI as reported by the Financial Times. These estimates are shown in the graph to the left. - 1 more annotation(s)...
The fact of the matter is that our vulnerability to extreme weather is increasing, due to a combination of a growing population and especially urbanization in locations prone to extreme weather events. This means that even with the hard work by many professionals in a range of fields that has contributed to the dramatic decrease in the number of deaths over recent decades low death totals are unlikely to continue into the future, as this year's tragic tornado season tells us. Of course, given expected societal trends a reversal in statistics would not necessarily mean that our disaster policies are failing. What it means is that our responses to extreme weather require constant vigilance, investment and continued hard work.
a study by Kathy Fogel, Randall Morck, and Bernard Yeung, found statistical evidence that economies with more churn in the corporate sector also had faster economic growth. The relationship even seems causal: churn today is correlated with fast economic growth tomorrow. The real benefit of this creative destruction, say Fogel and her colleagues, is not the appearance of “rising stars” but the disappearance of old, inefficient companies. Failure is not only common and unpredictable, it’s healthy.
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a study by Kathy Fogel, Randall Morck, and Bernard Yeung, found statistical evidence that economies with more churn in the corporate sector also had faster economic growth. The relationship even seems causal: churn today is correlated with fast economic growth tomorrow. The real benefit of this creative destruction, say Fogel and her colleagues, is not the appearance of “rising stars” but the disappearance of old, inefficient companies. Failure is not only common and unpredictable, it’s healthy.
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But in politics, where are the bad ideas that have been tested, found wanting, and replaced with something better? It’s rare – but not unheard of – for politicians to seriously test out their policies, perhaps because they realize that we voters pay more attention to soundbites. And so there’s rarely a really good evidence base to shut down failing policies and replace them with something else.
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we’re playing “Battleship” with the Earth on which we live.
Only in this Real World, it’s always Earth’s turn.
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tornadoes hitting downtown areas in the past? Rare – almost unheard of. But tornadoes hitting downtown areas in the future? Increasingly common.
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It’s time to start planning and building awareness of such risks, and developing plans. Evacuating urban buildings? Problematic. Opportunities to shelter-in-place? Minimal. To work through a strategy providing for safety in the face of this threat will require the best minds in both the private and public sector. And it ought to start now.
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But before we overreact or act irrationally in fear of earthquakes or other natural disasters, we must step back a bit and put them in perspective. as I have done in my new book Catastrophes! Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Tornadoes, and other Earth-Shattering Disasters. Which ones cause the most damage? Which ones are the most dangerous to us in the short term? Which ones are dangerous in the long term? What things are most likely to kill you? What kinds of things are capable not only of hurting us as individuals, but destroying human civilization?
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Psychologists have shown that human beings are notoriously poor at judging relative risks, and assessing which threats are really serious and which ones are exaggerated. For deeply-held psychological reasons, people are far more afraid of dying from a snake bite or in an earthquake, even though these are staggeringly improbable events for most people in the United States. Only 5 to 10 people die of snakebite each year. In the United States over the past century, earthquakes have killed an average of only 6 people per year. Yet because earthquakes are unpredictable and shatter our notion of “terra firma,” we are unjustifiably afraid of them. Because snakes trigger a primordial fear response in our brain, we are terrified of them. When we were small vulnerable hominids running across the African savanna, snakes were a real threat to us, because many African snakes, like mambas and cobras, are poisonous. But now that snakes are so heavily slaughtered in this country (despite the fact that most American snakes are non-poisonous), we are much more a threat to them than they are to us.
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A more objective way of assessing real threats is to look at cold hard statistics, as an actuary or insurance adjuster does. A 2008 article by Borden and Cutter looked at deaths in the U.S. from all natural hazards from 1970 to 2004. Despite the fact there were several big California earthquakes (1971, 1987, 1994) and large hurricanes during that time window, you would never guess what the number one killer was. It was not even a topic that we think of as catastrophe, since it happens so often and so slowly. The top killers among natural hazards in this country are … heat waves, storms, and winter!
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