Maybe Nate Silver is not really a leftist fool who got lucky after all. He seems to have hired a real scientist for his blog and not a compromised agw nutter.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/disasters-cost-more-than-ever-but-not-because-of-climate-change/
When you read that the cost of disasters is increasing, itâs tempting to think that it must be because more storms are happening. Theyâre not. All the apocalyptic âclimate pornâ in your Facebook feed is solely a function of perception. In reality, the numbers reflect more damage from catastrophes because the world is getting wealthier. Weâre seeing ever-larger losses simply because we have more to lose â when an earthquake or flood occurs, more stuff gets damaged. And no matter what President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron say, recent costly disasters are not part of a trend driven by climate change. The data available so far strongly shows theyâre just evidence of human vulnerability in the face of periodic extremes.
To identify changes in extreme weather, itâs best to look at the statistics of extreme weather. Fortunately, scientists have invested a lot of effort into looking at data on extreme weather events, and recently summarized their findings in a major United Nations climate report, the fifth in a series dating back to 1990. That report concluded that thereâs little evidence of a spike in the frequency or intensity of floods, droughts, hurricanes and tornadoes. There have been more heat waves and intense precipitation, but these phenomena are not significant drivers of disaster costs. In fact, todayâs climate models suggest that future changes in extremes that cause the most damage wonât be detectable in the statistics of weather (or damage) for many decades.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/disasters-cost-more-than-ever-but-not-because-of-climate-change/
When you read that the cost of disasters is increasing, itâs tempting to think that it must be because more storms are happening. Theyâre not. All the apocalyptic âclimate pornâ in your Facebook feed is solely a function of perception. In reality, the numbers reflect more damage from catastrophes because the world is getting wealthier. Weâre seeing ever-larger losses simply because we have more to lose â when an earthquake or flood occurs, more stuff gets damaged. And no matter what President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron say, recent costly disasters are not part of a trend driven by climate change. The data available so far strongly shows theyâre just evidence of human vulnerability in the face of periodic extremes.
To identify changes in extreme weather, itâs best to look at the statistics of extreme weather. Fortunately, scientists have invested a lot of effort into looking at data on extreme weather events, and recently summarized their findings in a major United Nations climate report, the fifth in a series dating back to 1990. That report concluded that thereâs little evidence of a spike in the frequency or intensity of floods, droughts, hurricanes and tornadoes. There have been more heat waves and intense precipitation, but these phenomena are not significant drivers of disaster costs. In fact, todayâs climate models suggest that future changes in extremes that cause the most damage wonât be detectable in the statistics of weather (or damage) for many decades.
