US Disaster Costs Shatter Records In 2017, the Third-Warmest Year On Record (cnbc.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Major hurricanes and wildfires fueled a record year for costs related to natural disasters in the United States, according to a new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That report also said 2017 was the third-warmest year in 123 years of record keeping, behind only 2014 and 2012. Natural disasters in the United States cost more than $300 million last year, far surpassing the previous record of $214.8 billion set in 2005, NOAA said Monday. NOAA counted 1 drought event, 2 flooding events, 1 freeze event, 8 severe storm events, 3 tropical cyclone events, and 1 wildfire event during the year that bore losses exceeding $1 billion each. There were also 362 deaths. That would tie with 2011 for the largest number of such billion-dollar disasters, the agency said.

Comments

How to cause panic with statistics

[SuperKendall]

Why would anyone expect the cost of natural disasters to do anything but go up? The price of everything is going up, from real estate to building materials to labor. Every time there is damage the cost of repair will be greater, sometimes much greater. Every year is probably going to be the most expensive. To claim (or imply) we had larger disasters than ever before is simply false, we've had bigger hurricanes, and worse wildfires. Especially speaking of wildfires, THAT is due to Californias stupid policy on never doing controlled burns and the sky-high price of real estate there. Wildfires there are nothing but a man-made disaster, probably caused by "Raw Water" freaks smoking pot as they collect.

I also like how they casually imply the year being warm has strong ties to all the disasters - which include things like a freeze.

Re:How to cause panic with statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Except all the reputable scientists say otherwise. Only the people who aren’t climate scoentists are the people who the deniers get to sign ridiculous lists against climate change. As if it matters that a cardiologist denies climate change. Even Exxon Mobile acknowledged climate change years ago privately and yet idiots like you and SuperFag think otherwise to the benefit of only the oil companies.

Re:How to cause panic with statistics

[iggymanz]

no, reputable scientists aren't and don't point to a weather event and say it was due to climate change. there was stupid article recently about one contrarian with paper that said that could be done, but reputable scientists don't.

  your brain is scrambled with confusion over unrelated issues. Climate change, the weather events listed in the summary and increasing expense of disasters are three different things.

Re:How to cause panic with statistics

[Entrope]

An awful lot of Puerto Rico's hurricane costs are due to "deferred" maintenance of public facilities. The territorial government was too busy diverting funds as political favors to keep the infrastructure up-to-date. They apparently even forgot how to keep things in good repair. As a result, things broke badly when they finally got a strong storm.

Re:Uh huh

[MightyMartian]

You actually don't know what a trend is, do you? And of course, despite that you're a super genius who is the first to think "should we enter solar output into our climate model". Despite your obvious lack of knowledge of statistics, my god, you must be so goddamned smart. You'd better right over to your nearest university, go kick in the door in the atmospheric studies department, throw them out and make it clear you expect a Nobel Prize for your brilliant, if utterly unfounded, insights.

Re:Uh huh

[baker_tony]

Holy fucken shit, no climate scientists ever in the history of the world has ever thought of "solar cycles" impacting climate change!
Motherfucker, you're the smartest person on the planet!

Oh wait, no, a few seconds in Google proves you're a moron, here's the first link I clicked on:
https://www.giss.nasa.gov/rese...
and here's the second link:
https://www.scientificamerican...
you may continue to keep clicking on the list, just Google "do solar cycles cause climate change".

Re:cnbc is so biased

[deviated_prevert]

1 single volcano puts off more carbon monoxide that all the cars ever built. Yet we are still alive.

Grow up people, global warming is a giant lie.

Hey you dumb fuck carbon monoxide is not the gas at issue with the known and recorded atmospheric gas imbalance. The higher levels of CO2 created by recent human activity are causing a rapid average global atmospheric warming. To deny the science and the evidence that every reputable scientist in the field is reporting is also becoming a rather stupid platform. Anyone who claims that carbon monoxide is the problem here is a complete absolute ignorant idiot. The same as the idiots who claim that atmospheric warming does not cause weather anomalies, or about as logical as the tired old saw used by some shills posting here that "AGW does not equal weather".

More extreme weather events on average created by AGW is a sound hypothesis. And indeed we are seeing the increase in global atmospheric CO2 cause increased average temperatures and changes to the jet stream that cause more extreme anomalous weather events. Areas are becoming dryer and hotter and soon some areas adjacent to deserts that are currently inhabited may become uninhabitable. Areas of India and Southern Europe are starting to see more extreme heat events that kill. All of these things have been predicted and are being proved true.

In Canada we have seen a direct correlation between the pine beetle forest die off in British Columbia and the statistically recorded increases in average winter and summer temperatures in the pine beetles range. To deny the evidence of the destruction being caused by human caused climate change is idiotic and at worst a deliberate attempt by morons in the petro chemical industry and their shills in Washington to deflect the blame away from the causes!

Re:Uh huh

[KeensMustard]

While I watch as about a foot of global warming slowly melts after the second longest deep freeze on record slowly lifts, I will also point out that if last year was colder than. 2012 and 2014, an equally valid guess is that those two years were a peak.

Well, when you a better strategy than randomly guessing the outcomes of climate change, maybe let us know. Until then, we'll look to people who can actually produce evidence.

Wait a few more decades for a few more solar cycles to elapse and then you can do some dispassionate analysis.

Thanks for the offer, but I don't think I will.

Your assertion, to put it plainly, is that solar cycles, changing in the way it always has, is now magically (because of fairies?) causing the troposphere and ocean and land surface to warm, but not the upper atmosphere, which for magical reasons (fairies?) is cooling, and meanwhile the warming that should result from adding CO2 to the atmosphere (per Arrhenius et al) is magically being dispersed by fairies.

Is there a way to test for these fairies? Oh right, magic.

Strangely enough, it's from the humanities that we can take a lesson here: the historians have understood for quite a while that anything more recent than a few decades ago cannot be evaluated objectively.

Sure. Quantum mechanics and the Laws of Thermodynamics don't exist: because humanities.