

Billion dollar weather disasters on the rise - jameswilsterman
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/reports/billionz.html#narrative

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pragmatic
What about growth?

Areas that were corn fields 20 years ago now have houses, malls, commercial,
mfg plants, etc.

We have a greater population that is spread out. What was one a small crop
disaster for farmers is now a very costly disaster for a municipality.

Does the study account for this? Is this a valid concern?

tl;dr: We have more "stuff" to ruin now.

~~~
pragmatic
Also how do you _really_ adjust for dollars.

A mfg plant built in 1985 is not equivalent to one built in 1995 or in 2005.
Same with houses, etc.

Our infrastructure is more advanced, more costly and more complicated.

What about things that didn't _exist_ in 1985, like fiber optics and cell
phone towers (or barely existed).

~~~
fleitz
Agree with you on infrastructure and more importantly the dollar adjustment.

CPI is a nice handy tool for things that could damage the basket of goods in
contained in the CPI but it's wildly inappropriate for weather disasters
because the weather disasters primarily cause damage to capital infrastructure
rather than consumer goods. Case-Schiller, M3, or DOW, S&P 500, would be much
better numbers to use for adjusting damage to capital infrastructure. Even
then it's kind of a crap shoot as none of those price indexes really
accurately reflects the kinds of property damaged by weather.

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jameswilsterman
Is this really climate related? My initial suspicion is that as technology
advances, we just have more complicated (expensive) systems and infrastructure
that are harder to repair because of the expertise required. We also become
more and more reliant on technology every day, but also more and more
incompetent when that technology suddenly fails. It is sort of a 'house of
cards' effect.

~~~
thaumaturgy
A whole bunch of data and graphs and other neat stuff on hurricanes:
<http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/>

The part I found most interesting was the points-of-origin graph, and how
closely that correlates with the Tropic of Cancer. But, there's also a
historical graph there for your edification.

Tornadoes:
[http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/severeweather/tornadoes....](http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/severeweather/tornadoes.html)

The historical graph here does not appear to show any upward trend 1950 to
present for frequency of EF3-EF5 tornadoes; if anything, they may be becoming
slightly less common.

As for droughts, I will link to a report from NIPCC, who are -- to say the
least -- climate change skeptics:
[http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2011/jul/27jul2011a2.htm...](http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2011/jul/27jul2011a2.html)

In their report, they found no long term trend for drought conditions. I can
find nothing that casts doubt on their research.

If I were serious about figuring out whether the cost figures for natural
disasters were attributable primarily to increased costs or primarily to
increased severity of natural disasters, I'd use earthquakes as a comparison
-- if it's an increase-of-cost issue, then I'd expect to see the same
increase-of-cost for historical earthquakes. If the increase-of-cost for
earthquakes is substantially less than of the natural disasters in this
report, then I'd be inclined to attribute it to a greater frequency and
severity of natural disasters.

~~~
hugh3
* If I were serious about figuring out whether the cost figures for natural disasters were attributable primarily to increased costs or primarily to increased severity of natural disasters, I'd use earthquakes as a comparison -- if it's an increase-of-cost issue, then I'd expect to see the same increase-of-cost for historical earthquakes. If the increase-of-cost for earthquakes is substantially less than of the natural disasters in this report, then I'd be inclined to attribute it to a greater frequency and severity of natural disasters.*

On the other hand, we've got a lot better at building earthquake-resistant
structures.

Also, the number of earthquakes causing any significant damage in the United
States over the past two hundred years is small enough to be statistically
iffy.

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justin_vanw
Oh my god, in 2010 there are infinity more car related deaths than there were
in 1880. Are we getting worse at driving, or are cars just less safe?

There are more people, there is more stuff, and there is a little thing called
inflation. People live in areas of Florida that were swamp 20 years ago.

<http://mensnewsdaily.com/images/misc/tipler/a.jpg>

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mise
A billion dollars ain't what it used to be... With inflation, this bar has
been dropping over the years.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Immediately below the report preview images:

Note: Billion Dollar U.S. Disaster costs have now been adjusted to 2011
dollars using the Consumer Price Index (CPI), as noted below.

~~~
hugh3
This is true, though the CPI is a fairly lousy way of adjusting for inflation,
especially over long time periods, and when talking about things which aren't
consumer prices.

For instance, the Empire State Building cost $40 million to build. According
to a CPI inflation calculator I found, that comes out to $600 million in
today's money. But good luck trying to rebuild a 100+ storey skyscraper in New
York City for $600 million nowadays. You'd probably spend that much just on
Environmental Impact Statements and arguing with the City about whether you're
likely to displace any endangered frogs.

(Yes, yes, I'm exaggerating. The recent Bank of America tower, which is maybe
two thirds the size of the Empire State Building, cost one billion dollars
though:[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_America_Tower_(New_York...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_America_Tower_\(New_York_City\))
)

