
Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters: Time Series - perfunctory
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/time-series
======
zosima
1\. The graph is apparently adjusted for CPI, but not house prices. House
prices especially in big cities has mostly gone up much more than CPI over
time. [1]

2\. Including only billion dollars climate events does seem misleading and
especially prone to statistical bias. Both bias towards local weather around
cities, but also for modern days, partly because of 1.

3\. Population has gone up and cities expanded so there's now a much larger
area to make billion dollars devastation on.

Using percentage of GDP and not setting an arbitrary threshold of a billion
dollars would rectify some of these problems. An alternative graph is provided
here [2], and on that it's much harder to spot a trend.

[1] [https://www.bankingstrategist.com/housing-prices-hpi-vs-
cpi](https://www.bankingstrategist.com/housing-prices-hpi-vs-cpi)

[2]
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2019/11/07/everythi...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2019/11/07/everything-
you-hear-about-billion-dollar-disasters-is-wrong/#2c7385322fea)

~~~
mfer
Florida is one of the places I look for when it comes to this. According to
the NOAA [1] they have not really been able to detect an increase in
hurricanes (the natural disaster that semi-regularly hits Florida) due to
climate change. Yet, there has been growth in GDP and population. So, the
increase cost in Florida is, at least in part, due to the increase in what
people have.

If we have more and more expensive things (especially nice buildings) it's
going to cost more even when the weather stays relatively the same.

Disclaimer, I'm not making a statement on climate change. I use FL as an
example to highlight a different point. In the reference you'll see there is
talk of places where observations of change have occurred.

[1] [https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-
hurricanes/](https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/)

~~~
everdev
> they have not really been able to detect an increase in hurricanes (the
> natural disaster that semi-regularly hits Florida) due to climate change

Correct, not a significant increase in the number of hurricanes, but they are
projecting an increase in destructive power.

> The IPCC AR5 presents a strong body of scientific evidence that most of the
> global warming observed over the past half century is very likely due to
> human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

> it is likely that greenhouse warming will cause hurricanes in the coming
> century to be more intense globally and have higher rainfall rates than
> present-day hurricanes.

> the lifetime maximum intensity of Atlantic hurricanes will increase by about
> 5% during the 21st century

> We also conclude that it is likely that climate warming will cause Atlantic
> hurricanes in the coming century have higher rainfall rates than present-day
> hurricanes, and medium confidence that they will be more intense (higher
> peak winds and lower central pressures) on average.

~~~
milkytron
> they are projecting an increase in destructive power.

Is this being measured by wind forces, tidal surges, etc?

~~~
everdev
Mostly higher rainfall / flooding (due to warmer waters).

For wind, it sounds modest. They project the strongest hurricanes to be 5%
stronger (windier) by 2100 than the strongest hurricanes today.

Of course there are other factors too like sea level rise which isn't factored
in I don't think. If your city is already flooded and a hurricane hits, I'd
imagine the damage would be worse or last for longer.

------
mfer
Side note, because of the way the page is constructed the data isn't part of
the backup kept by the Internet Archive.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Programmer but not a web dev here - why not? View Source tells me it's pulling
data from [https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/disaster-
mugl.xml](https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/disaster-mugl.xml). It's
formatted by the fancy JS graph stuff, and displayed by:

    
    
        <div class="multigraph" data-src="/billions/disaster-mugl.xml?disasters[]=drought..
    

with links to the time series data below the graph. In what way does this not
make the data available to the Internet Archive? How could this page (or a
hypothetical similar page on my personal blog) have been constructed to (1)
make the data available to IA and (2) make it not vulnerable to an HN hug-of-
death (it looks like just some static assets with a user-side dynamic
Javascript graph that would be trivial to serve to my untrained eyes).

------
Tepix
The server seems to be overloaded.

~~~
spurgu
Yeah. The graphic in the article is loaded with ajax so doesn't work from
Google's cache either.

~~~
jmiskovic
It loads on Wayback Machine after a minute.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200105124509/https://www.ncdc....](https://web.archive.org/web/20200105124509/https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/time-
series)

------
mirimir
Even though the methodology is iffy, the evidence for CO2 and mean temperature
increases is solid enough to take it seriously. And if the data is valid and
the trend is real, the next decade or two should be interesting.

~~~
plutonorm
Solid enough? Its cast iron.

~~~
mirimir
I agree. And it just keeps getting better and better.

Or worse and worse, if we're considering the impacts.

------
Gravityloss
Climate news brings out all the nit picking. We will never reach
100.0000000000% certainty, and even then you can just argue for more zeros.

~~~
crystaldev
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_figures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_figures)

------
ThomPete
This tells nothing about weather or climate and everything about how rich
we've become and where we are able to build today.

It's simply misleading to put it up this way. Even if the weather was getting
less extreme you could experience an increase in cost.

This is all the way up there with the claims of oil subsidies by measuring
only arbitrary negative externalities with not talk about the positive ones
(and no they are not factored into the price)

~~~
Retric
Future impacts are not simply based on the weather but also people’s building
habits. Any prediction ignoring such factors is going to be meaningless.

Edit: But, that does not mean the current impact of climate change on these
numbers are meaningless nor that further climate change can’t make the
situation worse.

~~~
ThomPete
Thats what I am saying.

~~~
Retric
Not quite, saying the economy is the most important part of this graph is not
enough to dismiss the impact of climate change.

~~~
ThomPete
What I am saying is that the reason the cost can be bigger even if there were
less extreme weather is that we have more stuff and we build places we didn't
before. We have more stuff to be destroyed.

You would have so show the same amount of stuff, extreme weather and that this
extreme weather is because of climate change to make a case for this to be
climate related.

It's the usual sloppy catastrophic thinking that we unfortunately see in this
highly policial debate.

~~~
Retric
Trends generally have multiple causes.

The link between extreme events and high costs plus the link between extreme
events and climate change is enough to say climate change is a factor rather
than the only factor.

Further, we don’t need to care about the causes to look into mitigation
strategies. Banning construction at significant risk from storm surges is
simply a good idea even if climate change where a non issue.

Edit: I avoided saying numbers of events because type and intensity could be
more important than overall numbers.

~~~
ThomPete
It's non-sensical to use climate change as an explanation when it comes to
cost for reasons I have already pointed out.

There are multiple obvious reasons for why the cost is going up since the is
more to get destroyed before we even get to "climate change".

But there is not a single piece of evidence anywhere that it has anything to
do with "climate change" which itself is a completely meaningless and sloppy
expression that really lumps all sorts of things together that should be
separated.

I am willing to bet that you can't actually find a single concrete piece of
evidence that the rising cost have anything to do with climate change.

And using your logic, Holland shouldn't exist at all.

We are becoming better and better at living places that used to be inhabitable
for humans. That has a cost because it's more exposed, but over time this will
be countered by improved mitigation processes.

I would love to see any concrete demonstrated evidence that climate is an
issue here. There is a reason why they call it weather and climate disasters.
Highly manipulative.

~~~
Retric
If you want _any_ evidence:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1452](https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1452)

“Here, we review the evidence and argue that for some types of extreme —
notably heatwaves, but also precipitation extremes — there is now strong
evidence linking specific events or an increase in their numbers to the human
influence on climate. For other types of extreme, such as storms, the
available evidence is less conclusive, but based on observed trends and basic
physical concepts it is nevertheless plausible to expect an increase.”

As to climate change, the term is specifically used because it’s far from a
uniform change in temperature. The poles warm far more than the equator with
massive amounts of heat shifting between them. In some instances this can
result in events where winter cold fronts stretching much further south on the
same day warm fronts extend into the far north. The global temperature may be
above average on the same day you get snow flurries in Texas.

~~~
ThomPete
Its used because its unspecific, you can lump any notion whether speculated or
demonstrated under that category and just claim whatever you want.

Your example is as vague as they come which proves my point. No specifics and
everything gets lumped under one to conclude what they want to. Thats not
science thats scientism.

------
IanDrake
Measuring these disasters with money is about as meaningful as measuring IQ
with potatoes.

~~~
sho
Why on earth would you say that? Arguments against attempting to avert these
disasters will inevitably be based on cost. Presenting the consequences in
monetary terms will help counter these arguments.

~~~
bfieidhbrjr
Because first there’s M0 inflation to take out, and then it’s well known that
claims inflate for the same damage over time, and courts award bigger damages
and so on.

Dollars are a problematic way to measure it.

~~~
simonh
They're a problematic way to measure anything, but often they're the best
we've got, especially when what we're measuring is economic costs.

~~~
mytailorisrich
It depends on what we want to measure and for what reason.

Here I expect this time series will be used to illustrate consequences of
climate change without taking into account that the US' population has grown
by 45% since 1980 and that the US' real GDP has grown by 171%, which makes
this time series a poor proxy metric especially when there are direct metrics
(e.g. number of hurricanes, etc. per year) available.

~~~
nothrabannosir
This sounds interesting and, to my amateur ears, at least worth considering.
Is there any possibility of correcting for those factors? Would that satisfy
as an indicator of climate change (or lack thereof)?

