Climate change gives us less devastating natural disasters

Funny, Al Gore didn’t say anything about 2017 being “less devastating”:

Frankfurt am Main (AFP) – Natural catastrophes worldwide were less devastating in the first half of 2017 than the average over the past 10 years, reinsurer Munich Re said Tuesday, while highlighting the role of climate change in severe US storms.

Some 3,200 people lost their lives to disasters between January and June, the German group found — well short of the 10-year average of 47,000 for the period or the 5,100 deaths in the first half of 2016.

Every year there is a long list of disasters somewhere (aka weather-porn items for Al Gore :)

April floods and landslides in Colombia that claimed 329 lives were the deadliest single event.

Elsewhere, an April-June heat wave in India killed 264 people, while floods, landslides, and avalanches claimed around 200 lives in Sri Lanka, 200 in Afghanistan and 200 Bangladesh.

In terms of costs — that’s 60 billion “saved” this year:

Disasters inflicted a financial cost of around $41 billion in the first six months, Munich Re reported.

That was less than half of the $111 billion toll in the same period last year, or the average of $102 billion over the past 10 years.

The most costly single event was flooding in Peru between January and March, which killed 113 people and inflicted damage worth around $3.1 billion, followed by Cyclone Debbie’s toll of 12 lives and $2.7 billion in Australia.

No one is suggesting one-year stats and ten-year averages are meaningful. Unless you are Al Gore, then you need even less.

Here’s Gore using events exactly like these to sell his renewables salvation. From the transcript of the Al Gore speech:

In Australia, there may be less rain overall but much more in these big storm events.

A couple of months ago, there was a 1 in 500-year flood in NZ and similar in Brisbane a couple of years ago. Last week in  Lagos Nigeria, this (slide)  was in my state just two months ago and another 1 in 1000 years.

I was in Houston Texas last year training climate activists, there was 240b gallons came down, the equivalent of 3 days of Niagara Falls flowing right into the middle of  Houston. In one calendar year they had two 1 in 500  years and one in one 1000 years. [Footage of flood slides from Quebec, Guatemala, Columbia, Rio,  Lima, Chile, Bangladesh, Guangzhou, UK, Spain, Madagascar].

Gore and others are using events that are happening anyway to imply that every flood/drought/storm/landslide/sticky-road is worse than it would have been unless we buy his snake oil. Where’s the ACCC when you need them?

Read rest at JoNova

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