Red Cross Destroy The Climate Disaster Myth

By Paul Homewood 

  

h/t AC Osborn

 

http://notrickszone.com/2015/10/10/inconvenient-truths-2014-global-natural-disasters-down-massively-no-trend-in-tornadocyclones-since-1950/#sthash.vAJg81Bp.hTuedbKO.dpbs

 

Pierre has a good piece regarding the 2014 Natural Disaster Report from the Red Cross:

 

Down Again: 2014 Catastrophe Losses Below Average
Global natural disasters1 in 2014 combined to cause economic losses of USD 132 billion, 37 percent below the ten-year average of USD211 billion. The losses were attributed to 258 separate events, compared to the ten-year average of 260. The disasters caused insured losses of USD39 billion, 38 percent below the ten-year average of USD63 billion and was the lowest insured loss total since 2009. This was the second consecutive year with below normal catastrophe losses.

 

I’ll not bother to go over the same ground, as Pierre has covered it nicely.

 

However, there some snippets in the Red Cross report which are worth highlighting.

 

 

They start by saying this in the Executive Summary:

 

 

Despite 75% of catastrophe losses occurring outside of the United States, it still accounted for 53% of global insured losses, driven by a higher insurance penetration.

This is hugely significant, as it shows just how meaningless using insured losses is as a measure of climate. US has higher insurance penetration because it is richer than the rest of the world. It is also richer now than 50 years ago, and in the same way will have higher insurance penetration now than then.

 

Moving on, they offer this analysis:

 

 

 

So while economic losses have been increasing, the main factor is population increase and urbanisation, particularly in coastal regions.

The scale of the increasing losses, both economic and insured, can be seen on Exhibit 13:

 

   

 

However, when we take account of GDP:

 

 

And their conclusion?

 

  

 

Take away Katrina, the accident waiting to happen, and I suspect there will be no loss trend increase at all.