The Center for American Progress reports
This year has been "anything but ordinary" according to the latest data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In the first three months of 2018, the United States has seen three climate and weather disasters each resulting in more than $1 billion in damages.
Two of the four nor'easters to hit the central and eastern U.S. during a one month period resulted in record snowfall and more than a billion dollars in losses each. Millions were without power and hundreds of flights were grounded. Multiple deaths were reported across Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
In mid-March, a deadly storm also hit the Gulf Coast with reports of dangerous winds, hail, and tornadoes. At least three people died and 20 tornadoes were reported in Alabama.
"It has been quite some time since the U.S. has experienced multiple, billion-dollar winter storm events", said Adam Smith, the NOAA scientist who compiled the data.
All told, the January to March period of the past three years has had the highest frequency of billion-dollar disasters on record since 1980--with 2018 surpassed only by 2016 and 2017.
As Smith told ThinkProgress via email, not only is the number of billion-dollar winter storms experienced in the past few years increasing, but the cost of these winter storms are increasingly above average compared to the 1990s, when a series of damaging storms--including a 1997-98 ice storm that hit the northeast--crippled parts of the country.
[...] Like with summertime hurricanes, winter nor'easters start in the ocean. And with warmer waters, these storms become more intense. According to Accuweather, this year's series of devastating nor'easters spent more time forming over the ocean, giving them a chance to increase in strength by absorbing more of the warmer ocean temperatures.
Additionally, with higher sea levels come more devastating storm surges. Massachusetts, for example, was repeatedly hit with coastal flooding during this year's winter storms.
Related: Climate change dials down Atlantic Ocean heating system
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday April 12 2018, @06:31PM
DON'T. YOU. BELIEVE. IT!
Nothing to see here, there is no change. Status quo here.
Nononononono...yes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRlqmTKyQx0 [youtube.com]
YES THERE IS CHANGE.
Wait.
What?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Thursday April 12 2018, @06:31PM (10 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @07:47PM (9 children)
This is one if the dumber excuses to hand wave away climate change. No mention of solar cycles today?
(Score: 1, Troll) by Arik on Thursday April 12 2018, @08:43PM (8 children)
I honestly wonder sometimes how people this stupid manage to breath.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @09:11PM (7 children)
Well you keep doing it so answer your own question.
Use this link as a starter to find more info: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/overview [noaa.gov]
In the very first paragraph on that page you'll find
More details follow, and other pages will provide even more information.
My point 100% stands, deniers stick to incredibly basic arguments and assume errors were made when even a basic review of TFA could clear up the issue. You then take these assumptions and treat them as unassailable proof that the studies are flawed. That is the "hand waving" I refer to, shitty arguments that will only convince other people who have little idea about the topic beyond "some people say climate change is bullshit, but who to believe???" Your simple arguments work well on people who don't have the knowledge or desire to understand anything that requires a little effort.
So, how are you still breathing? Is the invisible hand of the market crushing your lungs yet?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @09:30PM (3 children)
You could be a little more open-minded. There is an effect associated with economic growth that slants the results, as mentioned below. When GDP grows (which it does in CPI adjusted dollars) there is that much more stuff to get damaged. If there was a town with 100 houses that got damaged in 1990, today there are 200 houses and the damage is twice as large. Or maybe the houses are twice as fancy, but no more robust. You will get twice the economic damage from a storm, even if the climate is exactly unchanged.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @09:39PM (2 children)
Wow!!! I bet they didn't even think of that! What an amazingly simple point that completely changes everything.
The Earth will be OK, everything is just naaatural maaaan.
Go fly a kite, at least your hand waving will be doing something useful.
(Score: 2, Troll) by khallow on Friday April 13 2018, @12:09AM (1 child)
They probably didn't since it's climate change alarmism.
It's more than just inflation though. From January, 1998 to December, 2017, the valuation of US homes [tableau.com] (which is a significant part, but not all real estate in the US) increased from $14 trillion to almost $32 trillion. That is a more than doubling in dollar amount of the stuff that can break in an extreme weather event. Only part of that is going to be due to inflation.
Now, toss in that a bunch of that new construction during that time is probably in areas, like flood plains, that are more susceptible to flooding and other extreme weather events, and we can explain most, if not all, of the increase in extreme weather damage just from the increased cost of the stuff that gets damaged in such events.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday April 13 2018, @03:11AM
Since I took office, our economy has been coming on like Gang Busters! Especially since we did the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act. Unemployment (black & white & Hispanic), stock Market, Bitcoin, real estate -- all doing TREMENDOUSLY!!!
People don't know this, in August I signed a terrific Executive Order, I call it the One Federal Decision Policy. It lets us fix our badly broken infrastructure -- our roads, bridges & pipelines -- VERY QUICKLY. They built a highway, it took 17 years. We will bring it down to less than 2 years. I repealed a VERY DUMB rule, the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard -- another horrible Obama number. He said, "oh, let's do endless studies about floods." Big waste of time. We're going to be much smarter and much, much faster. We'll build the infrastructure we need. Where we need it. And if a flood washes it away, we'll build it again. All in less time than those dumb studies would take!!!
(Score: 1) by Arik on Thursday April 12 2018, @10:36PM (2 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @10:50PM (1 child)
That is because all efforts to explain reality fall on deaf ears and all I get in return is continued simplistic reasoning. My default reaction is to call out such simplistic bullshit and not worry about the person's feelings on the matter. I only searched for confirmation when you pushed the issue as if the glaringly obvious inflation correction was not accounted for.
I don't care if you're happy, I don't care if you're mad, I do care that you stop pushing bad science that has been repudiated by the very companies that pushed the propaganda that climate change is a myth. Stop muddying the waters and accept that you fell for a massive propaganda campaign. Accept the data and stop pretending like scientists are pushing a massive conspiracy for *reasons*, and get with the fact that the majority of anti-gw science was funded by the people with actual profit motivated reasons.
Realz over feelz amirite?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 14 2018, @12:57AM
In other words, you don't have an argument. It's telling that this absence of argument is the only response in this thread to an important point. The rising price tag of stuff that can be damaged by extreme weather events combined with more such stuff being placed in harm's way would in itself would create a large increase in the dollar value of damage from those extreme weather events. This is a sign of deception - that more important factors are downplayed while global warming which by its nature has hard to estimate effects (but which its own researchers admit is a modest effect at present) is played up.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday April 12 2018, @06:32PM (13 children)
It's the deteriorating infrastructure that needs proper maintenance.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday April 12 2018, @06:54PM (12 children)
It's a combo of the first three comments:
- extreme weather patterns when/where they are not usually expected, or more frequent
- under-funded infrastructure more exposed (and people allowed to build wherever they feel regardless on danger, because profit)
- inflation of repair costs.
Plus random dumb statistical luck. Next year may be quiet, or twice as bad.
But I'm gonna go with God hating Republican presidents, because, while Obama got Sandy, W and T got particularly served (and T is far from done, yet)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday April 12 2018, @07:14PM (10 children)
Factor in one more thing, bob_super. Our population is higher today than it ever was in the past. We occupy more area, and we occupy it more densely. That is us, without bodies, us with our possessions - we get harder to miss with each passing year.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @10:02PM (8 children)
Excellent reason to do nothing about it.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Friday April 13 2018, @12:11AM (7 children)
Especially when the something that is being called for does nothing about it. It is better to do nothing about something than something about nothing.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 13 2018, @12:48AM (6 children)
Just checkin'. Yes, khallow still has his head deep in the sand.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Friday April 13 2018, @07:57AM (5 children)
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Friday April 13 2018, @05:21PM (4 children)
Wow. Did you receive a check from the Koch Brothers or Robert Murray for that posting?
Your argument is the classic: "we haven't done enough to address climate change, therefore, we should stop all efforts and do nothing".
As for economic impact: in many cases, new solar capacity is actually cheaper than running existing coal plants. The cost of wind power has also dropped dramatically, so that it also competes with coal.
Over time, the smart economic approach is to install renewables.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 13 2018, @10:09PM
I have it on good authority that khallow and jmorris trade their astro turfing for access to elite "services" like that backpage fiasco.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 13 2018, @11:58PM (2 children)
My argument is different. I think we've already done enough to address climate change at this time. Maybe in the future, decades or centuries from now, we'll need to do more. That remains to be see.
The problem is that some people think we should do all sorts of things that do nothing, but at considerable cost such as passing treaties that create negligible reductions in CO2 emissions for considerable economic disruption or promoting on the public dime various ineffective renewable energy schemes. At that point, doing nothing for nothing is better than doing something for the same nothing.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Monday April 16 2018, @12:32AM (1 child)
So, basically, you don't really know the details of what is going on, but your are against it anyway. Typical.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday April 16 2018, @12:41AM
The problem is that I do know what's going on. I know what the Kyoto Treaty was intended to do, and it's not much. I know that we've spent tens of billions on renewable energy projects that never will have any traction because they're either too niche (such as biogas generators) or too cumbersome/costly (such as solar thermal) compared to what we produce now in quantity.
It's tiresome to have these same arguments over and over again where people ignore that we have remarkably little evidence in support of harmful climate change combined with a history of climate change mitigation that is similarly remarkably ineffective.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday April 13 2018, @12:20AM
That's hardly relevant. It still boils down to poor management in order to save a penny. The disaster is strictly human. We build things to barely work when they're new. A denser population should imply a more robust system.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Informative) by NewNic on Thursday April 12 2018, @07:16PM
Don't forget: allowing unrestricted development in flood plains (Houston).
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @06:34PM (3 children)
Climate is changing! The end is neigh!
I guess sensation and gloom sells. But my bullshit tank is full. I'll take your latest data and wipe my ass with it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @06:42PM (1 child)
The data is tainted. You'll get a rash, at least.. Better to burn it with that pile of old tires out back. Try to make it look like an accident.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 13 2018, @12:07AM
> The data is tainted.
Is that before or after he wipes his taint with it?
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Thursday April 12 2018, @07:02PM
Very concisely put, sir or madam.
I take it, that you were trying to make an advertisement for this coming weekend's March for Science [marchforscience.com]
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Entropy on Thursday April 12 2018, @06:39PM (22 children)
Means global warming. Right? Too cold? Global warming. Too hot? Global warming. Stormy weather? Global warming. Give me a break. Oh wait, it isn't getting warmer so now we have to call it "Climate change".
Give me a break with this crap. There are normal statistical variations in all weather patterns, and they can happen over quite long periods of time. There were how many ice ages before the modern age?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @06:52PM (7 children)
1. Lack of an easily identifiable local warming effect has made you into a jaded cynic ironically named Entropy.
2. You have no respect for the scientific process, where our understanding of how the world works changes as new data comes in.
3. You ignore "heat sinks" and other feedback processes that make climate change a slow and ongoing crisis.
4. You talk about "normal statistical variations". How about abnormal statistical variations?
5. Even oil companies acknowledge that climate change is a problem. Maybe you will catch up with them one day.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @07:13PM
*throws a snowball!*
Global warming has been disproven! Nobody can argue against the snowball! Bwahahaha!
:-)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Thursday April 12 2018, @07:33PM (2 children)
Oh, there's probably been a lot more behind it than just that particular lack.
"2. You have no respect for the scientific process, where our understanding of how the world works changes as new data comes in."
To the contrary, it sounds like he understands the scientific process, something we cannot say for those who proclaim their thesis with religious certainty and persecute those who fail to believe.
A priest who calls his deity "science" is still a priest, not a scientist.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @07:52PM (1 child)
More and more I wonder if you are a really advanced chatbot. The first proper AI but still too stupid for really basic reading comprehension.
If you're on the autistic spectrum maybe say so and people will cut you some slack. That is a phrase which means they won't criticize you for every mistake.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @08:10PM
I'm going to blame the SN stupid IP filters for that, I frequently have to copy/paste a comment within 15 seconds when on mobile and I'm not even using a VPN! I guess I didn't tap accurately on the copy button so it put the last thing from the clipboard.
My original point was that Arik and company are much more like the devout, avoiding all evidence and logic in favor of their own simplistic arguments. All because climate science is HARD and exact predictions near impossible. They swallowed propaganda and are now true believers, even when the oil companies are admitting the truth!!!! Wtf mate?
Hey I copy pasted correctly that time. Invalid form key buuulllshiiit.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 13 2018, @08:01AM (2 children)
And you haven't presented a reason to consider those processes. The fact that they are slow is an indication that they aren't strongly positive which is what is needed to justify urgent climate change mitigation. Keep in mind that estimates of long term heating (3 C per doubling) are about twice the short term heating. No one has actually confirmed these predictions with observation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 13 2018, @10:17PM (1 child)
You are a fool. Under educated and full of yourself. Once those heat sinks are gone we will see the real impact, right now we're just getting eratic weather patterns since we're in the middle of the tipping point. Once the glaciers are gone shit is gonna get wonky pretty quickly.
With weather once shit gets fucked you are already too late. Do you start boarding up your windows as the hurricane hits? NO!
No one has confirmed these predictions? So the satellites we spent billions on to monitor global weather patterns are nothing? The steady increase in global temperature is nothing? You won't believe there is a disaster coming until it arrives?
You're the worst kind of fool, the type that tries to speak with authority and convince others to follow your stupidity. There is all the benefit in the world to switch away from gas and oil, but that would be bad for those industries which I'm 99% sure is WHY you are such a moron. Your financial situation is hugely dependent on those industries so being a scaredy little conservative you'll do and believe anything that keeps you from having to change anything in your life.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 14 2018, @12:05AM
Like outer space? Earth will go first.
This is an example of the excluded middle fallacy. Because I don't fully agree with whatever position you hold, then I must fully disagree with it. Show there's a problem first, then we'll have something to talk about.
Oh really?
Such as more poverty, higher overpopulation, and the many consequences of more poverty and overpopulation such as higher pollution and consumption of fossil fuels. I'm instead interested in solving the bigger problems.
So the first reason you've mentioned for anyone to do anything, and it's to go against your argument. You're not getting it. We need reasons not feelz for heavily modifying our global economy and harming the well-being of billions of people.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @09:17PM (11 children)
Wow. Just wow. After all the articles that have floated through here on this topic and all the times people have tried to educate you, here you stand spouting stupidity.
The global temperature has increased.
They renamed "global warming" to "climate change" specifically to avoid idiots saying "but its colder over here haw haw global warming what a joke!"
Localized weather patterns are not a good indicator of global patterns.
There is still the possibility that the Earth will warm and then an amazing amount of cloud cover will form and quite suddenly the Earth will cool as a massive fraction of sunlight is reflected back into space. Search "albedo" to get a clue on that mechanism.
So all the warming might result in an ice age. This would still make perfect scientific sense, but apparently your mind is too brittle to accommodate a mild seeming paradox.
There, a TL:DR on the current status of the climate change topic. I doubt it'll make a difference to you and you certainly won't thank me, but there you go.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday April 12 2018, @10:13PM (9 children)
As a non-American Soylentil I can confirm that the climate change deniers are almost exclusively American.
In the rest of the Western world we are not drowned in quite the same amount of propaganda (in a general sense), and the massively wealthy are not given the same control that they are in the US.
Climate change denial nonsense is almost exclusively from the people who stand to benefit most from fossil-fuel industries, supported by their useful idiots.
In my country there is a low level of climate change denial, but only from the extreme right-wing (universally wealthy white men) and they are not taken particularly seriously in our national politics.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @10:38PM (1 child)
> the massively wealthy are not given the same control that they are in the US.
How cute. You must be European. I'm sure you don't even recognize you're apart of the German Empire now. But at least you got to stick it to those Americans! ;-)
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Saturday April 14 2018, @08:55AM
No, not even close. Also, like everyone else in the civilised world,we really like the Americans we meet traveling in our country, but then they are not the Americans stuck in some Mid-West shithole terrified they might be bankrupted by some minor accident or illness.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @10:59PM
With a sprinkle of Aussies, those who stand to lose profits or jobs from coal mining.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 13 2018, @02:37AM (2 children)
The majority is not always correct, oven if it is overwhelming. Have you heard of groupthink? What steps are climate policymakers taking to avoid that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 13 2018, @02:56PM (1 child)
You realize that logic applies equally to your own position right? And you don't even have valid data to back up your position.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 14 2018, @03:19AM
Groupthink is associated with the "in" group position. Where I live, the "in" group really thinks global warming is a big deal, and the "out" group, which is the minority doesn't.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Saturday April 14 2018, @01:28AM (2 children)
Let us note the propaganda is very one-sided in favor of exaggerating the impact of global warming. Yet that doesn't stop the Very Confident people from complaining about the Very Imaginary propaganda of the massively wealthy.
Which is probably why you turned out so clueless about the actual effects of global warming and other climate change.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Saturday April 14 2018, @08:58AM (1 child)
I'll take being called clueless by you as a badge of honour actually.
You might well be the stupidist person posting here now that Ethanol Fuelled seems to have pushed off.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 14 2018, @12:00PM
In your first post, you made a bunch of assertions and it appears you haven't really thought about any part of that at all. As a resident of the US, I'm drowning in non-existent pro-fossil fuel propaganda because feelz. I actually compared the amounts being spent on said propaganda (there are plenty of news stories talking about these actual dollar amounts). And no matter how much you exaggerate the money being spent by Big Oil, the Koch brothers, etc, they're outspent by at least an order of magnitude (for example, look at the budget of Greenpeace International or the World Wildlife Fund). Even in the US, it's a rout.
You also don't see most journalists siding with that side ever - it's very one-sided in favor of exaggerating climate change once you get outside of the holdouts like Fox News or Breibart. Again, that's in the US.
The first thing is what is "climate change denial nonsense"? Your sloppy language led me to conclude you meant anyone you happen to disagree with. I happen to believe there is global warming caused by humans, but it's not urgent enough to justify impairing our societies now when we're solving bigger problems like overpopulation and global poverty. Asserting without evidence that I'm stupid hasn't yet persuaded me that my viewpoint is in error.
Moving on, we have the usual empty accusation that I must somehow be a useful idiot for someone who profits from the situation. Unless the situation is entirely trivial with no consequence to anyone, then there's always someone who will profit. I don't create my opinions based on who is likely to profit from them. Maybe you shouldn't either.
That's too bad. You shouldn't let the extremes take control of such an important issue. That's part of the reason such factions are growing in power right now. When convention thought excludes important societal issues such as immigration control or the cost of climate change mitigation, then extreme viewpoints get to own them and acquire credibility that they wouldn't have in a rational society.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 14 2018, @01:15AM
I guess that bit of propaganda didn't work so well.
And yet here's a story trying to scare us (apparently with some success) by attributing three such localized weather patterns to "climate change".
There's also the possibility that God will strike us down for burning his sacred dinosaur corpses.
It won't, but it might. A climate which doesn't respond as you expect would also make perfect scientific sense after the fact.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @09:33PM (1 child)
The Science which you deny, multiple overlapping data sets confirm.
Ice cores, Tree rings, Fossil leaves, Boreholes, Corals, Pollen grains, Dinoflagellate cysts, Lake and ocean sediments, Water isotopes
climate proxies [wikipedia.org]
Not only have global temperatures shifted, the rate of change has never been anything like the last 200 years. [explainxkcd.com]
...and when temperatures were just 5 degrees C cooler, what is now NYC was under a mile of ice.
Denialists are simply revealing their gross ignorance.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @09:41PM
"Denialists are simply revealing their gross ignorance."
Kinda a good TL:DR for a good portion of this site's userbase. Stick to math and coding ya nerds!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tizan on Thursday April 12 2018, @08:57PM
The companies who are allowed to emit pollutants that are slowly causing weather to get systematically worse are making trillion of dollars ...so all is good they'll pay a large fraction of that as tax which the government will use to repair all these damages promptly and infact will be building sea walls and protection across the eastern sea board weather the future storms so no problem right...pollute on ? Oh wait ...did they just get a huge tax break instead of an increase in taxes, darn the poor and middle class will have to pay for it as usual.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @09:39PM (4 children)
If the economy were flat, increasing storm damage would be alarming. But in fact, the economy has grown by about 50% in real terms since 1997 and is almost 3 times as large as in 1980. With that much more stuff around that can get damaged by storms, it's no wonder that there is more damage. But keep feeding us that FUD, NOAA "scientists".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @09:56PM (3 children)
Thanks for the garbage post oh armchair scientist. You have no call to make such a claim. Please, do the research into their methods and come back when you can PROVE that the increased damages from weather events is FUD.
Oh you won't cause you're not capable and too lazy? Yeah, that's what I thought.
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @10:05PM (2 children)
Here is my proof: For an unchanging climate, one would expect economic growth to cause storm damages to increase. Therefore, one should not consider increasing storm damages as evidence for climate change. QED.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @10:41PM (1 child)
That is not proof, just more simplistic logic without any supporting evidence. I guess any equation with more than X and Y just blows your mind. Besides which there was no claim that higher storm damages are proof of climate change, this is an article about the effects of climate change. I bet they were hoping that financial impacts might sway your conservative brain, but apparently it's too pickled from the Reagan years.
I will agree that your simplistic logic is a valid point about larger cities receiving more damage than previous years when they were smaller, but again it is too simplistic without actual support evidence. You can't even say that the report did not account for GDP growth.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 13 2018, @08:11AM
So you think there's no evidence to support the claim that the economy has grown or inflation has occurred? Or that storm damage would be proportional to the value of the objects damaged? Or does "without any supporting evidence" merely mean "I disagree"?
The "simplistic" claim hasn't been rebutted - it's worth noting here that the effect is far stronger than would be indicated by a measure of GDP. For example, you're ignoring that US real estate valuation (at least of residential real estate, though I think other sorts of real estate have also increased by a similar amount) has more than doubled [soylentnews.org] just in the last two decades (and has increased faster than the economy over the entire period from 1980). You're ignoring that more buildings and such have been constructed in areas like flood plains that are more susceptible to extreme weather events.
This is typical climate change confirmation bias - attributing an phenomenon solely to climate change when there are far larger, "simplistic" effects that readily explain it.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by The Shire on Thursday April 12 2018, @10:17PM (1 child)
The Center for American Progress is a HIGHLY partisan liberal "think tank" dedicated to spewing out alarming anti conservative propaganda. I wouldn't trust them with statistical or scientific claims any further than I could throw an elephant while standing in a swamp with my hands tied around a tree. But that's just, like my opinion man.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @10:55PM
LOL, yeah shoot the messenger. That's fine. No really.
Here, direct from the source then: http://www.noaa.gov/news/us-hit-with-3-billion-dollar-disasters-in-first-3-months-of-2018#block-system-main [noaa.gov]
Oh right, the US gov is just another arm of George Soros! Or was it the Koch Brothers? Eh whatever, you're crazy and that is "O K", but that is also just like, my opinion man.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 13 2018, @02:29AM
Weather people (on TV and at NOAA) love to overhype the importance of weather. News at 9.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 13 2018, @03:47AM (1 child)
Every time there are news about climate change there is a massive surge of conservative automatons attacking it with all kind of childish random crap.
Climate is an undeniable fact, not some political playground you stupid assholes.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 13 2018, @11:37AM
Climate is a fact, wow. Nobody says there is no climate. Nobody says it isn't changing. There are no climate change deniers. What people question is the groupthink that it is changing in a dangerous way.