By Simon Sturdee, AFP
Natural disasters killed over 220,000 people in 2008, making it one of the most devastating years on record and underlining the need for a global climate deal, the world’s number two reinsurer said Monday. What I find particularly funny is, the article talks mostly about non-global warming caused disasters. For instance, 70,000 of those deaths were caused by an earthquake in China: Just days later an earthquake shook China’s Sichuan province, leaving 70,000 dead, 18,000 missing and almost five million homeless, according to official figures, Munich Re said.
He then talks about how COLD weather caused 1000 deaths in Afghanistan. Ya know I looked and looked, but I just couldn’t find where in the dictionary a “cold snap” was listed as a natural disaster:Around 1,000 people died in a severe cold snap in January in Afghanistan, Kyrgystan and Tajikistan, while 635 perished in August and September in floods in India, Nepal and Bangladesh.
He also admits that there were less natural disasters this year, than in 2007:Although the number of natural disasters was lower than in 2007, the catastrophes that occurred proved to be more destructive in terms of the number of victims and the financial cost of the damage caused, Germany-based Munich Re said in its annual assessment.
Furthermore, he works under the broad assumption that every one agrees with the legitimacy of global warming, and therefore, he doesn’t once try and make any sort of scientific or even logical link between natural disasters and global warming. He simply states that they are caused by increased pollution and global warming. Yep, another article by the MSM about how we are all going to die if we don’t avert global warming, by making our own compost piles, recycling fingernail clippings, and buying Al Gore’s DVDs. There are a lot of people out there, even some close to me, that claim all of this extreme weather is the result of global warming. Problem is, the evidence doesn’t support the claim that the natural disaster death’s of ‘08 are the result of global warming, or that increased global temperature leads to extreme weather patterns and disasters. In fact, sometimes it is the opposite, and has been more historically tied to El Nino, El Nina, and other fluctuating water currents. Hurricanes ‘are not caused by global warming’
Rising temperatures may actually reduce the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic, Tom Knutson claims in a new study. Dr Knutson’s change of heart has reignited the debate in the US about how closely hurricanes can be tied to global warming......Dr Knutson’s study, which is based on computer models, predicts that hurricanes will become less common, but more destructive, by the end of this century.They are also likely to be accompanied by much heavier downpours of rain. Dr. Knutson and colleagues from the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at Princeton, New Jersey, ran computer replays of each August to October hurricane season between 1980 and 2006. The simulations were then repeated to show what would happen if ocean and atmospheric conditions were altered by expected levels of global warming. The “warm climate” runs generated 27 per cent fewer tropical storms and 18 per cent fewer hurricanes. The team concluded that the recent jump in hurricane frequency was caused not by high temperatures in the Atlantic, but by differences in temperatures between oceans. Uniform warming of all ocean basins does not generate more hurricanes, they found.
Graph produced by GlobalWarmingHoax.com with data from NOAA
Well what about tornadoes you ask? The deadliest tornado decade since 1930 was the decade of the 1930’s. Tornado deaths have fallen every decade since 1930 up until the 1970’s when they increased about 5% over the previous decade. The 1970’s were also one of the cooler decades this century with below average temperatures and there isn’t any clear correlation between strong tornadoes and climate temperature. Every decade after the 1970’s have seen the number of tornado deaths fall.
Well what about lightning and floods? Actually both lightning and flood deaths are way down from their highs… Sorry. Looks like the claim that global warming is causing more natural disaster deaths is a bunch of crap. Thanks to globalwarminghoax.com for some of the graphs. Read more here.
