Read here. NJ's Governor Christie and other hack, warming alarmist politicians, often assert that global warming is causing climate change that results in growing disaster losses. Unfortunately for presidential hopefuls like Christie, ignoring the actual empirical research is a nomination death wish now that the internet allows anyone to find out if a candidate has gone into 'bozo' alarmist mode.
A lesson to be learned in order to avoid looking like a climate 'bozo': future presidential hopefuls (and other politicians) should be very wary of most "science advisers" who have in mind political agendas, not empirical science.
With that said, a Dutch scientist reviewed 22 recent peer-reviewed studies regarding disaster losses and global warming. Not a single study found a connection between extreme weather, global warming and increased disaster losses. The 22 studies covered the entire spectrum of disasters, including: bushfire, earthquake, flood, hail, landslide, windstorm, thunderstorm, tornado, tropical storm, hurricane and hail.
"The Dutch researcher reports that "most of the 22 studies have not found a trend in disaster losses, after normalization for changes in population and wealth." In fact, he says that "all 22 studies show that increases in exposure and wealth are by far the most important drivers for growing disaster losses ," a conclusion that has also been reached by Changnon et al. (2000), Pielke et al. (2005) and Bouwer et al. (2007). And he adds that "no study identified changes in extreme weather due to anthropogenic climate change as the main driver for any remaining trend."...Reiterating these observations in his paper's concluding paragraph, Bouwer says that although "economic losses from various weather-related natural hazards, such as storms, tropical cyclones, floods, and small-scale weather events (e.g., wildfires and hailstorms), have increased around the globe," the 22 studies he analyzed "show no trends in losses, corrected for changes (increases) in population and capital at risk, that could be attributed to anthropogenic climate change."" [Laurens M. Bouwer 2011: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society]
Additional severe-weather and peer-reviewed postings.
