Posted on 10/02/2022 3:18:43 PM PDT by grundle
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
September 28, 2020
Since we started burning fossil fuels on a widespread, global scale, the number of people killed by natural disasters has gotten smaller, not bigger.
Does this mean that we have fewer natural disasters now than in the past?
No.
Instead, what it means is that the huge amount of wealth that we have created by burning fossil fuels has made us better able to withstand natural disasters.
This chart shows the number of people killed (per 100,000 population) by natural disasters by decade.
You can see a bigger version of the chart by clicking this link: https://www.businessinsider.com/natural-disasters-used-to-be-so-much-worse-2015-2
Since when is 4 worse than 5?
What would we do without you and your blog?
So Katrina was more racist, and thus more terrible, than Ian.
So in at least two ways, things are getting better with regard to natural disasters.
So there is a reasonable argument that fossil fuels have, in fact, reduced the number of people killed by natural disasters.
Libtards don’t seem to think hurricanes occurred before man started driving his car to work
Breaking out storms would be interesting, but they constitute a very small portion of the total deaths in any of the time tracked, and thus a very small portion of the decline.
Having 1-3 hours warning about a likely lanfall and a horse is very different from having 48-96 hours warning and a car.
That said, the number of idiots who build houses in places where one is going to expect the house to be destroyed, on average, more than once a century, and then are shocked when it gets destroyed seem to be increasing at an exponential rate.
I think Katrina veered off at the last minute and was not a direct hit on New Orleans. The major damage in New Orleans was flooding because of levee failure , and not because of the actual wind and storm damage.
It turns out that the Army Corps of Engineers were the true racists.
Many coastal sites are now sparsely populated industrial areas, tourist areas, or seasonal retreats for the wealthy.
The values in this chart seems to correspond with the introduction of weather satellites for tracking storms. These allowed effective preparations and evacuations not possible before. So it is not necessarily the counter argument implied.
Caused by George Bush personally going to the levees and installing the explosive charges. But then he let Dick Cheney push the detonator.
The Great Weather War, When Americans battled the weather to stay alive.
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