Roger Pielke Jr. explains that NOAA’s rising count of weather disasters that cost $1 billion or more does not mean that the weather events have increased or worsened. Inflation, insurance, and economic growth are better explainers.
“The billion-dollar disaster tally is easy to understand, simple to communicate, but in actual fact, incredibly misleading. It is climate misinformation.”
These National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration figures are being misused.
“The ‘billion dollar disaster’ meme is more than just clickbait — beyond the White House, it has made its way into the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.S. National Climate Assessment and into various U.S. regulatory and legislative policies.”
Pielke writes in The Honest Broker on Substack. The photograph is by Jan Mallander from Pixabay.