SOURCE:
"Are weather disasters becoming more common? You’d have thought so because we keep on being told so. A few months ago, the BBC informed us: [bold, links added]
“The number of weather-related disasters to hit the world has increased five-fold over the past 50 years,” says the World Meteorological Organization.
“As global temperatures have risen in recent decades, there has been a significant uptick in the number of disasters related to weather and water extremes.”
Now, you might ask, if this is all true, why has the number of disasters declined in the last decade?
Every year, we are fed similar claims. Last week, it was the UN’s turn to publish its latest report on natural disasters.
As with the BBC chart, we see that there has been no increase since 2000. But why the startling increase since the 1970s?
The answer is simple: there was no formal reporting system for disasters before 1998, when EM-DAT, the International Disaster Database, began to be published.
Consequently, many disasters were not formally recorded.
Indeed, CRED, the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, which maintains the database, made this clear in 2004, when they had this to say about the collection of disaster data in their Annual Report:
“Until recently the needs were addressed on an ad hoc basis … As a result, data were incomplete, outdated, or unusable…
“Since 1900, more than 9,000 natural disasters have been registered in EM-DAT. Of these, about 80 percent have happened in the last thirty years. [This] might lead one to believe that disasters occur more frequently today … however reaching such a conclusion would be incorrect …
“Over the past thirty years, development in telecommunications, media, and increased international cooperation has played a critical role in the number of disasters reported.
“In addition, increases in humanitarian funds have encouraged reporting of more disasters, especially smaller events which were previously managed locally.”
Indeed, the latest UN report emphasizes that ‘99.7 percent of all disaster events between 1990 and 2013 were smaller disasters, involving fewer than 30 deaths or 5000 houses destroyed. Thousands of these smaller-scale events are unreported every year.‘
If thousands are still being unreported now, heaven knows how many were missed in the 1970s! Still, it gives ample opportunity for the bureaucrats to record ever higher numbers of disasters in years to come.
The formal reporting of disasters in the 1970s was so poor that the database does not even include the Red River flood in August 1971, which killed an estimated 100,000 in North Vietnam.
Experts in these matters know all about this, from international aid agencies to charities. But they all turn a blind eye each year when the UN publishes fraudulent reports like this one.
And every year they are faithfully reported by the likes of the BBC, in an attempt to persuade the rest of us that we are heading for climatic Armageddon if we don’t do as we are told."
Now, you might ask, if this is all true, why has the number of disasters declined in the last decade?
Every year, we are fed similar claims. Last week, it was the UN’s turn to publish its latest report on natural disasters.
As with the BBC chart, we see that there has been no increase since 2000. But why the startling increase since the 1970s?
The answer is simple: there was no formal reporting system for disasters before 1998, when EM-DAT, the International Disaster Database, began to be published.
Consequently, many disasters were not formally recorded.
Indeed, CRED, the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, which maintains the database, made this clear in 2004, when they had this to say about the collection of disaster data in their Annual Report:
“Until recently the needs were addressed on an ad hoc basis … As a result, data were incomplete, outdated, or unusable…
“Since 1900, more than 9,000 natural disasters have been registered in EM-DAT. Of these, about 80 percent have happened in the last thirty years. [This] might lead one to believe that disasters occur more frequently today … however reaching such a conclusion would be incorrect …
“Over the past thirty years, development in telecommunications, media, and increased international cooperation has played a critical role in the number of disasters reported.
“In addition, increases in humanitarian funds have encouraged reporting of more disasters, especially smaller events which were previously managed locally.”
Indeed, the latest UN report emphasizes that ‘99.7 percent of all disaster events between 1990 and 2013 were smaller disasters, involving fewer than 30 deaths or 5000 houses destroyed. Thousands of these smaller-scale events are unreported every year.‘
If thousands are still being unreported now, heaven knows how many were missed in the 1970s! Still, it gives ample opportunity for the bureaucrats to record ever higher numbers of disasters in years to come.
The formal reporting of disasters in the 1970s was so poor that the database does not even include the Red River flood in August 1971, which killed an estimated 100,000 in North Vietnam.
Experts in these matters know all about this, from international aid agencies to charities. But they all turn a blind eye each year when the UN publishes fraudulent reports like this one.
And every year they are faithfully reported by the likes of the BBC, in an attempt to persuade the rest of us that we are heading for climatic Armageddon if we don’t do as we are told."