German skeptic site “Die kalte Sonne” brings up an article at the online Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) that reports natural catastrophes worldwide have reached a 10-year low.
Anthony Watts also wrote on this earlier at WUWT.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung (South German Newspaper) writes:
Number of natural catastrophes in 2013 drops to a ten-year low
Over the past year the number of natural catastrophes dropped to the lowest level in ten years. This is reported by the “World Catastrophe Report 2014”, which the die International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement published in Geneva. According to the report 337 natural catastrophes were counted over the past year, almost half as many as the peak seen in 2005. The number of deaths was 22,452 and thus well below the mean of the decade of 97,954.
The results fly in the face of alarmist claims of man-made global warming causing more violent, extreme weather events.
In fact there has not been any warming in 18 years, and weather-related damage is increasingly due to cold events, as the world’s leading reinsurer Munich Re reported last July:
Economic losses plummet 56%
The statistics for natural catastrophes for the first half of 2014 have been marked by pleasingly low levels of global claims. Overall economic losses of US$ 42bn and insured losses of US$ 17bn to the end of June were considerably below the average for the past ten years (US$ 95bn and US$ 25bn respectively). “
And the reason for most of the damage:
Record North American winter, blizzards cause losses
The record winter in North America also caused significant losses, with extremely cold temperatures and heavy snowfalls over a longer period in many parts of the USA and Canada. The losses from various blizzards totalled around US$ 3.4bn. The most costly snowstorm was in the first week of January: losses for this storm alone totalled US$ 2.5bn, of which US$ 1.7bn was insured. In many instances the harsh winter also had a heavy impact on business, as companies were forced to stop production. At the end of January, a blizzard brought the Atlanta metropolitan area almost to a standstill, even though only a few centimetres of snow had fallen. Snow and ice made the highways impassable, as there was a lack of snow-clearing equipment for a city unused to such conditions.”
So we can add another one to the list of climate “science” now exposed as being purely bogus.
I have lived in the Atlanta metro area for almost all of my 72 years. Although I am a firmly convinced and volatile skeptic I must admit the shutdown of Atlanta was more due to government incompetence then snowfall. Not just the unavailability of snow removal equipment, but mainly, not sending workers home early leading to extreme traffic jams.
Just for the record, for the last few years the summer weather HAS NOT been abnormally hot. Indeed, the weather has been quite mild and pleasant. Winters have been quite cool.
If the cooling I believe is going to come arrives, the snow removal equipment the local governments rushed out to buy after the snow event may prove valuable.
http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/21-08-2014/128340-climate_cooling_food_supplies-0/
good article from Pravda
There must be an opportunity pony somewhere in this frozen manure pile!