Wal Street Journal Says We're Safer than Ever from Climate Disasters
When I saw the title of a November 3rd WSJ piece by Bjorn Lomborg, "We're Safer From Climate Disasters Than Ever Before," I had to do a double take. Then a triple. I was sure I was reading the headline wrong, especially since the big Glasgow climate change conference was in the news that same week with world leaders signaling gloom and doom and the end of life as we know it if we don't get our carbon under control.
But Lomborg painted a surprisingly different picture.
"Many of the fearful descriptions you hear of souped-up hurricanes, heat waves and wildfires aren’t accurate. And estimates of costly but increasingly frequent climate damages are typically designed to mislead..." Lomborg writes.
In his piece, Lomborg points out that what activists typically focus on when citing statistics to support their cause is disaster frequency and rising costs associated with natural disasters. While these two are indeed on the rise, historical comparisons aren't necessarily appropriate when it comes to measures like costs. After all, "there's much more stuff to damage today than there was several decades ago."
As the world has gotten richer and its population has grown, the number and quality of structures in the path of floods, fires, and hurricanes have risen. If you remove this variable by looking at damage as a percent of gross domestic product, it actually paints an optimistic picture.
Lomborg's piece also reminds readers that the internet and 24/7 news media cycle has made reporting of natural disasters more common and easy to do. Prior to 1980, when the International Disaster Database was created to capture global catastrophic events, there was no repository for such things.
Lomborg says that activists also often fail to use death toll numbers when citing statistics.
Unsurprisingly, the media this year has been filled to the brim with coverage of natural disasters, from the Northwestern Heat Dome to floods in Germany and China. Yet it has conveniently left out the total death toll.
Below is a chart from Lomborg's article showing a sharp decrease in the number of recorded deaths from natural disasters.
Lomborg explains, "so far 5,500 people have died from climate-related disasters in 2021. Using previous years’ data to extrapolate, climate-related deaths will probably total about 6,600 by the end of the year. That’s almost 99% less than the death toll a century ago. The global population has quadrupled since then, so this is an even bigger drop than it looks."
All things considered, this piece took a daring stance against the climate hysteria so commonly spread in today's culture. So bravo to Lomborg for speaking out. I hope to read more of his work in the series on climate change that he's doing for the WSJ. Our side needs someone who can balance the scales with level headed logic and a clear understanding of the statistics.
Check out Lomborg's latest article here. Pass it around!
Cover image by Nikolas Noonan.
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