New UN report claims climate-related disasters have doubled

The report is incompetent and wrong on pretty much all accounts

The report should be withdrawn

Thread

Report here: https://www.undrr.org/news/drrday-report-dramatic-rise-climate-disasters-over-last-20-years
Data here: https://public.emdat.be 

New UN report claims climate-related disasters doubled

Yet, even the report's own data shows the number of climate-related dead has *halved*

Report here: https://www.undrr.org/news/drrday-report-dramatic-rise-climate-disasters-over-last-20-years
Data here: https://public.emdat.be 

Death data is relatively robust

Instead, almost all non-death data is much better reported towards the present. That is the main reason the UN finds an increase in numbers.

Yet, they simply wave it away

Report here: https://www.undrr.org/news/drrday-report-dramatic-rise-climate-disasters-over-last-20-years

Not only has *actual* death data halved

Because population increased by 73% over 1980-2019, death risk has dropped by almost two-thirds

Report here: https://www.undrr.org/news/drrday-report-dramatic-rise-climate-disasters-over-last-20-years

Known for a long time that actual death from climate-related disasters is not increasing

Death from climate-related disasters has declined 95%
Death risk from climate-related disasters has declined 99%

Leads to *very* different understanding of world

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162520304157

Because climate-related deaths are down, the report instead focuses on "number of affected"

It claims number of affected are up. But so is population

Proportion is actually *down*

Oops

Report here: https://www.undrr.org/news/drrday-report-dramatic-rise-climate-disasters-over-last-20-years
Data here: https://public.emdat.be 

UN claims number of climate-related incidents have increased

But this is mainly an issue of reporting: as we get closer to today, the database has many more reports of small disasters

Report here: https://www.undrr.org/news/drrday-report-dramatic-rise-climate-disasters-over-last-20-years
Data here: https://public.emdat.be 

UN claims number of climate-related incidents have increased

But this is mainly an issue of reporting: as we get closer to today, the database has many more reports of small disasters

Small incidents have been increasing, large incidents have been decreasing

Easiest way to see the UN report is simply wrong is to compare their stats to actual well-documented data

We have great stats for US hurricanes, and reassuringly, UN and reality is reasonably in agreement (as expected, deaths better registered)

Data: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11069-011-9849-x

Comparing the UN report with actual data shows that its *numbers* of catastrophes are wildly wrong

Whereas the actual number of US landfalling hurricanes have slightly decreased, the UN show ever-increasing numbers

https://journals.ametsoc.org/bams/article/99/7/1359/70330/Continental-U-S-Hurricane-Landfall-Frequency-and

Another way to see the UN report is wrong is to look at US tornados. We have good stats, but here even deaths are off for UN

It seems UN caught few deaths in the early part, only converging in last 40 years

Data: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/#data 

As US population doubled over period, here is death risk — same overall point, that UN only converge towards end-of-period

(Also, one stand-out is 1963, where EM-DAT has higher deaths, from Gainsville GA — probably miscoded, should be 1936)

Data: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/#data 

UN data is just terribly off on number US tornados

Reality is that strong US tornados (EF3+) have almost halved

Whereas UN data thinks it has increased 13-fold

Data: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/#data 

UN# incredibly off

Real tornado numbers 100x higher than UN numbers, but that includes mostly machine-noticed EF0 tornados

Yet, even strong tornados are 10x higher, EF4+ still 2-3x higher, and EF5s 41-12, all declining

UN shows that last 20 yrs 2.2x higher than reality

The poor UN report is really just a re-run of previous climate alarmists claiming incredible disaster increases with EM-DAT, when the database shows "human impacts"

Their researcher says "you cannot claim trends in numbers"

Oops

https://twitter.com/NimaYaghmaei/status/1095379228307214339

https://web.archive.org/web/20181019170246/https://www.gmo.com/docs/default-source/research-and-commentary/strategies/asset-allocation/the-race-of-our-lives-revisited.pdf

This was the UN headline figure. All data misleading/wrong

As we have seen for number of disasters in thread above

It also shows increase in deaths, but only true for earthquakes — dishonest on climate

Fails to adjust for population and economy

When you adjust damage costs for size of economy, which even the UN Sustainable Development Goals insists you should:

The relative cost of disasters is declining, not increasing

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2018.1540343

The UNs new report is incompetent and wrong on all major accounts

Not okay to scare people witless with bad analysis

The report should be withdrawn

ENDS

Here is another good overview of some of the EM-DAT problems https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2020/10/13/un-claimstaggering-rise-in-climate-emergencies-since-2000/