Natural Disasters and Climate Change, Not natural anymore

[elprincipe]

megaman79 said:

I wanted to write this because Melbourne (in Australia) has suffered the worst fire related death and destruction in over 150 yrs. Some choose, namely Murdoch media like Foxnews, to disregard climate change influencing long droughts (12 yrs in sth est Aust) or increased hotter days (the hottest days recorded preciding and on the day of the worst fires), but i think its having an effect.

Greece, California, etc, these are fire related. The worst heatwave in history killing 35k people in Europe in 2003. Earthquakes,  Tornado's (US increase certainly), Tsunami's, Cyclones and other "natural disasters" are happening more frequently and with more ferocity. This is not natural, i just hope people realise this.

Read this --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll#Top_10_deadliest_natural_disasters

I guess im curious to know whether involuntarily causing these problems is something you ever thought about. I think after Katrina people started thinking. After last week i know i have.

 

The facts do not jive with the assertion that there are more/worse natural disasters now than in the past.  Let's take hurricanes, for example.  There are no more hurricanes now than there have been in the past. 

Check out this chart from NOAA:

There are a few more named storms as we get closer to the present, but this is due to better monitoring (satellites, etc.) and not due to changes in climate.  The amount of actual hurricanes has remained very similar.  In fact, if you go back to historical records before what is recorded in the chart above, you'll find early Europen settlers of North America reported more landfalling hurricanes than we typically get at present.

There is another assertion that hurricanes are somehow made stronger by global warming.  The chart shoots that down as well.

As for the fires in Australia, I'm not as familiar with the history there, but from what I've read it has much more to do with a changing of historic land use patterns, the stoppage of aboriginal use of fire to clear land, eucalyptus tree biology and laws in Australia banning clearing of trees near houses.