Kerby Anderson

Are there more weather-related disasters due to climate change? Activists and the media would have you think they are increasing in number and intensity. Some science fiction movies portray a dystopian future due to climate change.

If you are paying attention, you will notice that activists may talk about climate disasters, but they never total up the deaths from various natural disasters. Fortunately, Bjorn Lomborg has put together the facts and a chart that show we are much safer from climate-related disasters.

It is true that the costs of natural disasters are often increasing, but there is a very good reason for the increase in cost. The world is getting richer, and the population has grown. That means the number and quality of the structures in the path of floods, fires, and hurricanes have risen.

There is a more accurate way of estimating the impact of weather-related damages by comparing the costs as a percentage of gross domestic product. When you do this analysis for each decade from 1900 to 2020, you see a significant decline.

If you plot disaster-related deaths on a chart, you see a sharp decline. “A century ago, almost half a million people died on average each year from storms, floods, droughts, wildfires and extreme temperatures. Over the next 10 decades, global annual deaths from these causes declined 96%, to 18,000.” This drop is even more significant once you realize that the global population has quadrupled.

We are safer from climate disasters than we have ever been. That doesn’t make for terrifying headlines or gripping science fiction movies, but it is a fact rarely covered by the media.