By Jo Nova
The more CO2 we emit, the less we spend on global weather disasters
Fully half of all human emissions of CO2 ever, have been emitted since 1990. This super-molecule was supposed to cause stronger cyclones, nastier storms, more droughts, floods, sea level surges, blizzards, and fires. We were going to save a fortune by installing solar panels and windmills to reduce CO2 and slow the storms. Instead, we make more CO2 than ever, and 34 years of data suggests that the more we make the less we have to spend on flattened or flooded homes.
Munich Re says the world has experienced $298 billion dollars of catastrophic disaster losses due to weather events in 2024. This sounds terrible in terms of mindless “big numbers” , but Roger Pielke Jnr points out that these losses are shrinking in terms of the size of the global economy.
And they are nothing compared to the size of the dead end “transition” spending. Catastrophic weather losses in 2024 “were about 0.26% of global GDP.” We are rebuilding our entire energy system, supposedly to reduce the damage caused by climate change which that hurts one quarter of one percent of our global economy.
The more CO2 we emit, the less we spend on global weather disasters.
For what it’s worth, Pielke notes that “Global Catastrophe Losses” turns out to be in large part due to US Hurricane losses. We can argue the toss about better ways to measure weather related costs, but we can’t argue that the media spins relentlessly one sided lies about the cost of “climate change”.
If it suited their narrative they could just as easily say “burn oil” and protect us from floods and storms. Or even more easily, since it is true — the rich world survives fires, floods, droughts and storms so much better than the poor world and fossil fuels are unarguably essential to make the concrete, the fertilizer, the planes, and the fuel to power satellites and mobile phones, ambulances and fire trucks.
Fossil fuels made us rich and keep us safe.
REFERENCES
Pielke, Jr. R. (2019). Tracking progress on the economic costs of disasters under the indicators of the sustainable development goals. Environmental Hazards, 18(1), 1-6.
DATA
56% of all human emissions have occurred in the period from 1990-2024.
Cumulative human emissions of CO2 1990 – 2024 (OWID)
1990: 808.9 billion tons
2023: 1,800 billion tons
2024: (Assume same as 2023 = 1,850 billion tons)
Percentage of human emissions from 1990 – 2024 = 56%
It’s sad we are so heavily, if indirectly, censored by media and by other organisations with huge dollars tied up for profits from changing our energy system. Discussion of matters such as in this article are not tolerated in public. Profits for some (and ideology for many others that would control the world), the already wealthy and powerful, must be paid for by the rest of us. We are forced without a voice to pay the piper as determined by all our governments with lawfare support from our legal system.
We live in a mad world, made wealthy by following logic based on repeatable proof. The same world now refutes the very principles and logic that lay behind our success and instead forces us to become illogical, defy the scientific method (in many fields, especially ethics and social matters) and act on the opinions of a few elitists (what a corrupted word that is) whom we know want to dominate and control the Western world by now proven impoverishment.
What I don’t understand is how we elect so many fools as politicians who see huge power for their deluded selves as the payoff for selling the rest of us out to these international avaricious tyrannical scumbags. How many of them seek UN jobs post local politics for just to be in the mix?
Indeed, the almost total subservience off so many citizens to this holy grail is stunning. The innocence of unquestionably supporting such a position by such a huge number of the best educated and intelligent people in our communities is appalling. Obviously history is a dead topic for such people; they have learned nothing. The ready belief in bizarre social arrangements, historically condemned as antisocial is mind boggling. Shooting a CEO of a Healthcare Company is applauded by many. Gender no longer exists for many; you believe what sex you are and that’s it! Logic, anatomy and biology are disregarded, even legally. Animals before humans; humans are subanimal. Subhumans supported over humans even after a slaughter.
One can only sit back and wonder at the insanity of it all, yet that insanity is imbedded in the most educated and wealthiest human beings that have ever existed on the planet. Is it all because we have lost the idea of basic ethics that have been behind humanity until the last 75years? How are westerners any better than Putin or Xi? I think those ‘elites’ of the Western World are no better. They simply push to destroy us from within while Putin and Xi see the same social disruption through war. Power is the aphrodisiac of them all!
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Of course nothing is changing, we are just getting smarter at building.
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Climate eats humanitarian money – not defence spending
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Probably the fundamental detachment from reality (the list is long nowadays), is the notion that ‘reducing weather catastrophe’ is an actual thing.
Weather and catastrophe are universally inseparable.
We could reduce the losses by not turning deserts into golf courses and not building mansions on hurricane coasts.
Even such little things as filling reservoirs for suppling fire hydrants to fight fires.
But no.
Maybe the central feature of our destruction …
is that once a quasi religious apocalyptic belief system takes over a culture, all that the pious can see and do must serve fulfillment of prophecy.
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Weather Gods throughout history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_god
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Those weather Gods throughout history… I personally prefer
Zeus the Sky God, (being fond of clouds,) or, (being Aries by birth and red of hair,)
Thor the God of Thunder, kboom!
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All of the above factors could be a source of economic difficulties in the years to come. Indeed, all the elements are present for a perfect economic and financial storm, especially if we add the possible convergence of a monetary crisis, a fiscal crisis and a financial crisis. There are currently too many exuberant speculative bubbles for this not to be a cause for concern. https://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-agenda-economic-financial-consequences/5876986 – Climate + AI gonna bubble us all into poverty
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Thanks Jo for trying to wake us up, but I think our pollies and their so called scientists are a lost cause.
The Albo loony was lying again tonight telling us that extreme weather was getting worse and the Bolta just shook his head.
In fact extreme weather deaths have fallen by 98% and drought deaths by 99.9% since 1920 according to the latest AI tool and OWI Data etc. And Dr Goklany, Lomborg, Co2 Coalition scientists etc have been telling us the same message for decades.
So how did these amazing good things happen in only the last 0.1% of Human history or since the start of the UK’s Industrial Revolution?
For 99.9% of Human history our lives were brutal and short and suddenly our life expectancy is 73 years and much higher for the rich countries.
Does anyone really doubt that we are the luckiest people in Human history?
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On the decrease of damage, I remember one discussion where Dr Richard Lindzen (Professor of Dynamic Meteorology at MIT) said that classical meteorology was that storm likelihood decreased with increasing temperature. Which seems counterintuitive to many.
This has been agreed by Dr. Judith Curry who first gained world fame for the catastrophists when disagreed based on observations and published with the opposite conclusion. And real notoriety when she admitted that on review of the data, she was wrong and the reverse was true.
Now Dr Curry has left the university and she consults privately to corporations that increasing temperatures are due solely to sun activity and ocean currents.
So real meteorology says storms decrease. There is no part of the man made CO2 driven Global Warming story which is true scientifically, but we have had 37 years of political science. It is now a cause celebre of the communists, except in communist countries.
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And it looks like the terrible Los Angeles fires in winter have everything to do with arson, government incompetence, DEI, lack of water and equipment and even the importation of cheap labour which contains criminal elements. To catch an illegal immigrant on parole violation in the area of the fires with a blow torch is damning.
Woke has now cost a straight $150billion in just one city and a score of lives and thousands of homes. The only real change is the political climate and the cheap labour is starting to look very expensive.
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Why has one particular reservoir been empty since 2009? I hope it was not to mitigate co2 emissions. I remember reading several years ago (IIRC at WuWT) about a policy in Kali to reduce the surface area of reservoirs. It seems the Hand Wringers found out that large bodies of water emit c02 as they warm.
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