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In a HUFFPO piece last week, meteorologist Paul Douglas - a self proclaimed Christian and a republican and “began investigating climate science, and, over time, began to see the thumbprint of climate change—along with “… 97% of published, peer-reviewed PhD’s, who link a 40% spike in greenhouse gases with a warmer, stormier atmosphere.”

Of course that 97% claim, made so often is a bogus study based on what ended up being the opinion of just 79 scientists on whether the globe was warmer than 1800 (the mini ice age) abd whether man played a role in climate change. Most all skeptics would have voted yes as surely we are not in a mini ice age (though could be sooner than we think) and man does have a very measurable affect on local climate (microclimate) through urbanization.

He found these NOAA charts especially convincing and credited ultra leftist Jeff Masters of the “Weather Underground” (named after the Alinsky Doerr radical 1960s group) for his interpretation.


Roger responded to the graph on the left that shows billion dollar disasters

Bad Economics at NOAA

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a federal agency that does a lot of excellent work related to weather, climate and the oceans. In fact, it is the primary sponsor of CIRES here at the University of Colorado where I serve as a Fellow. However, NOAA has been publishing information related to disasters that is extremely misleading and scientifically inaccurate.

The graph above shows NOAA’s tally of “billion dollar disasters” which NOAA defines as “the 1980-2005 events which resulted in at least $1 billion in overall damages/costs at the time of the event” (emphasis added, source here in PDF). The bolded part of that sentence is where NOAA’s methodology has a serious flaw, as $1 billion does not mean the same thing today as it did in 1980. In fact, adjusting just for inflation means that $1 billion today would have been the equivalent of $400 million in 1980. And that is not all, because there has been considerable development across the nation since 1980, meaning that there is more property and wealth to be damaged, $1 billion in damage today is actually equivalent to about $170 million in 1980.

Events which would have caused $1 billion in damage today, but did not when they occurred are not included in the NOAA listing. So by focusing on a $1 billion threshold, as $1 billion comes to represent less and less over time, NOAA has built in a strong bias in their analysis which creates the illusion of trend. If the point of the analysis is to say something about trends in weather, it will always be better to look at weather data, not damage data.

He concludes:

Regardless, of whether the total is 4 or 9 missed events or somewhere in the middle, NOAA’s data misses at least 80% of the billion dollar disasters in 1980. Not good. No doubt that a reanalysis of the years 1981 to present would turn up many more such events that failed to meet the contemporary billion-dollar threshold but would certainly do so today.

It is extremely misleading to use economic impacts as the basis for making claims about weather and climate. NOAA should take immediate steps to improve the scientific quality of its tabulation of “billion dollar disasters” lest it find itself accused of misleading the public and decision makers with scientifically unsound information

Click source to read FULL report from Joe D'Aleo