My gut feeling is that severe weather events are no more frequent than the long run but may attain higher intensities hence higher cleanup costs. A trivial example is my garden shed that survived 174 kph winds three years ago but was flattened in a wind storm earlier this month. For the US we should heed the advice of insurer Munich Re
http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/insurers-acute-climate-challenge
They say the damage trend is increasing even allowing for more people putting more valuables in harms way.

Attempts to debunk the increasing toll seem unscientific. For example US tornado deaths in 2011 exceeded 500 for the first time in decades. It was put down to people living in trailers due to the recession. No doubt some other ad hoc reason will be found to downplay another major disaster. I'm inclined to listen to the insurers.

Taswegian. You don't think that Munich Re might want customers to think that?

Because a disaster does not have a monetary value does not make it any less of a disaster. There is more to life than money.
One disaster that is waiting in the wings to make an entry at the start of the next El Nino is drought.
WA has the least amount of rain ever in the last winter and this is while there is still a La Nina.
The ground water is diminishing rapidly and they are depending on desal water.
The floods in Queensland and NSW are attributed to the extra warm sea temperatures causing extra precipitation.
I would not crow too loudly or too soon about the lack of climate disasters.

The author may like to review and correct the following, which makes no sense. Something must have been omitted.

"...so now there have now been four peak periods the mid 1960s."

I applaud this article for its relevance. I usually discount heavily anything which comes from Professor Pielke Jnr, because his reputation is heavily tainted by criticism of his work and of the organisations with which he is associated. On this occasion, the study which he has unearthed appears to be worthy of review. Pity that it's not in the public domain.

Like others, I tend to accept the opinion of the insurance and finance industries when it comes to assessment of risks and future costs. Second-hand analysis of this type is forced to start from a few available insurance company statistics and is limited by the lack of access to the vast quantities held by such as Munich Re but not in the public domain. If only the large insurers would open their (proprietary and highly valuable) knowledge to researchers!

Taswegian; good analysis; your shed fell down therefore extreme weather is getting worse; I bet that would work as a line of argument at the Drum.

The weather is not getting more extreme in any permutation, even the subtle one you refer to, namely less but worse events.

The usual loons have gotten on this extreme weather bandwagon, Gore with his "dirty weather" and the much arrested Hansen rebuuted here:

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2012/08/14/hansen-is-wrong/

And Trenberth rebutted here:

http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/a-blog-memo-to-kevin-trenberth-ncar/

These guys are alarmists and should be prosecuted under the Finkelstein criteria of not shouting fire in a cinema; that is what these characters are doing; yelling fire amongst the public.

cohenite,
Attitude polarization, also known as belief polarization, is a phenomenon in which a disagreement becomes more extreme as the different parties consider evidence on the issue. It is one of the effects of confirmation bias: the tendency of people to search for and interpret evidence selectively, to reinforce their current beliefs or attitudes. When people encounter ambiguous evidence, this bias can potentially result in each of them interpreting it as in support of their existing attitudes, widening rather than narrowing the disagreement between them