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

That's right Robert; maybe Taswegian's shed had termites but he overlooked this in his enthusiasm for believing in AGW.

The objective evidence for AGW has never got beyond GCM processing and that is why it has failed; simply put AGW is a product of programming not reality.

The only aspect of the AGW debate which, objectively, seems to have some unresolved element is whether humans are responsible for the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations over the 20th and 21st centuries, or whether the increase has been natural.

Maybe Taswegian’s shed was flattened this month because it was structurally weakened by the 174 km/h wind three years ago, or because of termites as suggested as conceivable by Cohenite. What were the wind velocities in this month’s storm? Maybe the US insurers have factored in the rash of shifts from houses to trailers, and the drop in expenditure on home maintenance, caused by the Global Financial Heist.

Natural disasters were once well correlated with incidents of witchcraft, and before that with other actions incurring God’s wrath, and earlier still with actions incurring the wrath of multiple gods. What causes changes in natural phenomena remain in the realm of speculation powered by ideology and the need for research grants.

Warming by any cause will lead to an increase in atmospheric CO2 as it becomes less soluble in the warmer ocean. So will emission of CO2 through human activities

Agree with Robert Le Page!
No tornadoes in Australia? Tell that to the people living in south east Queensland's scenic rim, who recently had their houses destroyed!
Or the people living between Eidsvold and Theodore, who watched in horror, as an extremely robust "Willy Willy" came down and ripped a twenty mile long, mile wide swathe out of the local native forest, back in the sixties, leaving only match wood in its path!
Or people living in coastal communities in NSW, who watched while a "water spouts" on steroids come ashore, relatively recently, and left much property destruction in their wake!
As for one in one hundred year flood events, Queensland has just had three of them in three consecutive years!
What planet is the author living on?
The problem with multi media multi tasking, seems to be, information simply goes in one ear and out the other?
Some unkind contributors might suggest, that there is very little in between to stop it? Why are people so unkind?
As for El Nino; only 40% of these events produce drought like conditions?
Similarly, La Nina doesn't always result in destructive flood events?
I buy home and contents insurance every year! Not because I believe I'm in imminent danger of it blowing away, being washed out to sea, or rattled to the ground by an unusually strong earthquake; and don't laugh folks, we get lots of little ones, all over Oz, as very regular events!
I buy the insurance on the basis of the precautionary principle, that suggests that any of the aforementioned or worse, could be my future reality!
Satellite recorded footage provides absolutely irrefutable evidence, of entirely unprecedented ice melts, that are far more rapid than in any of the climate change models!
There is a measurable long term heating trend, with the last two decades being the warmest ever recorded! We have to hope that these changes are due to human activity!
Why?
Because if it is related to human activity, we can still reverse it with different behaviour!
Rhrosty

Rhrosty:
You have made a point . If the global warming is NOT related to human cause, then we are in big trouble.
I wonder if denialists like cohenite take out insurance?
To add to your list of "events", WA has had a few tornadoes, one quite recently went through the outskirts of Bunbury.
When we get the next big drought ( and we will) the demands from the extra millions that are expanding our population will not help either.

Robert LePage and Rhrosty

come now, you must know most of what you say is wild exageration. Trying to spot treads in storm damage and death toll is hard because storms are arguably the least important factor in such matters. The shift to the coast and the general increase in the value of housing over the years are far more important factors in increasing storm damage (when the big storms hit the coast they lose power), as is building codes in reducing damage.

Thus you can have an increase in storm violence and a decrease in deaths because the building codes have changed.

Now, do scientists agree that there is a link between temperatues and storms and can they agree that there has been a statistical increase in number and intensity of storms? Not sure on the first point but on the second point they've more or less agreed that they can't find one - not yet, anyway.

If you go back a few years you would have found papers saying yes and no and papers coming to diffent conclusions often had the same authors. Now they more or less agree that the evidence is mixed.. If you can take the discussion any further by all means do so..

Rhosty! "We have to hope that these changes are due to human activity! Why? Because if it is related to human activity, we can still reverse it with different behaviour!"

On the contrary, if it is just climate doing its thing -- as it did a thousand years ago, and again two thousand years ago -- we have every reason to believe that it will proceed to do what it did two thousand years and one thousand years ago, and cool down again.

What we SHOULD want to try and reverse is the Ice Age which is on the cards for us in the next few thousand years; and if anthropogenic CO2 can do that we should be emitting it for all we're worth. There is, after all, a reason why this is called the Interglacial Period.

"If the global warming is NOT related to human cause, then we are in big trouble. I wonder if denialists like cohenite take out insurance?"

What warming, according to the MET warming stopped 16 years ago despite increasing CO2.

I take out insurance against real things not imaginary things like AGW or the purple people eater; I wonder if I can get insurance against alarmists who are the real menace.

And what a joke relying on insurance data to prove AGW; as if insurance companies, like other big sell out companies, wouldn't use AGW to pad their bottom line; anyone who thinks otherwise is a gullible fool.

The fact is the current climate is about as good as it gets; humanity should be filling its larder and getting its energy sources gold-plated before mother nature, b.t.h that she is, has a change of mood.

No tornadoes in Australia! Well I'll be b---ered.
Apart from the endless trotting out of false facts? Denialists seem to share the almost universal attitude, adopted by the now infamous, Shell B, Wright; or, it won't happen to us, it always happens to somebody else; or, the hear nothing, see nothing, learn nothing, Sergeant Schulz Syndrome?
An Ice age? Sure, love one thanks!
Should go well with a cold beer and a warm, fly free, bloody beudy flamin b-b-Q!
Albeit, will probably miss those little peppery tasting ones, that always add to the alfresco dining experience, and the great Australian salute, during the height of an Australian summer.
We can survive if our average temps fall by around 5C! But, we'd have a snowflakes chance in hell, if they rise by a similar amount!
Climate change? Man made or natural?
Who can say with any absolute surety? But on balance, the evidence seems to point at us and our emissions?
Can we reduce these emissions? Sure can! No problemo!
And can we use the changes we make, to build an even larger, much more equitable, prosperous and sustainable economy?
Why sure! Piece of cake!
But, not by doing what we've always done, or burying our collective heads, somewhere warm and comfortable!
Doing what you've always done and expecting a different result is sheer madness! As is waiting for serendipity to solve our problems for us!
By the way, and talking about an ice age?
Did you know haw the native kiwi parrot, the Kaka, got its name?
No?
Well, it flies around the Southern Alps, its little ice tipped beak chattering like a flamin 50 cal M15; crying out, ka, ka, ka, crikey, it's ka, ka, ka, cold.
You all have a nice day now,y'hear?
Rhrosty.

I agree (as would Blind Freddie) with the author's point that location and type of dwellings has had the biggest impact on disaster fatalities.

But the statement (re) 'the big 3 disasters of the last decade......it is hard to see any sign of a link between these disasters and 'climate change',..... is a statement that is unsupported by evidence and which exposes the underlying bias of this article.

Scientific analysis of such recent disasters as the Melbourne fires and Brisbane floods has indicated some influence of the .9 degree temperature rise that has mainly occurred in the last 20 years.

Yep ,They morphed from Global Warming to Climate Change,scares of Ocean acidificication,drastic sea level rises,now to Extreme Weather,caused by CO2.

What's next? Global warming is causing Global cooling?

Where are all the climate change sceptics who are qualified climatologists and actually know what they're talking about ?

"Scientific analysis of such recent disasters as the Melbourne fires and Brisbane floods has indicated some influence of the .9 degree temperature rise that has mainly occurred in the last 20 years."

That is false. In respect of the 2009 Black saturday bushfires being linked to AGW:

http://mises.org/daily/3343

In respect of the 2010 QLD floods being a product of AGW:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/before_you_scream_global_warming_two_items_of_fact_about_brisbane/

What is a fact is that AGW policies exacerbated both the bushfire and the flood. In respect of the 2009 bushfire green policies prevented adequate burning off and this extra fuel made the fires more intense.

In respect of the 2010 QLD flood the fact that droughts had been predicted by AGW spruikers and alarmists meant the Wivenhoe was used to store water and could not mitigate the flood.

It makes me sick when I read or hear people use these 2 natural disasters as proof of AGW when they are in fact proof of the disastrous consequences of AGW and green ideology

To refute the nonsensical misinformation that is used by deniars to try and prove their point.
UK Met Office responds: It’s still getting warmer
According to the Daily Mail on October 13, UK Met Office data showed global warming stopped 16 years ago. Not so, said Met Office one day later.
http://earthsky.org/earth/uk-met-office-responds-global-warming-did-not-stop-16-years-ago

To address some of the points in the article published today:
Firstly, the Met Office has not issued a report on this issue. We can only assume the article is referring to the completion of work to update the HadCRUT4 global temperature dataset compiled by ourselves and the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit.
http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/met-office-in-the-media-14-october-2012/

Disregarding (for the moment) the connection (or not) between AGW and extreme events, Mr Atkin's point that we don't have tornadoes is off beam. Bunbury in Western Australia has experienced several sizable tornadoes in the last decade - one took out the Catholic Cathedral, which required a total replacement.

A recent storm in the south west of WA last June was extremely wide-spread and ferocious, and according to the state power commission, caused the most wide-spread and worst ever damage from a single event that they had seen.

Forgot to add link.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-10/wild-winds-lash-wa/4062970

@Mac: "Where are all the climate change sceptics who are qualified climatologists and actually know what they're talking about ?"

Here, Mac:

http://www.petitionproject.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming

Jon J, in other words: not here.

But Bugsy, why would they bother to come here, when the sceptics here are managing quite well on their own?

Quite an encouraging result for common sense in the ACT elections last night, by the way, don't you think?

If you analyse the list of 31,487 so called scientists, you find that the large majority of them are not scientists in the climate field or even a close specialty.
Some of them are not scientists in the definition of the word and have never had a peer reviewed paper published.
Some of them do not exist or are not available on any data base.
Anyone could make up a list of as many scientists who are sure that there is AGW and it would be just as meaningless.

Cyclone activity in Australia declined by both parameters, number and intensity, from 1970-2005, the peak period for AGW; that's according to the BOM:

http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/climatology/trends.shtml

And this article based on Dr Nott's research on historical super-cyclones in Australia puts cyclone Yasi in perspective:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/queenslands-cycles-of-havoc/story-e6frg6z6-1225998344719

There is NO AGW indication in the extreme weather events in Australia.

Robert, alarmist that he is, should do some research; AGW has been disproved:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14179

Let Robert critique those papers, each of which disproves AGW, and stop talking garbage.

"Robert, alarmist that he is, should do some research; AGW has been disproved:"

..............

cohenite, denialist that he is, should read some "real" research. AGW has not been disproved.

So there.......

Bugsy -- LOL, this site specialises in unqualified climate change "sceptics".

Robert Le Page,

Agree in regard to the list.

Jon J ,

That link really supports my argument ,QED

I'm going to write a paper refuting quantum physics, my formal education is in business, economics and economic history,so naturally I'm well qualified.

Robert Le Page

congratulations. I have committed the sin that global warmers often do of trusting the source.. but you realise that a closer look at the reference shows what I was only dimly aware of in passing, and amounts to the same thing.

For the story should really have read that the Met Office admits to statistically insignificant warming in the past 16 years.

An excerpt from the Met Offic statement you linked to (or linked from the link):

"The linear trend from August 1997 (in the middle of an exceptionally strong El Nino) to August 2012 (coming at the tail end of a double-dip La Nina) is about 0.03°C/decade, amounting to a temperature increase of 0.05°C over that period, but equally we could calculate the linear trend from 1999, during the subsequent La Nina, and show a more substantial warming. As we’ve stressed before, choosing a starting or end point on short-term scales can be very misleading."

Now note how small the warming is. Of course they are correct to point out that they could have chosen a different start year, but the point about 1997 is that although a very hot year it was, in effect, the end of notably global warming trend that occured between the mid-70s and the turn of the century (about). This is the huge problem that global warming theory faces. It keeps on forecasting big increases in temperatures and the last 16 years or so hasn't delivered. The fact that its a small period in climate reckoning doesn't get them out - they were forecasting big changes in small time periods, so they can't later claim well not enough time has elapsed.

Anyway, its rare for me to admit that a global warming would have one over on me but you did so.. Congratulations.

Curmudgeon, Your apology is accepted.

All that remains is to convince cohenite and various others of the same ilk that write here from time to time.

"All that remains is to convince cohenite"

I yearn to be convinced by my betters about AGW.

In the meantime critique the real references I have linked to:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14179

http://joannenova.com.au/2012/10/man-made-global-warming-disproved/

http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/has-global-warming-been-disproved-part-2.html

Go on Robert, pick a couple from the 70 or so references and impress us with your understanding; I've read all of them and I'm happy to discuss any of them with anyone.

Robert L

A small victory.. the fact that the Met Office found virtually no warming or statistically insignificant warming over such a long period, should be enough to close the global warming shop and head for the hills...

"...real references..."

(Ho, Ho, Ho)

Linking to blogs by non-climate scientists - as in joannenova.com and the climatescepticsparty.blogspot - and another link to an article written by the authors of those blogs are not real [scientific] references.

You have nothing to contribute to this debate Poirot so I do not understand why you persist with demonstrating your ideologically based mental constraints and gullibility; all the links are to papers by climate experts.

I bet you haven't read one. Your arrogant ignorance is tedious.

Once again, I have been away and unable to comment. But here's a few reactions.

The OLO article is a shorter version of the post on my website, and that in turn built on a paper by Crompton and McAneney. My phrase 'four peak periods since the mid 1960s' could have been better expressed. I meant that in the last fifty years there have been four periods where natural disasters clumped — that is, they are not rising in some sort of linear fashion in any way matching either CO2 emissions or global warming.

On tornadoes, storms with a peculiar and characteristic rotating column of air that connects the ground with the lower level of the clouds: we don't have many, or any that I am aware of. We do have violent storms, which we call hurricanes or cyclones. I dealt with this on an earlier post on my website. I can't find any reference on the web to the storm at Eidsvold/Theodore, and would be grateful for a reference. Intense storms that snap trees are rare, but known — I have seen the results of one on the NSW southern coastal range. They aren't tornadoes as the Americans define such storms.

I am not a 'qualified climatologist', but I'm not sure who is. No leading 'climate scientist' has formal qualifications in climate science, because such a degree is new. They all have qualifications in something else. Medical Nobel Laureate Peter Doherty makes pronouncements on global warming, but he has no formal qualifications in climate science. What is the test? Who is entitled to speak? On what?

My statement that the three big disasters of the last decade are unlikely to be linked to 'climate change' is a statement based on the evidence in the Crompton and McAneney graph.

Don, you may be interested in this earlier paper on normalised insurance losses:

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/publications/WorkingPapers/Working%20Papers/WPapers30-39/WP30_insured-damage-natural-disasters.pdf

Thanks, Cohenite — a good paper.

Don