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Climate Emergency Tour: Disaster Fatality Edition

As far as we know, no cities or countries declared a "Climate Emergency" in the 1920s. Instead, strangely, they waited until 2019, after the death toll from climate emergencies had faded to almost nothing. Using Oxford University's Our World in Data website we plotted the total annual deaths from floods, extreme weather, heatwaves, drought and wildfires. The numbers tell the story: There might have been a climate emergency a century ago, but not today.

There are, of course, still some deaths each year due to weather and climate-related disasters. According to the chart above there were about 11,000 such deaths worldwide, which is still 11,000 too many. But that's 11,000 out of a population of 7.7 billion people. In 1900 there were 1.3 million deaths out of a world population of 1.6 billion.

The big change is not that the climate got a little warmer, but that people are better off. We build stronger buildings and more weather-proof infrastructure, we have better disaster forecasting systems and much better disaster relief and recovery systems so even when a bad weather event happens, relatively less damage happens and very few people die. If the climate emergency crowd get their way all these advances in human prosperity will be reversed (or prevented in those parts of the world where they haven't yet happened) in which case the chart above over the next 120 years will be the mirror image.

4 comments on “Climate Emergency Tour: Disaster Fatality Edition”

  1. Very interesting data and info. Interesting to look at wildfires which has been so much in the news, we see that there is no real trend but rather a few bad years in with a global average of about 100 deaths. If we go back in time we see that there were 1000 deaths recorded.

  2. To ALL who contribute to this wonderful website: I love reading your informative and often funny articles. For some reason, when I'm reading them, I see John Robson, as I see him in the videos, with his sly sense of humour speaking the words. The articles can't all be written by John,,,,,can they? That, or you've all the got the same sense of humour. I'm so glad that you "invented" Climate Discussion Nexus for us that are "climate deniers". I've been promoting your website to my friends and acquaintances but intend to turn it up for my New Years resolution. Keep up this valuable and important work and have a very Merry Christmas and Happy and informative New Year.
    Regards, Peter Link/ Edmonton

  3. Hi Peter,
    Thanks for your note and kind words. The Newsletter is a collaboration between a number of people but I do either write or edit all the material which explains how my sense of humour sneaks into all the items.
    We really appreciate your help in spreading awareness of the newsletter and please also share the videos (https://climatediscussionnexus.com/video/) which have lately been doing very well indeed on YouTube.
    Happy New Year to you too.

  4. I appreciate the more positive outlook and factual information provided. GWPF is another forum I enjoy with similar view points. Beware though that climate/green activists are putting pressure on Youtube to stop recommending videos which promote the skeptic's view or deny the alarmists' predictions.

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