As we have often observed, climate alarmists arm-wave about increasing natural disasters as if “everybody knows” when in fact the data do not show increasing natural disasters. It doesn’t matter what category you look at: hurricanes, droughts, you name it… even the IPCC goes quiet on the subject. So where do alarmists get this stuff, other than the thin air in the echo chamber? Well, interestingly, an entry in the insurance-market-goes-up-in-flames-along-with-planet that we were going to mention in passing in the previous item regarding British floods got caught in our eye instead. It was from the Canadian Press via MSN and the Globe & Mail and many others and peddled the usual “Home insurers raise prices, rein in coverage as weather events worsen”. So we thought “Show us the receipts” and by golly it added “According to a report from TD… the number of catastrophic weather events averaged 15 a year, up from around two per year in the 1980s.” Whoa! What? Strange, surely, with the number of extreme weather events not increasing at all that the number of catastrophic ones should go up eight-fold and pick on poor Canada in particular. That’s climate change on steroids. Or, more likely, statistical education on life-support.

Prying indelicately into what they think they know, and how the heck they think they know it, we found that report. Which seemed desirable since the general thrust of the article itself was that insurers were, for some strange reason, taking steps to avoid offering cheap insurance in places especially prone to disasters and preferring instead clients in places not prone to them.

People responding rationally to incentives isn’t much of a story. Whereas an eight-fold increase in disasters suggests that no matter how prudent you are, climate change will chase you right into your kitchen is a huge headline. But soft. What is a “catastrophic” climate event? Something measured in physical terms, like temperature, rainfall or wind energy, or something measured in dollars and therefore subject to biases from inflation and increased economic activity in the path of storms?

If you guessed something measured in dollars you’re right:

“These are currently defined as weather disasters that cause at least $30 million in insured losses, though lower thresholds were used prior to 2022.”

Not, you’ll notice, “adjusted for inflation”. Oh dear. Also not “adjusted for growth in GDP”. Oh other dear. It’s so basic that if there’s more stuff, and it’s worth more in real terms, and its value is further inflated by debauching the currency, the exact same weather will cause more damage. A lot more.

If one had the interwebs on one’s personal computer, and many people do nowadays who never even heard of, let alone heard, a dial-up modem (it went Psssht psssht geboing boing) they could readily discover that Canada’s GDP in constant dollars tripled from 1980 to 2024. (From 677 billion 2015 US dollars to 1.83 trillion of them.) And according to the Bank of Canada “Inflation Calculator” the CPI went up in the same period by 3.78 times. And you don’t have to have aced Grade 12 math to calculate without difficulty that 3 x 3.78 > 8.

You also don’t have to have aced math to know that if they don’t tell you what the “lower thresholds” were it’s hard to adjust for them. But overall the picture is absolutely muddied. The alleged “Bottom Line” in that TD study is that:

“Extreme weather is expected to continue growing over time as greenhouse gas emissions rise globally, underscoring the need for policies that help communities adapt to the changing climate.”

Got it? The whole thing isn’t even about what did happen, it’s about what people who don’t know what did happen are sure will happen. Also governments should force people to do things that reduce insurance payouts. Who saw that one coming either?

People like Roger Pielke Jr. have done the appropriate calculations for the United States and found that, despite all the hype about worsening weather there as well as in Canada, losses from natural disasters as a share of GDP have fallen not risen. And it would be odd if, right next door, we had an entirely different experience from “global” warming. It would be even odder if the whole world also saw them fall and we saw them rocket upward. But, again h/t RPJ, the world did.

It would also be odd if people here in Canada were too lazy to do the calculations though it’s hard to find them. But, if math am two hard, you can still try to do economics or at least transfer into business. Where they will say stuff like if insurance companies are profitable, they’re not being ruined by big climate-related payouts or indeed anything else.