Exposed: NOAA's 'Billion Dollar Disasters'


Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. has published a paper in Natural Hazards titled Scientific Integrity and U.S. Billion Dollar Disasters, exploring the fraud (my characterization) that is NOAA's "Billion Dollar Disasters," a frequent topic of this blog. 

To give you an example of how NOAA twists information to create a 'billion dollar' disaster, consider:
  • The 2011 Joplin Tornado or 2022's hurricane Ian were both genuine billion dollar disasters. 
  • Now, look at the map below, specifically the item in the upper left corner, "Rockies Hail Storms, Central and Eastern Severe Weather, June 21-26." Combining unrelated weather events over a period of days does not a billion dollar disaster make. These are all over the map. 
  • Because NOAA wants to show an upward trend (they use this to try to justify the claim that climate change is causing worsening disasters), they combine more and more of these typical meteorological events to manufacture a billion dollar disaster. 
NOAA used by be better than this. I recommend you read Roger's entire paper at the red link above. 

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