What is the thesis here, that storms are a new hitherto unknown phenomenon that are radically outside the human experience?
There has never been an era where humans didn't have to put up with horrific storms. It took Pompeii 4-6m of volcanic ash to stop humans picking up the pieces and carrying on.
I don't think a focus on "oh there'll be more storms" is going to cut it. We have to be ready for storms anyway, having more of them doesn't change the risk calculations all that much in my mind. I'd rather pay the taxes for a big well air conditioned community centre to deal with heat waves. It'll be cheaper than what gets wasted on sporting venues.
The thesis is you trade up. This isn’t about an extra thunderstorm or two, big storms are expensive and disruptive. More tropical storms become hurricanes. Category 1 hurricanes hit 2 etc, and what would have been a 5 hits harder and stays a 5 for longer.
It’s about more frequent forced evacuations, overtopped levies, and massive cleanup etc. Rising sea levels aren’t just larger high tides their also larger tsunami. Beyond that you just get more extreme events like heat waves in the Arctic, longer drought mixed with extra flooding, more hail, mudslides, bigger blizzards etc.
We’re looking at 100’s of billions in damages per year not simply adding a few AC to community centers. Though you’re also likely to have higher cooling bills.
This bothers me less than water shortages and desertification, as well as extreme high temperatures making certain areas uninhabitable. That's what will really lead to suffering on a wide scale.
I guess major coastal cities around the world becoming part of the ocean is bad too.
It's not the increased natural "disasters" that will really mess things up. It's some places becoming entirely uninhabitable, permanently displacing many millions of people.
Most of the cost from weather events isn’t born by the federal government. Looking just at extreme 1+ billion dollar weather events over the last 20 years averages close to 100 billion per year in the US. “The total cost of these 298 events exceeds $1.975 trillion.”
However, things are getting worse. “The 1980–2020 annual average is 7.1 events (CPI-adjusted); the annual average for the most recent 5 years (2016–2020) is 16.2 events (CPI-adjusted).“ https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/
Of course not all of that is based on climate change, but smaller storms also cost money for everything from snow removal to lost crops, and preparation for storms costs even more.
There has never been an era where humans didn't have to put up with horrific storms. It took Pompeii 4-6m of volcanic ash to stop humans picking up the pieces and carrying on.
I don't think a focus on "oh there'll be more storms" is going to cut it. We have to be ready for storms anyway, having more of them doesn't change the risk calculations all that much in my mind. I'd rather pay the taxes for a big well air conditioned community centre to deal with heat waves. It'll be cheaper than what gets wasted on sporting venues.