EM-DAT: The International Disaster Database
16 hours ago
Brief Note by Kip Hansen — 2 August 2023
There have been quite a few media and blog-based articles talking about disasters. (See Pielke Jr. here and here) Are they increasing worldwide or are they declining? Are there more or fewer weather-related, climate-related disasters?
The go-to source for statistics on worldwide disasters for (nearly) everyone is EM-DAT – The International Disaster Database. For years, the UN, IPCC and the climate-crisis-complicit mass media used the database just as presented at Our World in Data:
This version led to the wild claims that disasters had quadrupled or quintupled since the 1970s. There was a problem with that view, of course – it was not true in the real world, only in the pretty-picture graph. In 2019, I investigated this and an email exchange with Regina Below, Database Manager and Documentalist at CRED/EM-DAT, revealed:
I asked: “My guess would be that 1970 to 1998 represents an increase in REPORTING and not in actual Natural Disasters. Can you confirm this please — or correct me if I am wrong.“
Regina Below replied: “ You are right, it is an increase in the reporting”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/08/12/em-dat-the-international-disaster-database/
