‘But because the internet and proliferation of media has made it so much easier to access information today, the database records small natural disasters from 1980 onward that in prior decades wouldn’t have been recorded.
This skews the database by making it appear there are more total disasters today than the past. (Several U.N. agencies have twisted this data to say just that.) For instance, the database recorded four times as many earthquakes each year on average after 1980 as it did before. As the U.S. Geological Survey points out, when databases show more earthquakes, it isn’t because there are actually more earthquakes, but because they have been recorded better over time. Indeed, almost all of the earthquake increase in the disaster database is composed of small earthquakes that likely just didn’t make the news earlier in the 20th century. You see the same slant with hurricanes: The disaster database recorded far more U.S. hurricanes after 1980 than before—six times as many a year on average. But the historical record from dozens of peer-reviewed studies shows the number of landfalling U.S. hurricanes has actually declined slightly since 1900.
Death totals, on the other hand, are much less pliable. While reports on climate catastrophes multiplied over the last century, large-scale deaths have been consistently recorded. In fact, the disaster database’s death toll is very close to official estimates. And that data tells an incredible and heartening story. A century ago, almost half a million people died on average each year from storms, floods, droughts, wildfires and extreme temperatures. Over the next 10 decades, global annual deaths from these causes declined 96%, to 18,000. In 2020, they dropped to 14,000.
Unsurprisingly, the media this year has been filled to the brim with coverage of natural disasters, from the Northwestern Heat Dome to floods in Germany and China. Yet it has conveniently left out the total death toll. So far 5,500 people have died from climate-related disasters in 2021. Using previous years’ data to extrapolate, climate-related deaths will probably total about 6,600 by the end of the year. That’s almost 99% less than the death toll a century ago. The global population has quadrupled since then, so this is an even bigger drop than it looks.
As has been the case across this series of articles, economic growth and technological innovation get the credit for our improving position. Human beings are pretty good at adapting to their environment, even if it’s changing. Keep that in mind when you see another worried headline about climate disasters.’