2010 in Natural Disasters
Natural disasters killed more people this past year than terrorists have killed in the last four decades, according to an AP article out today.
Included in this figure are the earthquakes, responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in Haiti, and thousands more in Chile, Indonesia, Turkey and China, which, though at least in part the fault of man, had more to do with poor quality infrastructure than carbon emissions. (By one calculation causalities could very well have been limited to 80,000–instead of reaching 220,000–were Haiti’s shanties built as well as they were 25 years ago.)
Flooding around the world–most notably in Pakistan–caused over 6,300 deaths in nearly 60 nations. By Oxfam’s calculations 21,000 deaths in 2010 were attributable to severe weather events; according to Swiss Re, 260,000 casualties were the result of natural disasters this past year. About 115,000 were killed by terrorists between 1968 and 2009.
The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) dealt with a record number of disasters in 2010. Stated its head, Craig Fugate,
It just seemed like it was back-to-back and it came in waves… The term ‘100-year event’ really lost its meaning this year.
And according to Kevin Trenberth, Bolder, CO’s chief of climate analysis for the National Center for Atmospheric Research,
These (weather) events would not have happened without global warming.
Global temperatures in 2010 could likely go down in history as the hottest ever recorded, leaving 2005 to come in at a close second.
That’s why the people who study disasters for a living say it would be wrong to chalk 2010 up to just another bad year.
While 2010’s figures and statistics are indeed staggering, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has provided on its site an overview of key climate change indicators, providing a glimpse of potentially even more disastrous years to come.
