js7a's Journal: Global Warming Costs Too Much Money

I was looking at the sheer overwhelmingness of this chart, and I thought, well, this calls for regression!

So, I fired up R and typed this to make this graph:

decade <- c(1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990)
billions <- c(3.5, 5, 7.5, 13, 40)

plot(decade, billions, xlim=c(1950,2050), ylim=c(0,1000), main="average yearly inflation-adjusted dollar cost of extreme weather events worldwide")

pm <- lm(billions ~ poly(decade, 3))
curve(predict(pm, data.frame(decade=x)), add=TRUE)

summary(pm)

The adjusted R^2 statistic is 0.98, meaning that 98% of the variation is explained by the third-degree polynomial, which means that the extrapolation is probably accurate.

Dangerous storms: they cost $3.5 Billion a year in the 50's, and they're projected to cost 300 times that in the 40's, adjusting for inflation.

Is health care projected to increase 300 times in 90 years in real terms?

root cause

[capoccia]

i think that rising dollars spent on disaster relief does not mean that we have more disasters now than before. it only means that we are spending more money. this is for a variety of reasons.

awareness has risen. fifty years ago, no one even thought about bailing out asian islands who were hit by tsunamis. we were busy bombing them to finish the second world war.

bureaucracies have been set up to give relief around the world. as these agencies expand, as all bureaucracies do, the money needed increases.

i

Re:root cause

[js7a]

The source graph [www.ipcc.ch] counts "economic losses" which I think is seperate from disaster relief. The only such losses that actually cost money (i.e., don't just destroy stuff) are the insured losses, which are colored in a different shade.

Re:bzzt

[capoccia]

graph is inflation-adjusted (see giant headline at top).

somehow i didn't see it. there are still plenty of other factors.