Nobel Prize winners believe that your SUV caused the 1938 hurricane.
Long Island has hosted at least 20 hurricanes and tropical storms over the past century. According to a recent study published by the International Hurricane Research Center, Long Island is considered one of the top ten most vulnerable areas to hurricanes.
Five Category 3 hurricanes have made Long Island their target over the past 75 years, including the deadly hurricane of 1938. Dubbed “Long Island Express”, this hurricane claimed the lives of over 700 people and caused massive destruction on what was then largely undeveloped land. Over 2 billion trees were destroyed across New York and New England. That’s enough lumber to build 200,000 homes.
The 1938 storm caused an estimated $308 million in damages. Some experts estimate that a storm of the same magnitude today could cause as much as $40 billion in damages on Long Island, and up to $250 Billion in damages if it were to hit Manhattan. By comparison, the total damages caused by Hurricane Katrina are estimated to have been $81 Billion.
An honest ins company that doesn’t invoke fear of AGW to justify raising premiums?
One of the most frustrating things in the discussion of storm damage is getting people to understand the idea of normalization of data. While my state climatologist normalizes tornado data when comparing recent tornadoes in the Midwest to historic levels, some, like NOAA and Bill McKibben, still use grammar school methodology and do not normalize the data thus giving a skewed and inaccurate portrayal of reality. I can understand why Bill McKibben wants to mislead 350.org’s “upper class twit of the year” contenders, but why is NOAA so obtuse?
Those must be pretty big homes at 10,000 trees each. The average home uses <100 trees http://cadlab6.mit.edu/2.009.wiki/anchor/index.php?title=Number_of_trees_used_to_build_an_average_stick-built_US_home
2e9/64 trees = 31 million homes
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings and commented:
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Now after a hurricane, if a couple shingles blow off, you get a new roof. If a couple of pieces of siding blow off you get all new siding. If both take place, you get a new house. The insurance business has changed radically over the years, so with that plus inflation, it is not surprising that you are getting so many billion dollar disasters.
If we used that standard for the 1938 Hurricane and moved it a few miles to the west so it made a direct hit on NYC, you would probably have the first trillion dollar disaster.