Until 2017, the biggest bill Americans ever paid for a year’s worth of “natural disasters” was $214.8B, back in 2005: in 2017, it was at least $300B, not counting much of the damage to Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria.
Those Chinese hoaxes are fantastically detailed.
Every now and again, you hear people talk about how unrealistically expensive it will be to decarbonize our industry and energy sectors. Those people (who often complain about paying for social programs because “we are saddling our children with debt”) are fucking idiots and they owe the rest of us at least $300,000,000 for 2017.
The estimates include insured and uninsured losses, and the data used were compiled from several sources, such as the Insurance Services Office, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Interagency Fire Center, Energy Information Administration, U.S. Army Corps and various state agencies.
In calculating its records, NOAA compares years since 1980, when the agency began looking at the costs of disasters.
Data on some disasters could also still be forthcoming, especially on the damage caused by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, said Adam Smith, an economist at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. This is not that unusual. Data from damage due to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was still pouring in several months after the storm.
US disaster costs shatter records in 2017, the third-warmest year on record [Robert Ferris/Reuters]
(via /.)