Tomgram: Steve Fraser, A Disaster for All Seasons!

Even if you set aside the man made environmental disaster that is China, at a cost now estimated conservatively at $230 billion annually, ever more expensive disasters seem to be on the rise globally. Moreover, thanks to climate change, that is, the greenhouse gases we've been pumping into the atmosphere at record levels, the distinction between man made catastrophes and natural ones is rapidly blurring. In the United States, we've recently suffered a one two punch, when it comes to extreme weather. 2011now holds the American record for weather disasters, that cost $1 billion dollars or more with 14 of them, and 2012 came in an uncomfortable close second with 11. You can check out the list here. The Swiss Insurance firm Munich Re, points out that nowhere in the world, is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America, a dubious honor. And of them all, perhaps the most expensive of recent times, already estimated to have cost more than $50 billion, is the drought that had 60% of the country in its grip last year, and has continued relentlessly into 2013, parching the Southwest, the Midwest, and parts of the West. This, in turn, almost assures another season of "record" wildfires and, according to early predictions, possibly a new round of flooding from late season heavy snowfall in the upper Midwest, and especially along the Red River. In addition, on the billion dollar bad news side of things, scientists now believe that the continuing dramatic loss of ice in Arctic waters, which has been heating up that region, is also changing northern hemisphere weather patterns. It is evidently ensuring more extreme weather in the middle latitudes which helps explain, for instance, Europe's frozen spring of 2013, and will evidently lead to even warmer summers for most of us. And when we're talking about extreme weather, extreme events, and disasters, let's not forget that globally the likelihood of extreme energy events, like BP's massive oil spill in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, is also on the rise. After all, as Michael Klare has long argued at this site, energy companies are now ever more regularly going after extreme energy, in situations of rising danger. As a result, from the frack zone in the US, and the deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean off Brazil, to the Arctic seas of Alaska, the possibility of distinctly energy company made disasters is now on the rise, as, of course, are record oil company profits. In other words, we're now on a planet, where extreme disaster seems ever more normal and, when it comes to the weather, such extremes can increasingly be considered man made, or at least human influenced.