Climate Change

Ronald Bailey | 4.25.2024 2:10 PM

"Billion-dollar weather and climate disasters broke U.S. record in 2023, NOAA says," reported PBS earlier this year. "NOAA: US sees record number of billion-dollar weather, climate disasters in 2023," observed Fox Weather. "U.S. Hit by Record Number of High-Cost Disasters in 2023," declared The New York Times.

These and many more headlines were based on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) January press release reporting the agency's annual tally of weather disasters. It states:

The NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) has released the final update to its 2023 Billion-dollar disaster report, confirming a historic year in the number of costly disasters and extremes throughout much of the country. There were 28 weather and climate disasters in 2023, surpassing the previous record of 22 in 2020, tallying a price tag of at least $92.9 billion.

In a new article in the journal npj Natural Hazards, University of Colorado Boulder political scientist and climate policy expert Roger Pielke Jr. challenges the scientific integrity of these annual NOAA climate and weather disaster........

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