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Roger,

I enjoyed your Revelle Lecture yesterday. You are fine-tuning your message well.

There is one item that appears to be an inconsistency. You said in you lecture and in the brochure that came with the lecture that the costs of disasters are increasing with time. However, you clearly showed that, in the U.S. at least, when scaled by the overall increasing total wealth in this country, that the costs of disasters are not increasing. This is a little confusing.

John

Thanks John, glad you could attend. This is a good point. To clarify:

1. The total costs of disasters are increasing rapidly.

2. When societal factors taken into account the trend goes away everywhere we've looked.

FYI, we'll have a PDF copy of the brochure (a short acticle that accompanied the talk) up soon.

Thanks!