Well here is what we say in our wrokshop report from last May:

“For future decades the IPCC (2001) expects increases in the occurrence and/or intensity of some extreme events as a result of anthropogenic climate change. Such increases will further increase losses in the absence of disaster reduction measures.”

Mr. Mills or Newsweek said should something like this rather than something scientifically unsupportable.

My question to you was not rhetorical – don’t you in fact expect that someday the evidentiary case will be made that AGW will lead to a shift to more frequent, extreme weather events and contribute to higher disaster losses?

The difference of course between my statement and Rumsfeld’s is that, like you, I believe that there are plenty of other grounds to justify adaptation responses that will dampen disaster losses.

However, I do believe that the possiblity of a linkage between AGW and more extreme weather events/greater losses should be taken into account in considering possible mitigation poicies. An unlike Rumsfeld, who withdrew the UN inspectors, I have an open mind and believe that the research should go on.

“But the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, as well all know. Furthermore, don’t you in fact expect that someday the evidentiary case will be made, if we are indeed in for continuing the war on terror”?

I guess it is this kind of prominent placement of the meme of the “increasing cost of climate change” continues to propagate and infect the minds of the uninformed and weakly informed.

The effectiveness of the rolodexes of the army of public affairs officers employed by large non-profits in placing this meme in the public arena is an all to often ignored aspect of the issue.

Furthermore, don’t you in fact expect that someday the evidentiary case will be made, if we are indeed in for continuing AGW?