My latest column in Bridges, the quarterly publication of Office of Science & Technology at the Embassy of Austria in Washington, DC, is now online. It is titled, “Making Sense of Trends in Disaster Losses,” and starts out like this:

“Record rainfall and over a thousand dead in Mumbai. Devastating floods in central Europe. A record hurricane season in the Atlantic, including more than $100 billion dollars in damage from Hurricane Katrina. The summer of 2005 seems to have witnessed more than its fair share of weather-related disasters. And, perhaps understandably, no weather-related disaster occurs without someone linking it to the issue of global warming… But as logical and enticing as it may seem to connect the ever-growing toll of disasters with global warming, the current state of science simply does not support making such a connection.”

Read the rest here. Comments welcomed.

If you are interested in science and technology policy, then the entire issue of Bridges is worth your attention.