Damage estimates for Hurricanes Frances and Charley are starting to show up, and they seem to be narrowing in on some totals.

Accord to Munich Reinsurance, quoted in this AP article, Frances could result in overall insured damage of $5 billion to $15 billion, but will probably be less than Charley which is estimated at $7.4 billion in insured losses. As a general but very rough rule, total damages are often estimated to be about twice the insured damages.

The New York Times reported yesterday that the total costs of the two storms could reach $40 billion, citing loss estimates from AIR Worldwide of $20 billion in total losses related to Frances, with $5 billion to $10 billion covered by insurance, and similar totals for Charley.

No doubt that 2004 is already an extreme year for Florida’s hurricane damage, but it is far, far from the worst case. Consider that from 1944-1950 the state of Florida experienced what today would be a billion dollar storm in each of those seven years. Here is the data, and here is the analysis.

Also, Mary Downton and I have a paper in press in Natural Hazards that discusses errors in tabulating disaster costs. Here is a link to a prepublication copy:

Downton, M. and R. A. Pielke, Jr. (in press). How Accurate are Disaster Loss Data? The Case of U.S. Flood Damage, Natural Hazards.

Science Defiled – Or Politics as Usual?

An Interactive Panel Discussion in conjunction with the Third Presidential Debate

Stem cell research…. climate change…. genetically-modified organisms…. nanotechnology….

The politicization of science has received much media attention of late and how society views science may play a role in the 2004 elections, but do politics have a larger impact on science under the current administration than under previous ones? Is scientific purity possible – or desirable – when the political stakes are high? A panel of experts and policy makers from inside and outside the Beltway will tackle the question of the role of science in the political arena.

Wednesday October 13, 2004

3:30-5:00pm

ASU Main Campus –Armstrong Hall, College of Law

Panelists:

(more…)

Have international negotiations on climate change failed to adequately address the role of population growth in they structure of international policies?

Consider that the Kyoto Protocol is currently being negotiated on the basis of individual countries contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions based on a 1990 reference point. But this approach biases the Protocol in favor of countries with low population growth rates, as population growth is a significant factor in growing greenhouse gas emissions. Consider these facts:

According to the Population Reference Bureau from 2004 to 2025 the United States is expected to increase in population from 294 million to 349 million (1990 = 249 million). Over this same period, Europe is expected to decrease in population from 728 million to 722 million (1990 = 722 million).

What this means is that assuming that European greenhouse gas emissions remain constant on a per capita basis, then Europe need only follow business-as-usual to equal its 1990 emissions in 2025, as its population is expected to decrease back to 1990 levels. By contrast, the United States is projected to see a 40% increase in its population between 1990 and 2025. This means that for the U.S. to revert back to its 1990 level of emissions it would need to see about a 30% decrease in its per capita emissions.

Based on expected population trends, any treaty based on the total greenhouse gas emissions of countries will strongly favor Europe over the United States. Perhaps this helps to explain not only why U.S. policy makers have not signed on to Kyoto, but also why it has been so easily embraced by European policy makers.

(On per capita emissions see this post.)

I have no idea who is going to win the upcoming election (though for perspectives see this site and this site). However, if George W. Bush wins, Gregg Easterbrook thinks that “A reelected Bush, if he wants to win favor with historians, will have to do something impressive, statesmanlike, and out of character. Which is why I think a second-term Bush will be the president who imposes global-warming controls.”

While Mr. Easterbrook is most likely not a Prometheus reader, should Bush win a second term and engage the climate issue, just remember our commentary from July 12, 2004:

“While the United States is all but certainly not going to ratify the Kyoto Protocol under any conditions, is just a matter of time, perhaps less than a year, before the United States reengages in the Kyoto process under the Framework Convention on Climate Change. I think that this reengagement in the process will likely occur under a President Kerry or a President Bush.”

If Bush loses or wins and stands fast on his climate policies … well, never mind.

It’s been a rough hurricane season, all in one month. Now Hurricane Frances is approaching Florida as a Saffir/Simpson Category 4 storm. Worst case scenarios suggest the potential for a significant disaster. The U.S. National Hurricane Center has had as difficult a year as in recent memory with Charley and Gaston.

I spent a number of years studying hurricanes and their impacts, and know that they can lead to devastating disasters. In the next few days we should all send our best wishes to the forecasters, first responders, and Florida residents who all need a little luck to escape the worst of Frances.

Beloit College recently released its widely circulated “Mindset List” which aims to help faculty understand how the world looks from the perspective of entering college freshmen, many of whom this year were born in 1986.

As always, the Mindset List for the Class of 2008 includes a range of interesting and funny observations. It has a few notable oversights (e.g., the internet? The Challenger accident?) and a few mistakes (Mike Tyson, contender? And The Shining predates Johnny Carson’s retirement by 12 years …). But what is most interesting to me about the Mindset List is it overwhelming reliance on allusions relevant exclusively to the Baby Boom generation — e.g., Desi Arnaz, Orson Welles, Roy Orbison? What about John Belushi, Kurt Cobain, Princess Diana?.

In the future, the folks at Beloit might want to factor in some input from Generation Xers, who are now coming to occupy more and more faculty positions as the oldest of Boomer’s approach and enter their retirement years. This leads me to think that perhaps we are in need of a separate Mindset List to highlight the different perspectives of senior faculty who can remember where they were when Kennedy was shot and junior faculty who too young or weren’t yet born in 1963, but sure know where they were when the heard that the Space Shuttle had exploded in 1986 (e.g., compare this thesis (in PDF)).