May ’08 has been a pretty rough month for the planet and its inhabitants, what with the volcanoes and tornadoes and cyclones and earthquakes, <VOICE=”Professor Frink>and the drowning and the crushing and the evacuating and the staaaaarving, glavin</VOICE>.
Jeff Masters has a roundup and some history, and some inside info on why the death toll in the country formerly known as Burma was so high.
[ALGORE]…all due to Global Warming[/ALGORE]
See Demokratie, Diktatur und Naturkatastrophen (don’t worry, only the header paragraph is in German) for why the death tolls of natural disasters are almost completely determined by the form of government in the affected nation rather than the size of the event.
For example, essentially identical large earthquakes struck California and Iran in December of 2003. The California earthquake killed 2 people. The one in Iran killed 50,000.
This study is interesting in light of the recommendations of the AGW community. They want to reduce economic growth ostensibly in order to reduce the number of climatological disasters. According to this study, a wealthier society can better withstand a greater number of disasters than can a poorer society a smaller number.
If the “AGW community” were remotely serious they’d be all about promoting democracy and market economies, by invasion if necessary.