Why Disasters Are Getting Worse

If you look at all storms from 1900 to 2005 and imagine we had today's populations on the coasts, as Roger Pielke, Jr., and his colleagues did in a 2008 Natural Hazards Review paper, you would see that the worst hurricane would have actually happened in 1926.

If it happened today, the Great Miami storm would have caused $140 to $157 billion in damages. (Hurricane Katrina, the costliest storm in U.S. history, caused $100 billion in losses.) "There has been no trend in the number or intensity of storms at landfall since 1900,"says Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado. "The storms themselves haven't changed."

What's changed is what we've put in the storm's way. Crowding together in coastal cities puts us at risk on a few levels.

Reasons why you should move as far inland as possible to avoid hurricanes - maybe Topeka, Kansas. Uh oh, what about tornadoes? Anyway, climate change is not responsible for costly hurricane damage as much as our tendency to build homes and live in hurricane prone areas.