NOAA: Climate disasters cost U.S. $2.6 trillion since 1980

  

The United States has sustained more than $2.6 trillion in estimated total costs due to hundreds of climate disasters over the past 40 years, according to a new report from a subsidiary of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The comprehensive disaster cost assessment, published Tuesday by the National Centers for Environmental Information, found 371 extreme weather events since 1980 that each exceeded $1 billion in damage.

Costs were incurred through physical damage to residential, commercial, and municipal buildings, and damage to material assets and equipment. Business interruptions and loss of living quarters were taken into consideration, as well as damage to vehicles and boats; public roads, bridges, levees; electrical infrastructure and offshore energy platforms; agricultural assets including crops, livestock, commercial timber; and wildfire suppression.

This year alone there have been 23 confirmed climate disasters in the United States, with 253 people killed and estimated losses topping more than $1 billion in each catastrophe, including two floods, 18 severe storms, one tropical cyclone, one major wildfire, and one blizzard...MORE

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You can smell the game plan here.

let's spend money now on climate change and save ourselves from the long term expenses of climate disasters.