Damn Pielke Jr's bullshit button, full speed ahead: On his way out the door, Steven Chu invokes disasters loss trends as an indication of human-caused climate change

Letter from Secretary Steven Chu to Energy Department Employees Announcing His Decision Not to Serve a Second Term | Department of Energy

During the three decades from 1980 to 2011, the number of violent storms, floods, droughts, heat waves, wildfires, as tabulated by the reinsurance company Munich Re, has increased more than three-fold. They also estimate that the financial losses follow a trend line that has gone from $40 billion to $170 billion dollars per year...A few short decades later, we don’t want our children to ask, “What were our parents thinking? Didn’t they care about us?”

Flashback: Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: A Handy Bullshit Button on Disasters and Climate Change

With this post I am creating a handy bullshit button on this subject (pictured above). Anytime that you read claims that invoke disasters loss trends as an indication of human-caused climate change, including the currently popular "billion dollar disasters" meme, you can simply call "bullshit" and point to the IPCC SREX report.