Mike Hulme, professor of climate change at the Tyndall Centre, which advises
the UK government on global warming, said there was no real evidence that
natural disasters were already being made worse by climate change. He said:
"A proper analysis shows that these claims are usually superficial"

Muir-Wood's paper was originally commissioned by Roger Pielke, professor of
environmental studies at Colorado University, also an expert on disaster
impacts, for a workshop on disaster losses in 2006. The researchers who
attended that workshop published a statement agreeing that so far there was
no evidence to link global warming with any increase in the severity or
frequency of disasters.

Muir-Wood himself is more cautious. He said: "The idea that catastrophes are
rising in cost partly because of climate change is completely misleading.
"We could not tell if it was just an association or cause and effect. Also,
our study included 2004 and 2005 which was when there were some major
hurricanes. If you took those years away then the significance of climate
change vanished."

Muir-Wood's paper was originally commissioned by Roger Pielke, professor of
environmental studies at Colorado University, also an expert on disaster
impacts, for a workshop on disaster losses in 2006. The researchers who
attended that workshop published a statement agreeing that so far there was
no evidence to link global warming with any increase in the severity or
frequency of disasters. Pielke has also told the IPCC that citing one
section of Muir-Wood's paper in preference to the rest of his work, and all
the other peer-reviewed literature, was wrong.

The Sunday Times has since found that the scientific paper on which the IPCC
based its claim had not been peer reviewed, nor published, at the time the
climate body issued its report.

When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It
said: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship
between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."

Despite this change the IPCC did not issue a clarification ahead of the
Copenhagen climate summit last month. It has also emerged that at least two
scientific reviewers who checked drafts of the IPCC report urged greater
caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts -
but were ignored.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...fset=12&page=2

Best Regards

Tom.