Past weather Extremes

Weather extremes of the past were worse than those of today. The IPCC in their recent SREX report on weather extremes doesn't mention the past or a decrease in death rates from extreme weather events but it does note that there is not a confirmed attribution of extreme weather to climate change.

“Long-term trends in economic disaster losses adjusted for wealth and population increases have not been attributed to climate change, but a role for climate change has not been excluded (medium evidence, high agreement).”

 Take a look at the report from Dennis Avery who informs us about 300 year droughts and sea-floods from our past. Chris Scotese has a nice web site detailing the paleoclimate by geologic period. Take a trip back in time.

And then there is James Marusek. (pdf) This work documents weather related events from 1AD to 1900AD in 802 pages.

Here is a 2011 paper that finds that extreme weather was as prevalent in the MWP and LIA as it is now.

When CO2 was 327.18 ppm (backup here) this is how it was around the world in 1971. In 2012 CO2 is 394.45ppm.  Severe weather happens at different concentrations of CO2. 

Just because we weren't there or haven't got the best memory doesn't mean that past weather extremes did not take place. Humans invented record keeping to provide a species wide memory. And now it is digitized and made available via the internet to anyone with a computer.