"How would we know if disasters are becoming more costly due to climate change?"

Source: Pielke 2018

"To show that disasters have become more costly because of human-caused climate change, several criteria must be met. First, there must be an actual increase in the costs of disasters. Second, there must be a detectable increase in either the frequency or intensity of weather events which are associated with the disasters. Such an increase must be on time scales of decades or longer. Third, the detected increase in frequency or intensity must be attributed to human causes, typically defined narrowly in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, but other causes are also possible.

    "This framework of detection and attribution comes directly from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ...
    "[S]ome researchers have decided to abandon the IPCC framework of detection and attribution in favour of an alternative approach, called single-event attribution.... While such studies are intellectually interesting, they are also deeply problematic.... The abandonment of the IPCC framework for detection and attribution with respect to extreme events can also look like a political strategy ...
    "The rise of 'event attribution' studies offers science-like support to those focused on climate advocacy, but it is not clear that they offer much in the way of empirical rigour, particularly as compared to the IPCC detection and attribution framework."

~ Roger Pielke Jr, from his post 'How would we know if disasters are becoming more costly due to climate change?'