Global warming isn't making storms worse, but coastal population density is

There was a time when our coastal areas were sparsely populated.

    The damage, although not the death toll, of Hurricane Harvey may outpace that of Hurricane Katrina. You can expect the Global Warming crowd to cite this as "proof" that global warming is making things worse.
    Virtually everything gets blamed on global warming. Facts, of course, are not important. Click here to see a chart that identifies every hurricane known to have reached U.S.  landfall since the 1850s. It's not considered accurate for its earliest years because many hurricanes were not identified due to sparse population.
    You will note that the past 10 years have seen below-average hurricane activity. And  the 1940s, when global warming was a mere gleam in Albert Gore Sr.'s eye, were a time of frequent and powerful hurricanes.
    What has changed is that more and more people are moving into areas that are prone to highly destructive hurricanes. In the 1940s Florida claimed about two million residents and Monroe County, Fla., home to Key West and Key Largo, had about 15,000. In the 1940s the Bogart and McCall movie Key Largo featured at a nearly abandoned hotel, which was quite realistic for the time.
    Today Florida has a population of more than 18 million and the population of Monroe has grown to almost 80,000. Most of Florida's population growth has taken place around Orlando and in coastal areas. The map at the top of this post shows the population density of the Southern Atlantic Seaboard. It's the same story all over Florida, with most people choosing to live near the water -- and in the path of deadly hurricanes.
    Conjure up an image of a Florida beach house and you likely think of a very simple structure;  many years ago such houses were built with the knowledge that the Big Bad Hurricane Wolf might come and blow the house down. Today expensive homes are built with wild abandon along all of our coastal areas, subsidized by cheap federal insurance. The results, in terms of property damage and the loss of human life, can be catastrophic.
    Florida's story is repeated all over the nation. In 1940 the city of Houston, Texas had fewer than 400,000 residents; today there are more than two million. Some of that increase is doubtless due to annexation, but the area is far more densely populated than ever before. The results when disaster strikes are easily predictable.
    So the next time you hear somebody prattle on about how massive damage from storms is caused by global warming, point out that the leading cause of this damage is the decision by tens of millions of people to build and live in harm's way. Perhaps, as a matter of public policy, we should discourage such development, or at least not have the government subsidize it so much.