Climate Change Policy Won't Prevent Twister Deaths

Written by Eli Lehrer on Friday May 13, 2011

After devastating windstorms hit the South in April, there's been a push to link climate policy to preventing more tornadoes. But there are easier ways to save lives.

By any reasonable measure, the windstorms that ravaged the South in April present a massive tragedy: the most disaster-caused deaths in a single day since 9/11 and more deadly than all but three post-World War II natural disasters. Communities will mourn, ponder what-ifs, and rebuild. Federal, state, and local authorities as well as dozens of community organizations will do everything they can to help those now left without homes, neighbors, and loved ones. And many of those involved in the public policy debate over global climate change will use the storms to push for agendas that they support anyway.  In particular, groups that favor controls on carbon emissions will point to research showing that such emissions could produce the conditions that cause tornadoes; groups that oppose restrictions will point out that strong tornadoes have become less frequent in recent decades by some measures. And the debate will rage on. For all of the argument, there's a good case that climate change and its politics should have nothing to do with the way America responds to tornado activity.

Here are the facts: the United States’ overall response to tornadoes through stronger building standards, better technology, and improved insurance practices has made the nation much safer. Even with the recent deaths taken into account, total death rates from tornadoes have dropped every decade since accurate statistics are available in the early 20th century and have fallen at least 80 percent in all: more than as many as a thousand died from tornadoes in a typical year in the early 20th century while few years in the 00s saw more than 100 deaths. If America wants to make sure the tragedy doesn’t repeat itself, continuing efforts to improve building, technology and insurance—not an emphasis on climate change—will save the most lives.

Building standards around the country have made most buildings in tornado-prone areas much safer over the past century. Tying roofs to house frames so they won’t blow away, required in many wind-storm prone areas, means that even people who fail to take shelter in basements will usually remain safe when storms roll through. Siding secured directly to home frames rather than simply nailed on also helps. But these efforts aren’t as widespread as they should be; most houses predate standards that require them. Buildings all across the country need reinforcement.

While strengthening building standards simply represents commonsense, developing better technology has saved even more lives. Some developments like Doppler weather radars that convey information about the velocity of funnel clouds have obvious direct applications to tornado forecasting. But even bigger declines in tornado deaths have happened as a result of broadly useful technologies like radio broadcasts that allow for advance warning and automatic gas line shutoffs that prevent storm-caused fires.   But there is more to do. For example, although smartphone technology makes it possible to send most people severe weather alerts for their exact locations (current tornado warnings cover huge areas so many ignore them), there’s no system that actually does so.

Lastly, insurance, although less directly, has also saved many lives. Over the past several decades, most states have moved towards “open competition” systems for setting insurance rates that let market forces rather than government agencies determine what people pay for insurance. These prices convey information about safety because people who live in dangerous places pay more. But this trend, like the others, could still go farther. Although the sheer number of factors involved with tornado damage makes it nearly impossible to draw firm conclusions, it’s interesting to note that the states with the most damage—North Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi—have not historically allowed for much choice for flexibility in their insurance markets.

In short, we have good evidence for what works. The climate change debate matters quite a lot in many areas of public policy. But the evidence about what has worked to deal with tornadoes indicates that public policy should focus on things other than climate change if we want to make America safer against severe windstorms.