Oh look - record rainfall causes death and destruction in Japan - again

For the last 5 years or so, during the Japanese summer, I've been posting news about record rainfall there, the resultant floods, landslides and deaths.  (My search bar will find the posts for you.)   Here's the latest entry:

Luckily, Michael Shellenberger has written that book which can reassure the victims that natural disasters like this are not increasing.   This must all be in the imagination of Japanese residents:

An average of almost 1,500 landslides rocked Japan every year during the past decade, marking an increase of almost 50 percent on the previous 10 years, according to a government report endorsed by the Cabinet on Friday.

The trend reflected the rise in torrential rainfall due to global warming, said the white paper on land, infrastructure and transport, which called for restrictions on the use of at-risk land and relocating residents to safer areas.

The average number of landslides per year was 1,006 between 2000 and 2009, but jumped 46.7 percent to 1,476 between 2010 and 2019. This compares with 1,027 between 1990 and 1999.

Downpours of 50 millimeters or more per hour in the past decade were recorded 1.4 times more frequently than between 1976 and 1985.

I never really did trust Shellenberger, and his turn to the Lomborg/Pielke style of environmental half truth advocacy, all stoked by a "if you don't agree with me as to what should be done, I'd prefer to create political doubt that anything need be done at all" attitude, has given me some retrospective justification for never taking him very seriously.

His reaction to the questions posed to him by The Guardian really does seem a bit nutty, if you ask me.  Ketan Joshi's post about his odd behaviour is good.