More statistics

John Vidal in the Guardian asks, Are we having more natural disasters?

The answer is, apparently not, but that more people appear to be "affected" by them when they happen.

What is happening, says the Red Cross, is that more people are being killed and affected by disasters. Last week it said 901,177 had died in natural disasters from 1995 to 2004, compared with 643,418 in the previous decade. Count the "adversely affected" and you find that 2.54 billion people - almost half the people alive - have been through one disaster or another in the past decade, compared with 1.7 billion in the previous 10 years. Worldwide, the Red Cross reckons that the number of people affected by disaster has climbed 46% in a decade.

Is this because we cluster round coast lines like flies on shit, convinced that beachfront property, no matter how rickety, is surely better than living the landlocked life? More fool we, if so (see blog entries passim).

Or is it because the phrase "adversely affected" includes everyone from the direct victim to the person who gets slightly annoyed while listening to the 5Live phone-in on the subject?