Quantitative Data is Better Unless...

For a lot of business owners, knowing the quantitative impact to their bottom line is what can seal the deal in making strategic decisions. It makes sense to ignore (for now) the thing that causes the business to lose $50 and pay attention to the thing that costs the business $500,0000. Data is usually trustworthy, until it isn't because it creates a false narrative.

The cost or negative economic impact of natural disasters has grown exponentially over decades. Partly because settlement patterns have increased (read: we put more money and people in the way of disasters) and partly because the disasters are growing in severity. Spending on things like continuity of operations or emergency management isn't very "sexy" because it is preventative by nature. You prepare instead of repair...or make the cost of repair significantly less by investing in preparation (Texas decided against investing $6B in winterizing their power grid in 2011 and were the recipients of a $195B loss due to 2021's winter storm, for example. If they invested back then...).

But how do I even know the impact was $195B? Because it was recorded by NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), like all of the preceding disasters. Thanks to a White House order issued on May 8, 2025, NOAA will sunset their Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database this year, which has been tracking the cost of extreme weather events since 1980. The goal is to get rid of climate change as a factor in policy-making. There are many issues with this.

First, how can business owners and local governments make informed decisions about what to invest in to protect themselves? This is just bad business practice all around. I get some people (incorrectly) believe that climate change is not real (despite heaps of evidence to the contrary), but all it is doing is hiding the figures in dollar amounts so the public can't make informed decisions. The disasters will still show up. The damage will still occur.

I've talked about this to two people. They had similar sentiments: "Well, that data will show up elsewhere or be filled in by someone else. Like insurance companies."

Here's the problem with that statement: NOAA was getting its information from FEMA, the SBA, and HUD - all the federal resources of aid in response and recovery. They pay out just to help, when there is no insurance, or when insurance doesn't cover the loss. The insurance companies are only going to record the cost to them. They try to make sure the payout is as small as possible if they are paying out at all (watch US Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri masterfully tear into the insurance industry's natural disaster practices).

If that's the data we'll be left with to use, some will say, "See, it wasn't that bad!" or "Climate change is reversing!" Neither of those statements are helpful or true when you're trying to figure out the steps you need to take to keep your doors open and cash flowing.

So what does that leave us with? Data that doesn't show the whole picture. Data that can't be trusted. It's not false data, it just has a lot of asterisks after it qualifying that is limited in what it is reporting. That makes quantitative data - previously the gold standard - data that isn't very helpful.