Sometimes poor planning in my opinion is to blame for majority of the disasters we are experiencing. Of course the variations in climate patterns is a big contributor but we are blaming climate change for things which we can avert with a little planning. For instance if we destroy upland forest cover and riparian vegetation, we naturally should expect more flooding of downstream lands. But we find politicians and misinformed opinion shapers blaming it all on climate change!
Climate change does have its effects. It has always been there. But human activities and anthropological effects just make it worse.
Poor planning, urban expansion, economic growth and climate change are all causes of the greater catastrophe-related losses in recent decades.
Munich Re is a large (world's largest?) German reinsurance company, and their statistics show that wheater-related losses are growing much faster than the benchmark of seismic-related ones.
This is strong evidence of the growing role of climate change in human catastrophes.
References:
Excerpt: "it would seem that the only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change:
http://www.munichre.com/en/media_relations/press_releases/2010/2010_09_27_press_release.aspx
Here's the graph comparing both seismic and weather-related losses:
http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/GENI-us/2012/geni-us-letter-2012-04.shtml
climate is always change, however I agree that human activities especially combustion of fossil fuel has made unbalance condition that nature can't neutralize the effect.
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