Comments on the short communication: The number of natural disasters is zero: commentary to “Is the number of global natural disasters increasing?” by David Oliver Kasdan, Youngdal Son, and Hangul Lee Natural Hazards https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-025-07245-9 (2025)

In their recently published “short communication”, Kasdan et al. (Nat Hazards 2025) explain their strong negative reaction (“raises our hackles”) to an earlier article (Alimonti and Mariani in Environ Hazards 23(2):186–202, 2023) which questioned if the often-quoted increase in the number of entries (events) in a leading “natural disaster” database is real or a consequence of evolving reporting practices. According to the communication’s abstract, their objections are partly semantic, regarding the term “natural disaster”, and also methodological. They also question the “intentions” of the authors of the earlier study. As we explain below, we consider that the comments of Kasdan et al. 2025 are flawed in several ways, both regarding perspective and methodological aspects.