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Insurance Industry Looking Hard At Climate Change
A recent paper in Science (abstract) examines the insurance industry's reaction to climate change. The industry rakes in trillions of dollars in revenues every year, and a shifting climate would have the potential to drastically cut into the profits left over after settlements have been paid. Hurricane Sandy alone did about $80 billion worth of damage to New York and New Jersey. With incredible amounts of money at stake, the industry is taking climate projections quite seriously. From the article:
"Many insurers are using climate science to better quantify and diversify their exposure, more accurately price and communicate risk, and target adaptation and loss-prevention efforts. They also analyze their extensive databases of historical weather- and climate-related losses, for both large- and small-scale events. But insurance modeling is a distinct discipline. Unlike climate models, insurers’ models extrapolate historical data rather than simulate the climate system, and they require outputs at finer scales and shorter time frames than climate models."
God forbid someone actually get some actual benefit from their insurance...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Global warming has already been forecast http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review to cost much more than slowing it down/preventing it would cost.
I guess those externalities in economic models (and fossil-fuel price and fossil-fuel-based product prices) weren't so external after all.
Who would have guessed that the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The CAGW graphs from models have repeatedly failed to predict current temperature trends, and others, like global methane in the atomosphere. Data has been repeatedly unused, misused and misreported in CAGW pal reviewed "literature". CAGW is a scam and pseudoscience. Go listen to Feynman about missed predictions. Get over it.
Insurance has been raising for a couple of years as there is an increase of natural disasters that are purely related to the weather.
Regardles of the who and what, but the climate is changing noticable. Normally at these part in this time of year it is freezing but now we are getting temperatures in the range of 15-18 degrees. We also have more floods then in the previous years. It may be warmer, but we also have a lot more rain.
...using climate change as an excuse to raise rates? A win-win.
If the scaremongers are right, they cover possible extra expenses... which have not - in any sense - shown up. No extra bad weather, hurricanes, et cetera. Just higher payouts from covering more people.
If they're wrong, the insurance companies get more money for free, and they get the environmental folks to help them get the rate increases approved from various government entities.
"We need to raise our rates to allow for extra payouts from climate change."
"Do we get a refund if you don't have to pay out more?"
"No. But don't you feel better knowing that we might?"
You mean actuaries, and they are.
it's those who scream the loudest about global warming that want us to wait twenty years until we can switch to renewable power sources.
Straw man. Ask most actual scientists who know anything about the topic, and we'll tell you we should be building nuclear power plants as fast as possible. (And yes, I would happily live near one, although since I live practically on top of a fault line it would be a pretty stupid place to build it.)
We see more stories about global warming on Slashdot lately because more of the predicted effects are becoming reality. That trend will continue because we will continue to do nothing to address it, opting to put our own short-term interests ahead of the costs to future generations. Nothing new there. Just ask Yeats: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity."