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What the Insurance Industry Thinks About Climate Change
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Joseph Stromberg reports at the Smithsonian that if there's one group has an obvious and immediate financial stake in climate change, it's the insurance industry and in recent years, insurance industry researchers who attempt to determine the annual odds of catastrophic weather-related disasters say they're seeing something new. 'Our business depends on us being neutral. We simply try to make the best possible assessment of risk today, with no vested interest,' says Robert Muir-Wood, the chief scientist of Risk Management Solutions (RMS), a company that creates software models to allow insurance companies to calculate risk. Most insurers, including the reinsurance companies that bear much of the ultimate risk in the industry, have little time for the arguments heard in some right-wing circles that climate change isn't happening, and are quite comfortable with the scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels is the main culprit of global warming. 'Insurance is heavily dependent on scientific thought,' says Frank Nutter, president of the Reinsurance Association of America. 'It is not as amenable to politicized scientific thought.' A pronounced shift can be seen in extreme rainfall events, heat waves and wind storms and the underlying reason is climate change, says Muir-Wood, driven by rising greenhouse gas emissions. 'The first model in which we changed our perspective is on U.S. Atlantic hurricanes. Basically, after the 2004 and 2005 seasons, we determined that it was unsafe to simply assume that historical averages still applied,' he says. 'We've since seen that today's activity has changed in other particular areas as well—with extreme rainfall events, such as the recent flooding in Boulder, Colorado, and with heat waves in certain parts of the world.' Muir-Wood puts his money where his mouth is. 'I personally wouldn't invest in beachfront property anymore,' he says, noting the steady increase in sea level we're expecting to see worldwide in the coming century, on top of more extreme storms. 'And if you're thinking about it, I'd calculate quite carefully how far back you'd have to be in the event of a hurricane.'"
Insurance companies are always looking for an excuse to raise rates. They are not going to look for evidence against global warming when they can pretend that it has all been totally proven and tell clients that the risks are now sky high and, oh, by the way, your rates are now 60% higher to account for that.
winter's coming...
"I wouldn't invest in beach front property"
Tell that to the residents of Boulder, Co.
Also see http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/01/castles-built-on-sand.html
The downside is that their less-pessimistic competitors undercut them on rates and win big.
Until, of course, the pessimistic view proves right, and those competitors go under. Or, if you're really pessimistic, get a bailout.
Seriously, you take their estimate of risk as gospel? Their goal is to collect as much as possible, and pay as little as possible. They are simply trying to hedge their bets on the collection side. Duh.
And for the record, the Atlantic hurricane intensity has not increased one iota. That is a complete outright lie which they should know if they spoke to an actual expert on Atlantic basin hurricanes. The reason for larger payouts from damage in the past is that MORE people and expensive property are near the coast lines. They have been subsidizing bad behavior. Climate change is not the culprit there.
If another insurance company thinks climate change is a bunch of bunk, they can lower rates and steal business from the company that has reached the opposite conclusion.
Insurances are ready to accept global warming as it will help them adjusting their prices, but that does not mean they will do anything to prevent it, nor even to get it accepted by everyone.
People are building in places where they probably shouldn't build. Many of the good places to build are used up, and people have an almost irresistable pull to build in dangerous places.
More people
And yes, there are a lot more catastrophic events happening that are causing a lot more damage
He said that even when the first two events are taken into consideration, there is something quantifiable happening, that makes the industry tend to believe that warming is taking place, and probably man has a hand in it.
I wish I still had the presentation, because it had a lot of facts and figures, without the cherry picking that deniers love to employ. Pretty scary actually.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Insurance companies are all about collecting the highest premium and not paying claims. "Global warming" helps justify higher premiums, maybe create fear and uncertainty to buy mire insurance, and perhaps can help palm more claims off to the taxpayer in the occasional big event years.
So the insurance companies are in on it now, taking bribes from the shadowy international group of scientists perpetrating the hoax so that they'll use climate data even though intentionally using inaccurate information would be very bad for their business.
I was looking forward to seeing how this would effect the grand conspiracy theory.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
the past couple of years of almost no hurricanes
Right, in 2012 there were only Sandy and 9 others. Almost none.
Not only is the anecdotal evidence pretty strong, but now we have scientific evidence: we've burned so much gas in so many combustion engines over the past century we can now measure the effect or "leftover" from that at every corner of the globe. The science tying climate change to [anthropogenic] means however, is far from bulletproof and the report itself cannot say it is anything more than "likely".
What? What other species runs combustion engines? The last sentence seems to contradict the rest of the paragraph.
Anyway, if you're going to welcome the warming you'd better be well-protected from the pests, famines, wars and refugees. You might want to check this out:
https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives-intermediate.htm
And this:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Global-Warming/2013/0917/New-climate-change-map-adds-a-new-factor-people
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Climate change might be happening. But who or what is responsible?
'I personally wouldn't invest in beachfront property anymore,'
That runs counter to the industries best interests. Selling high priced insurance on expensive property. So if I was in the insurance business and I thought that risk could be mitigated by changing behavior, I'd be lobbying for that. On the other hand, if I thought that the change was inevitable and there was nothing to bee done, I'd tell people to avoid the risk.
Have gnu, will travel.
I read your post a few times, and failed to make sense out of it. Who are you saying is profiting from flood damage?
Tip: there's this button labeled "Preview" right under the box where you type stuff...
taking bribes from the shadowy international group of scientists
There's big money in climate change. Even Big Oil got on board. I see it as much a conspiracy as a bunch of pigs fighting for a place at the feeding trough.
so that they'll use climate data even though intentionally using inaccurate information would be very bad for their business.
Where's the evidence that the insurers were corrupting their business practices? Just because someone decided to pay lip service to climate change doesn't mean anything about how they provide insurance or estimate risks.
For me, it boils down to a simple observation. Where's the money? It's not in ranting against bad public insurance policies.
It may also be that US federal flood insurance is a profitable boondoggle for parts of the insurance industry. In that case, redirecting blame for their profits on climate change rather than fat public subsidies may allow the gravy train to run longer than it otherwise would.
There's big money in climate change. Even Big Oil got on board.
There is magnitudes more money on the other side. Big Oil didn't get on board, they simply realize reality too.
I've read some of the comments, one way and another, and would like to make a couple of observations:
The only thing preventing the insurance companies from raising rates is competition. If they can point to something like GW as justification, they stand to make more money. At worst, they won't loose any. Yes, there are higher costs associated with weather related events, but as has been pointed out in many posts, there are more people building (more expensive) structures in areas subject to those events. Global Warming? Can't say, since I'm not scientifically trained in climatology. But you might want to hedge your bets either way.
Not everyone agrees.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Well, let me be the first to say that you are a complete fucking selfish asshole. I imagine the millions of people that are going to die so you can a slightly more pleasant September will go to their graves knowing they died for a good cause. The hot spots on this planet are going to get hotter and the warm places are going to get hot. That means agriculture across the planet is going to be disrupted on the very large scale. Which possibly means millions of people of dying, but that's okay, you can wear a short sleeve shirt in September!
As for those nobodies that live on the coast, which is probably a good chunk of the human population, they'll just have to suck it up. Their cities will disappear and they'll just up and move, like it's nothing. It's just their lives and livelihood, I mean, it's really nothing. The trillions of dollars in infrastructure across the world will need to be replaced or augmented will come out of our pocket change, but that's okay, you're warm in September!
Of course, let's not discus the thousand or millions of species that live on this planet are going to heavily impacted or die. The giant and highly complex ecosystems across world with just have to "suck it up", you know, they don't do anything but make the world livable and the air breathable (I don't mean that figuratively either.) The environment will change in 100 years what would usually take 100,000 years, with a huge mystery of how it will turn out, but who cares, you get to drive a super size truck! I mean, if Mother nature was not such a pussy, she would not have this problem because it is all about YOU.
PS> If you don't like the September's where you live, you can fucking move, you ignorant fuck.
Linux O Muerte!
Oh, you know else who is making business decisions based on a future of anthropogenic (sorry, I typed wrong) climate change?
ADM, Monsanto, Dow Chemical. Companies that are involved in worldwide agribusiness. They're all betting heavily on climate change (the anthro-something one).
But not you, because you know better and the AM radio told you so.
You are welcome on my lawn.
How many were predicted? How many were predicted to his US mainland? How many did hit US mainland?
And Sandy was a Category 1 storm. Ignoring all the hype, the only reason anyone cares about Sandy is because it hit New York instead of Florida or Texas.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Exactly. The insurance companies are just like the oil companies when it comes to the price of gasoline. A china man farts in Mongolia and up goes the price of fuel. They will glob onto anything they can so long as they can create some fax reason to raise rates.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
If you want an idea of cost involved with "going green" and all that sort of thing then see; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw5Lda06iK0&feature=player_embedded
My karma is not a Chameleon.
There is magnitudes more money on the other side.
Do the math. Wikipedia claims half a trillion in fossil fuel subsidies versus almost 90 billion just in renewable energy subsidies in 2011. That's not an order of magnitude, much less several orders. And I mentioned a number of other big business sectors than just renewable energy.
Most of the fossil fuel subsidies are provided by oil producer nations such as OPEC memberes and Russia. Not everyone can get the subsidies and rent seeking opportunities that state-owned Gazprom or Saudi Aramco have. For example, at least 40 billion was due to Saudi Arabia alone (it's domestic oil consumption subsidy (which incidentally is significant enough to impair production!) and subsidies for oil-based electricity and water desalinization). I see that Gazprom had around $5 billion per year just in subsidies to former Soviet republic members. Venezuela has similar consumption subsidies kicking in about $4 billion a year currently.
In comparison, those renewable energy and other subsidies are ripe for the taking and not previously claimed by a state actor. And there's no reason a business can't claim both fossil fuel subsidies and climate change-related subsidies. It's not that hard.
In general no. It is in an insurance company's interest to charge a lower premium, so they then sell more insurance. If they overestimate the risk; more people will go to the competitor, and the competitor will have a better deal.
Overstating the risk basically makes sense, if the entire industry has overstated the risk, AND you have a captive market. For example: Automobile liability insurance is mandated by many states, therefore consumers have to buy it, and thus; the whole market may overstate the risk, with no fear that they are leaving money on the table, that could be their profit.
The captive market, basically means premiums can be 10 to 20 times would that would be otherwise.
Like the "evolution" fad , or the "round earth" fad?
the laws of science caresnot for popular thought. The physics of CO2 infra red absorbsion are well defined and the mechanism behind anthropomorphic science change would be just as valid if everyone thought like the anti-science crowd and denied the greenhouse effect.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
You're forgetting market pressure. Predict too high - nobody buys the insurance because it is too expensive and your competition is cheaper. If insurance were a monopoly you would be correct, however.
And you seem to have missed the point this gentleman in the article was trying to make. The rainfall in Boulder is a good example, not a bad one. These people mine data for a living. If they're seeing catastrophic weather events trending upwards, that means something. He even said the old traditional averages around 05 have broken down.
That's vitally, fantastically important information.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
All this proves is insurance companies have finally figured out they have a "scientific consensus" to hang their premium hikes on.
Yes, those events have happened and continue to happen. The quantity and severity averages, however, have changed.
People are typically denied payout on coverages because they don't understand the policies for which they are paying. Otherwise they leave themselves open to class action lawsuits.
The business of actuarials is to accurately estimate risk. Ask them what the risks of global warming present to increased claims: they are experts on the subject. As to the causes of global warming, there opinions are no more or less informed than anybody else as it doesn't impact their bottom line. Since nobody but straw men are arguing that global warming isn't happening, the "story" here is that insurance companies confirm that global warming is likely to be happening. Also, the world is round. News at 11.
the processes of financialization and growth through increased consumption. They will back these trends to the hilt until *after* they start seeing damage, and even then they will limit their cautionary guidelines to very specific circumstances (i.e. beachfront property, and now property with high fire risk).
They remain conservative and give not a damn about conservation, much less the plight of poor and normally uninsured human beings who are in the path of environmental destruction. The people who run and invest in private insurers would switch their operations over to profiting from climate distress tomorrow if the scientific predictions weren't so generalized. They are actively looking for ways to make this transition as we speak.
There were 6 predicted, and 10 happened.
Sandy was category 3, though it had weakened to category 1 when it hit the US. It was the 2nd costliest Atlantic hurricane ever.
The physics of CO2 infra red absorbsion are well defined
Then why is there a factor of two error bar (which might grow with the latest IPCC report) from lowest to highest estimate for the sensitivity of global temperature to CO2 concentrations? That small niche of well defined properties is embedded in a vastly complicated system which we don't have similar certainty about.
>$$$$$= lose your customers to a company that had neutral actuaries. Unless you wish to provide evidence of complete marketplace collusion between every single insurer covering a given type of property. No? Didn't think so...
So what about your tin foil hat supplier. Are they in on it too?
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Exactly. Put another way, *the entire industry* has an incentive to overstate the risk together.
I've little faith that anyone is bothering to undercut hurricane insurance because they *all* stand to gain if they keep up the charade that hurricanes are more likely now - taking advantage of popular opinion driven by our warmist friends :)
So the insurance companies are in on it now, taking bribes from the shadowy international group of scientists perpetrating the hoax so that they'll use climate data even though intentionally using inaccurate information would be very bad for their business.
Damn liberals.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There is magnitudes more money on the other side.
Do the math. Wikipedia claims half a trillion in fossil fuel subsidies versus almost 90 billion just in renewable energy subsidies in 2011. That's not an order of magnitude, much less several orders
And subsidies is the only money involved, right?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson said last year that AGW is happening. He went on to argue that we should adapt to it rather than preventing it, but a "should" argument doesn't contradict the science.
So what about your tin foil hat supplier. Are they in on it too?
You know, that's an industry that would really profit by pushing conspiracy theories.
And they probably provide an NSA backdoor in their hats.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Money talks and bullshit walks.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
There's another indication in support of my claims. If there's so much money involved on the fossil fuel side, why is the debate so one-sided in funding for the other side?
I was ready to believe the insurance industry regardless of the appeal to authority argument to make us trust it. The article did two things:
1. Stated that the Climate is changing
2. Failed to address or prove how this is man made.
No one disputes that the climate changes. There are even proven periods of dramatic change. How does that automatically mean we point the finger at humans? I heard the Ice Age came about because the dinosaurs were smoking trees.
Since Wilma, there have been no major hurricanes which have made landfall on the US mainland. Zero. Sandy was not a "major hurricane"; it did a lot of damage because of where it hit, but it was still only Category 1 in strength. This is the longest major hurricane drought on record.
Tsunamis aren't a risk to everyone just because they live nearish the sea. For instance, you can be protected by a bay, or in an area with minimal earthquake risk.
Of course, you can point out that tsunamis didn't happen in the Indian Ocean until the Boxing Day tsunami of a few years back, but then I could say that wherever you live, there's always some risk. Should I call you imprudent for not considering the risk of some event that hasn't happened in your area in a hundred years?
Look out!
Posting to undo moderation. Next time I'll read a post all the way through before giving an "Insightful" to a self-centred prick.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Most of those places no longer exist. They blew away back in the 1930s, or had their milkshake sucked out by Homo Hoover.
So your property is cheap to insure, but your futures contract on bottled water breaks the bank. Nice solution.
The vast majority of that money comes from industries with a publicly well-known, vested interest in denying global warming. And from right wing think tanks with bottomless pockets that fund studies trying to disprove AGW and still are forced to conclude by the evidence they gather that it is quite likely occurring. Thanks for pointing that out with your post.
Is anyone else basking in the irony of all these pro-business AGW denialists suddenly trying to come up with excuses for why the market disagrees with them?
You don't need regulation for anything, market forces keep companies honest and well behaved!! Except now... because insurance companies are somehow able to charge unnecessarily high premiums without being undercut by a competitor, or the government is making them overcharge or something...
The market is right, unless is disagrees with you, and then it's wrong.
I stole this Sig
How a culture is clustered depends on the habits of the species of that culture.
Humans have the ability to utilize any means possible, and before the 19th century oceans and rivers were the motorways of the world. Roads were at best two tracks with the width of two horse asses. That caused important points to get a denser population.
During the 19th century the railroads became the important way of transportation on land and some additional centers did grow up, especially where major rivers and railroads did cross. Sometimes for other reasons as well.
The 20th century became the century of the car. And all the time the coastal centers have prospered since changing from one mode of transportation to another makes them a hotspot even in our time.
However if you look at another species on another planet things may be completely different. Another species may be more attracted to climbing trees than water - much like cats on Earth.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
They exist to help it's customers in times of need, yet it's a for profit business. Those 2 do NOT work together.
All businesses exist to help customers with their needs. Profits are a monetary signal that they're running the business correctly, and the incentive to put up the capital for risk in the first place.
Real insurance is just a collective risk sharing pool with a management fee. Granted, regulatory agencies have made that simple reality as painful as possible.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
With all the public money sloshing around in various climate change-related sectors like renewable energy, carbon emission credits, public transportation, and climate change reparations, there's plenty with which to bribe various insurance entities.
Ah, the kookery never ends. You could be sitting on a raft on a planet covered with water and you'd still have a meticulous explanation for how it has nothing to do with the hoax of global warming. Why don't you save us all the trouble and come out of the closet? Just outline what evidence you require to convince you that average global temperatures are on the rise and that all or most of it is directly caused by burning fossil fuels.
As an aside, I like how you like to employ colorful adjectives to describe the amount of public money at stake to suggest a financial motive for perpetrating a global warming hoax, but at the same time your ignore the TRILLIONS of dollars at stake as a motive for denying global warming.
There were 6 predicted, and 10 happened.
Good to know. I mis-remembered it the other way.
Sandy was category 3, though it had weakened to category 1 when it hit the US. It was the 2nd costliest Atlantic hurricane ever.
Costly because of where it hit and the long build to storm surge caused a lot of flooding and damage. If it had hit Florida and died over Georgia, no one outside would have cared much*, because it just was not a powerful storm.
.
*I say this because no one cares much whenever Florida gets hit by a hurricane. It's expected to happen.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Only when assuming a free and functioning economy with no collusion between insurance companies.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
Every once in a while, I find myself in a position to debunk the merits of astrology. As you can imagine, the people who are believers are next to impossible to be persuaded otherwise. However, one of the arguments seem to be more convincing and at least make some of these people think. If the position of stars at the moment of one's birth really influence one's destiny and (say) one's life expectancy, wouldn't insurance companies pay a top dollar for astrological natal charts? Insurance companies do not give two bits for the moral and ideological implications of the formulae they are using to determine their rates. They will use satanic rituals providing they improve their bottom line.
I don't know the two people you mentioned, but it is very reassuring that all this global warming insurance shit is just their fault. Thank you!
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
HA! Seen on Slashdot, but unfortunately un-attributed because I didn't save the link:
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
I didn't understand this bit.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
In a competitive market, no. For instance, car insurance (at least here) is brutally competitive. If the requirement for mandatory insurance was dropped tomorrow, I doubt premiums would go down. No one insurer can charge 'rip off prices' because someone would undercut them a minute later.
As a counter example, until recently light aircraft in Europe did not have to carry insurance. About 4 years ago, liability insurance became compulsory (with fairly high lower limits, too - in £millions). Our insurance premiums didn't go up when mandatory insurance came in, even though aviation insurance is a lot less competitive than car insurance.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Insurance companies live or die by correctly assessing the risk they cover, and translating the expected cost + safety margin + operating cost + profit margin into insurance premiums.
And yes, they will try to squeeze costs (as indeed anyone who ever tried to claim on their medical insurance will know all too well).
But this is something completely different. Insurance companies are giving notice that they will not offer cover anymore for certain risks (i.e. against premiums that are considered marketable).
They are leaving this piece of business on the table, which definitely causes them a loss in turnover. And that (counter to your superficial assumptions) is not a negotiating ploy. They just don't want it.
That in turn should set you thinking.
(1) that more widespread and severe weather extremes aren't related to an global change in weather patterns (i.e. climate change), and
(2) and that this global change is related to human activity
Well, that's an improvement on earlier positions taken in this debate in that you implicitly acknowledge that there are measurable and impactful weather changes. That used to be denied too (and still is by people who don't follow the news and by people who's thinking is faith-based rather than fact-based).
As to whether climate change is happening, the successive IPCC reports are remarkably consistent. It is.
As to the linkage between human activity and climate change, it's just the paragraphs aimed at the public and policy makers have been rephrased. Not the underlying observations and thought.
New Scientist has a readable and accessible discourse on how people deal with the message.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929360.200-climate-science-why-the-world-wont-listen.html
Fear is the justification that these insurance companies are going to use to jack people's rates up. We have seen fewer hurricanes, fewer tornadoes and sea level rise is still about the same as it has been for the last 100 years, and yet people are more than willing to pay more for insurance simply because these disasters "must be in the pipeline."
Here is the secret:
People will always take advantage of you if you let them for monetary gain. And people will always side politically with the group that benefits them the most. Who benefits from climate change hysteria?
Or perhaps the insurance companies are doing both...being prudent just in case temperatures do start rising from our stagnant levels over the last 15 years, and if it turns out to be wrong, those rate increases can be blamed on the scientists. Its really win-win for them, and I would be careful if I was predicting doom and gloom, because if people get screwed out of money that goes into insurance companies, those people might be a little pissed in the end. So keep your predictions and projections on a realistic level is the moral there. People do tend to get over-excited about being made to be chumps with money.
And don't you see a problem with those two statements?
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
OK, I'll spell it out. (Warning: loss of subtlety ensues.) There is no natural reason for lights to cluster along beaches at night. However, an intelligent species both would have a preference for living along beaches and would light them at night with artificial light, if for no other reason than to protect its valuable beachfront property - think Johnny Carson in Malibu.
A slightly less intelligent species, finding itself born in that Garden of Eden we call Earth, which is by far the best known place in the galaxy for life to live, would proceed to systematically ruin that garden via global warming. Then, to escape rising tides, it would intelligently retreat from the beaches, which (here's the ironic part - wait for it...) it made dangerous with the very intelligence that allowed it to be attracted there and power artificial lights in the first place.
So, is a lifeform like that truly "intelligent"?
I would hope people would bet heavily on climate change. Because the climate on this planet has been changing drastically for the last 4 billion years and I doubt it will suddenly decide to STOP changing because humans now inhabit this planet. We have seen vast hot times, vast ice ages and even a probable snow-ball Earth where the entire planet was covered in ice. We have even seen atmospheres that would poison humans, and atmospheres without oxygen even.
This planet has been changing since day 1. So yes, you are throwing out a red herring here either through ignorance on what climate skeptics believe, or because you just want to insult half the US through your "talking points." Serious climate skeptics do not believe the warming we have seen is the fault of man, but rather natural warming that the planet is giving us through processes that we do not quite understand yet. Most of us also believe as a rule that CO2 DOES have an effect, but that its been over-emphasized by political organizations that take the normal 1C per doubling of CO2 and simply multiply it by some figure to make it worse with zero proof that water will amplify the effect instead of moderating the effect of CO2 increases which is what water normally behaves. (Hello, we use water as a temperature moderator in nuclear power plants, so we do know it behaves like this)...
In any event, the last 15 years are showing that the climate models which were never more than a weak hypothesis were in fact wrong. If CO2 did drive temperatures, the temperatures would have kept on increasing as long as CO2 was increasing in our atmosphere. That failure of the models in essence shows us that CO2 has a more minor impact on temperatures which kind of leaves the only alternative left:
That the climate is changing due to reasons we do not understand.
The experts are the ones stuck on the dying horse. The rest of us have moved on and are trying to figure out what is causing the current stagnant temperatures. As for future temperatures, Ill flip the coin and tell you what the future holds. And I hope these companies are also planning for a cooling world, because frankly we are in what is called an inter-glacial and at some point regardless of man we will be thrust back into an ice age that will be much worse than the supposed catastrophe of warming. We can adapt to warming. We can not adapt to cooling as well. Think about that.
The vast majority of that money comes from industries with a publicly well-known, vested interest in denying global warming.
Again, show me this alleged money. I see empty assertions. But when I look at actual visible budgets, the World Wildlife Fund, a group promoting climate change theory, by itself receives more in public funds than the entire "climate deniers" cottage industry.
A comparison of the two links shows that billionaires have supposedly donated $120 million to the cause of climate denying over ten years while the WWF received $41 million in public funding just last year.
Greenpeace apparently received $2.2 billion (though not in public funding) over the same time period that billionaires were kicking out $120 million.
And from right wing think tanks with bottomless pockets that fund studies trying to disprove AGW and still are forced to conclude by the evidence they gather that it is quite likely occurring.
Didn't happen. Read up on it. Yes, there was such a study and yes, the Koch brothers were funding it. But right wing think tanks with bottomless pockets weren't involved.
T'he thing that is apparently so easy to forget is that there are far bigger corporations (though not corporations as are usually considered on Slashdot) out there than Big Oil and other fossil fuel businesses. For example, the European Union is one such with a captive market of almost 400 million people and backed by the power of a few dozen developed world countries, all themselves powerful corporations in their own right. Similarly, there's the United States which again has a captive market of roughly 340 million people.
These deep pocketed organizations which employ tens of millions of people and have budgets, which can range into the trillions of dollars, can easily outspend the entire fossil fuel industry. And my take in the climate change debate is that they have done so.
Really? His surname is Muir-Wood? How cool is that! I wonder how long it took him (or his parents) to find a compatible spouse with the correct last name.
For another example of the money involved, the EU is (or perhaps was) proposing to spend 20% of its budget on "climate-related actions". That looks to be 200 billion Euro over six years. I think it's foolish to speak of money while ignoring who is spending it.
You are aware how reinsurance works, right?
You are aware that the reinsurers really believe that global warming is coming down the pipe and have already started to adjust their rates accordingly?
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Only when assuming a free and functioning economy with no collusion between insurance companies.
Any DA proving (and busting) such an illegal collusion will gain a lot of fame and glory, and will be destined for great things. The insurers know this.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
It's all a scam that you'd be so into but "the man" (who is pushing the scam) won't let anyone in, which is why nobody has come forward with the proof of the scame.
But we can infer proof of the scam (despite not being able to infer the existence of continued global warming from the weather events) because you haven't become an insurance broker to make out like a bandit by undercutting these scamming insurers and not buying into the AGW scam.
Can't we.
They only back events with the smallest possible probability of occurence.
They stand to profit from sowing fear.
On those criteria alone, you might simply conclude that the insurance industry has found: the climate is not changing nor is the incidence of extreme weather, and that humans are not the cause of any changes.
Honesty from the insurance industry? Now that's a low probability event.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
With all the public money sloshing around in various climate change-related sectors like renewable energy, carbon emission credits, public transportation, and climate change reparations, there's plenty with which to bribe various insurance entities.
Whereas big oil and big coal have no money at all and therefore are known to bribe nobody at all ever.
Give me a break, fool!
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Have solar panels on my roof actually, slightly greater than 7kW and I don't drive. However, I also don't try to pretend to have a 0 impact since the stuff I use still gets driven, I use a train to get to work etc. I'm not an econazi maybe just an eco Pol Pot. The amount of gas that a car uses, the weight of it for example can change much more rapidly than governments are going to tear down the new wind firm they built for billions. I'd suggest that if the governments are going to involve themselves in peoples energy choices they should incentivize/force
1) Imbedded the total cost of an energy source in its cost by C02 (or other factors) taxing
2) new buildings must have a solar installation assuming they are south (or north for the southern hemishere) facing.
3) cars are hybrids possibly with rooftop solar installed. As solar panels get more efficient it would be much easier to convince people to drop 1k to get the new model on the car than to convince a power authority to replace 10'000 panels. You could use peoples vanity against them, they'll need the new IPanel 5s before their neighbour gets it.
Not to rain on your parade, and not to take sides, but if it was a hoax, then the insurance companies would love to get in. It makes risk go up, which means they can justify premiums going up. That's more money in their pocket as long as the entire industry plays along. (And we see that happen all the time in the petroleum industry.)
AJ Henderson
Science is not based on consensus.
You do not get to vote on the truth
Here are some "facts? based on consensus"
The sky is blue; no it is not.
The earth is round; no it is not.
It is hotter than it has ever been; no it is not.
It is colder than it has ever been; no it is not.
The temperature of the Pacific Ocean is hotter than it has ever been in the last 5000 years.
How do you take the temperature of 20million cubic miles of fluid?
The Earth is a dynamic system, heated by a thermonuclear fusion engine literally 1million times bigger than the planet.
A belch of volcano gas is has a greater affects than mankind in upseting the balance of airflow and heat absorbption.
We live in the 3mile skin of an 8000mile ball.
I remind you of the parable of the elephant and the 5 blind men:
One man in the Himalayas notices to ice sheet getting smaller and declares Global Warming.
One man in Antarctica notices the ice sheet getting thicker and declares Global Cooling.
One man on the north side of an island notices the beach disappearing and declares the oceans are rising.
One man on the south end of the island notices the beach is increasing and declares the oceans are receding.
One man notices that it is the hottest summer on "record" and declares Global Warming.
One man notices the same year that his summer is the coldest on record and declares Global Cooling.
All are true
For you to "believe" that you matter, you affect the planet, shows how self-important you are, how little you understand.
We literally are a speck on a rock next to an ocean. In comparable size, we are an anthill on the football(or soccer) field.
Even if we tried, we do not affect the outcome of the game.
The IMF has a report that pegs the total world-wide subsidies to fossil fuels at about $1.9 trillion per year.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
A comparison of the two links shows that billionaires have supposedly donated $120 million to the cause of climate denying over ten years while the WWF received $41 million in public funding just last year.
You're comparing apples and oranges. $120 million was spent to specifically fund climate change denial campaigns, while the WWF funds are mostly spend (84%) on actual conservation programs. The other 16% is split between fundraising and administration. You'd need to find the amount of money that WWF spends on climate change advocacy campaigns to make a reasonable comparison. Otherwise you need to compare BP's $400 billion in revenues per year to the $600 million in revenues that the WWF gets per year.
The situation actually looks lopsided in the other direction when you're making reasonable comparisons.
These deep pocketed organizations which employ tens of millions of people and have budgets, which can range into the trillions of dollars, can easily outspend the entire fossil fuel industry. And my take in the climate change debate is that they have done so.
Exactly, what percentage of those budgets are spent on climate change advocacy?
My take is that you are desperately clinging to any excuse you can find.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
No they can't really. The article is really about the reinsurance companies. These are the companies from which the insurance companies buy their insurance. Insurance company X maybe doesn't have $10B in the bank to underwrite all their policies. They may be bringing in $100M per year in policies, and pay $75M per year to underwrite their policies from reinsurance company Y. Note that I'm not in the business and I'm pulling these numbers out of a hat.
An established company is probably running similar risk numbers to everyone else and reaching similar conclusions. An upstart insurance company betting against global warming and offering lower policies is unlikely to have the cashflow to purchase their more expensive reinsurance. They're also the ones most likely to need reinsurance as they don't possess any significant assets to underwrite their policies themselves.
www.clarke.ca
Yes, the climate is changing, and the insurance industry is adjusting accordingly. That simply isn't the issue.
The issue is whether the changes are preventable through intervention, and what the cost/benefit tradeoffs are.
If the main conclusion is "don't buy beachfront property", that doesn't imply much of a need for action. Beachfront property has always been risky anyway, and that includes entire cities that are directly on the water.
Just to be clear, do you think that anthropogenic climate change refers to climate change influenced by humans, or climate change which is occurring naturally.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Infallible theory you've got there ...
You'll remember how well the banking industry predicted the risks of mortgage default. What could go wrong?
The way i see it ...humanity's greatest contribution to the greenhouse effect and global warming is not burning fossil fuels ... it's population growth ... turn 80% of the worlds population into fertilizer and we won't have any significant effect on climate change.
Waste of time. This person is clearly biased and extreme; waste of time trying to educate or correct the misinformation. Not lies but a lot of mistakes and ignorance.
For example, Global Cooling or Global Dimming is completely mischaracterized; Global Dimming science was found to be completely aligned with Global Warming science.
Oddly, the thin atmosphere is actually mentioned while at the same time as the tired argument about how we are too small to impact it. Why not mention how density works and how much gas is produced when a solid is gassified? Or follow up your lose reference to sunlight with those embarrassing arguments about solar activity, distance from sun, mars being cold, etc? Or better yet, rant about how we didn't improve the ozone or acid rain problems and that they in fact never existed but were created so that decades later they could be used as part of the scientific community's conspiracy to make us Pagan.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Um, is this a trick question? Caused by humans, of course.
"with its genesis in humanity"
You are welcome on my lawn.
No doubt. And it is in the best interests of the insurance companies to promote beliefs that exaggerate risk to allow the charging of higher premiums, and the payout of fewer claims.
Sounds like a wildly optimistic statement :) There's no particular reason to believe that you haven't encoded beliefs into your software that exaggerate risk, either by relying on dubious information (say, as in climate models that have no regional resolution, and even fail on the global metrics), or by discounting mitigations to risk.
Your software may have been used, but I doubt you can show that in its absence, premiums would be higher :)
I think what you mean to say is, "Experts are always wrong."
Because when you can sufficiently devalue expertise, you can tell people anything. It's why there's a huge battle between religion and science right now.
Because experts pee into the swimming pool of superstition.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Ah, the kookery never ends. You could be sitting on a raft on a planet covered with water
Why can't you accept that science is evidence-based? I will accept some level of evidence, but not consensus or half-baked research and modeling.
Just outline what evidence you require to convince you that average global temperatures are on the rise and that all or most of it is directly caused by burning fossil fuels.
I agree that there is some degree of increase in global warming though not the second part that "all or most" is due to burning fossil fuels or other human-caused activity. Nor the current claim, that this resultant global warming is serious enough to warrant changes in our behavior.
I wish to see a demonstration that climatology can accurately predict future climate given solar activity and future greenhouse emission levels. So far that is lacking.
I'd also wish to see more scientific attitudes in the field and less of this false certainty.
As an aside, I like how you like to employ colorful adjectives to describe the amount of public money at stake to suggest a financial motive for perpetrating a global warming hoax, but at the same time your ignore the TRILLIONS of dollars at stake as a motive for denying global warming.
There are trillions at stake either way. For example, the EU recently has proposed to spend 200 billion Euro over six years (20% of its budget) on climate-related activities. Its member nations are already spending considerable sums.
Further, no one has yet to explain why if fossil fuel backers are so wealthy and working so hard to spread disinformation on climate change, that they're being outspent propaganda-wise by at least an order of magnitude by the side favoring the climate change argument.
For the calculation of post-tax subsidies, the benchmark price includes an adjustment for efficient taxation (t*>0) to reflect both revenue needs and a correction for negative consumption externalities:
Post-tax subsidy = (Pw + t*) â" Pc,
where Pw and Pc are defined as above. Therefore, when there is a pre-tax subsidy the post-tax subsidy is equal to the efficient tax plus the pre-tax subsidy. When there is no pre-tax subsidy, the post-tax subsidy is equal to the difference between efficient and actual taxation.
I gather the idea is that "efficient taxes" contain no economic distortion. Say if a government collects 25% of the country's GDP as taxes, then the efficient tax on fossil fuels would somehow be 25% of the GDP contribution of those fossil fuels whatever that would be. But it could also mean 25% of the raw cost of fossil fuels, which would go a long way to explaining why they think they have so much in subsidies which no one else happens to have.
From the UN report they admit temperatures haven't risen for 15 years and they admit they don't know why. This breaks their models that depend on CO2 as the cause.
Ok Slashdot guys, you act as if you're scientists. What did they teach you in grade school about the scientific method? A hypothesis is valid until there is a counter example. With the CO2 levels now over 400 PPM, we have our counter example. This is not hard guys. In fact it's obvious.
Something caused temperatures to rise. Clearly it wasn't CO2.
As for the weather, that's funny. In 1893 Hogg island was mostly wiped off the face of the earth - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hog_Island_(New_York) . Of course today that would somehow be "proof". Other storms, I remember real bad storms going back decades. Mud slides in California, etc. In short - mother nature being mother nature. I don't see a change and as for the hurricanes this season has been way below what they had predicted - again due to bad models.
Time all scientists admit the obvious. CO2 is a symptom and not the cause. Greenhouses are not hot due to CO2 by the way. It isn't as if they pump CO2 into the house.
Insurance companies are in the business of making money by accepting risks in return for premiums. If they don't charge enough for premiums, or the risks are higher than they expect, they'll lose money (sometimes catastrophically, if they've covered too many correlated events.) But if they charge too much for premiums, customers aren't going to buy from them, and customers like banks and big corporations have more choices about who to buy from (including self-insurance) than you do.
So they have to either charge rates that are vaguely realistic, or they're not going to make money, especially if they have competitors who have roughly the same information about risks that they do and will undercut them if they get too greedy.
And as one of the spokescritters said, they have to base their rates on actual science; basing them on politicized "science" doesn't work. Coal companies are in the opposite position - if real science says they're destroying the world with greenhouse gasses, and politicized science says "Sure, no problem", they've got a big incentive to politicize science so they can sell their coal, instead of having policies based on real science that force them to stop.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yeah, isn't it amazing what kind of leaps of logic otherwise smart people will make just to avoid having to adjust their worldview?
The situation actually looks lopsided in the other direction when you're making reasonable comparisons.
I just noted that the spending is more than ten times as large in favor of two proponents of climate change advocacy whose primary role is as advocacy groups, and you say it's incomparable? I also noted that the public funding for one of the above, the World Wildlife Fund swamped what funding was discovered of the climate change "denier" advocates.
120 million was spent to specifically fund climate change denial campaigns, while the WWF funds are mostly spend (84%) on actual conservation programs.
So what is the difference? It's well known that propaganda is more effective when it is done in conjunction with useful work or charity. Christian-themed soup kitchens do it all the time.
For example, I just glanced at the WWF International webpage. Every single article or blurb on the main page is either climate change or oil themed. Six of ten articles in their "Conservation news and stories" webpage are similarly themed. So if you went to their webpage to save the pandas, you got a big dose of climate change in the process.
My take is that their conservation work, while worthy, buys access for climate change propaganda. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Someone should advocate for that side. And if they're saving endangered species and promoting conservation efforts in the process, then so much the better.
But I tire of the unsubstantiated stories of Big Oil buying the debate. Again, where is the money? All I can see are relatively small advocacy groups like the Heartland Institute, which appears to be among the largest. Their $5 million a year budget sounds impressive until you look through the numbers I quoted earlier. Even the IPCC easily outspends them (almost $13 million last year).
Where's the Big Oil movie? Hollywood has always had money for making huge environmentalist-themed flicks, even crap like "The Day After Tomorrow" or "Waterworld" which are over the top, stereotypical morality plays almost to the point of parody of the environmentalist belief system.