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I live in South Jersey, so yeah, Sandy is about to make my life uh interesting.
Hurricane Sandy: One of many reasons the insurance industry is paying attention to climate change (Photo: Charlie Walker / Flickr)
So before the power/interweb goes out let me reiterate a point that is not made often enough in the climate change debate – Big Business is not united in their denialism.
One sector that is particularly immune to fossil fuel propaganda is the global insurance and reinsurance industry – because unlike consumers or politicians they are on the hook when the reality of Climate Change strikes.
Take for example Munich Re cited in a wonderful article from the New Yorker: Watching Sandy, Ignoring Climate Change
A couple of weeks ago, Munich Re, one of the world’s largest reinsurance firms, issued a study titled “Severe Weather in North America.” According to the press release that accompanied the report, “Nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America.” The number of what Munich Re refers to as “weather-related loss events,” and what the rest of us would probably call weather-related disasters, has quintupled over the last three decades. While many factors have contributed to this trend, including an increase in the number of people living in flood-prone areas, the report identified global warming as one of the major culprits: “Climate change particularly affects formation of heat-waves, droughts, intense precipitation events, and in the long run most probably also tropical cyclone intensity.”
Munich Re’s report was aimed at the firm’s clients—other insurance companies—and does not make compelling reading for a general audience. But its appearance just two weeks ahead of Hurricane Sandy seems to lend it a peculiarly grisly relevance. Sandy has been called a “superstorm,” a “Frankenstorm,” a “freakish and unprecedented monster,” and possibly “unique in the annals of American weather history.” It has already killed sixty-five people in the Caribbean, and, although it’s too early to tell what its full impact will be as it churns up the East Coast, loss estimates are topping six billion dollars.
That’s right folks. The world’s largest and well established insurance companies are not only not in denial, they are pricing and operating with Climate Change firmly in mind. And their expertise seems to be yielding an accurate analysis. Which is important to them because their fortunes are at stake.
Well time to go shutter the windows, make sure I have food and batteries in place, because the warmer water caused by Climate Change means Southern New Jersey is going to face sustained 50-70 mph winds tonight and into tomorrow as well as billions of dollars in damages on the shore and energy infrastructure.
Not to mention one of the country’s oldest nuclear power plants is here.
What could go wrong?
Maybe I’ll have enough light to read Senator Inhofe’s award winning book about it all being a hoax.
Then again, maybe not.
18 Comments
Great post. Recommended.
Soooo glad to see this.
This morning, as the graphics flew past on the Weather Channel, my daughter asked what 5 minus 10 meant. I realized she was talking about the rainfall estimates across Pennsylvania, ranging from 3 inches in the far west to 10 inches along the Delaware River.
Rainfall of this magnitude across the entire state will produce severe, possibly unprecedented, flooding throughout the Susquehanna River watershed, home to the Three Mile Island and Peach Bottom nuclear facilities.
I’ve found from years of experience with midwestern tornado warnings and severe thunderstorms that a nice piece of escapist fiction is quite nice when sheltering in the basement with a battery powered lantern after the power goes out.
Imhofe’s awardwinning book might be just the thing for our next big storm here, and reading by candles, lanterns, or flashlights seems like it would really add to the gripping fictional drama of his storytelling.
I’ll have to look his book up, it sounds interesting.
Some months ago, at a family gathering, I was talking to a relative whose consulting involves products that are of much interest to the climate catastrophist crowd. (I’m not going to be more specific.)
He made mention about insurance companies having the best or most complete data on climate change, because they needed it. I challenged that, because I know that satellites are used for things like surface temperature measurement and sea level. So, I asked him, “Are you saying that the insurance companies put up their own satellites?” He looked a little sheepish, at this point.
My recollection of what he said about what we’ll call ‘climate change adjusted rates’ by insurance companies is vaguer, but I do recall him going on and making a point much like this diary. But what was weird was his expressed belief or opinion that there was no financial incentive for insurance companies to exaggerate ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’ or whatever phraseology is in vogue.
I looked at him with disbelief at what I was hearing.
Oh, yeah. He has 2 degrees from Ivy League schools – including an MBA.
Well, not 2 weeks ago, Spiegel carried an article spanking big insurance for bilking its customers using exaggerated ‘climate change’ claims. From Spiegel Slams Munich RE: Distortions Of Weather Extremes Are “Suspicious” And “Irresponsible Hype”:
I’ve been tentatively planning to write a diary, asking which is more significant? This article by Spiegel or Michael Mann’s (of hockeystick fame) getting spanked by the Nobel committee for his false claim about being a Nobel laureate?
The answer, I (tentatively) intend to argue, is that the Speigel article is far, far more significant. That’s because businesses have a strong financial interest to make sure they’re not getting screwed, getting maxiumum profits for their stockholders, etc. Michael Mann has some egg on his face, but he’ll just wipe if off, and he and his apologists will soldier on.
Big businesses that are getting screwed by insurance companies, OTOH, may have very deep pockets, hordes of lawyers already on staff, lobbyists that they already have contracts with, etc. Surely, some of their top managements read widely, and they are likely ideologically predisposed to ‘climate change’ being nothing near as serious as the catastrophists claim. Some of them, e.g., are likely to know that the HADCRUT4 data set recently released shows no statistically significant global temperature increase in 16 years.
My conclusion is: this article by Spiegel could be major in society’s evolving views of whether the catastrophist climate scenario’s are plausible.
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To sum up: I usually don’t bother my relative with info that he will likely have trouble handling, but I couldn’t resist posting about the Spiegel article to his Facebook page. He ended up deleting it, and calling me a “bad boy”. No other explanation…
ooops. ” outrageous claims now being made ” has a link:
outrageous claims now being made
The fossil fuel lobby vs the global insurers lobby. I guess it’s obvious which one is the 800 lb gorilla.
But since insurers can pass costs on to consumers, maybe in this case, they are no lobby at all. To totally mangle John Lennon, “Just gimme some profits, all I want is the profits”.
Once again, meth drives by with links to all manner of circular reference, paid professional climate change denialists. Today’s main attraction is Alex B, a geologist (non-climatologist) known as the Geraldo Rivera of German journamalism. In other words, more misleading meth shtick.
The Denialist Infinite Factoid Mill does gives metamars the advantage of infinite reloads even when each and every one turns out to be BS… the DIFM provides all that’s needed for a denialist to generate ever greater amounts of smoke and noise whenever confronted with reality.
And that situation will last until the Koch brothers just can’t keep their heads above water anymore.
Literally.
Has Alex B made any factual errors?
Do you even care?
I don’t read German, don’t know anything about “Alex B”, but I have the feeling you don’t know German, or anything about “Alex B”, either.
I just googled: “Axel Bojanowski” “Geraldo Rivera”
and came up with exactly 1 hit, which goes to a dead link.
I find this odd for somebody who is, as you say, “known” as the Geraldo Rivera of German journalism. People “know” this, but nobody talks about it on the web? Also, his bio on the Spiegel website says,
That’s kind of an odd mix, wouldn’t you say? A junk journalist, together with a columnist at a scientific journal, all wrapped in one.
I frankly get the impression that you’re lying through your teeth. But let’s not jump to conclusions. Perhaps you’d like to post some evidence that Axel Bojanowski really is known as a Geraldo Rivera type of journalist? I, for one, am not going to take your word for it.
it’s comical that metamars spews this nonsense on a day when five degree higher than normal sea temperatures are causing horrendous damage.
as predicted by people who know about these things. They’re called Scientists.
don’t bother respond to me please metamars, I can’t be bothered digging through your growing mass of pseudo science cherry picked and always wrong.
Cause is one thing – and who pays for it?
According to Romney all of this should privatized, too.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/06/14/244973/mitt-romney-federal-disaster-relief-for-tornado-and-flood-victims-is-immoral-makes-no-sense-at-all/
You got me, man. I got that scrambled, turned around and upside-down. I should have said that Geraldo Rivera is the Alex B of journamalism. Thanks for keeping me honest. That’s why we’re all here, right?
Depends on whether you like what a man owned and operated by the dirty-energy billionaires has to say.
Metamars’ schtick is well known to real scientists and their allies, as it’s a common trick of conservatives, Republicans, and other bought-off or massively deluded persons like 9/11 “truthers”. It’s called the “Gish Gallop”, named for a creationist who uses this tactic.
Simply put, the Gish Gallop involves spewing so many lies and/or misrepresentations at once, and so many particularly shameless lies and/or misrepresentations at once, that not only is refuting them all with documented fact quite time-consuming (being that it’s a lot quicker and easier to make something up than it is to thoroughly refute it), but the outrage caused by the utter shamelessness of the tactic’s user often makes its victims speechless, or nearly so.
Paul Ryan tried to use the Gish Gallop on Joe Biden in the vice-presidential debate — and Biden defeated him by the simple expedient of laughing at him:
Meanwhile:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/12/paul-ryan-stimulus-funds_n_1962163.html?1350075036
http://americablog.com/2012/10/nyt-romney-abolish-fema.html
Yes, but I find it useful to point out that the primary source of the infinite amounts of denialist BS is not religious dogma but is instead a deliberately fabricated pool of disinformation funded by fossil fuel billionaires for the sole purpose of extending their power and, increasingly as of late, avoiding responsibility for their actions.