Insurance industry pricing climate risk as a dead certainty

Hey, the exact same two charts again. Rather than go through the exact same discussion, let me simply point out that Nik brought these up on this thread, and some others this one. There you can find what criticisms people like myself had, what answers he gave, and so generally judge if there’s merit to what he brings up without repeating it all.

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I do know that in recent years, the flood zones in our area have been redrawn to reflect ocean incursions further inland in case of storm, etc.

…but how is Nik supposed to know how superlatively witty my own personal retort is on this exact occasion?

Honestly, if I’m going to stop using mindlessly repeated talking points as an opportunity to show off how clever I am, why do I even have an internet?

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I remember this from many years ago. The insurance industry was the first to start confronting reality out of pure necessity while the rest of industry sat on its slothy, corrupt hands to continue to milk the current infrastructure. I’m happy to see this finally come to the forefront. Of course, this won’t change anything for deniers, but nothing ever will. They’re mentally locked in.

European reinsurers exhibit minimal social conscience and try to reduce the risk of catastrophe. Their US counterparts keep their mouths shut and simply adjust their tables to continue to make a buck. Why is this so unsurprising?

Okay, not to quibble, but in my experience, not trusting insurance companies has merit, in general, but it doesn’t mean that you don’t believe in global warming.

Eduardo Porter gives a good example of politically biased confusion between since-driven and market-driven behaviors.

It’s worth noting there is a difference between observing that temperatures have increased over the past generation and attributing it to a specific cause.

It will be humorous (and sad) how, in the future century, how politicians and deniers will discuss all these heightened weather effects all the while still refusing to admit their cause. Eg, even as they are suffering rising sea levels, they’ll talk about it as rising sea levels only, and not what’s causing it (I mean, who really knows, right?)

That’s the thing; there are people out there who, for whatever reason, trust businessmen more than scientists. So, okay fine… hey, look, businessmen! Believing in global warming! And betting actual money on it! NOW can we install some more wind farms?

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It doesn’t appear with current trends that we will see more politicians and “deniers” dismissing AGW in the future. Considering that many governments/politicians the world over have already created numerous policies to limit the output of human sourced GHG’s. The trend is towards more regulation, taxation and restrictions - not less.

This is why we continue to see auto-manufacturers focus on their reduced CO2 emissions…or companies touting their use of solar/wind/green energy sources…tax breaks for solar panels in residential/commercial structures…tax breaks for green cars etc…etc…etc…

This isn’t because the politicians of the world are deniers. These are policies set in place to encourage the use of green energy.

A century from now we’ll have far superior data, models and evidence to support, contradict or even possibly create new hypothesis about AGW, climate change and GHG’s.

I know I know by then it will be “too late” and the world will fall into some deadly cycle of becoming the next Mars or some shit like that.

Ultimately I think there are some that dismiss AGW, some that accept it but are skeptical of government reactions to the phenomenon, others that claim the sky is falling and others still that think its a big hoax/conspiracy.

We’ll see what comes…humans are a rather inventive species.

It’s interesting to see how views shift when people have to put their money where their mouth is, so this is a good take on the matter.
Slightly off topic, I have always been perplexed why people put the “A” in “AGW”. Why does that matter? Surely what matters is whether anything can be done, not who or what was to blame? So the real discussion should be about the extent to which humans can affect the climate in the direction they want to.

What causes it has pretty big influence on what you can do about it. If it’s caused by industrial CO2 emissions your remediation efforts might be a little different than if it’s caused by an increase in solar activity.

Pointing out that it’s caused by industrial CO2 emissions is one way to hopefully decrease the amount of industrial CO2 emissions. Not sure I understand why this is such a mystery to you.

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On the other hand, even if the cause isn’t human activity, it seems like it would still be a good idea to curtail human activity that could exacerbate the problem, such as adding CO2 to a warming system.

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