The insurers are taking it seriously
Next time you hear someone telling you that we don’t need to do anything about climate change you may want to refer them to the insurance industry.
IAG is the parent company for NZI and State. It’s 2005 sustainability report ’see’ has an excellent graphic showing the cost of recent weather events in New Zealand.
The report is in PDF so I can’t link directly to, or extract, the page, just click here and then go to page 14. It shows the immediate physical disaster costs (as opposed to the downstream things like invasive species and diseases) that should be weighed against the supposed *expense* of Kyoto.
The article of which is a part - Otherwise Fine - is also interesting:
What’s behind the dramatic shift in climate? As with most adverse environmental developments, the answer is people.
The cars we drive, the coal we burn, the factories we operate, the forests we destroy - these are all factors contributing to the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The result is global warming. And scientific research has revealed a definitive link between rising global temperatures and the increased frequency and ferocity of weather events.
So the people who have to pay for the clean up after the increasingly frequent extreme weather events are clearly under no illusions to their causes…
December 20th, 2005 at 3:26 pm
On a kind of thread hijack, I do think the carbon cost of diesel trains up here in Auckland is pretty insignificant compared to the carbon saving of all those commuters not using cars or buses which are less efficient than trains. Not that I’m knocking electric trains, but I do think getting the whole train thing working in Auckland is far and gone a priority compared to getting bitter on them not being electric at the moment. Baby steps!
December 20th, 2005 at 3:47 pm
Ben: Obviously you’re referring to Keith’s media release earlier today http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR9466.html.
Note the fact that he welcomed the funding for the rail network and that he didn’t attack the Govt, he was just disappointed. Given that a major investment in rolling stock (that will lock the system into either electric and diesel for the foreseeable future) is just around the corner that wasn’t unreasonable IMHO.
This was one of those releases aimed at making sure that the Greens, who have been calling for more trains generally, are in the story. You don’t get coverage for totally agreeing with things
December 20th, 2005 at 7:48 pm
And when we have a 20 year cyclone event next year in March, will you blame that on Global Warming, too?
And scientific research has revealed a definitive link between rising global temperatures and the increased frequency and ferocity of weather events.
Not quite true. Even on RealClimate they will usually qualify the extent of what they know to not make such broad statements as “definitive link”. This essay as referred to me by somebody on this site was highly informative. For instance,
“… any uncertainty … on the strength of the CO2 effect is largely due to the fact that the strength of the feedbacks (water vapour, clouds, ice, and snow) is only known imprecisely. Still, many studies … have provided increasingly hard evidence that the most likely value of the “climate sensitivity” (ie the equilibrium response of the climate to a doubling of the CO2 concentration) is close to 3°C.‘
Finding a definitive answer for any system as large and complex as global warming will always be difficult.
December 20th, 2005 at 9:09 pm
Not true mugwump, the insurance industry is being forthright, more so than many, but when it’s your money on the line…
Anyway, it’s perfectly possible to make definitive statements about things as large and complex as global weather. Rain comes from clouds. Increasing global temperatures cause increased frequency and ferocity of weather events. Those two statements are pretty much on a par.
You can argue about how much global temperatures will increase over what time period, you can argue about how much any particular increase will effect weather events, it’s pretty damn hard to argue that there isn’t a link - and that quote you provide doesn’t even attempt to.
All the claims in that Insurance Industry quote are pretty definitively true, you don’t need to know the exact strength of the feedback mechanisms to know that. Or the exact value of “climate sensitivity” - they will alter the degree of warming and the severity of future weather events, they won’t make them vanish completely.
December 20th, 2005 at 9:18 pm
nice one Pip!
on the subject of not being able to link to page 14 of a PDF, (yaargh PDF sucks and is a spawn of the devil), how about this wired story about hackers that are so pissed off about major reports being published in PDF only format, that they copy them and publish it as HTML…
http://wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,64346,00.html
“I wanted to whip up something people could actually link to so bloggers could comment on it,” Kottke explained.
December 21st, 2005 at 4:07 pm
Govy capitulated to corporate interests about the carbon tax cause they knew that if they didn’t, corporate media would quickly whip up the public’s anger, which they keep at a constant state of aggravation, and create a S$%T storm that the govt couldn’t handle.
They are so owned by corporate interests exactly for that reason.
Jeanette would make a great prime minister.
December 21st, 2005 at 10:13 pm
Correlation ain’t causation, folks. And AIG is not a re-insurer, which rather removes their overview on things. What they are doling out is local spin for increased general reinsurance costs.
And what influences reinsurance costs? Which, BTW are globally pooled by private companies, so the weightings of risk by sector are commercial secrets. Let’s see:
- increasing litigiousness. Think, USA and even in little NZ, ACC plus medical malpractice claims.
- increasing accounting rigour, which forces companies like reinsurers to properly state liabilities for employee share options, pension funds and the like.
- increasing intolerance of life’s little knocks, which has public authorities running scared of liability, and consequently insuring themselves against everything that moves. Classic Aussie example: uneven footpaths.
- increasing real wealth in places like China, where assets worth insuring now exist for the first time ever.
Now these are all real inflators of reinsurance costs: but how to explain these to your average State House tenant? Why, it’s Global warming!
December 22nd, 2005 at 10:32 am
Oh waymad, Swiss Re is a global reinsurance agency and it has been worried about climate change and the rising costs of extreme weather events for over a decade. For them its a matter of their core business becoming unaffordable. See their website for estimates of how much Hurricane Katrina cost them.
December 22nd, 2005 at 3:21 pm
Pip said: Increasing global temperatures cause increased frequency and ferocity of weather events.
Actually, the evidence would say that only the ferocity increases; the frequency is controlled by other factors. In essence, the waves crash louder but not more often. Maybe you missed that news piece or don’t know where the relevant data can be found.
btw, The essay came from one of the RealClimate authors, so please, feel free to humiliate yourself by attacking the scientific reputation of the author.