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Munich Re: “The only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change”

By Joe Romm on Jan 4, 2011 at 8:03 pm

Flawed study on impact of climate change on damages from Atlantic hurricanes ignores one of its own references and many key factors

Anthropogenic climate change will almost certainly increase the number of the most destructive hurricanes (see “Nature: Hurricanes ARE getting fiercer “” and it’s going to get much worse” and NOAA here, the source of the figure).

Also, while this has not been modeled much, warming will put more water in the air above the ocean for hurricanes to sweep up and deluge down, as Kevin Trenberth, head of NCAR’s Climate Analysis Section, explains here.

A trickier question is how that will translate into an increase in landfilling hurricane and, even trickier, how much that will translate into increased damage, when you have to correct for non-climatic factors that would increase damage (population and GDP growth) and those that would decrease damage (better hurricane warning and building codes).  Hurricanes are uniquely difficult to do this kind of analysis for because, as Judith Curry has pointed out, “It’s the strongest storms that matter most.”

“More than half the total hurricane damage in the U.S. (normalized for inflation and populations trends) was caused by just five events,” explained MIT hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel in an email to me a while back. Storms that are Category 4 and 5 at landfall (or just before) are what destroy major cities like New Orleans and Galveston with devastating winds, rains, and storm surges.  One extra Cat 4 or 5 hitting Miami and you’ve obliterated the damage records.

So one thing you can safely say about a hurricane damage analysis study:  Its conclusions should not be generalized into broader conclusions about the impact of climate change on extreme weather.

Into this mix comes a new study, “Emergence time scales for detection of anthropogenic climate change in US tropical cyclone loss data,” by Crompton, Pielke and McAneney (PDF here via the NYT/ClimateWire article).  Yes, it’s that Pielke (see Foreign Policy’s “Guide to Climate Skeptics” includes Roger Pielke, Jr.), who just can’t avoid making an outrageous and baseless attack on the integrity of those whose real-world data happen to disagree with his widely-criticized modeling:

The study concludes, unjustifiably, as we’ll see:

Read more

Politics

King Won’t Give Up His Government Health Care, But Applauds Those Who Do ‘For Standing On Principle’

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Jan 4, 2011 at 7:41 pm

As ThinkProgress has noted, despite spending the past year and a half railing against government healthcare, just five Republican members of the 112th Congress have been willing to forgo their own government healthcare coverage, which is provided to them as federal employees. Rep.-elect Joe Walsh (R-IL) is one of those Republicans who will opt out of his congressional health package, even though his wife will have difficulty finding coverage due to her pre-existing condition (that is, until portions of President Obama’s health care law barring insurers from discriminating against people with such conditions take affect in 2014).

Asked tonight about Walsh’s suggestion that it’s hypocritical for GOP congressmen fighting Obama’s health law to keep their own government coverage, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) didn’t seem to disagree. King told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he gives Walsh “a lot of credit for standing on principle,” even though King himself won’t forgo his government coverage:

BLITZER: [H]e thinks to accept the federal government’s health insurance program would be hypocritical, do you accept the federal government’s health insurance program for yourself

KING: Well, I’m on it now, like other federal employees are –

BLITZER: Will you stay on it?

KING: I don’t intend to pull off of it, but I give Joe a lot of credit for that. I went to Joe to help him in the campaign and I give him a lot of credit for standing on principle.

Watch it:

Walsh explained his decision by saying, “My wife and I now are going to have to go through the struggles that a lot of Americans go through, trying to find insurance in the individual market and having to deal with problems of preexisting conditions.” As of 2008, 12 percent of King’s constituents lacked coverage. Apparently King doesn’t think he should have to face the same struggles as them.

Health

Will Republicans Be Able To Defund Health Reform?

By Igor Volsky on Jan 4, 2011 at 7:35 pm

Over at the Health Affairs blog, Melissa Seeley argues that the GOP’s threats of defunding health reform — once outright repeal fails — may be louder than its bite, since the Obama Administration “already has much of the funding it needs to carry out the main elements of reform”:

The pillars of the law’s health insurance expansion strategy—increased eligibility for Medicaid and the new premium and cost-sharing subsidies for private health insurance—are exempt from the annual appropriations process. These so-called “mandatory” or “entitlement” programs are permanent and have permanent funding authority. Furthermore, the Department of Health and Human Services has the ability to fund related provisions without seeking additional appropriations from Congress. For example, Federal grants to states to plan and build the new health insurance exchanges fall into this category. It also includes funding necessary to immediately lower insurance costs for uninsured individuals with preexisting conditions and early retirees.

Indeed it’s an argument we’ve heard from Democrats before. In December, after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) dropped the omnibus spending package that included some $1 billion in funding for health reform and instead opted for a much smaller continuing resolution (CR) to extend federal spending authority into the new year, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius argued that “the initial Affordable Care Act passed with some resources included in the bill and we’re going to continue to implement the law.” Similarly, Tom Daschle explained to me that “A lot of what we did in health care reform has more of an entitlement than a discretionary funding base. So as an entitlement, they would really have to change the law rather than simply not fund in order for it to be effected. The entitlement sections of the legislation are going to be fairly immune from defunding.”

All of this is true, but it’s unclear what happens after the current CR expires in March or if Republicans try to shut down the government over the debt ceiling vote.

Justice

2011 Republicans Label 2005 Republicans’ Attack on Filibuster An ‘Unprecedented Power Grab’

By Ian Millhiser on Jan 4, 2011 at 6:35 pm

In 2005, when Republicans controlled the Senate, they released a memo claiming that a bare majority of senators have the power to change the Senate’s Rules:

One way that Senators can restore the Senate’s traditional understanding of its advice and consent responsibility is to employ the “constitutional option” — an exercise of a Senate majority’s power under the Constitution to define Senate practices and procedures. The constitutional option can be exercised in different ways, such as amending Senate Standing Rules or by creating precedents, but regardless of the variant, the purpose would be the same — to restore previous Senate practices in the face of unforeseen abuses. . . . This constitutional option is well grounded in the U.S. Constitution and in Senate history. The Senate has always had, and repeatedly has exercised, the constitutional power to change the Senate’s procedures through a majority vote.

Six years later, a broad coalition of senators is considering something very similar to what the GOP advocated in 2005 — amending the Senate’s rules with a simple majority vote. Now that the GOP is in the minority, however, they are humming a very different tune. In a memo entitled “Senate Democrats Threaten Unprecedented Power Grab,” the GOP now warns that “Unilaterally changing the rules of the Senate by a bare majority would be unprecedented . . . it would forever change the nature of the Senate and constitute a naked partisan power grab.”

Of course, the GOP’s 2011 attack on its 2005 position is far from surprising, since they fell back in love with the filibuster the minute they lost their majority. In 2007, when Republican Leader Mitch McConnell suddenly found himself leading the minority, the number of filibusters immediately spiked:

Audaciously, McConnell defends his obstructionist record by claiming it was all the Democrats fault. According to McConnell:

[Reformers] have peddled the well-worn myth that changes are needed as a way of overcoming partisanship on the part of Republicans. Their evidence: a historically high number of so-called cloture petitions by the Democratic majority to cut off debate. Republicans forced these petitions, Democrats say, by blocking or slow-walking bills.

What these critics routinely fail to mention (and too many reporters fail to report) is the precipitating action: the Democratic majority’s repeated use of a once-rare procedural gimmick that has kept Republicans from amending bills that are brought to the floor. This practice, known as “filling the amendment tree,” leads to a question that answers itself: Why would Republicans vote for action on a bill that, we’ve been promised, we’ll be blocked from contributing to in any way?

There are any number of reasons why McConnell could not possibly believe his own claim here, but the most obvious is the fact that McConnell’s caucus hasn’t simply wielded the filibuster to block legislation, but has also waged an unprecedented campaign of obstruction against President Obama’s nominees. Nominees cannot be amended, so if McConnell really just wanted his caucus to be able to offer amendments he wouldn’t have led a scorched earth campaign against the president’s nominations.

In the end, however, the biggest problem with McConnell’s obstructionist campaign is not hypocrisy — it is the fact that his tactics are slowly destroying the nation’s ability to function. Because of the right’s abuse of the Senate rules, countless judgeships and other essential jobs are unfilled — even though the overwhelming majority of Obama’s nominees to these jobs face little opposition even from the GOP. Meanwhile, numerous federal agencies are currently operating without congressional authorization because the Senate is unable to move authorization bills. The United States government still does not have a budget, because GOP obstructionism prevented the Senate from performing this most basic task.  And hundreds of bills that passed the House without any opposition whatsoever will never receive a vote in the Senate. McConnell wants to frame the debate over reform as a partisan showdown, but the whole nation is suffering because of his recalcitrance.

Yglesias

Endgame

By Matthew Yglesias on Jan 4, 2011 at 6:15 pm

Where are my friends?

— “Lobbying, Rent Seeking, and the Constitution”.

— Commander of the USS Enterprise boldly goes too far.

— The least-distinguished Enterprise commander.

— Roads don’t pay for themselves.

— Cleveland getting desperate enough to welcome some immigrants.

— The economic impact of robots is a good reason to reorient the tax code around natural resource fees.

— Giving money to poor people is an effective anti-poverty strategy.

Everyone’s talking about which songs to play at their aughts nostalgia party. I’ve got Le Tigre, “Get Off The Internet”.

Health

Rep. Tom Price: Americans Want Insurers To Continue Denying Coverage To Sick People

By Igor Volsky on Jan 4, 2011 at 5:35 pm

Yesterday, Jonathan Chait warned Democrats that they need to sharpen their message against the GOP’s campaign to repeal health care reform if they hope convince the public that the law is worth preserving. “If you shrug it off as a meaningless symbolic vote, then why not go ahead and vote yes?,” he asks. “In fact, Democrats have a strong response. Republicans are voting to open up the donut hole for Medicare recipients and charge them higher rates, allow insurance companies to turn away anybody whose family has a preexisting condition, and all sorts of awful things.”

Unwrapping the individual provisions of reform from the law as a whole and the process it took to pass it has always been an effective messaging strategy, one that incoming House message guru Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) deployed rather skillfully this morning during her CNBC debate against Rep. Tom Price (R-GA):

WASSERMAN-SCHULTZ: The Republicans will take away a 50 percent cut in brand name drugs that seniors got…it will mean that children and in a few years everyone will be dropped or be denied coverage for the pre-existing condition that they might have. It will mean that young adults will no longer be able to stay on their parents’ insurance until they’re 26. …. What we’re going to do is put insurance companies and profit-driven decision making back in the driver’s seat, instead of decision making between doctors and their patients.

PRICE: That’s the kind of policy that was rejected on November 2nd.

WASSSERMAN-SCHULTZ: Really? Really? You think that people want insurance companies, Tom. You think that Americans want insurance companies to make decisions about whether or not they get coverage for a pre-existing condition? That is absolutely not what November 2nd was about.

Watch it:

It’s also worth pointing out that the Republican repeal legislation is actually a major cop-out. Rather than proposing an alternative for the very sickest Americans who are now enrolled in reform’s high risk insurance pools or the small businesses who are benefiting from the small business tax credits, the GOP replacement legislation instructs the health committees to develop alternative solutions and report back to the full House. The maneuver shields the bills from any detailed criticism — Republicans presumably want to avoid the kind of backlash that their initial alternative generated — but it also suggests that the party has nothing immediate to offer to those Americans who are already benefiting from reform’s early consumer protections and programs.

Yglesias

Bringing Balance to Historic Preservation

By Matthew Yglesias on Jan 4, 2011 at 5:27 pm

I was talking to some folks in my condo last night about a construction project just north of our building and I asked what the deal was with an enigmatic derelict warehouse that’s adjacent to the construction site:

This, I was told, is owned by a different developer but nothing’s being done with it because the building is “for some reason” on the historic preservation list. I asked if there were something we could do to get the building taken off the list, since this listing seemed like the kind of thing that would likely be done by local NIMBY busybodies. Apparently, though, our local Advisory Neighborhood Commission has already asked for delisting but didn’t get its way. So the hope was that the construction at the adjacent site would accidentally knock the warehouse down, thus rendering the issue moot.

Relatedly, I was trying to look up more info about this and it turns out that the swathe of broken-down buildings and vacant lots across the street to the south is in fact the “Mount Vernon Triangle Historic District”:

If you say so. At any rate, the point I would make about this isn’t that historic preservation is never a good idea. All aesthetically meritorious undertakings, including art museums, parks, etc. have some kind of financial cost and it would be a shame to live in a world without aesthetically meritorious undertakings. But if a city or state wants to bear some cost in order to fund a museum, that goes through some kind of appropriation process where the cost is assessed and subject to scrutiny. Historic preservation, by contrast, tends to operate as a kind of ratchet where more and more stuff is added to the list over time and there’s little assessment of the overall impact. Then since nobody actually wants to freeze every structure in place, the key issue becomes which people have the right kind of pull or consultants or lawyers or whatever to navigate the process and get things done.

In his forthcoming book, Ed Glaeser proposes the idea of capping the overall number of landmarked buildings in any given city. That way if you want to landmark a new structure, you need to bear a cost—delisting some other structure. The cap could, of course, be raised but that would require a legislative process rather than happening on auto-pilot. I think it’s a pretty good idea.

Politics

REPORT: Rick Scott’s Inauguration Funded By Special Interests With Substantial Business Before State

By George Zornick on Jan 4, 2011 at 5:23 pm

This afternoon, Rick Scott was sworn in as the 45th governor of Florida. Scott, the former head of scandal-plagued Columbia/HCA hospital operation, is worth around $219 million and frequently said during the campaign that the $73 million in personal funds he spent to be elected meant he was simply a “businessman with no ties to special interests.”

The two-day inaugural bash this week tells quite a different story, however. The ceremonies cost about $3 million, and are largely funded by business interests in Florida that, as the St. Petersburg Times writes, have “the most at stake in his administration.” From tobacco companies trying to avoid taxes, to drug companies and HMOs hoping to benefit from Medicaid changes, Scott’s lavish ceremony is being paid for by those who want to be a part of the real party: Florida is the world’s twentieth-largest economy and Scott will enjoy almost unchecked control of the state’s business, as his party holds super-majorities in both legislative chambers.

Here’s a glimpse at Scott’s inaugural supporters, and what they are likely after:

– Dosal is a tobacco company that was exempted from a massive settlement with the state in 1997, and has been avoiding paying the settlement fees ever since — which by some estimates add up to $200 million per year — allowing it to become the state’s third-largest seller in Florida. The company has been lobbying fiercely for a decade to remain exempt from paying settlement fees, and donated $10,000 to Scott’s inauguration. Phillip Morris, which would like to see the settlement fees imposed on a competitor, also donated.

– “Companies that want to influence the debate on Medicaid reform — from drug companies to HMO chains — were the largest donors, giving more than $800,000, according to initial estimates.”

– “Real estate developers and investors, eager for fewer regulations and no growth management hurdles, contributed more than $275,000.”

– Houghton Mifflin Harcourt donated the maximum to the inauguration. The company is aggressively pursuing contracts with the state’s schools, and holds a 65 percent market share in Florida.

– “Gambling interests — from the Seminole Tribe of Florida to the Las Vegas Sands, who are at opposite ends of a debate over expanding casino gambling in Florida — ponied up a total of $150,000.”

– United Automobile Corporation donated the maximum. The company is pursuing changes to the state’s auto insurance fraud rules.

– “Florida Crystals, the sugar giant and agribusiness concern that wants to have a piece of the state’s alternative energy pie, had four of its affiliates donate a total of $100,000 to the inaugural cause.” As ThinkProgress has previously reported, the sugar industry in Florida frequently influences the political process, including efforts to have soda pop bans halted.

– “Florida’s utility giants also contributed heavily to the inaugural events. They want Scott to back their pro-nuclear power initiatives or, in the case of Florida Power & Light, their push for solar development.”

A Scott spokeswoman claimed that donors “should expect a series of events intended to honor the people of this state in this period of a change in leadership in our state, and nothing more than that.” However, as the St. Petersburg Times reports, “many of the donors were included in four invitation-only inaugural events,” including “an evening candlelight dinner honoring about 120 ‘Friends of the Inauguration.’”

Given Scott’s fervent pro-corporate dogma — he said today in his inauguration speech that “prosperity comes from the private sector [and] ONLY from the private sector” — it’s not unreasonable to think these large business interests expect to be rewarded. Notably, Scott’s “jobs tour” last month, in which he claimed simply that “[w]e like business people and we’re going to grow this state,” was paid for by the Florida Chamber of Commerce.

At a prayer breakfast this morning, born-again Christian Chuck Colson lamented that “America has lost its way to self-indulgency, greed and materialism,” according to the Miami Herald. The answer, he said, is a renewal of the sense of shared sacrifice and civic duty. “We’ve got a sick culture…. We don’t want to make any sacrifices for the common good.” This sentiment does not seem to square with Scott’s already demonstrable deference to large corporations and business interests.

Climate Progress

State Of Energy 2011: API CEO Gerard Calls For Future Awash In Oil

By Brad Johnson on Jan 4, 2011 at 4:34 pm


Jack Gerard applauds Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI).

In a high-powered rollout at the glossy Newseum, the head of the big oil lobby argued that America today needs to reduce taxes and expand drilling for oil companies. Like a broken clock, American Petroleum Institute President and CEO Jack Gerard repeated his annual call for lower oil taxes and expanded drilling, arguing it would increase jobs and even government revenue, based on a new study from oil consultancy Wood Mackenzie.

Before he made his remarks, Gerard heralded the appearance of Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), the new chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee who now rejects limits on oil pollution. Gerard’s speech, and his answers to the questions from the audience, emphasized thousands of jobs tied to “access” to trillions of dollars of oil and natural gas, but also touched on other topics:

On the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster: “I’m proud of the way the industry responded.”

On the oil industry’s safety record: “There is always room for improvement.”

On the future: “Policymakers face two choices: one takes us forward, one takes us backward.”

On global warming pollution: “The Clean Air Act was never thought of to regulate greenhouse gases.”

Gerard’s central argument, that what’s good for Big Oil is good for America, depends on several key fallacies. The most important fact Gerard ignores is true cost of oil — more drilling means more disasters, more pollution, more risk, more global warming, more sickness and death. Even ignoring the existential threat of global warming, oil consumption in the United States causes the premature death of at least 10,000 Americans a year. API’s projection of increasing demand for oil and natural gas for the next several decades would make catastrophic global warming — including mass species extinction, crop devastation, and rapid sea level rise — unavoidable.

The other key fact Gerard ignores is that the oil industry is extremely inefficient at creating jobs — you could even call it a job killer. In fact, you get four times as many clean energy jobs as oil jobs from the same investment. If the federal government raised taxes on the oil industry by $5 billion per year, and invested the revenues into clean energy, that would create a net job gain of 75,000 jobs. Even API’s chief economist John Felmy has admitted that this analysis is accurate. “I have no doubts you can get a lot more jobs,” he said, when asked what would happen if the government invested in clean energy instead of the oil and natural gas sector.

Finally, Gerard’s claim that the Clean Air Act was not meant to regulate greenhouse gases is nonsensical. The U.S. Supreme Court — whose job it is to interpret laws — found that greenhouse emissions are pollutants under the Clean Air Act. This is no surprise, since the law as written includes effects on “climate” and “weather” in the definition of pollution:

All language referring to effects on welfare includes, but is not limited to, effects on soils, water, crops, vegetation, manmade materials, animals, wildlife, weather, visibility, and climate, damage to and deterioration of property, and hazards to transportation, as well as effects on economic values and on personal comfort and well-being, whether caused by transformation, conversion, or combination with other air pollutants.

Policymakers do indeed face two choices — going back towards the 19th-century world of dirty energy and robber barons, or forward to a clean, healthy, prosperous future.

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