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Little noted ginormous weather-related loss figure from Dallas:
(Reuters) – Insured losses from the massive hailstorm that struck the Dallas area on Wednesday could reach as much as $2 billion, making it one of the most costly storms of its type in U.S. history, an insurance organization said on Friday.
The Southwestern Insurance Information Service (SIIS), a trade group that speaks for property insurers in Texas and Oklahoma, said members have already classified the storm as catastrophic.
…
According to the Insurance Information Institute, over the 20 years ending in 2010, total hail, wind and flood losses nationwide were just $14 billion.
Reuters
Sounds as though “adaptation” will be even more fun than we anticipated. Why shouldn’t hailstorms become more destructive in years going forward?
What we have now going off is a Climate Bomb!
The insurance industry is toast. The won’t even have time to grow to fear hail storms at this rate.
I wonder how the airline industry in the area feared?
Many industries will be affected indirectly also by the collapse of the insurance industry.
More insurance woes…
wildfire in northern Colorado that has scorched about 85 square miles and destroyed at least 181 homes, the most in state history.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/16/high-park-fire-2012-colorado-wildfire-record-homes_n_1603049.html?utm_hp_ref=canada&ir=Canada
Doug – well spotted. Nothing in UK media on this event. Re prospects, it’s worth stating that this extreme hailstorm was off the timelagged warming due to mid-’70s pollution – since when we’ve raised airborne anthro-CO2 from ~55ppm to ~115ppm. And counting.
Given that business generally has its assets leveraged as collateral for loans, and that weather-damage insurance is essential for this arrangement, any withdrawal of cover by insurers could be economically disabling (as is looming in UK). Here government is not willing to commit the blank cheque for future impact costs. I gather Washington already does so for some US flood costs, but will the rightists accept an extension of open-ended govt. spending to cover all the other classes of intensifying impact that we face ?
OTOH, just how many cattle, crops, cars, roofs or people would survive grapefruit-sized hail ?
Regards,
Lewis
Here’s a 2009 motherearth news bit on solar panels and hail storms.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/ask-our-experts/solar-panels-and-hail.aspx
For the second time I hear the words “So let’s hope the scientists are wrong on climate change” spoken by a BBC reporter on a BBC flagship news programme. The first time it was unscripted (Jeremy Vine? on Newsnight).
This time it was scripted, a piece of sarcasm (I think misplaced) from BBC Environmental Analysist Roger Harrabin on Friday’s Radio 4 PM.
I’m told BBC i-player doesn’t work outside the UK so some of Roger’s 3 minute talk on the future of global resources is transcribed below the link.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01jrqrr/PM_15_06_2012/
@ 41 mins.
“The future of our resources is dominated by one very large uncertainty – climate change. Let’s ignore the scientific mainstream for the moment and and take an optimists view of the climate.
Suppost the world proved resilant to our ever growing level of greenhouse gases … Some things will be in noticably shorter supply though, like wildlife. …half a billion Chinese tourists, so If you like solitide, you may have to find it in a virtual reality game … But overall without severe climate change we can maybe muddle along and the supply of some resources, like digital ones, will get ever better.
That is the optimistic scenario.
“Now lets take the scientific establishemnt scanario… …if it gets so bad that the global economy is disrupted… So let’s hope the scientists are wrong on climate change because the world’s political leaders are doing very little to shield us from that risk.“
“overall without severe climate change we can maybe muddle along ”
People are failing to connect the dots. We are experiencing severe climate change right now.
I can not see how the current global economy can cope with the current level of extreme weather events.
Can the insurance industry weather the current frequency, prevalence and intensity of recent tornados, hail storms floods and drought. ($2b dollars of destruction in 1/2hr in Dallas!) No. That is the temp now. We are going to warm for another 1C at least!
Climate change is not going to be severe, thats now. Its going to be cataclysmic in the near future.
We are now experiencing a Climate Bomb.
Even if we found a golden lamp, and used our three wishes to instantly convert to negative GHG emissions, we will not be able to “muddle along” longterm. It’s a finite planet, and we have three never-ending growth processes: population, resource use, and the third? Essential to capitalism is non-stop economic growth. Clean tech all by itself is a great stop gap, but these other problems will sink the ship too. It’s all one problem, one heart…. many branches. AGW is just the brach posing the greatest immediate hazard. “Muddle on??” gimmeabreak
When I worked in the UK, a ‘muddled’ patient was one in the early stages of dementia. That sounds like the MSM and the execrable BBC to the life.
Surprised this didn’t get a mention on CP:
Arctic Sea Ice Dips Below Ominous Milestone
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/06/arctic-sea-ice-falls-below-ominous-milestone
Follow every bump in every graph at Neven’s Arctic Sea Ice Blog.
A place where people of all sorts chill out over ice.
The Texas hail storm was surely a signal that even the political denial of climate change, that seems to be a seminal aspect of Texas politics, is going to be put to the test. When people live though these extreme weather events, they experience tends to get their attention.
The arctic sea ice melting SO FAST is a clear sing that ice recovery over the winter is now in the form of very thin ice, ice that melts away in record time once summer comes. Someday soon even this thin ice will not recover over winter and that will set up the feedback loop that the dark waters soak up sunlight and then a runaway effect becomes reality.
Other may want to comment on this thing I have noticed as of late, “The climate science deniers are becoming much more quiet as of late.” Only the truly hard core
fanatics are ignoring the mass of recent extreme weather events and still screaming loudly that global warming and climate science are a liberal conspiracy.
Absolutely. Why haven’t the media hounded Inhofe in his igloo?
into
yes, I have noticed this as well. Perhaps if we move into a true El Nino in the upcoming year along with a relatively high TSI level (after a longish solar min)…well- maybe we can move to the next level of conversation- What do about this ‘exquisitely’ challenging situation.
Why don’t the fossil fuel companies understand that selling much less of their product will send prices up massively, as well as the value of their deposits?
They should tell their lobbyists to make sure the politicians vote for stronger restrictions. Less fossil fuel burned means more profits for them.
Turning around the fossil fuel industry lobbyists would probably help a lot with getting more support for the climate with American politicians.
Our article on ‘Wedging the Gap’, a bottom-up approach to the global climate challenge now online! Nature Climate Change: http://goo.gl/Dtgnq
ROCK & ROLL TO THE RESCUE
Lucky for us, the band Aerosmith has begun it’s 2012 ” Global Warming Tour”, “kicking off” today in Minneapolis and heading for climte-challenged cities across the continent including Chicago, Toronto, Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Denver, Oakland & Los Angeles.
“After blowing away audiences in South America and Japan, the Bad Boys from Boston are back to rock America’s soul, with The Global Warming Tour playing 18 markets beginning on June 16 in Minneapolis, MN.”
The Aerosmith website http://www.aeroforceone.com/ offers no statement about the title of the tour or any reference whatsoever to global warming, climate change or band member positions; but as band member Stephen Tyler explains:
“The old Aerosmith is back with a new vengeance and we will kick your ass and make out with yur mothers,”
Just when I was starting to feel down again about what to do Mr Tyler gives me this whole new perspective. Can’t wait for the Rolling Stone analysis of Aerosmith’s contribution to focusing fans on global warming. The GW Tour Tshirts aren’t in the online store yet, but for Father’s Day you can still get ” Joe Perry’s Rock Your World® Mango Tango™ Table Sauce 12 Ounces
$8.99
Member Price: $8.09″
Enjoy.
http://www.aeroforceone.com/ — wotta mess! The HTML runs 1123 lines, most of them blank.
The W3C validator sez: 116 errors, 38 warnings found while checking this document as HTML 4.01 Transitional!
C’mon, guys! You’re big rock singers, you’ve got golden fingers — you can do better than this.
The Economist has what looks like a good report on the vanishing Arctic, and that issue is open online (at least via Starbucks.)
Here’s one paragraph from their introduction:
Unfortunately the world is indeed mad. It has been MAD ever since the wartime development of the “gadget,” aka atomic bomb, in America. Now, however, we are faced with multiple dimensions of Mutual Assured Destruction. These multiple threats come from one associated source: Fuels of War.
Chumps fall for “EPA spy drone” rumor.
Will the next rumor play out any differently? What if the story was “EPA black helicopters?” Is a fool trainable?
EPA ‘spy drones’ overshoot the facts
I had not seen this paper in Nature before – interesting study showing that at the end of the last glaciation sea level rose by 14 to 18m in 350 years.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/full/nature10902.html
A new study suggests trees growing on former tundra increase CO2 release from the soils
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-06/uoe-eof061512.php