UPDATE: graph of damage losses including 2012 posted below. It says all that needs to be said.
This ad is running in rotation at the NYT today, and it needs an application of Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.’s handy bullshit button.
Steve Milloy writes at junkscience.com:
Insurers know that bad weather comes and goes… and after it comes, it’s not likely to come again for a long time… that’s why they’re called “100-year” storms.
There at that website they write:
Superstorm Sandy devastates the east coast with heavy winds and storm surges that flood major cities and shorelines while dumping record snow in West Virginia and knocking out power as far away as Cleveland, OH.
…
Unpredictable weather seems to be the new norm.
I call BS on that last sentence.
Sandy was not only predicted, many meteorologists nailed the path well in advance. In fact, some have called it ‘Their finest hour’:
From CCM Mike Smith:
Here is the European computer model’s forecast made at 2pm last Wednesday. It shows a hurricane near the coast of New Jersey or DelMarVa yesterday evening. The computer models showed more and more of the details of this ferocious storm as the time grew nearer.
The U.S. models didn’t do well, at first, taking the storm out to sea. But, human forecasters at AccuWeather and elsewhere put their knowledge and experience to work and leaned on the European heavily to get preliminary warnings and preparatory advice 4.5 days in advance. Those forecasts stayed consistent and got more detailed as time passed. By Saturday, we were predicting the flooding of the subway and two airports in NYC.
You’d think The Hartford insurance group would have experts for this and would have looked at the IPCC SREX report. But then again, they may just be out for gouging profiting at the expense of the stupid.
Dr Roger Pielke Jr observes:
===============================================================
The full IPCC Special Report on Extremes is out today, and I have just gone through the sections in Chapter 4 that deal with disasters and climate change. Kudos to the IPCC — they have gotten the issue just about right, where “right” means that the report accurately reflects the academic literature on this topic. Over time good science will win out over the rest — sometimes it just takes a little while.
A few quotable quotes from the report (from Chapter 4):
-
“There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change”
-
“The statement about the absence of trends in impacts attributable to natural or anthropogenic climate change holds for tropical and extratropical storms and tornados”
-
“The absence of an attributable climate change signal in losses also holds for flood losses”
The report even takes care of tying up a loose end that has allowed some commentators to avoid the scientific literature:
“Some authors suggest that a (natural or anthropogenic) climate change signal can be found in the records of disaster losses (e.g., Mills, 2005; Höppe and Grimm, 2009), but their work is in the nature of reviews and commentary rather than empirical research.”
He was prescient with this:
You may find yourself having to use the bullshit button in locations that are supposed to be credible, such as Nature Climate Change and the New York Times.
But, I’ll bet he didn’t think it would be used on advertising.
===============================================================
If I were a Hartford customer, I’d be on the phone with my agent, and not to order additional insurance.
UPDATE: Pielke Jr. adds this. 2012 was no Katrina year.
The graph above shows an updated estimate of the 1900 to 2012 normalized hurricane losses for the United States. The normalization methodology is described in Pielke et al. 2008 (here in PDF) and the data presented in the graph comes from the ICAT Damage Estimator, which extends the analysis of Pielke at al. through 2011.
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Would be funny (in a coincidental fassion) if enough people ordered the extra insurance and there was another Sandy type storm (Cat 1 Hurricane at high tide) that struck the area, then the Hartford had to pay out. I bet the insurance would vanish the following year with all remaining insurance contracts cancelled. Storms hav been known to strike twice in a season.
Hmm yes, there are quite a number of new insurances developing, some mandatory with penalties for skeptics and punishment for the resistant.
Taleb explains well the utility of insurance for Black Swan events.
Roger Pielke Jnr has previously observed that Reinsurance businesses usually more than make up for losses incurred in a major disaster in the following year. Partly this is by raising the premiums, but also due to people taking out extra insurance. He has also pointed out that a large Reinsurance companies – Munich Re – has a climate change department that puts out alarmist reports. This encourages people to over-insure, generating pure profits for the recipient.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/op-ed-on-climate-change-and-disasters.html
The leaked Draft AR5 SPM has similar statements about a lack of link between extreme weather and climate change. For instance Page 3 Lines 46-48
In on Page 4 Line 14 there is an admission that previous IPCC reports got it wrong on tropical cyclones getting more extreme. A consensus of the world’s leading experts do not agree with the likes of Prof Lewandowsky that Sandy was a likely result of global warming.
I worked with some people who got me with a button one day.
Walking into the lab one day I heard this voice say “Here comes that guy from [department].”
They’d modified a Staples button to be able to record and playback a voice.
IIRC they had to spend $30. on parts to make their prototype. Perhaps there’s a market at production volume prices. Or less for single message, which is what Staples’ device does?
“Never give a sucker an even break” W.C. Fields
I can visualize it now: the Hartford agent sits down with the prospect and proceeds to frighten them with the doomsday talk. When their sphincters have reached the desired tension, he pulls out the pen and points to the dotted line. Reminds one of the old song:
“Rolls in, rolls in, my God how the money rolls in, rolls in”
The other insurance companies will not be far behind, I promise.
The insurance is a gullibility tax.
Scientists say that CO2 acts like a blanket evening out temperature. Indeed the north pole [but not the south pole ] is warming faster than the topics so storms should e and are milder !
Thermodynamics says that wind speed is proportional to the difference of temperature not absolute temperature !
Remember the fastest winds in th solar system are on Neptune where it is close to absolute zero !
Maybe the message is “Don’t buy Insurance, buy shares in Insurance companies”.
On the other hand, maybe there are tiny signs that the dam can’t hold much longer and that the truth will start to appear in MSM.
Do they insure for cold temperatures as well?
http://theweathercentre.blogspot.com/
SSW event unfolding. It is going to get COLD
It is 60 yrs since the spate of New England hurricanes in the 50s. I have used the 60 year (or so) guide for droughts, floods, heatwaves, rain snow, wildfires, storms, cold NW US, etc. With some success and I comment frequently on ths subject. McKibben even crowed about the recent drought in US being the worst since the 30s.
Please sceptics, don’t be caught out smugly pooh-poohing this. If we don’t recognize this cycle, then it gets hijacked with success by the alarmists. If Hartford’s insurance isn’t outrageous, it could be a good gamble.
Answer this question: are we never to see a spate of.50s type NE fall hurricanmes again? If so, when? What about wildfires, tornadoes, floods…? Surely the Pielkes aren’t unaware of this likelihood. We’ve gotten so numbed dealing with where the alarmists are going that we have adopted a nothing-extreme-is-going-to-happen-ever-again stance. With this, catastrophists are going to end up ‘right’ and will have wind in their sails for another generation while we will be belatedly protesting ineffectually that its really just cycles while we are being forced to buiuld a windmill in our back yard. Does anyone here get this?
One should consider classifying the quotation from Junkscience.com as BS as well. The author has misinterpreted what “100 year event” means. It is absolutely false that after a 100-year event we should not expect another such for a long time. Over a very long period of time 100-year events should have a recurrence rate of one per 100 years–but two such events could occur together. The run of hurricanes on southern New England in the 1930s is probably a good example.
I have a question or brian teaser for the experts here on WUWT.
In artical at the CBC and listed on the Tom Watsons blog there is a statement that the Kyoto protocol was suppose to reduce co2 by 5% based on 1990 levels and instead we have an increase of 58%. See the excerpt below.
“The controversial and ineffective Kyoto Protocol’s first stage comes to an end today, leaving the world with 58 per cent more greenhouse gases than in 1990, as opposed to the five per cent reduction its signatories sought.”
If the co2 level in 1990 was 353 and the current level is 392 how are they getting the percentages stated above?
Brian teaser…
Thank you for your help in advance. I just want to know if this is BS or if I am missing something in my calculations which show nothing close to 58% even if I try and play with how they might be computing the number for example adding in the assumed savings of 5% which equates to 17.6 ppm to the delta between 352 ppm in 1990 versus the 2012 levels of 392 ppm’s.
John S.
Reply: You are confusing emissions goals with atmospheric concentration. They are not the same number. ~ mod
^^like the Cubs, right? Nevermind.
“2012 is currently on record as having the most extreme temperatures of any year since such recordkeeping began in 1910.” (Source: the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), as of September 1, 2012.)
—–
Is this statement from thehartford.com true? By “most extreme temperatures” do they mean highest temperatures? When I first read it, I thought they were saying that 2012 would be the warmest year since record keeping began. But I suppose “extreme temperatures” could also include extreme cold temperatures. So are they saying 2012 broke the most temperature records (hot or cold) since 1910? Does anyone know what the NCDC meant by this statement? Is there any truth to it?
If they believed extreme weather was going to be as widespread as they claim, they wouldn’t insure against it, any more than they currently insure against flood damage for buildings in known flood plains.
There’s nothing wrong with people buying insurance. It’s all in the premiums. A low risk should be mated with a low premium. If there’s any industry is not made up of fools it’s the insurance industry so I wouldn’t really worry too much about people being taken advantage of. If the premiums are too high another carrier will compete with lower premiums.
As most of us know its only when the government gets involved that things really get messed up.
@John
“If the co2 level in 1990 was 353 and the current level is 392 how are they getting the percentages stated above?”
My guess is that they are talking about anthropogenic CO2.
John says:
December 31, 2012 at 11:17 am
I have a question ….
That could be correct in diplomatic terms.
Internationally it may be 5% less then what it would have been had no action been taken. We’d never really know, you can take all sorts of scenarios to prove that point or to disprove it for that matter.
Most of the signatory nations can indeed claim reductions in CO2 output, the dirty industries just got exported to non signatory countries, problem solved.
The key to such protocols is to make sure that you satisfy the majority of parties, the greens were happy with the “binding” agreement on reductions. Industry in the signatory countries were happy as they finally had the “out” they needed to move these plants to non signatory low wage countries, something they wanted to do for ages to remain competitive but found hard to justify politically at their national level.
Kyoto was a great win for democracy, the majority got something they wanted, even though they were seemingly opposites. And when if it does not play out as per the “agreement”? That was many presidents and elections ago. How can we hold the current crop of politicos to account for what was signed then? And really: who cares?
Politicians can always sign another agreement with other “binding” (but meaningless) terms.
After all it is the taxpayer footing the bill.
Happy new year to all.
After the insurance companies extract money from folks who are then hit by a Sandy-like storm, could they not say something like…
“Hey, that’s not extreme weather; check this out at WUWT: ‘An update to US Hurricane Intensity 1900-2012 – no recent trend with hurricane Sandy’. Claim denied!”
Of course they risk being labeled weather insurance claim deniers.
Next thing you know Loyds of London will be charging a premium for ships or planes moving through the Bermuda Triangle.
When I want to compare dollar amounts from the past with dollar amounts today, I divide the past amount by 20 then multiply by the current price of an ounce of gold. Before FDR, one ounce of gold was used to make a $20 gold piece and was worth (duh) $20.
Maybe not the most accurate approach but it’s a quick and easy comparison when some disaster story tries use $ amounts to say how much worse things are now.
Unpredictable weather seems to be the new norm.
I’d send back those new super-duper-computers then, if, as this statement suggests, the weather used be be predictable by the crimatologists.
I’m afraid I can’t fault Hartford here.
The Free Market is all about selling people what they want and what they (think) they need ant a price they (believe) they can afford to pay. As a Natural Born Socialist, I don’t personally agree with that philosophy but that’s the way of the Market.
If people are gullible enough to believe that they need special insurance for exreme weather created by AGW then someone is going to satisfy that need. As long as they actually provide what they’re being paid for for (ie: as long as they actually pay up IF the extreme weather materialises) then they’re only doing what any good Capitalist should.
Of course, assuming they’re good at what they do, the very fact that they’re offering this suggests that they’ve run the figures and decided that the risk of it materialising is a low enough risk for them to insure against. Which does suggest it’s NOT as bad as we thought after all.
And at least they’re prepared to actually stake their own future on that assessment rather than other people’s futures – unlike those who keep telling us how much worse it’s getting 😉
Truth to an Insurance company is like sex to a virgin. Hyping, fear Mongering and profiting from the gullible is their stock in trade.
Which is why the Insurance industry loooooooooves the whole Glowball Warming Thingy.
$$$$$$$$$&&Profit.
A;though the pile on with disdain here is just, in the longer term, with US bankruptcy only years away, the generous disaster bailouts that we’ve become accustomed to – from the government – may well grow scarcer. In this circumstance, weather disaster insurance could be more like real insurance – disaster bailouts getting scarce as we go broke.
Liam McGhee,
Chairman, President, and CEO,
The Hartford Company.
Dear Sir:
Your ad in the New York Times December 31, 2012, “Extreme Weather is on the Rise” is incorrect, according to various scientific studies, including the AR 5 second order draft of the IPCC, which studies report that extreme weather events have not increased in frequency. The Hartford Company’s appeal is improperly based on the climate alarmism which currently is raging in this country. You may take this posting as your notification of this impropriety.
Now that you are aware of this, please be advised that any marketing approach that features an appeal based on such climate alarmism is fraudulent. I further advise that you consult your legal staff concerning the potential exposure of The Hartford Company to action brought by those who were inveigled into purchasing a Hartford policy due to marketing based on such fraudulent claims. Your attorneys can also advise on the question of criminal liabilities that may arise against Hartford agents, marketing personnel and executives, including yourself, connected with such fraudulent marketing.
I urge you to respond at this website to this notification.
Wishing You a Prosperous and Happy New Year,
mpainter