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:
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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):
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“There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change”
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“The statement about the absence of trends in impacts attributable to natural or anthropogenic climate change holds for tropical and extratropical storms and tornados”
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“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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I just visited Milloy’s site and the comment attributed to Pielke Jr. seems odd. “…Insurance companies make good on losses quickly through premiums…”–well the best counterexample is AIG I suppose, but many companies go broke through inadequate premiums. The insurance companies set hurricane premiums in Florida using a quiet period (in the 1970s, I think) and this, added to politics, is the reason that Florida itself is now the insurer for so many. Even using re-insurance to cover unexpected contingencies does not make the business of setting premiums easy. And as far as excess coverage and premiums being a “rip-off” goes; I have probably paid for the original value of my house through insurance and have never made other than one claim for hail. This does not make it a rip-off, though.
Great advisory. I’ve often wondered if truth in advertising laws couldn’t be used to whack any organization using fudged statistics, scare mongering, and other tactics to sell memberships and solicit donations and grants the way these laws are used in regard to commercial sales. Any examples?
Please report back if Messr. McGhee answers.
McComberBoy says:
As the moderator pointed out in response to John’s comment, the statement about a 58% increase in that CBC piece was a (not very well-worded) statement about the increase in emissions, not an increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. An increase in emissions of CO2 should equate to an increase in the rate of rise in greenhouse gas concentrations…In other words, it is more closely related to the derivative of the concentration with respect to time than to the concentration itself.
Well, you may be remembering his chart correctly, but Rutan is not a climate scientist and this statement displays multiple fallacies:
(1) While it is true that greenhouse gases are only about 2% of the atmospheric concentration by volume, they are the only ones that are capable of absorbing infrared radiation emitted by the Earth and hence they play a disproportionately-large role in determining the radiative balance and temperature of the Earth. (The non-greenhouse gases do come into play in that they cause some important pressure broadening of the greenhouse gas absorption lines.)
(2) It is rather irrelevant what percentage CO2 is by volume of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since all greenhouse gases are not created equal…and the radiative effect of a greenhouse gas is not simply linearly proportional to its concentration. For these reasons also, CO2’s direct radiative effect is disproportionately large compared to its proportion of total greenhouse gas concentrations.
(3) A further fact is that the largest greenhouse gas by volume, water vapor, is condensable and because of this its concentration turns out to be controlled to a large degree by the temperature, which in turn, is controlled to a large degree by the non-condensable greenhouse gases of which CO2 is the major component both in terms of concentration and overall radiative effect.
(4) The claim that “human contributed CO2 is 3.4% of CO2” is a falsehood. Humans may be emitting only about 3.4% of the gross amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere but the natural emissions are balanced by equally large absorptions from the atmosphere. So, humans are responsible for all of the net increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. In fact, the oceans and land biosphere are sequestering about half of our emissions, so atmospheric concentrations of CO2 would have increased by about twice the amount that they have if not for the fact that this sequestration occurs. Hence, we are responsible for all of the ~40% increase in CO2 concentrations since the beginning of the industrial revolution…and, it is only through the good fortune of the ability of the biosphere and oceans to take up CO2 that this increase has not been more like 80%.
Happy New Years to you too. However, it is one of the ironies of WUWT that those like myself who are called “trolls” are actually injecting basic scientific facts into the discussions and those who make accusations of trolling are often spreading “facts” that is completely discredited in the scientific community.
REPLY: “…but Rutan is not a climate scientist”. And I’ll remind the readers that neither is Joel D. Shore. Though he fancies himself as one. – Anthony
joelshore says:
“Well, you may be remembering his chart correctly, but Rutan is not a climate scientist…”
Neither is joelshore.
And joelshore should notify his pals at the thinly-trafficked alarmist blogs that even unscientific ‘troll’ comments are posted here. Readers can then decide what is truth, and what is nonsense. Most readers agree that catastrophic AGW is complete nonsense.
Alarmist blogs censor uncomfortable comments by scientific skeptics, because skeptics demolish the alarmist narrative. If they published all comments like WUWT does, they would get lots more traffic. But they would also have their alarmist nonsense demolished. So they censor.
[SNIP – Joel, I’m not interested in turning your petty arguments into a flame war. I’ve been quite tolerant of your occasional lapses, and you’ve had 3470 comments here on WUWT, but it ends here if you want to complain that you are somehow being treated unfairly. Move on to another topic, if you don’t like the moderation here, take a hike. In fact, take a few days off to think about how terrible it is that you have 3470 published comments here. See you next week] – Anthony
Kevin Kilty says: January 1, 2013 at 5:03 pm
mpainter says:
December 31, 2012 at 5:11 pm
Re:Liam McGhee
Great advisory. I’ve often wondered if truth in advertising laws couldn’t be used to whack any organization using fudged statistics, scare mongering, and other tactics to sell memberships and solicit donations and grants the way these laws are used in regard to commercial sales. Any examples?
Please report back if Messr. McGhee answers.
===============================================
The NY Times has wide national distribution, perhaps 50 states, so 50 jurisdictions.
Does the ad qualify as deceptive, untrue, or misleading? Somewhere there is an AG who does not like global warmers. Can you imagine James Hansen called to testify? Or any of these global warmers whose science falls apart at a poke?
Hartford has over 20,000 employees. Liam McGhee will hear about my notification when he returns to work, if he has not already. It will get his attention, you can bet. We’ll see if he responds
mpainter.
I disagree with the assessment that it is unlikely in the future. Poisson statistics say otherwise meaning that an event in the future is maximum near a current event. Sandy may be caused by cooling or warming but a repeat is maximum right now.
joeldshore says: January 1, 2013 at 6:19 pm
(1) While it is true that greenhouse gases are only about 2% of the atmospheric concentration by volume, they are the only ones that are capable of absorbing infrared radiation emitted by the Earth and hence they play a disproportionately-large role in determining the radiative balance and temperature of the Earth. (The non-greenhouse gases do come into play in that they cause some important pressure broadening of the greenhouse gas absorption lines.)
Refutation: Volumetrically, water vapor is the only significant greenhouse gas. CO2, at 390 ppm, is not of significant volume. It is true that water vapor comprises about 2% by volume of the atmosphere on average, but actual concentrations vary greatly from less than 1% in very dry climates to nearly 4% in the tropics. The greenhouse effect varies according to the climate. The much diminished GHE of such dry climates as the Sahara is confirmed by its diurnal temperature range of 85-90 degrees F. Compare with the diurnal range of the tropics of 20-23 degrees F. CO2 concentration is the same for the tropics and the desert, so the great difference of diurnal temperature range is due strictly to the different humidities. But even at very slight concentrations of water vapor, say .5% by volume, CO2 is still an inconsiderable portion of total greenhouse gas, compare 5,000 ppm to 390 ppm (.07), and so we see that even the very slight GHE of very dry climates is due to water vapor, with only an inconsiderable contribution from CO2.
(2) It is rather irrelevant what percentage CO2 is by volume of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since all greenhouse gases are not created equal…and the radiative effect of a greenhouse gas is not simply linearly proportional to its concentration. For these reasons also, CO2′s direct radiative effect is disproportionately large compared to its proportion of total greenhouse gas concentrations.
Refutation: The above example shows how very rapidly the earth’s surface radiates heat at nightfall in such dry climates as the Sahara. This is due to very low atmospheric humidity. CO2 is of little consequence in retaining heat in the atmosphere, and any retardation of heat in dry atmosphere is strictly due to the water vapor, slight though it is. Consequently, it can only be concluded that CO2 has no effect in determining climate. AGW theory simply invents a role for CO2 in climate matters, as the temperature record of the last sixteen years shows.
(3) A further fact is that the largest greenhouse gas by volume, water vapor, is condensable and because of this its concentration turns out to be controlled to a large degree by the temperature, which in turn, is controlled to a large degree by the non-condensable greenhouse gases of which CO2 is the major component both in terms of concentration and overall radiative effect.
Refutation: Water in all of its phases acts as a coolant. In the atmosphere, water acts as a primary means of transporting heat out of the atmosphere through the process of convection, which itself is actuated by the adiabatic lapse rate of water vapor and latent heat considerations. By such means heat is transported aloft to radiate into space through a thinner, dryer atmosphere. CO2, to the extent that it absorbs and holds IR, contributes to this convective cooling. Air temperature is determined by insolation and humidity, as exemplified by the comparison between the tropics and deserts, and not by CO2.
(4) The claim that “human contributed CO2 is 3.4% of CO2″ is a falsehood. Humans may be emitting only about 3.4% of the gross amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere but the natural emissions are balanced by equally large absorptions from the atmosphere. So, humans are responsible for all of the net increase in CO2…etc.,etc.,
Rebuttal: Atmospheric CO2 is entirely beneficial. It is the foundation of life in all of its forms and is the ultimate source of all food. Anthropogenic CO2 acts as a plant fertilizer and enhances agricultural yield, as proven by various studies.
joeldshore, see what happens to a house of cards when you poke it. Remember the story of the three little pigs? Same idea.
I like the idea of using the courts, or threatening use of the courts, to effect some justice on scams. I myself avoid it, though, because despite its power, the legal system is slow, and unwieldy. It’s like an M79, which if used improperly can lead to a bad scratch on one’s arm, or worse, a purple heart.
Insurance is a particular business, with fools in it.
One Canadian residential insurer decided to offer an optional extra medical option for travel to the US. At the price, without any restriction on time in the US, it was a very good deal. No surprise the price went way up in subsequent years, and restrictions on duration were added.
OTOH, years ago I was in a strata title residential development (often called condos). One year the property management company advised they’d found building insurance at far lower cost. “Sounds too good to be true.” we said. They explained that the insurance company had actually looked at the development and saw that the 200 units were in a couple of dozen or so separate buildings, not in a big connected block as some in that city were. So the fire risk was substantially less because the likelihood that all units would burn was much lower.
It’s not only the insurance lobby’s statements about attribution that are screwed up. Even the incidence of the events themselves is misrepresented: warming has been driving them down, for a long time. That may be about to reverse, of course. So their fear-mongering may turn out to be justified, but for the opposite of the reasons they cite.
The irony and stupidity both burn.