Guest essay by Linnea Lueken, originally published in Climate Realism
A recent article at the Chicago Sun Times (CST) claims that “Climate change is fueling a surge in Illinois home insurance premiums,” via increases in severe weather. This is false. Severe weather is not getting worse in Illinois, so it cannot be the driver for insurance costs. Other factors, like increasing home values and inflation, are driving insurance rates higher.
The article is sponsored by the environment focused media group Grist, so there is already an incentive to inflate the climate angle and downplay the more important reasons why insurance costs are rising in already-expensive Illinois. Those other reasons are mentioned briefly in the post, “the value of a home, the cost of the materials needed to rebuild it, and even the credit scores of the homeowner,” all impact insurance costs, but the CST insists that really climate change is the main problem.
The CST post says that “Illinois home insurance premiums are going up, and climate change-powered severe weather is in part to blame.” Later in the article it specifies hail and flooding as specific weather events that are damaging homes in the state.
The flooding issue is addressed within the article itself, with the CST writer saying that neighborhood developers “are also building homes in flood-prone areas, adding to rising premiums.”
Right, if a home is built in an area that FEMA has already designated as a flood zone, insurance costs will be higher. That is not the fault of climate change, it is the fault of developers and the people who are willing to take the risk and buy those homes. Flood zones change naturally over time, it has nothing to do with climate change.
The other major extreme weather the post points towards, hail storms, are most definitely not getting worse according to weather data.
As discussed in a previous Climate Realism post on the issue of hail in Illinois, weather data shows that hail occurrence has actually been declining on average since highs around 2006, but overall show no long term trend at all. (See figure below)
Despite the available weather data showing that extreme weather is not getting worse, CST says that State Farm and Allstate “pointed to extreme weather as driving up costs.”
Rising insured losses are not evidence that extreme weather is getting worse, but they are reflective of the fact that home values are getting higher, and that inflation which impacts the cost of the homes themselves as well as all the materials needed to make repairs after damage is done, is also rising.
It is convenient for insurance companies and state governments to blame climate change, a nebulous thing outside their control, for hikes in premiums. Climate Realism has posted dozens of posts showing why climate change is not responsible for rising insurance rates or dropped coverage in various parts of the country, and Illinois is no exception.
The Chicago Sun Times allied with Grist to promote climate alarmism at the expense of truth, and in the process shielded insurance companies from blowback for rising insurance rates and urban planners for allowing building in unsuitable areas. In a roundabout way CST and Grist blame the residents of Illinois for their own suffering. If only people would stop driving cars that use gasoline and diesel, and stop demanding reliable electricity as provided by coal, natural gas, and nuclear, then maybe insurance wouldn’t be so high! It is simple fearmongering in order to coerce people into supporting climate restrictions that Grist and other activists have long pushed for.
Blaming stuff on Carbon Dioxide relives authorities from doing anything to correct their self-made problems.
[The nickname “Windy City” came from Chicago’s political leaders being “full of hit air“, also,though, wind did blow smelly air from the stockyards.]
The late Scott Adams Dilbert creator understood the scam.
One of the many reasons the Left hated him as he got based on their lies.
grist – noun “anything that can be used to youradvantage:”
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/grist
And there was me thinking they mis-spelled ‘grift’.
More than 25 billion gallons of treated drinking water are lost in the Chicago area each year due to leaks in aging pipes.
If water leaks are repaired, the risk of flooding is reduced. This reduces the strain on the undersized drainage water pipes in Chicago.
Facts about drainage water pipes in Chicago:
Flood drainage water pipes and sewer systems in Illinois, particularly in the Chicago area and Southern Illinois, are frequently overwhelmed because they are too small to handle current rainfall volumes.
Let’s start here.
“It is simple fearmongering in order to coerce people into supporting climate restrictions that Grist and other activists have long pushed for.”
The reason for all this is not very complicated. In one of the most badly administered States in the US and one if the US most badly run cities, global warming becomes very convenient to blame for all the things that have gone wrong. The Sun-Times and Grist are simply lending support to the lies of their favoured politicians. The dismal Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass have already shown the way of how to lie about global warming to avoid accounting for their own appalling failures in running anything more complex than a Barbie Doll house.
In the long run, their lies don’t matter. The voters who pay most of the taxes are still fleeing from Illinois and Chicago by the tens of thousands every month. Brandon Johnson will doubtless continue the quest he and Lori Lightfoot undertook to make Chicago resemble the ruins of Detroit.
As a former Chicago area resident, and an Illinois refugee, allow me to point out how absolutely accurate this writer is.
From having once been the fifth largest city in the US with a population of well over two million, Detroit now has less than 670,000. Bad state and municipal governments for half a century ruined Motor City. It’s simply my observation that the same thing seems to be happening in Chicago as well. And New York. And LA. And Seattle. And Portland. And Boston.
It should be evident what all these places have in common. Uninterrupted rule by Democrats for more than half a century. All are locked in a perpetual cycle of decline. We’ve seen this movie before.
Escape from New York – Wikipedia
But who imagined that a John Carpenter film would be an accurate prediction of the future?
Didn’t Carpenter also do “They Live”?
Yes, he did.
I agree with both of you. This may be ugly, but Lori Lightfoot looks like something dragged out of a grave. For that matter, so does Karen Bass.
“Later in the article it specifies hail and flooding as specific weather events that are damaging homes in the state.”
Hail storms? Damaging homes? How common is that? I suspect it’s very rare. It can damage crops of course and especially vulnerable to hail are solar “farms”!
It is pretty common in the midwest to have your composite shingle roof damaged by hail. Over the 35 years I have owned in WI, the insurance companies have all pretty much opted out of coverage for shingle roofing.
I’m surprised. It can’t be all that many houses damaged- such that with a reasonable addition to the insurance rate- they shouldn’t have to drop coverage on that issue.
I wouldn’t be too worried about construction – there may not be much more. (story tip) Illinois is pushing a bill with new regulations for unsafe working temperatures. Defined as under 40 or over 80 outdoors, and under 60 or over 80 indoors (under 65 for office jobs)
https://www.nfib.com/news/news/illinois-house-revives-workplace-temperature-bill/
https://www.thecentersquare.com/illinois/article_0d9012cc-2031-4c79-b2bc-d87aebf2322f.html
I wonder how that will affect business liability insurance?
Here in the UK there is a persistent problem of Councils, interested only in increasing the council tax income levied on homes in their area, approving new builds on land liable to flooding. By law they have to consult the Environment Agency which often advises against but they do not have to take its advice.
A nit.
When the government increases property taxes, the value of the property inflates relative to insurance premiums.
As if they didn’t have anything else to worry about in that failed city state.
I suppose there may be some rhetorical value in all of these “Wrong, So-and-So” articles, especially for people who haven’t thought critically about the climate change claims before, but I find them rather tiresome.