World's largest economic sector faces global warming as a reality

Discussion in 'Business & Economics' started by Fraggle Rocker, Sep 29, 2007.

  1. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Abstracted from an op-ed in yesterday's Washington Post by John Morrison and Alex Sink, state overseers of insurance companies in Montana and Florida, respectively.

    If you don't want to read the whole abstract, skip to the final paragraph below the bracketed quote. I didn’t realize that insurance is the world’s largest economic sector.
    ”Federal reluctance to commit to international agreements on climate change, or otherwise cap total carbon emissions, appears to be driven by influential businesses that fear the limitations will hurt their bottom lines. But the risk perceived by the insurance industry--the world's largest economic sector--may shift that political balance. At the least, it should tell us something.”
     
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  3. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    If we stopped everything right now, it would be hundreds of years before there would be any effects in the global warming trends. If humans all went back to the horse and buggies, no fires, no nothing, it would be hundreds of years before there'd be any changes in global warming.

    Baron Max
     
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  5. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Interesting. What's your source for that?
     
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  7. desi Valued Senior Member

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    What are they basing this off of? The Katrina debacle was due to people living where everyone with any sense knew flooding would happen sooner or later. Fear mongers get annoying when you know better. I don't mind business taking profits but scaring up business is just bad business.
     
  8. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    You're being FAR to narrow-minded. Katrina was actualy just a small part of the total losses that occured in that 25-year span between 1980 and 2005. You have to look at the WHOLE picture - not just one little piece of it. And I really doubt if you have any idea about the magnitude of things in Florida or all the wildfires just in recent years alone.

    There's no fear-mongering here! Insurance companies, like anything else, are in business to make money. And when they begin to stop writing coverage - as many have done - that's NOT to scare anyone, it's called doing business.
     
  9. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Not entirely. The Army Corps of Engineers is one of the most respected institutions in America. People automatically have faith in anything they build. The reason they collapsed is that they were never meant to last this long without being reinforced or replaced. It's the same thing that's going on with our bridges: There's nothing wrong with the way they were built, they are simply overdue for normal maintenance or replacement. The government is so paralyzed by war, bureaucracy and corporate favoritism that it no longer does even the basic jobs that everyone assumed was the bare minimum it would always do.

    Nonetheless the point is well taken that hurricanes are becoming larger and more frequent because of the way climate change affects the open ocean. It would be easy for a hurricane to do just as much damage in Florida or Texas. As the globe warms and hurricanes roam further north, one could easily hit us here in low-lying Washington or even New York, which is nothing but a chain of islands. There is absolutely no reason they couldn't become more common in the Pacific and start hitting L.A. and San Diego... not to mention all those ripe little islands that make up Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
    They are not scaring up business. I worked for an insurance company and I assure you, there is no industry on earth that is more coldly rational. That is why I posted this in the first place. If the insurance industry is starting to take global warming seriously , it is time to worry.
     
  10. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Precisely the point I was trying to get across to Desi.

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    When the cold, calculating insurance companies STOP writing policies (their primary source of income for operations and investments) one can be assured they aren't trying to "scare up" business. Just the opposite, in fact - they are turning it DOWN because the risks have become too great!!
     
  11. spuriousmonkey Banned Banned

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    If we would all have horses and buggies global warming would still speed up. Horses fart and belch.
     
  12. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    I find it ironic that enviromentalists are making so much hay from hurricane Katrina when the whole situation was caused by them. A flood gate was all set to be built in the seventies which would have prevented the flood. Until some enviromentalists came along and filed a lawsuit which stopped its construction.
     
  13. spuriousmonkey Banned Banned

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    What kind of hay are the environmentalists making then? I can't remember seeing the environmentalists trying to gain profit from the hurricane.

    How did the environmentalists cause the hurricane to happen? Did they pray to the hurricane gods?

    Or did you mean that they objected to a project that would destroy vast tracts of the environment, and the greedy policy makes were uninterested in proposing a solution that didn't destroy the environment to this degree? Who is to blame? Environmentalists for trying to save our natural heritage, or policy makes too cheap to come up with a good solution?

    I think you have been blinded here by your own political agenda.

    Or may I propose another theory giving us another party to blame? Are we seeing a chaos theory effect here? was it not a butterfly flapping its wings in China that set Katrina off, but was it a wet fart by George W Bush on his ranch during one of his many long holidays?
     
  14. desi Valued Senior Member

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    Hurricaines are not any bigger than they were before. The earth is not getting any warmer than it has in the past. That is scare talk based on ignorance. The problem is more people living in areas like Florida where hurricaines happen to land predictably often. If the same number of people lived in hurricaine and tornado zones as they did in the 1900's this would not be an issue.
     
  15. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Ha! Only the part about more people living along coastal areas is correct. But the rest of it? Talk about being based on ignorance!!!!!:bugeye:
     
  16. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    Of course the enviromentalists didn't cause the hurricane, anymore than the conservatives did. What they did was oppose a project that would have prevented the flood. And, no, it would not have destroyed vast tracts of the environment.
     
  17. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Excuse me, but a floodgate is a huge human endeavor that alters the natural environment. What do you think the area we call Holland would be like without all those dikes? A floodgate project should be judged with as much suspicion as a highway or an offshore oil platform.
    Uh, excuse me again. You apparently missed this part of the original article:
    The problem is;
    • After a hurricane, idiotic refugees rush right back in and rebuild.
    • Idiotic local governments don't change the zoning to "HURRICANE PATH: ILLEGAL TO BUILD HERE" and give them the permits.
    • Idiotic banks loan them the money to do it.
    • Idiotic insurance companies sell them the policies that allow the banks to approve the mortgages.
    Oh wait, I guess that last one is about to change.

    I see people rebuilding in areas destroyed by brushfires in southern California, but at least they rebuild better: no wood shake roofs, wider firebreaks, etc. People in southern California DON'T rebuild after mudslides, so they have at least some sense. Why do people in Florida rebuild after hurricanes? Sure, the giant hotels are strong enough to survive, but small buildings are not. Why are we even encouraging New Orleans to rebuild? It just seems foolish to me. Move inland, you fools! Yeah we all love the city but nothing built by man is destined to be permanent.
     
  18. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    Would you prefer Holland without the dikes? Every life lost, all the billions of dollars wasted could have been saved if we'd built the damned floodgate. No possible benefit of not building the floodgate outweighs the cost imposed by not building it.

    I agree it's stupid to build there, but since people were already there, their well being should have been the primary concern.
     
    Last edited: Oct 2, 2007
  19. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    um there was talk of at a catagory 6 to hurricanes from the weather people
     
  20. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    and all those people could have been saved if the wetlands on the coast had not been destroyed your point
     
  21. desi Valued Senior Member

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    I'm sure there was. That way they could scare more people into listening to their fear mongering. The fact is, if you live on the coast in some areas you are due to get more or less soaked sooner or later from a tropical storm. It was that way before cars and global warming and it will be that way long after the last car has rusted into oblivion.
     
  22. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    Why are insurance companies worried, they have made all kinds of excuses to not pay out to a whole lotta people after Katrina. Frankly the amount of hate directed at them should at least equal the hate of the federal governement.
     
  23. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    They wouldn't be living near the coast if they hadn't destroyed the wetlands. As I said, give the fact that they were already living there; their safely should have been the paramont concern. They should have built the floodgate. That's my point.
     

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