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Is the world becoming uninsurable?

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Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#431

Post by Over2Chars »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #283

American, living in area prone to natural disasters: "Is the WHOLE WORLD becoming uninsurable?" The answer is obviously "no" since there are other parts of the world that don't live on a hurricane highway nor build houses made from firewood in an area prone to wildfires.

I would assume that earthquake insurance in japan is a reasonable model for "world insurance".

It looks like it's a reinsurance program:

https://www.mof.go.jp/english/policy/financial_system/earthq...

So, I think the answer is "no".

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#432

Post by leguminous »

HacklesRaised wrote: post #343
tobyhinloopen wrote: post #283

American, living in area prone to natural disasters: "Is the WHOLE WORLD becoming uninsurable?" The answer is obviously "no" since there are other parts of the world that don't live on a hurricane highway nor build houses made from firewood in an area prone to wildfires.

To be fair we are talking about an area of the country that is prone to seismic activity, it does limit the building materials. Perhaps what should be more commonly accepted is that the US is a land of great natural beauty! And large tracts of it should be left to nature. What's the average monthly leccy bill in Phoenix during the summer? $400? Where does LA get most of its water? Local sources? I don't think that's…

> What's the average monthly leccy bill in Phoenix during the summer? $400?

The average high temperature in Phoenix in July is 106.5F (41.4C). If you are cooling to 70.0F (21.1C), that's a difference of 36.5F (20.3C).

The average January low in Berlin is 28.0F (-2.2C). If you are heating to 65.0F (18.3C), that's a difference of 37.0F (20.5C).

I feel like many people living in climates that don't require air conditioning have this view that it's fantastically inefficient and wasteful. Depending on how you are heating (e.g. if you are using a gas boiler), cooling can be significantly more efficient per degree of difference. Especially if you don't have to dehumidify the air, as in Phoenix.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#433

Post by Theodores »

andsoitis wrote: post #337
Theodores wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1666 London had a bit of a problem with fire, after that some building codes were introduced. Buildings made entirely from wood were not allowed and roofs had to have a parapet. If you don't know what a parapet is, take a look up to the roofs on London's older buildings, the front wall rises up past the bottom of the roof. If there is a fire in the building then the parapet keeps the burning roof inside the footpr…

> Florida was obliterated in 2024 That’s an huge exaggeration. FL was not obliterated in 2024. Stats: Total storms 18 Hurricanes 11 Major hurricanes (Cat. 3+) 5 Total fatalities 401 Total damage $128.072 billion (Third-costliest tropical cyclone season on record)

I forgot that any exaggeration is not allowed on HN!

128 billion dollars is equivalent to 200,000 homes, or even more, which does not represent total obliteration, however, if that level of devastation happened in the UK, the only comparison would be what the Luftwaffe did during WW2.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#434

Post by addicted »

andsoitis wrote: post #337
Theodores wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1666 London had a bit of a problem with fire, after that some building codes were introduced. Buildings made entirely from wood were not allowed and roofs had to have a parapet. If you don't know what a parapet is, take a look up to the roofs on London's older buildings, the front wall rises up past the bottom of the roof. If there is a fire in the building then the parapet keeps the burning roof inside the footpr…

> Florida was obliterated in 2024 That’s an huge exaggeration. FL was not obliterated in 2024. Stats: Total storms 18 Hurricanes 11 Major hurricanes (Cat. 3+) 5 Total fatalities 401 Total damage $128.072 billion (Third-costliest tropical cyclone season on record)

That damage is like 10% of Florida’s GDP.

That’s absolutely nuts.

It’s also a lot worse than the pure numbers suggest because the damage here is taking away actual built up stock, so capacity for generating future GDP. And the GDP in Florida includes a lot of economic activity used to rebuild after past damage.

And all of this without Miami even being flooded out of existence. Miami can’t even build dikes due to the porous ground it’s built on.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#435

Post by meetingthrower »

leguminous wrote: post #432
HacklesRaised wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair we are talking about an area of the country that is prone to seismic activity, it does limit the building materials. Perhaps what should be more commonly accepted is that the US is a land of great natural beauty! And large tracts of it should be left to nature. What's the average monthly leccy bill in Phoenix during the summer? $400? Where does LA get most of its water? Local sources? I don't think that's…

> What's the average monthly leccy bill in Phoenix during the summer? $400? The average high temperature in Phoenix in July is 106.5F (41.4C). If you are cooling to 70.0F (21.1C), that's a difference of 36.5F (20.3C). The average January low in Berlin is 28.0F (-2.2C). If you are heating to 65.0F (18.3C), that's a difference of 37.0F (20.5C). I feel like many people living in climates that don't require air condition…

100%. And can be wonderfully done by efficient heatpumps that cover the warmer months too. Also nice correlation between hot and sunny areas which means solar can get you to net zero pretty quick. (Says man looking at his solar panels right now covered with snow.)

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#436

Post by a3w »

arrowsmith wrote: post #427
soniman wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN just had a "Whoops we undercounted plant C02 absorption by 40% for the last 40 years" post so I would say the errors mostly go in one direction.

Isn't that overly pessimistic, not optimistic? Surely if plants are absorbing more CO2 than we thought, that's a good thing for climate change? (More CO2 absorbed by plants -> less CO2 staying in the atmosphere -> less warming. No?)

I think the counting errors were "we expected these sinks to fill up slower. They are already full, and not contribute instead of being a sink".

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#437

Post by epolanski »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #283

American, living in area prone to natural disasters: "Is the WHOLE WORLD becoming uninsurable?" The answer is obviously "no" since there are other parts of the world that don't live on a hurricane highway nor build houses made from firewood in an area prone to wildfires.

I'm always baffled at the fact that Americans don't build houses out of bricks.

I read those arguments of the advantages this method has, especially financial ones, but to me it's nonsense considering that it would prevent an endless number of problems that cause the total loss.

I still remember when New Orleans was hit with by Katrina, large parts of the suburbs where houses where made by wood and plastic where destroyed, yet downtown where buildings where made of bricks required maintenance, sometimes little of it, but none faced a total loss.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#438

Post by kilotaras »

hakfoo wrote: post #234
roenxi wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the regulators have defined 'price gouging' as a price substantially below the break even mark, literally any profitable insurance product is implicitly believed by them to be price gouging. The US does a weird thing where "insurance" no longer means pooling risk but some sort of transfer payment welfare system. If they're going to define "price gouging" as profitable activity it is hard to see how the economy is…

The math of insurance suggests that, if it needs to be widely carried (either due to things like mortgage requirements, or the simple realization most people don't have enough resources to absorb a major catastrophe themselves), the most economical way to go is to have a single risk pool that's as broad and diverse as possible, so it can swallow a large clustered crisis more easily. Yes, this is a bit of robbing Pete…

> or you can include them in the broad pool, and the people with a full-cinderblock home in a non-flammable state pay $20 more a year so the entire endeavour can work

And you immediately start loosing customers to insurers that either did the former or left LA alltogether. This changes $20 surcharge into $25 surcharge, causing more customers to leave, causing surcharge to increase and so on.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#439

Post by jyounker »

adrianN wrote: post #360
agsnu wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A significant portion of human structures are located close to the coast (seaborne trade having been a huge enabler of economic development for a few hundred years) and are exposed to flooding from rising sea levels, or built in valleys that are increasingly at risk from flooding due to far-above-long-term-historic-norms precipitation runoff (higher atmospheric temps lead to more energy in weather systems; see eg mas…

Compared to the other challenges climate change poses those are fairly simple engineering problems. The Netherlands manage fine with large parts of the country below sea level.

The Netherlands has been planning for the impacts of sea-level rise for decades now. At least twenty years ago the government broached the idea (with TV commercials) that they were going to have to abandon some are areas to the sea.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#440

Post by llm_trw »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #351
Almondsetat wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the cost of your life ? If the house resists the earthquake and you are inside it, you don't die.

Building to protect occupants and building to make the structure salvageable afterwards may be two different goals. Think crumple zones in cars.

Where is the crumple zone in the burned out buildings in California?
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