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Is the world becoming uninsurable?

charleshughsmith.substack.com

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Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#871

Post by osigurdson »

SideQuark wrote: post #863
osigurdson wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with "people should aim lower" type arguments is eventually everyone is living in a tent.

The problem with slippery slope fallacies is, well, they are a fallacy. I also see you coupled it with the strawman fallacy, since I didn't claim anything as wide ranging as "people should aim lower." Pretty impressive to pack so much poor reasoning into one sentence. Spending within what one can afford is a long running method of resource allocation which has served mankind for millennia, and mankind is now living a…

>> Part of this is that homes are too fancy and large. All of that translates into elevated costs and risks.

I was originally responding to the above parent comment. Agree, if you can't afford it, don't buy it.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#872

Post by heavyset_go »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #700
horsawlarway wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hurricanes are mostly just flood damage in the US, and some wind/debris damage exactly like the blown over trees you mention. Houses generally aren't destroyed by hurricanes in the sense of "the storm literally ripped them up", they're made uninhabitable by storm surges (flood). The scary ones are tornados. And tornados do genuinely fuck shit up. Even in those "enlightened" parts of the world you think have proper bu…

The real problem is that we're politically/socially unwilling to transfer the risk to the people who are responsible for creating it: Wealthy coastal landowners believe that the cost of home insurance should be about $2000/year. If their properties actually cost $200,000 per year to insure, then that's what they should have to pay! If they don't like it, they should either build something cheaper (that's the other ha…

> The real problem is that we're politically/socially unwilling to transfer the risk to the people who are responsible for creating it

A lot of the responsibility falls upon governments who are lobbied by developers to zone areas for development that should never have been zoned for development in the first place.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#873

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

megaman821 wrote: post #514
avianlyric wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re ignoring one critical difference between these two scenarios. Humans, and all human related activities, produce heat as a waste product. It’s much easier, and consumes less additional energy, to heat an occupied space, than to cool it. Thanks to the fact that your average human produces 80W of heat just to stay alive. So every human in your cold space is 80W fewer watts of energy you need to produce to heat th…

It is true that heat is easier to generate. Berlin is considered mild while Phoenix is considered very hot. They just happen to have the same temperature deltas. On the whole, the world spends many, many times more energy heating living spaces than cooling them. The coldest cities people live in just have much larger room temperature deltas than the hottest.

I'm reading this discussion while smh. Looking at a high temperature of -10F on Sunday!

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#874

Post by hintymad »

KerrAvon wrote: post #800
hintymad wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we know why the insurance companies can't simply raise the insurance price to match the risks in those areas that are prone to natural disasters? I mean in general, not as in California where the government imposes strange policies. Speaking of the policy, why wouldn't California allow the insurance company raise the premium by region? Doesn't such policy benefit the rich at the cost of the poor as the rich love t…

It's more complicated than that, as always. Here's some (incomplete) background on Florida: https://www.civilbeat.org/2024/03/how-floridas-home-insuranc... Re: California, I don't understand the context for your question, or why you would think the California government is more strange than any other US state government. There's no universally-accepted "ideology of California." It's a big state with a huge, diverse p…

It was based on some reports (or podcast? I can't remember) that the California government didn't allow the insurers to sufficiently increase their premiums in the burnt areas. The government (or the insurers) cited two reasons: there was a rule that the annual increase should be no more than 7%, and that if they want to make an exception then the insurers must increase the premiums for all the insured areas instead of setting the price by risk. As a result, the insurers stopped insurance renewal for about 60% of the burnt properties. I assume the intention is to protect the insured or to ensure certain equity, hence the use of the term "ideology". FWIW, it thought it was a neutral term, implying that it's a strongly held fundamental belief.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#875

Post by screye »

horsawlarway wrote: post #551
chillfox wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s possible that solve the hurricane problems with proper building regulations and lower the risk of huge wildfires with controlled burning. But the US as always prefers to pretend that there’s nothing to be done when other parts of the world has figured it out. We have cyclones here similar to the hurricanes in the US and usually it just blows over some trees maybe causes a power outage. The absolute worst I have…

Hurricanes are mostly just flood damage in the US, and some wind/debris damage exactly like the blown over trees you mention. Houses generally aren't destroyed by hurricanes in the sense of "the storm literally ripped them up", they're made uninhabitable by storm surges (flood). The scary ones are tornados. And tornados do genuinely fuck shit up. Even in those "enlightened" parts of the world you think have proper bu…

the US would avoid flood damage if they just built apartment buildings. Asian apartments towers are immune to flooding because they allocate the ground floor to parking. Can't blow the roof off a square concrete building either.

Ofc, a sufficiently strong Tornado is destroying everything in its wake. But, they're rare in comparison.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#876

Post by epistasis »

greenavocado wrote: post #829
epistasis wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying to talk to people locally, a place with lots of homes built in the woodland-urban interface, about the risks of climate change and how insurance will have to change. Unfortunately these discussions almost never go well, because it seems that most people have at best a surface level understanding of what insurance is and how it works, and everyone is convinced that it's a full scam and insurance compa…

The issue is not that people believe that insurance companies are not pricing risk correctly. It's that because there is so little competition in the market, people are aware that insurance companies can charge higher premiums because they operate as an oligopoly.

Your statements contradict each other, don't they?

In the many many complaints I have heard about the insurance industry, nobody has complained about them acting as an oligopoly or about a lack of competition.

Further, pricing is extremely regulated in terms of what can be factored in, so being an oligopoly doesn't have much impact on that.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#877

Post by heavyset_go »

bdauvergne wrote: post #742
doug_durham wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't align with the reality of these areas. To get insurance in these areas you have to demonstrate that you have created a defensible space around your house. This is enforced by local fire department inspections. I know this because I live near a fire prone area. Despite these things the area still burned. The problem isn't "lawns" or "wooden houses". In the case of the LA fires you would have had the burne…

From the recent events in California I have seen many photos of burnt houses with unburnt trees around. I think those houses were especially flammable more than some vegetation around it seems. After the fire nothing remained but the chimneys. I have never seen any house burn like that in Europe. I live along the Mediterranean sea in France, many wood fires every summer, with wind above 100km/h; never seen so many ho…

> From the recent events in California I have seen many photos of burnt houses with unburnt trees around.

I think some of that can be attributed to the fact that buildings are stationary structures that have ample square-footage for embers to land and cause fires, where as trees have less stationary surface area for embers to land, remain and build into fires.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#878

Post by martijnvds »

0u89e wrote: post #764
bdauvergne wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the recent events in California I have seen many photos of burnt houses with unburnt trees around. I think those houses were especially flammable more than some vegetation around it seems. After the fire nothing remained but the chimneys. I have never seen any house burn like that in Europe. I live along the Mediterranean sea in France, many wood fires every summer, with wind above 100km/h; never seen so many ho…

I have looked on some videos of how those good looking US houses have plastic drainage, plastic material roof cladding and plastic panels inside and outside. And the first thing that I was thinking - those burn in an event of house fire. But I see more ond more building materials that were used in US now offered and being standard in building here in Europe, so most probably some of the newer houses in an event of fi…

The Grenfell tower fire comes to mind regarding flammable cladding. Not "new" but "renovated".

It killed more than 70 people.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#879

Post by daveguy »

petsfed wrote: post #755
horsawlarway wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hurricanes are mostly just flood damage in the US, and some wind/debris damage exactly like the blown over trees you mention. Houses generally aren't destroyed by hurricanes in the sense of "the storm literally ripped them up", they're made uninhabitable by storm surges (flood). The scary ones are tornados. And tornados do genuinely fuck shit up. Even in those "enlightened" parts of the world you think have proper bu…

Tornadoes are quite a bit less common outside of North America, and especially the US. Some of that comes down to the absence of people in the places where tornadoes occur, so there's no one there to report them. The Tornado Archive ( https://tornadoarchive.com/ ) has a pretty well executed map to illustrate that. They report that between 2011 and 2021 (just the dates I punched in, so its possible the actual ratio is…

Also, the list of tornadoes the GP refers to in Europe are mostly F0-F2 severity. These don't often cause high fatalities and injuries in the US either (on par with what's reported there). The problem is that tornadoes in the US Midwest and Southeast are often in the F3-F5 range, which are much deadlier. An F3 tornado includes winds to 165 mph, which is considered a category 5 in the hurricane scale. They don't last nearly as long, but high intensity tornadoes can cause catastrophic damage in seconds where they hit directly, unless the shelter is literally underground.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#880

Post by petsfed »

daveguy wrote: post #879
petsfed wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tornadoes are quite a bit less common outside of North America, and especially the US. Some of that comes down to the absence of people in the places where tornadoes occur, so there's no one there to report them. The Tornado Archive ( https://tornadoarchive.com/ ) has a pretty well executed map to illustrate that. They report that between 2011 and 2021 (just the dates I punched in, so its possible the actual ratio is…

Also, the list of tornadoes the GP refers to in Europe are mostly F0-F2 severity. These don't often cause high fatalities and injuries in the US either (on par with what's reported there). The problem is that tornadoes in the US Midwest and Southeast are often in the F3-F5 range, which are much deadlier. An F3 tornado includes winds to 165 mph, which is considered a category 5 in the hurricane scale. They don't last…

There's also that, but I didn't go to the effort of investigating the rate of various strengths. I'll bet their data explorer shows that aspect of the phenomenon too.

I suspect that a major factor is that the great plains of North America are at a lower latitude than e.g. the Eurasian steppes, so 1) there are fewer people living there and 2) the confluence of meteorological circumstances needed to generate a lot of tornadoes (and therefore a larger population of very destructive tornadoes) just aren't present anywhere else in the world.

This whole line of reasoning "Americans must be bad at house construction, look at all the destruction wrought by hurricanes/tornadoes/etc" just feels disingenuous to me. Like observing "look at how much better the British are at building volcano/earthquake proof buildings, you never hear about people losing their houses to lave in the UK!".

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