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Is the world becoming uninsurable?

charleshughsmith.substack.com

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Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#361

Post by igravious »

phtrivier wrote: post #325

Former CEO of AXA, a major French insurer, famously announced that a world at +4°C would be "uninsurrable" [1]. That was 10 years ago. It's true that most predictions about climate are wrong - most of the time, they're optimistic. (Not always, fortunately [2]) [1] https://www.leparisien.fr/economie/business/special-cop21-un... [2] https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/emissions-are-no-longer-fo...

+4°C is to the upper end of projections

if it did (which is not probable) happen it'd take until the end of the century

if we were to get there the entire world will be a different place; everything will have advanced so we won't be insuring our present world with our current knowledge and current tech but a future world with future knowledge and future tech

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#362

Post by throw310822 »

Animats wrote: post #107

Not uninsurable, but buildings are going to have to become tougher. It's happened before. Chicago's reaction to the Great Fire was simple - no more building wooden houses. Chicago went all brick. Still is, mostly. The trouble is, brick isn't earthquake resistant. Not without steel reinforcement. I live in a house built of cinder block filled with concrete reinforced with steel. A commercial builder built this as his…

In northern Italy, the rebuilding of mountain villages in brick and stone after devastating fires had destroyed many of them was ordered in the nineteenth century. It's absurd to claim you can't do anything against fires and the world has become uninsurable in the 21st century and in the world's richest country, while you keep building everything in the cheapest and lightest wood. The sight of the houses burned to the ground except for their fireplace and chimney in the middle is both sad and infuriating.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#363

Post by cutemonster »

mikewarot wrote: post #339
Sabinus wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the market is allowed to price insurance correctly then we can motivate building designs to be more disaster resist. If the McMansion can't get insurance but disaster resistant, modest homes do, then people will adapt.

It was only a week or so ago that I learned that a major failure mode of most houses in Florida during Hurricane season used to be the roofs ripping off. The tie plates and straps that were invented to solve that problem created the McMansion as a side effect.[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oIeLGkSCMA

Interesting video, didn't know about truss plates

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#364

Post by adrianN »

CalRobert wrote: post #345
adrianN wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even pessimistic scenarios don't predict threats to buildings (other than war, which to my knowledge never was insurable) in most areas of the world.

Seems like having the ocean at your door would be bad for the structure? Or burning down in a hot dry period…

Why would a city like London or Paris burn down in a hot dry period?

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#365

Post by fishstock25 »

nobodywillobsrv wrote: post #289
johnisgood wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm surprised that the damages of the LA fire occurred, because it was known beforehand that California had a fire problem (and also have an earthquake problem I think). I'm here in Eastern Europe and our buildings can withstand a lot of things. > we need to take action to mitigate their impact in the future. As a foreigner, it seems to me that Americans prioritize building cheap homes over constructing better…

The government banned insurance companies from raising prices. They used tax payer money to subsidize this for a while which increase home prices. Eventually insurance companies stopped offering insurance. When state actors even dabble in socialism disasters happen people die.

> The government banned insurance companies from raising prices. They used tax payer money to subsidize this for a while which increase home prices. Eventually insurance companies stopped offering insurance.

Obviously. Such a move by the government is just plain stupid.

> When state actors even dabble in socialism disasters happen people die.

No need to overgeneralize. Not every stupid move is immediately "socialism" and everything smart is "capitalism". It's obvious to every socialist that this move was stupid. In contrast, it's pretty clear that a purely market-based health system costs lives. Nobody is claiming though that "whenever societies dabble in capitalism it results in deaths". Pick your optimization target and then the right tool to reach that target. Sometimes that tool is to let prices regulate risk, sometimes it is laws to regulate risk, and sometimes it's something else entirely.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#366

Post by defrost »

falcor84 wrote: post #332
defrost wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Magnetic, rotational, geodetic .. ? What are you trying to say?

Can there even be geodetic drift of the poles? I sort of assumed that our lat/lon system is based on the poles being fixed points as a matter of definition.

Each ellipsoid is rigidly defined (well, some historic ones are sloppy), so WGS84 won't drift .. (that's a bold statement, is it true down to the micron and if so what are the absolute* datums to reference against?).

That said, there are literally hundreds of historic pre WGS84 ellipsoid|datum pairings, each with a somewhat different "survey map pole".

Historically geodectic poles have shifted as a function of datums.

The main point here, such as it is, was to poke at the infomation free aspect of "polar drift" as a comment .. which pole and what does that have to do with climate change? etc.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#367

Post by poisonborz »

Panzer04 wrote: post #259
_tariky wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Yugoslavia, in 1969, one of the biggest earthquakes occurred, destroying several cities. After that, the country’s leaders decided to change building codes. Even today, although Yugoslavia no longer exists, the countries that adopted those codes have homes capable of withstanding earthquakes up to 7.5 on the Richter scale. My main point is that if we face major natural disasters, we need to take action to mitigate…

Why bother building a better home when it's cheaper to buy insurance and rebuild later? This is why prices are important - sometimes it's sensible to build cheaper houses without these safeties if the risk isn't there, but if the risk does exist then it needs to be priced right to provide that incentive.

Maybe people don't like to restart their lives like that if it's avoidable, even if it costs more.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#368

Post by frankvdwaal »

nobodywillobsrv wrote: post #289
johnisgood wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm surprised that the damages of the LA fire occurred, because it was known beforehand that California had a fire problem (and also have an earthquake problem I think). I'm here in Eastern Europe and our buildings can withstand a lot of things. > we need to take action to mitigate their impact in the future. As a foreigner, it seems to me that Americans prioritize building cheap homes over constructing better…

The government banned insurance companies from raising prices. They used tax payer money to subsidize this for a while which increase home prices. Eventually insurance companies stopped offering insurance. When state actors even dabble in socialism disasters happen people die.

Ah yes. Socialism is when intervention and subsidies.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#369

Post by throw310822 »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #323
MagicMoonlight wrote: post #217

What are we betting that the Americans rebuild in wood again? It seems like they never learn. We had a single city fire like this 500 years ago and since then we haven’t… because we built the city back in brick instead of wood.

Americans used to build cities with brick and masonry. They were repeatedly destroyed by strong earthquakes, as would happen to your city if subject to similarly severe earthquakes. Americans paid for that lesson in blood. European houses are not designed to withstand American disasters. A brick house that can survive a M8.5 earthquake, which is the safety standard where I live, will be almost purely steel structural…

The entire south and south-east of Europe has a similar seismic risk to most of California, and wooden houses are nowhere to be seen.
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