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Is the world becoming uninsurable?

charleshughsmith.substack.com

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Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#511

Post by trollbridge »

Sabinus wrote: post #152
floatrock wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would expect that in a rational market. But go down a reading hole about flood insurance. tl;dr: in many places in the US, the only company that offers flood insurance is the US government because everyone else has pulled out. And people do tend to use the money to rebuild in the same location -- reasons as varied as "I like my beachhouse" to "my entire community was born and lived in this parish and I aint leavi…

>people are whispering "managed retreat" without actually being able to say it outloud around polite company, we are starting to see programs like "we'll make you whole in case of a flood, but you aren't allowed to rebuild on the lot if you take our payout". But those buyouts are often met with yells of "government is taking my property!" because again, no one wants to face the stark reality of managed retreat. I kno…

I live right next to a flood plain and the government doesn’t allow building in 100 year flood plains. This means you can’t get a mortgage for it, and the land is also very cheap - which can be used for grazing animals, growing crops, hunting preserves, or perhaps camping. The land is dry much of the year.

I have observed new owners do things like build open sided barns (which legally aren’t a building). Other owners live in camper trailers on the property. One just finished building an (illegal, obviously didn’t get a building permit) property up on stilts (which will get washed away if any serious flooding happens).

On the plus side, this is all not insurance and not mortgageable, and also won’t survive being sold to someone else, as no title insurance would cover these structures and a mortgage lender would require they be torn down first.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#512

Post by greenthrow »

nullc wrote: post #160
greenthrow wrote: post #25

An hour in and nobody in these comments is addressing climate change? The risks of drought and the resulting fire or hurricanes and floods is much higher than it has been in recorded history in these areas because of climate change. Should people be forced to abandon their homes because the fossil fuel companies lied and misled the public and bought out our governments for the last 50 years? IMHO we should be seizing…

What evidence do you have that these fires have anything to do with climate change? They appear to be adequately explained by the known behavior of the region, and to the extent that they're not the radical increases in habitation and the systematic suppression of small fires is enough to cover any gap. Ironically there is a great case that varrious environmental groups that vigorously opposed controlled burns are am…

The frequency and intensity of droughts in the area has increased due to climate change. The increased winds is due to climate change. It is obvious. It is not explained by "radical population increase".

Stop trying to distract with fossil fuel propaganda trying to distract with everthing else they can. Yes controlled burns still happen but it is also understandable that people would be jumpy about them with the problems fire has been causing in that area in recent years.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#513

Post by trollbridge »

paleotrope wrote: post #73
paleotrope wrote: post #44

It seems like "severe storms" have increased quite a bit, the other categories not so much. What does "severe storm" mean here? Doesn't seem to mean hurricanes or winter storms. So what gives? Is this just political patronage handed out under the cover of claiming a big storm knocked some trees down?

Ok so the source, https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/time-series/US says, "tornado outbreaks, high wind, hailstorms" So most of this cost is roof damage. Which is an area rife with insurance fraud and getting worse.

The main problem is (a) the cost of roofers has gone up significantly, (b) as a country we switched from more durable forms of roofing like slate to cheap forms that are harder to repair and easier to damage, like asphalt shingles, and (c) the roofing industry is now full of bad actors committing near-insurance fraud.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#514

Post by megaman821 »

avianlyric wrote: post #453
leguminous wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#515

Post by mcny »

overflow897 wrote: post #489
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…

"cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space" Man I wish this was true but it definitely isn't in anyplace that gets significantly cold. Heat pumps are super super efficient at cooling but they get less efficient at heating the colder it gets. Humans and appliances create a pretty negligible amount of heat.

> "cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space" Man I wish this was true but it definitely isn't in anyplace that gets significantly cold. Heat pumps are super super efficient at cooling but they get less efficient at heating the colder it gets. Humans and appliances create a pretty negligible amount of heat.

I thought any place that is significantly cold can still dig underground and at some point you can get enough heat to run your heat pump?

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#516

Post by trollbridge »

Ekaros wrote: post #373
cft wrote: post #349

The Third world has never been insurable. Insurance, supermarkets with self-checkout, home order delivery, all these things are only possible in high trust developed societies.

Home delivery works perfectly well in less developed society. As wages are so much lower it is very much cheaper to deliver to door and possibly even get documentation for signature. Big issue in the end is cost of living. Which affects everyone and most of things in live.

The problem with home delivery in a “low trust” area is that your delivered items will get stolen, unless you can manage to stay at home all day to receive deliveries.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#517

Post by yulaow »

throwup238 wrote: post #443
epolanski wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dest…

The entire west coast sits on top of a fault line. That’s why people don’t build with brick here. There’s plenty of brick buildings on the east coast (and on the west coast like in Oregon, but they have to be seismically retrofitted which is expensive).

I never understood this. We build in Europe, over earthquake-risk zones, with bricks and steel and we follow rules to make them earthquake resistant. It is not a problem anymore since like the 1980. We now have also methods to make old and very old brick buildings earthquake resistant without demolishing them

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#518

Post by throwup238 »

grvdrm wrote: post #478
drysine wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We'll develop mass production de-salinification plants and have enough water. And then you'll have the brine problem.

I'm asking naively and honestly: is there a solution to brine? Believe it's pumped directly back into ocean at the moment.

Desal plants use static mixers to mix the brine with a bunch of ocean water and pump it back out. The specifics depend on the local ecology and ocean currents but it’s a matter of making the outfall pipes long enough (they’re kilometers long usually).

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#519

Post by rafram »

EGreg wrote: post #221
rafram wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Call me crazy but if I was the mayor of LA I’d make them invest heavily in PREVENTION. Cameras and drones all over the place in the forests, to nip fires in the bud (and carch arsonists). This is a terrible way to deal with fire. The issue isn’t preventing fires from starting at all, because small fires are all over the place. A dropped cigarette can light a city block on fire if the wind is just right. The issue i…

And those precautions are… putting out the fire before it spreads, right?

No. Forest fires should be allowed to spread to prevent fuel buildup. It’s bad when they cross into developed areas, though, so you want to prevent that.

If anyone ever implements your drone-based surveillance-state wildland fire suppression system, please let me know so I can avoid hiking in the area.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#520

Post by carlosjobim »

michpoch wrote: post #49
Dig1t wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be a way to build fire resistant buildings to reduce the cost of insuring them, likely this would be the solution in California without price caps. You can build out of concrete and use fire resistant materials like metal or tile for the roof and your house is nearly fireproof. These buildings would be realistically insurable in both California or Florida. They would cost more to build, not THAT much mor…

> You can build out of concrete and use fire resistant materials like metal or tile for the roof and your house is nearly fireproof Just like exactly the rest of the world? We, the non-USA folks, are looking yearly at either fires or hurricanes destroying these wooden houses there and people keep rebuilding them. Insanity.

The rest of the world has mudslides, floods, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, etc. Or they have no natural disasters, just like so many parts of the US.

> We, the non-USA folks

Isn't that a sad way to look at yourself?

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