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Is the world becoming uninsurable?

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Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#531

Post by throwup238 »

yulaow wrote: post #517
throwup238 wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It works fine for commercial buildings and multi-family structures here too , there’s even a ton of brick buildings in Oregon (which are currently being retrofitted), but not as well for single family homes because of the cost.

There’s a lot of historical context to understand here. The neighborhood that just burned down in the Eaton fire (Altadena), was built up by African Americans and Latinos who were redlined out of Pasadena even after desegregation. Some of them built their houses on land that they bought for under $100 in the 1950s and 60s. They wouldn’t have been able to afford the kind of construction they’d need to be both earthquake and fire resistant. Their choice was between owning an old tinderbox or renting from slumlords.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#532

Post by _yb2s »

epolanski wrote: post #437
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 dest…

Unreinforced masonry is illegal in most of California and extremely dangerous- every brick becomes a projectile in an earthquake.

Despite the news coverage, fires are extremely rare but nearly every home in these areas is guaranteed to face multiple massive earthquakes that would bring down a brick building.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#533

Post by joshuaissac »

davemp wrote: post #428
Aurornis wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 companies are fabricating everything I have the exact same experience when discussing anything insurance related: People have wild assumptions about how much profit insurance companies a…

> When you point out that, for example, health insurance profits are low single digit percentage of overall healthcare costs they just don’t believe it. When you consider that single digit percentages of trillions of dollars is still an obscene amount of money it makes sense. People making tens of billions by applying formulas to spreadsheets and shuffling other people’s money around doesn’t sit right with most peopl…

I hear the same thing about supermarkets. Their margins are razor thin (1-3%), and yet people look at the overall profits and complain, ignoring the fact that the company had to deploy 50-100 times that capital to make that profit.

An alternative is to split these companies into smaller companies, which will each have much lower profits but also higher costs due to lost efficiencies, but people will not be happy with that either.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#534

Post by danans »

> Risks and losses cannot be extinguished, they can only be transferred to others.

At least for risks like wildfires, we can reduce future risk by rebuilding homes using wildfire resistant techniques and materials.

The problem in LA (exacerbated by the climate-change driven conditions) was that most of the burned neighborhoods were built adjacent to fire prone wildlands during an era when homes were built like matchboxes, almost designed to burn. Add the hurricane strength wind, and each building became a blowtorch.

Fiber cement siding, minimal eaves, and metal roofs are straightforward ways to reduce wildfire contagion risk of buildings. There have been numerous experiments done to demonstrate how effective this approach is at significantly reducing combustibility of buildings.

Cutting back trees near houses to create defensible space is also pretty straightforward.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#535

Post by giorgioz »

nojvek wrote: post #477
giorgioz wrote: post #461

It seems everyone is on the same "We will find new solutions to a new problem". I totally agree. Here is a list of all new solutions we need: 1) not insure places at higher risk 2) mass desalinification 3) fix US hot climate grids sparkles and/or place them underground 4) Street corridors to isolate fires in neighborhood 5) Build with more fire-resistant materials 6) Install automated hydrant towers with cameras able…

You’re mostly talking about wildfires. The top 5 most destructive events in US are all hurricanes. They are the size of multiple states and bring more water in a period of a day than rest of annual non-hurricane rainfall. It’s desalinated water falling from a massive sprinkler in the sky.

I'm not so familiar with huge wind but a lot of water I got some (naive) ideas. Build much bigger sewer pipes and river beds. Build houses higher. As usual each region has his own problems. We can all agree either we move out of there or we invent ways to mitigate the problems. For the long term of course, as we all agree, reducing CO2 emissions, stop climate warming and trying to get back some CO2. I believe and hope we can both do that and not having to live like austerity monks.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#536

Post by globular-toast »

infecto wrote: post #467
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.

Honest question. Why when people describe wood framed homes do they always phrase it like houses made from "firewood", "sticks", "twigs" etc? It at least for me always detracts from the argument at hand. You could just as easily build a wood framed home with an exterior shell that is fire resistant using modern materials or brick.

> You could just as easily build a wood framed home with an exterior shell that is fire resistant using modern materials or brick.

That is actually how pretty much all new houses in the UK are constructed. They are pre-fabbed timber frames with a brick facade. It's quite common for British people to be snobby about building materials. I wonder how many don't realise their house is timber framed.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#537

Post by theultdev »

matwood wrote: post #354
theultdev wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's false. Hurricanes are not getting bigger or more frequent due to climate change. They aren't getting bigger or more frequent at all. NOAA has stated this multiple times and you can read an article addressing it here: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/can-... It's well known that hurricanes go through multidecadal swings. Why this keeps getting repeated when it's obviously false is beyond…

Great article, scientifically written. I wish it was as confident as you are in your conclusion. > No, we cannot confidently detect a trend today in observed Atlantic hurricane activity due to man-made (greenhouse gas-driven) climate change. Some human influence may be present > The importance of this distinction between potential causes of AMV for future hurricane projections is clear: if strong man-made aerosol for…

Ofc they hint towards it, it's climate.gov. But the actual data shown, shows no increase at all.

You won't find a "smoking gun" because it's not happening.

Your biases are in-fact showing that you don't realize you went from claiming it was true to "well we have no smoking gun".

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#538

Post by jopsen »

lionkor wrote: post #316
csours wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, just play the next move. Insurance is expensive. Now what happens.

People don't build wood houses in an area that gets wild fires

Probably they will, at one point maybe that banks wills stop financing it.

But only when you can't get mortgages, people will begin to stop, and even then some will continue.

It'll take a long time for these changes to trickle out. Especially, when real estate prices in LA are so high.

It might be faster to fix this with zoning. Or if the area is so desirable, find a way to engineer your way out of it.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#539

Post by datadrivenangel »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #528
icehawk wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space. Simply because all the waste energy created by people living in the space reduces the total heating requirement of the space, but equally increases the cooling requirement of that same space. This simply is not true for a furnace or electric resistive heat. My furnace produces 0.9W of heat for every 1W of energy input. More efficient ones…

My AC works in both directions, in winter it moves more cold outside than the power it consumes. Not sure what the factor is exactly, but I think same as for cooling.

Thermodynamics unfortunately disagree. As your temperature deltas get smaller efficiency goes down.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#540

Post by skywhopper »

chillfox wrote: post #525
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.

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…

Where is “here”? Are you sure you aren’t confusing hurricanes and tornados? Hurricanes rarely destroy houses in the US, either.
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