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Is the world becoming uninsurable?

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Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#541

Post by giorgioz »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #503
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…

> 1) Not all the world will suffer equally from climate change. The parts that are at higher risk should not be insurable so that new housing will not be built there but somewhere else. So what about the people who already live there...? Like I'm fine telling millionaires their coastal cottages are fucked, but there's a lot more folks out there who've lived in these areas for generations both because they're attached…

I know, is sad :( Tough choices must be made. Like many of our ancestors, we will have to migrate to better places and/or adapt. We'll do all we can to make it work. As personal advice, I will be buying my second home (when I'll be able to afford it) somewhere in a different country/region with different climate (and political) connotations. Avoid having all the eggs in the same basket. I think we should all have 2nd/3rd homes and also Airbnb them to be more efficient. If all would rent their 2nd/3rd homes the supply would exceed demand and the price would drop. I think we really need to use smart-locks remotely openable in a bigger scale. We could have a future of prosperity and abbundance with enough redundancy to accomodate for all the distasers we were not able to mitigate enough.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#542

Post by schmidtleonard »

mcny wrote: post #515
overflow897 wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Right, but that's expensive too (initial outlay and maintenance) and needs to win a lot of efficiency before it pays off.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#543

Post by gregwebs »

gregwebs wrote: post #409
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…

It seems some houses that focused on fire safety survived the fire with minimal damage. https://nypost.com/2025/01/15/real-estate/passive-house-surv... Metal roof, passive house so embers don’t get sucked in. Concrete walls around the property and plants that don’t contribute to the fire. The house might cost an additional $100k to build compared to conventional. But it would make all that back on energy, roofing, an…

Other sources say the house wasn’t a passive house but did have fire rated walls.

It seems like a lot of fire resistance can be created just by focusing on defensible space and having a concrete or metal fence. Then protecting the roof ventilation from fire (there are special screening materials that can be bought). Then using class A rated materials on the roof and then the exterior. Then metal framed windows instead of vinyl. Actually doesn't cost that much more- they should require it in building codes in these areas. The issue then is retrofit- insurers should probably require a defensible space in these high risk areas.

https://youtu.be/yZe-TlYxm9g?si=Uuqy6rhrhUb8l-_c

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#544

Post by mfro »

asciimov wrote: post #128
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…

When I briefly lived in Oklahoma I found it frustrating that they use stick frame construction for homes and apartment buildings. Even when we know how to build much safer wind resistant houses. What I thought was worse was once a tornado rips up a neighborhood builders are allowed to build replacement stick framed homes.

Oklahoma is full of lowest bidder builders. Living in OK I rarely see a house built in the last 10 years that looks like it was built to last. Yet another thing Americans don't seem to care about anymore.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#545

Post by yetihehe »

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.

Heating is more costly if you use technology created for cooling. When you try to cool a cold space in order to heat hot space, you will have a bad time. You could use electric heater for heating, it should have no problems with heating, but will use more electricity. Or you could use something actually cheaper, like wood or fossil fuels. If you use more expensive method (like electricity) it will be more expensive.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#546

Post by skywhopper »

_yb2s wrote: post #529
tzs wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan is probably not a good comparison for home insurance because houses in Japan typically only have a 20 to 30 year lifespan. After that they are usually torn down and a new house is built.

Why would anyone tear down a 20 year old house? Where I live the houses are 80-100 years old and they’re better built and nicer to live in than most newer homes.

You could Google it and find out.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#547

Post by gruez »

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…

>People making tens of billions by applying formulas to spreadsheets and shuffling other people’s money around doesn’t sit right with most people.

The federal government will pay you $4.4 billion a year[1] if you lend them a trillion dollars, no "shuffling money around" required.

[1] current 5-year treasury yields

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#548

Post by skywhopper »

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…

Wood is way cheaper and more available at large scale here than in Europe.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#549

Post by kranke155 »

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

What? What earthquake zone in Europe is similar to the fault lines in California? We are talking about entire cities wiped out by earthquakes just 120 years ago.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#550

Post by leguminous »

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…

This is a good point that I had not considered, and I will add a few additional thoughts:

* In cold weather, solar heat gain can work in your favor as well. Much of the effect will depend on the orientation, shading, and properties of your windows, though. On the other hand, as another commenter pointed out, more sun in southern, cooling-dominated climate can also mean more, cheaper electricity.

* If you have a heat pump water heater, it will actually _cool_ your space significantly. The heat is transferred from your home to your water and mostly goes down the drain with it.

* At 65F (18.3C), most people I know would already be wearing a jumper/sweater. That's why I chose a lower target temperature for Berlin. The best source I could find[1] indicates that in November-December of 2022 (in the context of rising energy prices due to Russia's war with Ukraine), Germans actually kept their houses at 19.4C, on average.

* Maybe I'm moving the goalposts a bit, but I chose Berlin mostly because the numbers worked out conveniently. As someone who grew up in the American upper midwest, I wouldn't consider Berlin to be particularly cold. Phoenix, on the other hand, is the hottest city in the country and its summers are some of the hottest in the world. In general, the hottest cities are still closer to what we'd consider room temperature than the coldest are.

[1] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/80-percent-german-house... (original report is on German)

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