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Is the world becoming uninsurable?

charleshughsmith.substack.com

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Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#921

Post by llamaimperative »

currymj wrote: post #647
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 cannot win this argument with the average person who lives in a chilly European country. it just does not compute. there are whole important cultural lifeways related to opening and closing windows at proper times for efficient cooling and ventilation. these work really well — in Europe — and are treasured traditions. getting people to accept AC is sort of like trying to convince the average American to go grocer…

There's a big gap between "accept AC" and "build a megapolis in a city named after a bird that bursts into flames."

Phoenix is a slow-rolling disaster regardless of whether it's easier to heat or cool a room to comfort.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#922

Post by therealdrag0 »

sadeshmukh wrote: post #911
therealdrag0 wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’ve actually done the calculations with real numbers share the math. Otherwise stop assuming the conclusion.

The calculation was done by the insurers who refuse to insure the area, or must subsidize all insurance with nearby policies.

Surely there are rates at which they’d would insure the area? And you have shared no data on who is or is not willing to pay those rates.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#923

Post by dietr1ch »

michaelt wrote: post #557
infecto wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, we are commenting on an article specifically about the spread of fire in urban areas, as we've seen in LA this week. Here in the seismically stable UK, we had problems with fire spreading in urban areas [1] in 1666. So we banned wood exteriors on buildings. It works pretty well if you don't need to worry about earthquakes or hurricanes; brick doesn't burn. This lesson is taught in history classes to 10 year old…

> Here in the seismically stable UK

I don't think the US has enough seismic activity to be much different. Chile and Japan do fine with solid construction and periodic 6-8 Richter earthquakes. California is allegedly a seismic state within the USA and it rarely sees a 4 degree one, and when it happens it makes it to the US national news (and sometimes even to the news back home, but as a comedy break because people don't even think about getting out of bed if it's not a 6).

I'm not sure about hurricanes, but maintenance can't be much different as rotten wood and moldy bricks are both a problem. Maybe insulating bricks is more expensive?

> This lesson is taught in history classes to 10 year olds, and they don't tend to go into other countries' construction traditions, or reasons not to use bricks.

Cultural differences don't help here, in the US people think about rebuilding homes way more often than people in Europe, so there's this mindset that the home doesn't need to last that long because it will be rebuilt anyways. This shorter life span, "freedom" and profits thanks to lower costs also call for little regulation that forces the building code to aim to survive the regional disasters from the past 60+ years. California's fire code is probably an outlier, but SF had to burn down for the regulation to come out.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#924

Post by desmosxxx »

munificent wrote: post #914
bluedevil2k wrote: post #8

Like we see in California, when the government sets a price ceiling, insurance companies just leave. Same in Florida. If the free market truly was allowed run normally, the insurance rates in Pacific Palisades or on the Florida coast would be so high that no one could afford to live there. Is that a bad thing? If someone was living in a house near where they tested missiles, we'd call them crazy. At what point can we…

But if they don't set a price ceiling, then insurance companies price gouge. You can't get a mortgage without insurance, so if insurers were allowed to freely control the price, they'd charge an arm and a leg since buyers are forced to buy. If insurance companies are allowed to freely raise their prices, then they would certainly love to do so because any homeowner with a mortgage would be absolutely stuck and have t…

The right price is the market price. There are multiple insurance providers and sufficient competition. And certainly the time to raise the limits is when companies are leaving the state?

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#925

Post by hn_acc1 »

0u89e wrote: post #751
ryao wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall reading somewhere that the Indians had done controlled burns before Europeans settled in the parts of the U.S. where fires are now a problem. European settlers who displaced them did not continue the controlled burns and then fires became a problem. Apparently, if you do regular controlled burns, the severity of fires is reduced and healthy trees survive it. When you do not, when fires do occur, all trees di…

I recall reading the same thing, however I do recall that they were East coast native Indians, that cleared oak tree forests as a hunting grounds, so completelly unrelated to the problem in California. The story was about native land rights and if such looking after their hunting grounds can be seen as claims on property rights, which Indians did not knew as a concept, so it is a moot point anyway. The issues that pl…

We had a lot of rain the last couple of years (before 2024), which got us out of severe drought for several years back into "moderate". 2024 has been QUITE dry, relatively speaking, but because of the previous years of a LOT of rain, it's only back to moderate drought status, AFAICT.

The years with lots of rain caused MUCH extra plant growth, and anyone who's been here a while expected several bad fires during our fire season in 2024 as the first "dry" year after a "wet" year. The fact that it's only been 1 major one and a few minor ones has actually been a bit of a surprise.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#926

Post by WaltPurvis »

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…

Some relevant reading:

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/01/the-role-of-clima...

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#927

Post by kristjansson »

gibsonf1 wrote: post #650
vantassell wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re a fire management expert? What did LA do wrong?

1. Santa Ynez Reservoir right above Palisades was empty for the past year, depriving fire hydrants of water. (State incompetence) 2. La City defunded fire department removing 100 fire trucks from service due to maintenance. (City Incompetence) 3 Severe fire warnings reported days in advance of the fire. Rather than take precautions and position fire trucks and equipment etc as was done in the past, the Mayor flew off…

1. Santa Ynez may have helped, however (a) you're still limited by the flow rate of the main to withdraw from the reservoir, but more critically (b) the situation was already well out of hand before any hyrdants ran dry and (c) Eaton had so such issues with hydrants, but a substantially similar outcome.

2. 'defunded' -> about a 2% reduction. Also it's not 100 fire engines, 100 appartus, which covers ambulance, command cars, etc, and it's not clear what exactly is waiting for maintainence.

3. The Mayor doesn't drive fire engines. LAFD and LACoFD prepositioned according to their models, per the chief.

4. most of the LA fire wasn't forest, but chaparral, which is lower, scruby-er, brushy-er terrain. It tends to burn on a 30-50 year cycle, but burning too much more often destroys the ecoology entirely. Indeninous practice and some research[1] suggest small patch-burning; others (NPS) avoid prescribed burns in chaparral in favor of natural fire and structure defense. So it's not clear that there's an unambiguously better management practice than "its gonna burn sometime" combined with aggressive brush clearance and defense around structures.

re: 2/3 Los Angeles (City mostly, but also County) clearly need a bigger fire department, with more people, stations, and equipment. But the specific complaints are ticky-tacky at best, and (AFAIK) no one asserts that a differnt pre-deployment, or a few more engines in service would have changed anything but the margins. I will say LAFD letting their first shift go off-duty as scheduled while LACoFD kept their shift on is an unfortunate unforced error.

re: 4 USFS (and maybe Cal Fire too? not sure). did halt prescribed burns in October 24 in the face of opposition on liability and air quality grounds. Hopefully the LA fires drive people to reconsider their resistance to prescribed burns, and creates the necessary risk-bearing structures for Cal Fire and USFS to actually perform them.

[1] https://www.fs.usda.gov/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr05...

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#928

Post by desmosxxx »

jmclnx wrote: post #664
Panzer04 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the burden on insurance companies to make up for individual poor decisions? In some cases it makes sense to socialise the losses, but I'm not convinced this is one of them.

Insurance Companies do need to make a profit and Local, State and Fed Gov is allowing building in very risky areas. Just look at Florida, that is a very risky area for weather and sea rise. So in reality the burden is falling on Insurance Companies. High rates will in a way prevent building in those areas.

> High rates will in a way prevent building in those areas.

good?

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#929

Post by tom_ »

billfor wrote: post #747
api_or_ipa wrote: post #11

Every era has it's Malthusian alarmists and without fail, each has been proven wrong by exactly the same thing the author decries and says won't work this time: technological change and adaption. There's no reason to think this time will be any different. Will some places become uninsurable? Sure, plenty of places over time have become uninsurable. Will the whole world became uninsurable? Absolutely not, because we a…

So we can have 1 trillion people, 2 trillion, there's no upper limit?

But there are currently only 8 billion people, and already a lot of articles about how people in Europe and South Korea and Japan and America aren't having children. How are we ever going to get to 1 trillion like this?

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#930

Post by Over2Chars »

klodolph wrote: post #824
Over2Chars wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a country built on seismically active volcanoes. If there's earthquake insurance in japan, it should be do-able. "In and around Japan, one-tenth of earthquakes in the world occur. " https://geoscienceletters.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/...

Home values in Japan are somewhat anomalous. There are some good policies that contribute to this, but also other factors that make me reluctant to generalize from Japan. It’s a country with declining natural population, where houses are assets that rapidly decline in value to the point where they’re nearly worthless not that long after you buy them. Average home age in Japan is 30 years. I think, maybe once or twice…

The topic was "is the world becoming uninsurable?" with some climate-panic being implied, oh gosh.

If a country with 1/10th of the worlds seismic activity can have (earthquake) insurance, then well dammit, I think it can be done.

Insurance, afaict, is just gambling, and well darnit you can gamble on anything.

The odds might be terrible, but there's ways of hedging your bets I've heard.

I am not a gambler.

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