Month: August 2023

Will Hilary Accelerate a California Insurance Meltdown?

Only 4 percent of US homeowners have flood insurance.

Your Homeowners policy may cover hailstorms, windstorms or blizzards, but not flooding.
Taxpayers, stand by to be the insurer of last resort for millions.

Property Casualty 360:

California’s home insurance market is set to suffer another blow as Berkshire Hathaway’s AmGUARD and Falls Lake Fire & Casualty Co. plan to withdraw from the state, according to filings with the state’s insurance department.

AmGUARD will stop writing personal line policies in the state effective August 21, 2023, according to a sample non-renewal notice. Additionally, the company, a subsidiary of WestGUARD, is also pulling its personal umbrella line from the state, as carrying an AmGUARD home policy is a requirement of the umbrella program, according to the company’s regulatory filings. This change affects policies with renewal inception dates of November 14, 2023.

As a result of its decision, AmGUARD will not be allowed to renew any policies from the withdrawn home insurance program into a similar program offered by the same insurer group in California. AmGUARD is also barred from filing a replacement homeowners program for at least three years after the effective date of the withdrawal, according to a letter from the state’s insurance regulator.

Falls Lake is pulling out of the market because it couldn’t obtain reinsurance, according to a letter the company filed with the California Department of Insurance. The filings indicate the changes will take effect on September 21, 2023.

West Coast market meltdown

This news comes just months after State Farm, Allstate and Farmers Insurance announced they would stop writing new home policies in the state. Additionally, Liberty Mutual recently pulled its business owner policy (BOP) line from the state starting this fall.

While the state’s high natural catastrophe risks have been making for a challenging market, it is not the only force weighing on California insurers. Also driving a large portion of this market turbulence is inflation and its effect on construction material and labor costs, which in turn drive up claims costs and that eventually works out to higher rates.

According to Bill Martin, president and CEO of Plymouth Rock Home Assurance, the average costs for repairs have increased as much as 40% for some claims.

“Natural catastrophes might be a bit of a catalyst, but they are not the only thing playing on insurers,” Martin told PC360. “The truth is that post-pandemic inflation would have happened with or without catastrophes. The catastrophes only exacerbate them because they create a kind of demand surge in addition to the supply chain issues and labor market challenges that are driving increases.”

Across North America, Late Summer Bringing Brutal Climate Impacts

The McDougall Creek wildfire burn in the hills around Okanagan Lake, British Columbia on Aug. 17

Above – Maybe CO2 is not as good for plants as Exxon told us.

Toronto Globe and Mail:

Severe wildfires from Nova Scotia to British Columbia have cast a literal pall over the country – just as they have wreaked havoc around the world, from Maui to Greece to China – both as an everyday irritant and health scare, and as a dark manifestation of global warming. The more than 20,000 residents of the Northwest Territories who have been ordered to leave their homes, often along highways turned into corridors of flame, comes as the latest and most extreme reminder that the effects of a heating planet are literally at our doors.

Devon Allie, a 24-year-old software engineer living in Montreal, said the thick veil of smoke that descended on the city in June made him think of a volcanic eruption.

“For so long we’ve heard about climate change but you’ve never felt the impact so clearly and starkly,” he said. “When you see the whole city covered in smoke, which never happens, it’s a real show-stopper. Especially when the sun turns red. You can’t get more apocalyptic than that.”
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The number of air quality bulletins issued by Environment Canada gives some indication of how smoky 2023 has been, as forest fires have struck from coast to coast, and often in regions, like the Maritimes and Quebec, that are unaccustomed to them. Between 2017 and 2022, the average number of warnings issued during wildfire season was 897. This year, the ministry has already released 3,166, more than three times as many.

Approaching the end of August with El Nino affecting conditions worldwide, scientists have been expecting things to get wild, and, well,here we are.
Brief scan of North American extremes include fire, drought, flood, and heat.

https://twitter.com/Truthpole/status/1692691131719684526?s=20
Continue reading “Across North America, Late Summer Bringing Brutal Climate Impacts”

The DeCarbonizing Challenge is, Well, Daunting

Glen Peters’ graph, above, of our carbon challenge, caught my eye, and, following the reply threads, I came across this accurate restatement of the predicament.

Very important point comes about 2:36.
Getting slowly to Net Zero is very different from getting there quickly.

If you take the slow, upper boundary path to 2050, there’s a whole lot of carbon that you emit on the way that is going to make life all the more hellish even if you meet your zero emission goals.
Work to do.

How Russia Exploited the Maui Fires

Ryan McBeth is a military veteran YouTuber who regularly posts well researched, humorous and useful observations, usually on the nuts and bolts of military affairs from the point of view of a long time Army grunt.
He’s also no dummy, and has his eye on the bigger picture, as evidenced here.
Russia, by the way, has been a leading suspect in promoting disinformation around climate issues for many years, including the so-called “Climategate” emails hack, which first appeared on a Russian server in 2009.

I had posted an extended excerpt of Caroline Bueno’s amazing piece here, but she took exception to that, so I’ll just recommend you check out her great work on Substack.

Caroline Orr Bueno on Substack:

Off the Scale: A Scientist’s Agony on Wildfires in Canada

Aaron Thierry on Twitter:

I’m horrified by the news of mass evacuations from Yellowknife due to the wildfires.

I used conduct research in the area & it was after a talk with a volunteer firefighter there that I decided to leave ecological science & focus on climate action.

The Arctic is warming about 3X faster than the rest of the globe as a result of Global Warming from burning fossil fuels.

As a result we’re seeing major changes in Northern ecosystems – including a dramatic increase in wildfire.

 I was part of a team that was studying the effect that increased wildfires were having on the rate of permafrost thaw & what this means for the carbon cycle.

We wanted to know whether this leads to feedbacks that amplify the warming we’ve already caused.

Continue reading “Off the Scale: A Scientist’s Agony on Wildfires in Canada”

The Fossil Industry’s Good Germans – Republicans Still See No Evil on Climate Change

Like pathetic Sergeant Schultz in the classic TV series “Hogan’s Heroes”, Republicans are so terrified of the very base voter that they’ve spent 30 years disinforming through a massive anti-science media campaign, that they can no longer admit what their eyes are seeing, their ears are hearing, and what their own children are pleading with them to acknowledge.

Election year 2024 will also be perhaps the most intense El Nino year since 1998 – and it hasn’t even gotten wound up yet. Should make for some interesting campaign conversations.

Raw Story:

It may be so hot out West that President Joe Biden recently forgot whether he had actually declared a national climate emergency (he hasn’t, officially). 

But this summer’s record-breaking heat wave has nevertheless had Republicans at the Capitol deflecting and dodging all things climate change related.

Globally, July was the hottest month ever recorded. While El Niño is surely impacting this summer’s heat wave, scientists with research collaborative World Weather Attribution recently released a report that found humans and the fossil fuels we burn share the blame, too.

“The burning of fossil fuels is the main reason the heatwaves are so severe,” the report reads.

At the Capitol, most Republicans don’t even seem to have seen the report. 

As for whether humans play a role?

“I don’t know,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told Raw Story at the Capitol in July. “I don’t think anybody knows.”

The concern over the record-breaking heat wave is more an East Coast problem, according to at least one U.S. senator whose state generates significant amounts of fossil fuels.

“I think people, especially in the Rocky Mountain West, are used to the rhythms of nature, and people back here seem to dismiss the natural rhythms of nature and blame it on mankind and greenhouse gasses,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) told Raw Story before lawmakers left Washington for their August recess.

For others in the GOP, mention climate change and they go straight to one of the GOP’s new causes: protecting home appliances that emit unhealthy emissions, such as natural gas-burning stoves.

Continue reading “The Fossil Industry’s Good Germans – Republicans Still See No Evil on Climate Change”