The best evidence of climate change yet

They say that money talks, especially when large corporations start voting with their dollars. It seems the insurance industry is voting that climate change is indeed real.

As weather disasters strike with more frequency, homeowners first get hit with the destruction or total loss of property. Many are then hit with the unexpected loss of homeowners insurance policies as insurance companies re-evaluate their financial liabilities.

After a tornado ripped through Springfield, Massachusetts, last year, R. Paula Lazzari's home was badly damaged. The retired teacher found broken windows, missing siding and a damaged roof. Her insurer offered to fund repairs for one broken window and some of the siding. It took nine months -- and mediation services from an independent adjuster and the Massachusetts Division of Insurance -- to get her bills paid, according to the parties involved.

In this era of unpredictable weather patterns, Lazzari's case is not unique. Insurance companies are raising rates, cutting coverage, balking at some payouts and generally shifting more expense and liability to homeowners, according to reports from the industry and its critics.

"Insurance companies have significantly and methodically decreased their financial responsibility for weather catastrophes like hurricanes, tornados and floods in recent years," the Consumer Federation of America said in a statement after studying industry data.

The industry concedes that it is trying to avoid getting trounced by those same punishing weather patterns.

"Last year (2011) was an extraordinary year for natural disasters," said Michael Barry of the Insurance Information Institute (III), an industry trade group. "Insurers have taken a step back to assess whether or not they can absorb severe losses."​

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/11/us-insurance-disasters-idUSBRE83911S20120411

All I can say is, "Captain, when the rats start abandoning ship, I think we're in trouble."

I wonder if corporations being hit in the pocketbook by global warming will make the Republicans start to change their position on the subject?

 

I'm loving it. tired of freezing my ass off.

 

Have you seen MN 's weather and long range forecast for The month of April ?

Hurricanes do not make it this far...

 

How perfect for insurance companies...Claim GW is affecting their 'bottom line' so they can eventually deny coverage to everyone but those who are typically not affected by typical and cyclical weather patterns. All the while our tax dollars are paying for grants to study this GW ruse.

 

A marked increase in violent weather has been a predicted consequence of global warming for decades, and that's exactly what we're seeing. Does the name Katrina ring a bell for you? How about Joplin? Or those massive wildfires in Russia last summer? Or that massive heatwave in Europe a few years ago that killed tens of thousands? Seriously, just how many people have to die before you admit that we might just have a problem here? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? Tens of millions? Or will it not exist to you until it's your home that's lying in ruins?

 

anyone notice they didn't say MAN MADE Climate Change? few people deny that the climate is changing, what people disagree on is what is causing it and what we can do to 'fix' it..

 

Fine then, go back and mentally insert MAN MADE in front of every time I said "climate change" or "global warming." Although I generally do not shout at people. CO2 levels in the atmosphere have increased from 260 - 280 ppm before the Industrial Revolution to almost 400 ppm today. (The pre-industrial figure is based on ice cores. Direct measurements began in 1958, when CO2 levels were 310 ppm) CO2's role as a greenhouse gas is extremely well established. Studies of isotope ratios indicate the increase in CO2 is almost certainly coming from fossil fuels. Since we know how much fossil fuels we dig up and burn each year, we know how much CO2 we're releasing into the atmosphere. And our emissions are several times higher then the amount of CO2 that is staying in the atmosphere. Finally, in the 650,000 years of ice core data we have, Co2 has never before risen above 300 ppm, and there have been no increases in CO2 as large or as rapid as what we're seeing now. Any questions?

 

There is absolutely no proof that GW even exists and even if it did, there is no proof it would cause any catastrophic weather. You have been duped. It's a classic case of 'predicting' random events known to happen naturally, assigning whatever 'cause, then, after they happen one claims credit for the 'prediction.' Example: I predict there will be a massive earthquake within the next ten years somewhere in the world caused by too many liberals living in SF. Then, when that earthquake happens (and it will) I point to my former statement as 'proof.' Slick if you can get away with it but like someone once said, 'there's a sucker born every minute' (or something like that).

 

CO2 has never been proven to be a greenhouse gas. It's more likely a result of climate change than a cause.

 

LOL! Do you even know where CO2 even comes from?

 

Climate Change is real? It takes a scientist to prove that? I am thinking that during the last glaciation period that the woolly mammoths all stood around saying they had to do something about the coming climate change.

 

No one is debating climate change. They are debating the cause and effect. There is no proof that humans are the main cause of rising temperatures or how much of an impact they actually have as compared to natural causes. The earth has gone through massive climate changes before humans were a factor so the science is still being worked out.

This is what republicans are against. Legislation that punish individuals and companies without solid science to prove they are culpable.

 

The instrumental temperature record goes back to 1850. 11 of the 12 warmest years on record have been in the last 12 years. All of the 20 warmest years have been since 1987. The linear average temperature increase in the last 50 years 0.13C per decade and 0.074C per decade in the last 100 years. Philadelphia (as an example) has set 108 record highs and 12 record lows since 1990.

Global average sea level rose by 0.17 m over the 20th century. The average rate of rise 1961 - 2003 was 1.8 mm per year, from 1993 - 2003 was 3.1 mm per year.

Minimum summer arctic sea ice coverage has dropped 7.4% per decade since 1978. The Greenland ice sheet lost 150 - 250 km[SUP]3[/SUP] of ice per year over 2002 - 2006. The Antarctic ice sheet has lost a total of 152 km[sup]3[/sup] of ice over 2002 - 2005.

Long-term trends from 1900 to 2005 have been observed in precipitation amount over many large regions. Significantly increased precipitation has been observed in eastern parts of North and South America, northern Europe and northern and central Asia. Drying has been observed in the Sahel, the Mediterranean, southern Africa and parts of southern Asia.

More intense and longer droughts have been observed over wider areas since the 1970s, particularly in the tropics and subtropics. Increased drying linked with higher temperatures and decreased precipitation has contributed to changes in drought. Changes in sea surface temperatures, wind patterns and decreased snowpack and snow cover have also been linked to droughts.

And that's just for starters. I already went over the changes in CO[sub]2[/sub] levels in my previous post.

Violent weather such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and intense thunderstorms get their energy from air and surface heat. Adding more heat energy to the system creates more violent weather. That's just basic physics.

Then why is Venus hotter then Mercury? The radiative properties of CO[sub]2[/sub] were firmly established by experiments in the 19th century. You may as well argue that glass doesn't reflect infrared as dispute that CO[sub]2[/sub] is a greenhouse gas.

I think you may well have hit on the real root of the issue here, Kenrichaed. The dispute is really about the political and policy consequences of taking any action on the issue. The science really honestly simply is not in dispute, and I think that conservatives are doing themselves a really grave disservice by trying to make it look like it is. I think the real issue is what to do about climate change, not if it's happening. Those who insist on focusing only on trying to find *****s in the science are effectively cutting themselves out of any discussion of what to do about it. Those who keep denying reality until the bitter end will only accomplish two things - they will delay action until the situation becomes so bad that immediate action is indisputably necessary, and they will ultimately so discredit themselves that they will have no say in what that action is. Both of those will tend to result in much more drastic, expensive, heavy handed, government based course of action when it happens. And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the worst possible outcome for conservatives?

Admitting that climate change is real and humans are causing it does not mean that you're agreeing to any particular course of action to deal with it, or even to do anything about it at all. It doesn't mean that special ops teams are going to swoop down on your garage in black helicopters and confiscate your SUV at gunpoint. There are a wide range of options open for what to do about climate change, including doing nothing. Conservatives have often come up with innovative, market based approaches to problems, and I think that applying that ingenuity to the question of climate change would greatly benefit not only conservatives, but the nation as a whole.

 

No matter, there is still no proof, only theory and computer models.

 

Fear mongering.

 

Yep, had to wait for decades to have one bad year to prove that. LOL

 

Its not hard to take global average temperatures and compare them to past climates. We've done this and there's no doubt that the average temperature is rising. Absolutely no way to dispute that whatsoever.

The issue is trying to figure out why its happening. The earth has naturally gone through this cycle many many times and we have proof of it. Possibly humans have 0 impact on this effect.

On the other side you can see a steady increase starting in the early 20th century. We can also measure Co2 levels back to that time and the rise in Co2 almost directly mirrors that of temperature rise. When Co2 has risen or decreased the temperature on a global average has followed suit. Now is this natural or man-made or a combination?

That is the question we don't have the answer to. You could say that industry ramped up in the early 20th century and it caused more Co2. You can also look at the massive eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the 90's that put out so much ash it lowered global temperature by about 3 degrees for 2 years or so. Obviously nature trumps humans when it puts out extreme effects but that's not to say that humans don't have a constant much smaller input.

The point is that nobody can pinpoint a direct cause for a direct amount of climate change caused by humans. Until science has worked that out it would be like throwing darts at a dartboard in the dark. Maybe you'll hit something but its just a shot in the dark.

 

Actually, it is harder than you think, misleading, and inaccurate. Many parts of the world are not even recorded and throughout history, one part of the world will have warming while the another doesn't. At one time, the northern hemisphere did not have ice while the southern did and most of the area not covered is in the southern.

 

Actually its really easy. My university has added research on this aspect of climate change. Its not my field really but I know that they grab ice cores from around the world and average it out somehow. They measure that to today and can tell you very specific details about most periods. Down to what kind of things were floating in the air like pollen.

They can tell exact levels of oxygen and Co2 that were around and all sorts of things about the environment. We can pinpoint the beginning and end of every glacial period, what the temperatures were, and what pollutants were in the air.

Its for all intents and purposes, an exact science. Figuring out WHY all this happened back then is a totally different matter, but knowing they happened is very easy.

 

You are talking about proxy data, not measured temperature. The question I ask is what will we do when this mild interglacial ends?

 

Assuming you are not one of the few, what makes you think the climate is changing any more than it has at any other time in recorded history?

 

That's a good question. The ice will melt no matter what we do since that's part of the cycle. There will be another ice-age no matter what we do since that's part of the cycle also. Humans will adapt one way or another.

 

Ah ha! You are now an official heretic of he new religion.

 

Then move to the tropics

 

Are you expecting us to believe that it is all just "cycles" and that there IS no underlying cause?

The next ice age will not happen for millennia - meanwhile we have this warming problem that will happen over the next few tens of years - which is more immediate?

As for humanity surviving - some might but at the moment there are more people on the planet than there has ever been - and they depend on food. With a changing and unpredictable climate that has an increased tendency to extreme weather - the sort that destroys not just one crop but an entire region of food production............