Andylusion
Platinum Member
Good Afternoon.
MSN recently posted this article about how climate change was causing homeowners insurances to be unaffordable, or insuperable, and I'd like to reply to that for a moment.
The first thing I noticed was that they said that insurance premiums were going up in California and Florida, but also in Utah for example. It's true Utah's home insurance rates have gone up... but Utah's rates were artificially lower than nearly any other state around them. So the rates have gone up, but it's just coming up to normal market rates.
This is just another example of the media telling the truth, while flat out lying. Because Utah's increase in home insurance is for a completely unrelated reason than California or Florida... but they imply that it's the same, and related to climate change when it is not.
Now back to California and Florida.
There is no evidence at all, from any reliable source that I have ever found, that shows that "extreme" weather is more likely today than in the past.
What is different, is that more people live in these areas than in the past. AND.... more people are building more expensive homes, than in the past.
So for example Florida. When building a home was super cheaper, and you built small but sturdy homes, the cost to insure them even in Hurricane zone was relatively cheap.
But now they are building $5 Million dollar homes along the coast, and there are millions more homes than before, the cost of insuring all that is expensive. Yes if you build more expensive homes, and more of them in a hurricane zone, then yes it cost more to insure them.
Yeah. That has nothing at all to do with climate change. That has to do with larger more expensive homes, and more people living in this hurricane prone area.
California on the other hand, has a much bigger problem. And that is.... that they have a government that isn't doing it's job.
People seem to have this goofy idea that California never had wild fires all that much, and then "climate change", and now it's having a huge problem.
California has ALWAYS had wild fires. They had wild fires before we have records. We know this because the natives told us this long ago. Additionally I've found documents talking about how California was a natural fire plane back in the late 1800s. People were writing papers about how California was a wild fire area all the way back then. This is not new. This is not news. This is not a change. This is not climate change or one too many SUVs or something.
This is the normal natural state of California. It has always been a wild fire area. Always.
In the 1906 fire that destroyed nearly the entire city of San Fransisco, that fire was started by an Earthquake. However, one of the key scandals that came out of that fire, was that the fire chief of the city had pleaded for months and even years, to expand water reserves for the fire department, and upgrade the equipment they had, because the fire chief said specifically that a wild fire would quickly over run the city.
So they knew and understood in 1906 that this was in fact a fire plane, and they needed to be prepared for it. They were not worried about too many Model Ts rolling around was going to warm the planet and make wild fires, because they already understood this was a wild fire area. Long periods without rain, normal. Long duration high speed Santa Anna winds, normal. Wild fire prime area.... NORMAL.
This isn't a 'new' phenomenon in the area.
But what ALSO IS NOT NEW.... is the government ignoring their duty. The upgraded water supply for dealing with fires, and the better equipment to fight fires, never came to San Fransisco in 1906, which is why when the city caught fire after the Earthquake, millions died, and nearly the entire city burned down, after the fire trucks were over run by flames, and the water supply dried up. At one point they were trying to pump raw sewage onto the fires, and they ran out of that 'water' too. And so they literally just slept in the ruins outside of town, and watched it burn all day and all night, until it burned itself out.
And here we are in the 2020s, and the government was well aware of the fire danger, and the well aware they needed to send out crews to clear brush, to reduce the fire hazard, and they didn't. They didn't upgrade their fire departments, even though they were told multiple times that they needed to do so. And they didn't save more water for dealing with wild fires. And they didn't clear the brush knowing it posed a wild fire risk.
However, that's not all.
What the government of California DID do... is they increased the cost of building housing DRAMATICALLY. Endless regulations and minimum wage laws, and permits, and fees, and all the other controls. All this has made the price of housing insanely high as people are well aware.
But what they don't seem to grasp, is that this costs the insurance company more money. If you insure your house, and the policy states that it will pay to have the house rebuilt.... and now that cost is higher because wages are higher, and regulations are higher, and delays and permits and "environmental impact studies" and all this stupidity.... well that cost is now on the insurance company, which means dramatically higher premiums.
And all that has NOTHING to do with the climate at all. It has to do with you voting to screw your life over. And you getting exactly what you voted for.
Similarly, prior to the recent wild fire, the California government regulated insurance premiums, preventing insurance companies from charging what they deemed the policy to be worth.
The result was that 12 of the largest insurance companies fled the state.
Which is just another economic principal, that any time you regulate price with price control laws, you end up with shortages. In this case, a shortage of insurance companies not willing to insure housing in California..... which makes sense given the government already proved they'll simply allow the city to burn down, and not take steps to improve water supplies, or cut brush to reduce wild fire hazards.
But of course instead of doing what any rational person does... which is see that your endless regulations are making things worse... instead they simply allowed insurance companies to use a catastrophe factor to their insurance rates.
Which basically increases costs, but still adds massive expensive regulations to follow to do it, which means even higher premiums than if they just had no regulations.
So this is a man-made disaster, but not from climate change, but from government changing the market, and not doing their job.
Not that I have a problem with this. Just like California in 1906, the voting public voted for what they are getting. So let them have it.
MSN recently posted this article about how climate change was causing homeowners insurances to be unaffordable, or insuperable, and I'd like to reply to that for a moment.
The first thing I noticed was that they said that insurance premiums were going up in California and Florida, but also in Utah for example. It's true Utah's home insurance rates have gone up... but Utah's rates were artificially lower than nearly any other state around them. So the rates have gone up, but it's just coming up to normal market rates.
This is just another example of the media telling the truth, while flat out lying. Because Utah's increase in home insurance is for a completely unrelated reason than California or Florida... but they imply that it's the same, and related to climate change when it is not.
Now back to California and Florida.
There is no evidence at all, from any reliable source that I have ever found, that shows that "extreme" weather is more likely today than in the past.
What is different, is that more people live in these areas than in the past. AND.... more people are building more expensive homes, than in the past.
So for example Florida. When building a home was super cheaper, and you built small but sturdy homes, the cost to insure them even in Hurricane zone was relatively cheap.
But now they are building $5 Million dollar homes along the coast, and there are millions more homes than before, the cost of insuring all that is expensive. Yes if you build more expensive homes, and more of them in a hurricane zone, then yes it cost more to insure them.
Yeah. That has nothing at all to do with climate change. That has to do with larger more expensive homes, and more people living in this hurricane prone area.
California on the other hand, has a much bigger problem. And that is.... that they have a government that isn't doing it's job.
People seem to have this goofy idea that California never had wild fires all that much, and then "climate change", and now it's having a huge problem.
California has ALWAYS had wild fires. They had wild fires before we have records. We know this because the natives told us this long ago. Additionally I've found documents talking about how California was a natural fire plane back in the late 1800s. People were writing papers about how California was a wild fire area all the way back then. This is not new. This is not news. This is not a change. This is not climate change or one too many SUVs or something.
This is the normal natural state of California. It has always been a wild fire area. Always.
In the 1906 fire that destroyed nearly the entire city of San Fransisco, that fire was started by an Earthquake. However, one of the key scandals that came out of that fire, was that the fire chief of the city had pleaded for months and even years, to expand water reserves for the fire department, and upgrade the equipment they had, because the fire chief said specifically that a wild fire would quickly over run the city.
So they knew and understood in 1906 that this was in fact a fire plane, and they needed to be prepared for it. They were not worried about too many Model Ts rolling around was going to warm the planet and make wild fires, because they already understood this was a wild fire area. Long periods without rain, normal. Long duration high speed Santa Anna winds, normal. Wild fire prime area.... NORMAL.
This isn't a 'new' phenomenon in the area.
But what ALSO IS NOT NEW.... is the government ignoring their duty. The upgraded water supply for dealing with fires, and the better equipment to fight fires, never came to San Fransisco in 1906, which is why when the city caught fire after the Earthquake, millions died, and nearly the entire city burned down, after the fire trucks were over run by flames, and the water supply dried up. At one point they were trying to pump raw sewage onto the fires, and they ran out of that 'water' too. And so they literally just slept in the ruins outside of town, and watched it burn all day and all night, until it burned itself out.
And here we are in the 2020s, and the government was well aware of the fire danger, and the well aware they needed to send out crews to clear brush, to reduce the fire hazard, and they didn't. They didn't upgrade their fire departments, even though they were told multiple times that they needed to do so. And they didn't save more water for dealing with wild fires. And they didn't clear the brush knowing it posed a wild fire risk.
However, that's not all.
What the government of California DID do... is they increased the cost of building housing DRAMATICALLY. Endless regulations and minimum wage laws, and permits, and fees, and all the other controls. All this has made the price of housing insanely high as people are well aware.
But what they don't seem to grasp, is that this costs the insurance company more money. If you insure your house, and the policy states that it will pay to have the house rebuilt.... and now that cost is higher because wages are higher, and regulations are higher, and delays and permits and "environmental impact studies" and all this stupidity.... well that cost is now on the insurance company, which means dramatically higher premiums.
And all that has NOTHING to do with the climate at all. It has to do with you voting to screw your life over. And you getting exactly what you voted for.
Similarly, prior to the recent wild fire, the California government regulated insurance premiums, preventing insurance companies from charging what they deemed the policy to be worth.
The result was that 12 of the largest insurance companies fled the state.
Which is just another economic principal, that any time you regulate price with price control laws, you end up with shortages. In this case, a shortage of insurance companies not willing to insure housing in California..... which makes sense given the government already proved they'll simply allow the city to burn down, and not take steps to improve water supplies, or cut brush to reduce wild fire hazards.
But of course instead of doing what any rational person does... which is see that your endless regulations are making things worse... instead they simply allowed insurance companies to use a catastrophe factor to their insurance rates.
Which basically increases costs, but still adds massive expensive regulations to follow to do it, which means even higher premiums than if they just had no regulations.
So this is a man-made disaster, but not from climate change, but from government changing the market, and not doing their job.
Not that I have a problem with this. Just like California in 1906, the voting public voted for what they are getting. So let them have it.
