Renzatic on 31/1/2011 at 04:12
You know, if you all quit being such big pussies and moved into the desert, you wouldn't have to worry about shit like this.
demagogue on 31/1/2011 at 06:29
Interesting discussion.
I used to research about the insurance and social insurance aspects of climate change, since of course these 1:100-year incidents will occur with more and more frequency in the future (not just because of climate change & sea level rise, also because of urbanization along coasts, etc), and it messes with the system. For one, insurance gets stressed for mass disasters since it's harder to spread risk when it's shared (it violates the need for exposures to be unconnected; rather than risk being individual for each holder, it's shared across the whole pool). Even re-insurance is under stress since climate change is so cross-cutting.
Then there's the debate if there should be a social insurance scheme for climate-related disasters.
Scots Taffer on 31/1/2011 at 07:11
Oh. What kind of research, demagogue?
Interestingly I had a session in Sydney some time ago with a climatologist at one of our lead reinsurers who specialised in hail but whose interests spread far and wide. Her chief concern were the urbanized stretches of coastline exposed to one in one hundred year events and the worse but remote risk represented by tsunamis, tidal flooding and so on. It doesn't take a rocket scientist, or actuary for that matter, to figure out why as per my last rambling post.
On your last comment, if I'm reading you right, that very debate is happening here at the moment. The Labour government has imposed a tax levy on middle-income brackets to boost the disaster fund, which is causing outrage in its own right between the target of the levy and the mismanagement of the disaster fund, but there's also the discussion around whether there should be a nationally regulated natural disaster pool - especially for a country as disaster-prone as Australia with all its floods, droughts, bushfires and so on.
From the insurance/reinsurance perspective, it's all we talk about here on a daily basis and it's of particular interest at the moment due to the negotiations around the event definition that are ongoing (which you can imagine, we have a vested interest in). Although in my product line we've found ourselves only marginally exposed to natural disasters over history I've still copped nearly $3m in losses from the floods this time around, so the exposure and severity is always there lurking beneath the history of experience.
demagogue on 1/2/2011 at 18:21
Quote Posted by Scots Taffer
Oh. What kind of research, demagogue?
I was actually conflating two projects I did.
The first was researching the pros and cons of a general treaty-regime for social insurance for transboundary environmental harm, on the model of the US Superfund and the treaty covering oil-tankers. That was for human-made harms like toxic waste spills, though; things with a clear liable party. Industry would be the one paying into the pool. Natural disasters without a liable party are a whole other can of worms, because of course it starts looking like a general international tax (states don't like that), and the punchline was we can't even begin to think about international disaster social-insurance now, at least stand-alone, and should focus on clear human-harms. (I say "stand-alone" because there's a separate debate within the Climate regime itself to have its own social insurance scheme. BTW this doesn't stop some people wanting to argue oil & energy companies should be liable for climate disasters and paying into an insurance pool for them; but the liability regime just isn't there yet to hold them liable, but things are evolving fast, cf. Mass. v EPA, Comer, and in Aus: Hazelwood & Anvil Hill cases.)
The second project is just ongoing research on all the different aspects of liability and "adaptation" for climate change, and what role the Framework Climate Convention (FCCC) might have in the future (e.g., a liability regime & a Fund for climate disasters, or at least coordinating many Funds that states individually have). I mostly studied these two things (liability and a possible Fund), but of course these are both closely connected to the insurance issue too. I do think there's going to have to be a tailored liability and insurance regime for climate harms sooner or later, and it really needs to be coordinated on the international level, because the harms are so off the scale and there are transboundary aspects that the system just won't handle it well without managing it in a coordinated way, spreading the risk efficiently, possibly letting a bigger burden fall on bigger emitters (so they have financial incentives to emit less & they pay for their greater contribution to the harm), etc. But there are so many issues you have to take care of, and so many things states worry about... You probably know the hesitation at the national level; they just get compounded on the international level.
Scots Taffer on 2/2/2011 at 00:29
Interesting stuff, demagogue.
Back to topic: My parents are going to be flying over Cyclone Yasi, or around it, when this encroaches on the coastline tonight.
This bad boy has now been upgraded to a cat 5 cyclone, which is as bad as it gets. 500km wide. The eye of the storm alone is 100km wide.
Residents in the path have basically been told to GTFO by government as there's not much that can be done when it hits. 300kmh+ winds. 4m storm surge. 1000mm+ rainfalls. Yeesh. Hope no one dies.
PigLick on 2/2/2011 at 01:19
Yeh pretty crazy stuff, QLd cant catch a break.
PigLick on 2/2/2011 at 04:32
Been following this, and it now kinda looks terrifying. Must be horrible, just waiting and hoping your whole house wont fly apart around you.
SubJeff on 2/2/2011 at 12:53
What the hell? That is an insaaaaane size storm!
