Bishop Hill Appalling disinformation in Irish Times
Jan 20, 2012 Climate: WG2 The Irish Times has the most appalling piece by an environmental writer called John Gibbons. This is how the article begins:
GLOBALLY, 2010 was a year of weather-related disasters on an almost unprecedented scale. Last year was worse, with a record $380 billion in economic losses attributed to “natural” disasters, many climate-related, according to insurance giant Munich Re.
Few experts expect to see any break in this upward trend this year, or any time soon. Instead, as record emissions of greenhouse gases continue unabated, the climate system is now behaving precisely as scientists have been projecting for decades. The rapid build-up of energy in the system is the “engine” that is fuelling extremes, from storms and floods to severe droughts.
Here's Scientific American's take on the same report.
Natural disasters around the world last year caused a record $380 billion in economic losses. That's more than twice the tally for 2010, and about $115 billion more than in the previous record year of 2005, according to a report from Munich Re, a reinsurance group in Germany. But other work emphasizes that it is too soon to blame the economic devastation on climate change.
Almost two-thirds of 2011's exceptionally high costs are attributable to two disasters unrelated to climate and weather: the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in March, and February's comparatively small but unusually destructive magnitude-6.3 quake in New Zealand.
Quite, quite extraordinary.
Bishop Hill
Shub in the comments points out that John Vidal at the Guardian has the same problem.
Reader Comments (58)
I seem to recall Munich Re has history? (Can anyone help me out?)
Insurance companies love "Climate Change". Just think. Persuading folks to insure against climate-related damage that just isn't going to happen.
Perfect wheeze.
CO2 causes earthquakes! Who knew..?
Add in the floods in Thailand and it's worse than we thought, especially for the IT industry. Not necessarily climate change, but a natural consequence of building expensive manufacturing sites on flood plains and not investing in flood defences.
John Gibbons is not the best source of unbiased information, and even if you like your news green, Gibbons is unreliable. For a while, he had the habit of writing about temperature in percentages -- as is, 12 degrees Celsius is 20% warmer than 10 degrees Celsius.
Guardian reporter John Vidal has done the same thing.
" The rapid build-up of energy in the system is the “engine” that is fuelling extremes, from storms and floods to severe droughts."
Sounds like BBD physics.
Munich Re have previous on this topic. Expect Roger Pielke to take it apart soon.
You may recall John Gibbons as the first man to compare temperature changes using percentages, as can be seen on this thread, which was deleted from Gibbons' own website but which I reproduced here:
http://zone5.org/2011/09/thinkorswim-censor-zone5/
John Gibbons February 16, 2011 at 09:11:
"Just in case you’re not familiar with the basic science (and I really am now beginning to wonder), the current global average surface temp. is c.14.5C. Add 4C to that in half a century and you have increased the average surface temp by over 25%."
He does later acknowledge this mistake, but apparently still regards himself as someone qualified to talk about climate change and its potential impacts.
Oh come on. That's not so bad. If you want to hit rock bottom on the absolutely unbelievably cretinously stupid and rumpsmackingly idiotic in terms of AGW publishing, simply refer to this article from New Scientist some time ago:
The strange brain of the terminally stupid environmental reporter Kate Ravilious
I challenge you to find a more mind-numbingly dumb AGW article anywhere in the world.
Munich Re - aren't they partially funding the Grantham place that our friend Bob Ward works at?
John Vidal's just sound like a parody of global warming extremism. He sounds like a fresh face out of an Environment degree course rather than a man with grey hairs. How The Guardian keep him as Environment Editor, I don't know. I suppose its because he at least looks like a 'nice' middle class intelletcual.
Best - and most naive line: "one of the world's biggest insurance companies warning that climate change will increase damages" - and of course insurance premiums! - the oldest trick of the insurance salesman.
There was a recent case of someone talking about a 1 degree C rise in temperatures being equivalent to a 34 degrees Fahrenheit rise... Can anyone remember where that one was?
Obviously insurance companies are in on the conspiracy as well. Is there actually anyone except the enlightened denizens of this blessed blog who isn't in on it?
Munich Re has a very dubious history of honesty in this area - not surprising since they profit from every lie they tell - and a simple Google search on "'Munich Re' hurricanes Emanuel" shows the track record, once you scroll past the self-serving propaganda from www.muinchre.com and thinkprogress.org.
@Scots Renewables
Note that Munich Re enjoys generous tax treatment on its financial reserves. These terms were extended when the Greens were in power. In return, Munich Re agreed to support the climate agenda.
Scots - Roger Pielke, quoted in the SciAm reproduction, doesn't support the Munich Re: press release:
"Disasters are a tempting image for advocacy, but the science is just not there to support strong claims," says Roger Pielke Jr, a climate-policy researcher at the University of Colorado in Boulder. "We cannot yet attribute increasing dollar losses to human-caused climate change. Maybe we will one day, but not at present."
Check his past blogs for more detail.
The Guardian comments weren't going very well for the author though I see..
"Comments on this page are now closed"
Just a further example of what other people seem to be playing at.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/01/follow-up-noaa-to-redo-its-billion.html
Sorry if I repeat myself but...if emission-related climate-change insurance losses were already discernible, the IPCC would be proven wrong, alongside pretty much every mainstream-accepted model.
It'd be equivalent to temperatures plummeting for a decade to to -1C below long-term average. The end of it all.
"The $82 Billion Prediction"
"Joining them was British climate physicist Mark Saunders, who argued that insurers could use model predictions from his insurance-industry-funded center to increase profits 30 percent."
Read it all:-
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/11/82-billion-prediction.html
Oh the wonderful opportunities that false markets make available = "insurance-industry-funded center to increase profits 30 percent."
Jeremy H. It was Louise Gray in the Telegraph who made that spectacular mistake some weeks ago. It was quickly corrected online but remained in the print edition.
Bishop
I am just a little applaud at your title Appalling disinformation in Irish Times
The Irish Times is a far better newspaper than most I know of, particularly when you consider the Guardian.
HAD YOU LOOKED CAREFULLY, you would have seen that it is in the Irish Times OPINION page.
Just as you invite all to contribute to your blog, the Irish Times does print a wide arrange of OPINIONS.
And if you look at the comments section, you will not find the censorship you find in the Guardian.
You owe the Irish Times and the Irish an apology. We are far more fair than that.
Thankfully, it seems that most of the people who have commented on the article in the Irish Times can see right through the hype.
It remains tiresome that their is still such blatant BS being written these days.
Back in the real world as opposed to Scots Renewable Fantasy Land, business try to maximise their profits rather than being nice and caring. So if insurers can raise the level of anxiety about climate change, they can charge higher premiums, and if they can persuade their shareholders that current claims are unprecedented, then they will not be blamed for have failed to manage the downside. This is not a conspiracy, just the way the world is.
Richard Tol>
"Note that Munich Re enjoys generous tax treatment on its financial reserves. These terms were extended when the Greens were in power. In return, Munich Re agreed to support the climate agenda."
Not sure if you were joking, but no, there's no conspiracy. As David S says just above, insurance companies price based on perceived risk, not actual risk, so it's always in their interests to raise the perceived risk since plainly this is independent of actual risk.
@Dave
I'm not joking.
All reinsurers have an incentive to scare us. German reinsurers have extra incentives.
Sure - the public at large who end up paying for this monstrous fraud through their taxes.
We established at the time of your recent visit here that you support it for exactly the same reason as Munich Re - you're making money from it.
By the way - you don't need a conspiracy to persuade people to line their pockets, it's called following the money.
It's a bit like capitalism - but without the element of free choice.
At the end of 2011, Environment Canada climate spokesman David Philips waxed lyrical about the "wacky weather" over the year and claimed "There is no normal anymore".
The only thing normal about climate is variability. It is appalling that climate scientists are peddling this misinformation.
Gibbon??
Aint that a monkey?
Roger Pielke Jnr may comment on this, but he has done a similar comment just over a year ago concerning the 2010 data.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/09/munich-re-goes-too-far.html
In November he also highlighted a new peer reviewed paper that used Munich Re's extensive database on weather-related disasters. On severe thunderstorm activity, they commented
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-study-on-insured-losses-and-climate.html
Pielke has also analysed disasters insurance profit levels. When there is a high-cost disaster like hurricane Katrina, the insurance business will lose money. But they will more than make up the money in increased insurance premiums the next year. Well-publicized disasters in western countries tend to be of net benefit to the insurance industry, as public perceptions of risk are heightened beyond the actual risk. Creating alarm is always profitable to some.
2011 was also the year with the highest "non losses" on record (the average or total potential amount of payments that the industry would owe to its customers in case a disaster happens to all of them). Both the actual losses and the potential losses (or non-losses) are a direct function of the amounts insured, which are in turn a function of the total economic value of assets insured, which grows every year due to real economic growth plus inflation. If you don't standardize the losses to the amounts insured, little can be deduced from the factoid highlighted in the article.
Another example of this kind of erroneous computation is the assessment of hurricane damage by the amount of losses measured in dollars: one must apply not only an adjustment for inflation, but also an adjustment for the amount of people and assets located on the hurricane path (Roger Pielke Jr is the main reference for this matter).
I would guess that the comparitive figures quoted in these articles are NOT inflation-adjusted during a period of massive currency devaluation and commodity price increases. The $265bn figure quoted for 2005 ($380bn-$115bn) would actually be in excess of $300bn in current money, understating the 2005 figure by around $50 billion. How convenient.
For a while, he had the habit of writing about temperature in percentages...
So that's why AGW is less of a problem in the US than elsewhere, then?
;)
@Don Pablo: You say BH owes the Irish Times 'an apology. We are far more fair than that.'
Gibbons states in his article/'opinion': 'Given the complexity of the issues involved, non-specialist journalists are often easy meat to be drawn into spurious “debates” which give unwarranted airtime to contrarians and industry shills (this is known as bias-in-balance).' ---- sounds like disinformation to me, and the IT has an editorial responsibility as to what it publishes.
Salopian
It was an OPINION piece, printed in a newspaper instead of in a BLOG such as BH. Remember when there was no internet? Well, newspapers use to have opinion sections. IT still does. If you are going to find fault with them for doing so, then you have to find fault with BH for permitting the various trolls to comment here.
My objection is portraying the piece as an ARTICLE, which it was not. It was just some bloke shooting off his mouth and was clearly on the OPINION page.
Where I live, we have the First Amendment -- which is sadly lacking in most of Europe. I am happy to have it alive and well in Ireland, at least as well as it is preserved there.
While I certainly agree with those who think Gibbons is full of it, I might point out that there are a number who print their opinion in BH about how you can make water hot by adding ice to it.
As someone in the insurance industry, I see the price that insurers are being forced to pay as a result of climate fear.
Gibbon??
Aint that a monkey?
Jan 20, 2012 at 5:46 PM | Unregistered CommenterSlabadang
No, a gibbon is an ape and apes don't ape monkeys!
Pielke, jr. has documented quite well how the reinsurance industry has used cliamte fear to rationalize high premium prices. They have done a very good job.
Don Pablo:
'Where I live, we have the First Amendment -- which is sadly lacking in most of Europe.' --Where I live, there is no need for people to SHOUT to make their point, you are being rude. Whilst I respect your view that the IT has a right to publish opinions, it is their responsibility to make it absolutely clear that these are opinions and not 'facts' which is not my read of the 'opinion'.
The IT opinion piece was a media hack whine, solely interested in stirring the troops to keep pressing the keys for the cause. It wasn't reporting anything of substance wrt climate - the Munich Re item was just a convenient vehicle.
From an NZ perspective, the Christchurch Earthquake puts all other natural disasters into insignificance. The cost of rebuild is now over $10 billion (including my house!) and the long term insurance prospects for the country are in question.
Earthquakes are still continuing at mag 4-5 level on a fairly regular basis, 15 months after the original quake in Sept 2010.
Not surprising that the doomsayer's informant has turned out to be German. Germany and German business has a lot invested in the rest of us swallowing the climate disaster meme.
It is inevitable, in a progressing world, that insurance indemnification will rise.Simply because all of us acquire more and more valuable assets all the time. When a house is hit by flood in 2011 it will contain more goods of more value than the same house contained twenty years ago. Using the indemnification value as a climate indicator is plain fraud on the rest of us. But then think of the recent spate of international bribery scandals in Germany and you realise that fraud is no stranger to big business there.
There is a German connection with climate policy. They bet on it being a money maker, but three things happened which spoiled the plan: Fukushima that obliged the phasing out of German nuclear power, the economic crisis that reveals the nightmare that is Kyoto, the uncooperative global climate that is simply not warming.
Two days ago Siemens came out with a report on how renewables are not a viable alternative to "real" power. It was a start. When reality bites more widely expect a damping down of the hype. No doubt the same reporters who write the climate garbage now will find ways to spin the change of course of their masters.
Don Pablo,
Gibbon's gibberish is an opinion piece, but the Irish media's general output isn't much better. Search for "Ever-worsening weather events lead to inescapable verdict on climate change" by the IT's environment correspondent Frank McDonald to see only slightly less hyperbole and idle musings dressed up as reality. Note the quotes from Bob Ward, Pachauri, Greenpeace and Jeff Masters.
You'd have to live here to get a sense of just how blinkered the media is on the issue but - as the departing Prof. Tol would attest - you wouldn't wish that on your worst enemy.
@Nik
On a related note, France has banned fracking, presumably in order to protect their nuclear investment. I wouldn't be surprised if there is behind the scenes pressure at EU level to ban fracking, as it threatens the headlong charge towards "renewables".
People really do need to calm down. Using up all your superlatives before the really, truly bad stuff happens is just going to leave you speechless.
It is much much worserer all of you.....look.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHtZ6Ixeqvs
Salopian
I am sorry that you don't have a First Amendment, if that is the case, as it appears to be. You should try it. You might like it.
As for
May I suggest you take reading comprehension lessons. The URL is
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0119/1224310447309.html
I have highlighted that word. In addition, they very nicely put on the top of the web page
Comment » Opinion & Analysis »
You clearly failed to read that notice. I am sorry that you were misled but I do not believe it was IT's shortcoming.
FergalR
I agree that Gibbons is a chattering monkey and Frank McDonald is not much better -- his piece in today's IT entitled Ireland in top 10 on human development index is incomprehensible, but I don't read IT for his gibberish but the news pages and the economic information in the paper, particularly the Sunday version.
I also find all the US papers as bad, if not worse that the Guardian, which I think most of us agree is particularly bad. Not even the Financial Times can be rated as a decent paper any longer.
With that, which newspaper do you find useful? I find that I must read several, including aljazeera.com to get my information where I can and piece it together for myself. BH is part of that effort, as are other blogs.
My point was to the Bishop and that he presented the opinion piece as an ARTICLE which it was not. It was a contributed opinion piece and clearly marked as such. Since he is usually much more observant and careful, I was, to say the least, applaud.
Don Pablo, it was an opinion piece, the Bish described it as an article, for sure, but how many people in Ireland, or anywhere else for that matter, do you believe read the newspapers and separate opinion pieces from articles. And, for that matter, how many newspapers will allow opinion pieces that run counter to the views of the newspaper. There are gobshites everywhere DPDLS, even in Ireland.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/20/glyndebourne-wind-turbine-launch
Deserves a separate post. Why people think they can do things to save the planet without ever saying exactly how, and by how much, they will improve the situation, well.... Completely mad.
Michel
That Grauniad article is so bad. Do these people really believe the nonsense they spout ("we'll all be under water")? Has the propaganda within the education system and in the populace been that effective?
Don Pablo, a point of information - the Sunday times is unrelated to the Irish Times, but is an Irish version of the UK Sunday times.
The Irish times' main distinguishing feature is its po- faced lefty liberal bias in every article. Opinion seeps into every article, they are virtually incapable of being objective on any subject you could name. I find it virtually unreadable anymore, and this is supposed to be our paper of record?