Insurance companies have a love/hate relationship with losses. They are obviously inconvenient for the current bottom-line but useful ammunition for boosting future business and raising premiums. The invented climate crisis scare is a fantastic marketing promotion, and the world’s largest reinsurance company Munich Re is all in on these opportunities. It has announced a “heavy-loss” year for natural disasters in 2024, “where the destructive forces of climate change are becoming increasingly evident”. The distinguished science writer Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. has examined the weather figures and reports that overall losses, usually around twice the insured total, were about 0.26% of global GDP, similar to 2021 and 2022, much lower than 2005 and 2017, and higher than 2018 and 2023. Since 1990, observes Pielke, the overall trend is down – from about 0.25% of GDP to around 0.20% in 2024. Catastrophe losses, which most affect reinsurers like Munich Re which cover large risks from primary insurers (think bookies laying off their larger bets), were regularly much higher as a proportion of GDP in the 1990s than in 2024.
Happily climate change, which Munich Re says is “showing its claws”, will not unduly inconvenience its shareholders. A handsome 2024 profit of around €5 billion is expected. Last year also saw reality trump virtue-signalling with Munich Re leaving the Green Blob-inspired Net Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA). Once reality set in, the obvious anti-trust implications hit home and the attempt to enforce collective decarbonisation through insurance underwriting was dropped like a stone. “It is more effective to pursue our climate ambition to reduce global warming individually,” said the founding member of NZIA. It is of course reassuring to know that Munich Re is on the job of stopping the movement of global temperatures, but surely it should have occurred to it to run the NZIA past a few lawyers before joined it only to suffer a humiliating departure.
However, climate change fear mongering is far too good a marketing tool to be cancelled. “One record breaking high after another – the consequence are devastating. The destructive forces of climate change are becoming increasingly evident as backed up by the science”, claims Munich Re. Societies need to prepare for more severe weather catastrophes,” it adds. It is not clear which severe weather catastrophes are getting worse since a great deal of evidence including some provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, suggests otherwise. But no doubt cover, at a suitable climate change-adjusted price, can be arranged to assuage the fears of a concerned public.
Back in the real world, the Munich Re suggestion that climate change is “taking the gloves off” is not borne out by the data.
Dr. Pielke makes the obvious point that the data in the above graph is good news. In terms of expected economic losses, extreme weather has less of an impact today than it did 35 years ago, a fact that is curiously missing from almost all mainstream media. Munich Re’s commercial commentary is replicated countless times with misleading reports that humans are causing more extreme weather events. Much of this is whipped up by pseudoscience computer models making improbable and unprovable attribution claims.
All of this is not to say that losses will not trend higher in the future given the growth in exposure values fuelled by factors such as construction in high-hazard locations and rising replacement costs. Verisk is a leading analyst of insurance risk and its president Bill Churney emphasises these factors “exert a more immediate impact”. Piekle notes what Churney says and adds the view of the world’s second largest reinsurer Swiss Re that it has not yet seen a signal of climate change in losses. “To date, growth in natural catastrophe-related property losses has been mostly driven by rising exposures due to economic growth, accumulation of asset values, urbanisation and rising populations, often in regions susceptible to severe weather events (e.g. coastal regions, river fronts, and wildland-urban interfaces),” it says.
Dr. Pielke notes that it is perfectly reasonable to ask if changes in climate as reflected in the statistics of extreme weather events play some role in increasing catastrophe losses. For its part, Munich Re expects forthcoming profits of more than €5 billion and even great returns of €6 billion in 2025. “After climate change has taken off its gloves, it turns out that its claws are not really that sharp,” Pielke concludes.
Some readers will no doubt have seen the article written by Lionel Shriver in last week’s U.K. Spectator magazine titled, ‘The case against a “climate emergency”‘. It is an excellent ‘cut-out-and keep’ guide to climate scepticism and a useful antidote for those who still believe in climate Armageddon. She starts by stating that she is “increasingly convinced” the ‘climate emergency’ is another social mania we’ll look back on with a “J-eez, what was that about? Why?” She makes many debunking statements, many of which will be familiar to regular readers of the Daily Sceptic and other publications that question the so-called settled narrative. Climate propogandists lie, she states, writing:
They take temperature readings at Heathrow airport. They refuse to cite less distressing satellite readings. They attribute single weather events to climate change without supporting data. They play on the fact that up close, all natural disasters seem like the worst ever. They suppress good news, such as the recovery of the Great Barrier Reef and the fact that hurricanes have not grown more frequent – only reporting the ’hottest July on record’ without noting when the ‘record’ goes back only to 1940.
Shriver’s views are becoming more mainstream by the day – Michael Gove, one time friend-of-Greta and Government Minister, now Spectator Editor, describes his columnist’s piece as “a persuasive case for why the ‘climate emergency’ might be just another social mania”. But until wider society wakes up to the scale of the con trick that is being pulled to promote the Net Zero fantasy, it’s still ‘Treble Premiums all Round’.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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We’re in zero-sum territory here, aren’t we? Dubya time – ‘you’re either with us or against us’.
A pro-Palestine rally is an anti-Israel rally, according to the headline.
A few scumbags chanted “Palestine to be free from the river to the sea“, but this is used to damn the whole rally. This is the same tactic used against Kelly-Jay Keen when a couple of far-right idiots turn up, the same tactic used against anti-lockdown protestors when the same happened. Suddenly all the free speech principles are jettisoned.
Some of us just want peace, for this situation not to escalate, for the polarisation to stop.
I have started a discussion of the DS Forum about free speech here:
Should there any limits to free speech and if so what should they be? Is censorship ever justified?
You will only be able to see if after it has passed moderation so it is invisible to you at the moment as I have only just created it.
Quite right, this article represents incredibly lazy journalism. Humza’s parents attending a pro-Palestinian rally is a non-story. And to be supportive of the the rights of the Palestinians is not defacto support of Hamas. It seems that the Daily Sceptic only defends freedom of speech when it chimes with its own perspective.
I don’t have much time for the man or his politics but he’s not in charge of his parents
Instead of mindless downvoting why not explain why the situation is described is problematic- I can think of some
good arguments
Instead of moaning about what DS or some posters say, try persuading people
Isn’t that what we’re here for? Or are we here just to have everyone agree with us about everything and get huffy when they don’t?
Winkling out the downtickers and trying to get them to actually comment is like trying to open a mussel with a toothpick…pointless.
If it saves just one life
“he’s not in charge of his parents”
True.
Who were protesting peacefully about something..which is not against the law, last time I checked…
True. But the apple seldom falls far from the tree.
Often true, but I think the headline is a bit of a reach. I mean you could have a debate about possible divided loyalties when someone with his background has a role such as he has, and the issues that might present, but the headline just seems like a cheap shot to me.
But he is from that culture. If your father is a Crofter from the Outer Hebrides or if your mother was a seamstress in Syria you will be sympathetic to those communities and opposed to any other community that you imagine threatens them.
This may well be true for many. Do you think that should disqualify him from office? Or simply that people ought to be aware of it so they can bear that in mind when scrutinising his decisions and behaviour?
Aways to be aware.——–. You don’t jump into a snake pit because someone told you that not all snakes are poisonous.
Utterly predictable. All of a piece……
We believe that the recent actions by Hamas could not happen here….but they very much could. Indeed, with the Manchester bombing, London Bridge murders, they already have.
But that kind of murderous and barbaric behaviour, as we have seen from Northern Ireland, is by no means confined to any one ethnic group:
‘England is an oppressive nation. A predator nation….A murderous nation. A cruel nation’
‘Once we get our independence then we can chase out the English…..’
‘Not enough English getting killed (in Braveheart)’
Examples of anti English comments on Facebook, taken from Scottish nationalist pages.
Yes, but all of that you mention is from our own culture. But we are importing everyone else’s sectarianism into the UK and we will pay for that with endless cultural warfare, and calling everyone a racist who doesn’t want all of that brought here a racist does not reflect the feelings of the original Uk citizens.
So who the hell was Useless Yousaf complaining about being stranded in Gaza the other day? Third cousin twenty times removed? Tw#t.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/it-will-be-a-century-before-the-scale-of-the-vaccine-massacre-is-clear/
A little dump but worth a read.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-israel-outrage-shows-us-who-rules-us/
Another look at the Middle East issue. Final para:
“But the main reason for pussyfooting around what has happened is fear. Our authorities and the elites are afraid to admit that multi-culturalism has failed and that the reaction to the BBC and the FA calling out the horrors of Hamas would mean violence from a section of the Muslim community. The police are afraid that arresting those demonstrating in support of Hamas is beyond their capability and would provoke a violent reaction.
We know who we dare not criticise.”
There is no black and white clarity for this terrible longstanding conflict and enmity.
Palestinians in Gaza have suffered over decades. Israelis have suffered also.
Protesting the plight of Palestinians prompted by the contemporaneous carnage meted out by Hamas is problematic.
It associates those protesting a just cause with the unjust and terribly violent actions of Hamas.
And then there are those who are supporting the violence regardless of the justice of the Palestinian cause.
Maybe I should have kept this comment brief and wrote “its a true shit show” or “what a mess” and left it at that.
As for the British Labour Party, sadly there are no excuses for them.
https://off-guardian.org/2023/10/15/a-message-to-donald-rumsfelds-ghost-about-my-known-knowns/
A very interesting piece from Edward Curtin at Off-G providing a fairly detailed history of United States skulduggery over the last sixty years.
Gruesome reading.
Looks like 77 are getting some overtime.
Anything that takes them away from their child-porn collections has to be good.
It was disappointing as it didn’t mention the moon landings were fake
That’s because it is a reliable article.
And thanks for flagging up your views are not reliable. See here.
Thanks huxleypiggles.
Excellent article. The chronology appears sound and the facts seem sound to the best of my knowledge and belief.
And it seems it has provoked an answer to where all the anonymous downvoters come from. They are clearly disrupters and cancel culture activists. So you can know to take no notice of them.
Indeed if you get so many downvotes for a post containing a link to such an excellent article you can be sure you have done well.
Keep it up and stick it to them more.
The downvotes are a mark of a successful post – especially when they are matched by so many upvotes.
Many thanks.
This is the reason people are pro-Palestine.
And this.
LOL..the poor innocent little inanimate graphs are going to win the down-ticking today!!
Hysterical…..well done GHF….LOL!!
Important information GlassHalfFull.
Thank you for the graphics.
The question this raises for me is why do the demonstrations occur in the UK now and in such numbers when Hamas have done what they have just done?
Are there demonstrations in the UK and on such a scale when Palestinians suffer death or other injustices at other times or not?
Or if there are such demonstrations, are they on a much smaller scale and if so why such big ones now?
Or is it the ghastly BBC and legacy media not reporting other large-scale demonstrations?
There have always been large demonstrations in the UK in support of the Palestinians for as long as I can remember going back many, many years.
There’s is a just cause which has nothing to do with antisemitism.
Should have said “Theirs”.
It’s possible though that a lot of the purported support for their “cause” comes from an anti-semitic place. Doesn’t necessarily change the justness or otherwise though.
People are NOT antisemites for opposing Israel.
They do not dislike Jews for what they “are” because of their religion.
They dislike Zionists for what they “do” against the indigenous Palestinians.
“People are NOT antisemites for opposing Israel.
They do not dislike Jews for what they “are” because of their religion.”
I did not say or imply either of these things. It’s possible that not everyone protesting is doing it for the same reasons, and also possible that some or many protesting are in fact anti-semitic. I do not pretend to know all of their motives, but I can’t see how could know them either.
I follow many pro-Palestinian channels and have never seen any antisemitism.
I also follow some right wing channels to “know thy enemy” and the blatant racism is appalling.
“They dislike Zionists for what they “do””.
Some jews dislike Zionists for what they do now and historically including during the 1930s and 1940s.
But at the same time there needs to be some balance because some people who oppose a state of Israel are antisemitic but not all who oppose what is done in the name of the state of Israel are antisemitic.
I think it’s largely been caused by the expectation of a large scale attack on Gaza which is going to cause untold human suffering. And the understanding that Israel has the ability to wipe Palestine off the map. Supporters of Palestine are fearful, understandably, of what’s about to happen.
Israel may be responsible for those deaths but Hamas are accountable.
Everyone is accountable for their actions.
The deaths of innocent civilians on both sides should be condemned.
Absolutely agree. I would also argue that the protests and whataboutery we have seen in the immediate wake of the slaughter of innocent civilians, whether pro-Palestine or pro-Hamas, are the height of bad taste. A complete dehuminsation of the Jewish people and a massive eye-opener for me.
I am becoming increasingly dismayed at Daily Sceptic’s reporting of events in the Middle East. Not only does this promote polarising and divisive debate, there seems to be a one-sided quoting of reports from biased media.
Where is the scepticism?
If this continues, I will reluctantly have to cancel my subscription.
Bye!
Don’t do that Mike….
Just think what we had to get through with Convid and the Scamdemic…
This is no different…and there are people here who agree with you…
Thanks, but I fear it could be going the same way as the Daily Mail – at least on this topic. The majority of comments on the Daily Mail website disagree with the articles, but I suspect that many more silent readers swallow them hook, line and sinker without question. Who would want to support that state of affairs?
Would be lovely to think DS had millions or even hundreds of thousands of “silent readers” but I strongly doubt that.
One problem with the MailOnline, which you have noticed if you visit it, is that on controversial issues readers comments are often closed down early, with sometimes only half a dozen comments appearing and thousands of red and green arrows next to them. This does not give a true reflection of opinion. I cannot see the point of a comment section if you run scared of readers opinions like the Mail seems to do
In a war you fight soldiers. You don’t kidnap civilians and use them as shields. Imagine when we were at war with Germans if we parachuted over from Holland into Munchengladbach and kidnapped 100 boys, girls and grannies. ——That isn’t war. It is terrorism.
I was shocked by the inhumanity of the Hamas attack, but the response has been equally shocking, as has the commentary from many in the West who claim to be Christian.
Vengeance, as I understand from my atheist standpoint, is claimed to be reserved for their God. Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought Christians and Jews agreed about God, but maybe His word got lost in translation.
We managed get man on the moon, but we have not managed to stop wars. Nobody wins in wars, God or no God.
The bankers win.
As someone once pointed out “You cannot stop war”. Because you have to make war with those who make war on you. I think it was Ouspensky in his book “In Search of the Miraculous”.
This will Lift your spirits.. a really compassionate man..Dr Gabor Mate
Actually someone worth listening to in this morass of violence and the blame game…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6_GDDa4bmI
WTF!
ebygum you have been downvoted for that comment?
Who are these people?
This is crap.
They have no place on DS.
Such total intolerance of other peoples’ views and free speech is unacceptable.
LOL. Downvoters are out in force today.
See here.
When the Germans bombed London and Coventry did we not bomb Dresden and Hamburg? This was NOT revenge.
Completely agree. This is a brilliant article which touches on the issue: https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/hamas-israel-and-the-devil-on-my
What on earth is wrong with attending a pro-Palestinian rally?
The left behind these demos isnt “the woke left”. It’s the hard left and Socialist Worker. Get your facts right.
We are importing every bit of sectarian rabble from all corners of the globe and if you disagree you are classed a racist. Once this rabble becomes the majority or even 40% of the population the party is over for those who let this happen and took freedom for granted. The rest of us will just have to sit and watch as our culture is destroyed by the clutter of multicultural dogma
Very dishonest headline. It wasn’t an anti-Israeli rally Toby. Both Jews and Arabs marched side by side. It wasn’t even against ‘Israel’s’ attack on the Gaza strip. Most I spoke to (I went to take pics and to see how misrepresented this would be in the MSM and sadly, so called ‘independent’ media) despise those in control (both Netanyahu and Hamas) and want only peace. They consider these attacks on Gaza, not to be by ordinary Israelis, but by the psychopath Netanyahu and his henchmen. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets of Tel Aviv chanting ‘Bibi is a murderer’ (as they believe they were left undefended) and demanding he go to jail. Divide and rule is what our overlords want. Please don’t add to it, it’s spilling out already with anti-Semitic and Islamophibic attacks including the stabbing yesterday of a 6-year old boy in Illinois. Anyone ramping up the divide – including fake news stories – has blood on their hands.