US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8690

On September 08 2017 21:25 SoSexy wrote:
So while a huge hurricane is about to hit the US, people did this: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/hurricane-irma-petition-rename-ivanka-thousands-supporters_uk_59b151f1e4b0dfaafcf5e6e8

How retarded can you be to support something like that?

On September 08 2017 21:55 Plansix wrote:

People put sunscreen in their eyes to watch the eclipse. Humans do stupid things.

On September 08 2017 22:01 TheTenthDoc wrote:


I thought the Republican chorus pre-2016 was pretty much all repeal? That's why they passed bill after bill straight repealing the ACA and literally spent 0 time planning a replacement.

I'm also not sure what he's trying to say here. That we should go to just repeal? Give up repealing it at all? Machinate behind the scenes to collapse it and make the federal government waste more money while doing so by not paying insurers?

WASHINGTON — The last time a Category 5 hurricane ripped through Florida, it was so destructive that meteorologists retired its name forever. That storm, Hurricane Andrew, made landfall southwest of Miami in 1992, killing 65 people, destroying 63,000 homes and inflicting $26.5 billion in economic losses.

But if a similar-sized hurricane were to strike Florida today in the same spot, it would be far more catastrophic — causing up to $100 billion in damage, according to a recent analysis by Swiss Re, the reinsurance firm. That’s even after accounting for the fact that South Florida has strengthened its building codes since Andrew.

The reason is simple: Central and South Florida have grown at a breathtaking pace since 1990, adding more than 6 million people. Glittering high-rises and condominiums keep sprouting up along Miami Beach and other coastal areas. A lot more valuable property now sits in harm’s way.

With Hurricane Irma — currently a Category 5 storm and one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic — possibly set to pummel Florida this weekend, the state is confronting the fact that rapid development has made its coastline far more vulnerable to hurricane damage than it used to be.

“Florida has exploded in the last 40 years,” said Megan Linkin, a natural hazards expert at Swiss Re. “If you look at images of Miami Beach from 1926” — when the Great Miami Hurricane, a Category 4 storm, devastated the city with a direct hit — “it’s almost unrecognizable today.”

A similar dynamic is playing out across the United States, from Florida to Louisiana to Texas. In 2016, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that hurricanes currently cause about $28 billion, on average, in annual damage nationwide. But those costs are projected to rise 40 percent between now and 2075, after adjusting for inflation.

Nearly half of that projected increase, the C.B.O. said, is because global warming and sea-level rise are expected to make hurricanes and storm surges more severe, though the exact effects are still a source of debate among scientists.

But half of the expected rise in hurricane costs is the result of expected increases in coastal development. Today, according to the C.B.O., roughly 1.2 million Americans live in coastal areas at risk of “substantial damage” from hurricanes — defined as damage of at least 5 percent of average income. By 2075, that number is forecast to rise to 10 million.

Population growth can also increase hurricane risks by adding newcomers who are unfamiliar with big storms or by clogging roads during evacuations, experts said.

As of Wednesday, forecasters were still unsure where Irma might make landfall in Florida or how strong it will be when it does. But in almost any conceivable scenario, a hurricane today is likely to do more damage than a comparable storm in the past, if only because of increased development.

In 1960, Hurricane Donna raged through the Florida Keys as a Category 4 storm before turning northwest to hit Naples and Fort Myers, causing roughly $7.4 billion in damage in today’s dollars. According to a model developed by Roger A. Pielke, Jr., and Christopher Landsea, a similar storm today would cause $46 billion in damage, after accounting for population growth, and increased property values.

Swiss Re estimates that a storm like the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 would inflict more than $200 billion in damage today if it struck Miami and Miami Beach directly — exceeding the $160 billion in damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, adjusted for inflation. (Officials are still calculating the cost of Hurricane Harvey to Texas, but estimates today range as high as $180 billion.)

Nearly $80 billion of those potential losses in Florida would not be covered by insurance, the Swiss Re report said, which would “undoubtedly” affect South Florida’s economic growth “over several years, hindering its capability to recover.”

Those stark numbers, Mr. Pielke said, suggest that even before considering the effects of climate change, “more $100 billion disasters are probably in our future — and we need to think harder about how to prepare for them.”

In response, some cities like Miami have been taking precautions against future storms — though so far that has not included a slowdown in development.

In 1994, in the wake of Andrew, South Florida enacted some of the strictest building codes in the country. New houses must now feature impact-resistant windows or shutters as well as stronger clips and straps to secure their roofs, to better withstand major hurricanes, which inflict much of their damage through powerful winds that can send debris flying dangerously. Local zoning rules also require high-rise developers in key areas to build to withstand high winds.

“There’s no question that these building codes have improved our hurricane risk,” said Shahid Hamid, director of the Laboratory for Insurance, Financial and Economic Research at Florida International University, which has built a wind machine that can simulate hurricane-force winds to test new building designs.

But, Dr. Hamid cautioned, stricter codes don’t offer perfect protection. Roughly 70 percent of the region’s buildings were built before 1994, and many homes have not been retrofitted (though homeowners can get a substantial cut in their insurance premiums if they do so). And, he said, a direct hit from a Category 5 hurricane, with sustained wind speeds greater than 157 miles per hour, can cause heavy damage to even the best-constructed homes.

What’s more, even high-rises built to withstand fierce winds can still be vulnerable to water damage from heavy rains that can seep in through roofs, as investigators discovered after Hurricane Wilma clobbered the region in 2005.

On September 08 2017 22:47 farvacola wrote:
If anyone wondered what form the oncoming financial bubble pop may take, coastal real estate looks more and more likely, particularly given the possibility that Irma causes a cascading insurance/reinsurance crisis.

Hurricane Irma will test a Florida insurance market where a wave of large insurers aggressively reduced their footprint, replaced by smaller firms and a state body.

Florida’s insurance market nearly collapsed in 2006 after some of the costliest storms in U.S. history—besides Katrina, there was Charley, Frances, Ivan, Jeanne, Rita and Wilma in 2004 and 2005. In their wake, many big national home insurers shed policies in the state, frustrated by regulators and lawmakers who rebelled against the large rate increases they said were essential.

What followed has been a winding path. At first, state leaders used their Citizens Property Insurance Corp. entity to plug the gap, and it became the largest insurer in the state with nearly 1.5 million policies in 2011. From there, some 50 small to midsize home insurers have played a growing role. They have grabbed so much business that Florida’s top-20 market-share list for homeowners’ insurance is rife with names of carriers most people never heard of outside its borders.

This transformation occurred during a 12-year hurricane dry spell. lasting long enough for state officials to shore up the foundations of Citizens. But it is also long enough that the new system has never had a real-life test of its resilience.

“The truth of the matter is a Category 4 or 5 hurricane in a heavily populated area is a major stress test of everything [because] the destruction is almost unimaginable,” said Joseph Petrelli, president of Demotech Inc., a ratings firm with a specialty in Florida’s market.

On September 08 2017 22:50 ticklishmusic wrote:


WSJ had a good article about it the other day:



Source

On September 08 2017 21:25 SoSexy wrote:
So while a huge hurricane is about to hit the US, people did this: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/hurricane-irma-petition-rename-ivanka-thousands-supporters_uk_59b151f1e4b0dfaafcf5e6e8

How retarded can you be to support something like that?

On September 08 2017 22:53 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:


I read somewhere that there are already, a few of course, Insurance companies that refuse to cover people and companies past a certain point past Florida and other states due to Climate change and so on.