There's a piece in the Guardian today, marking the publication of the AA's insurance premium index. Dull stuff, I'm sure you'll agree.
Patrick Collinson, the piece's author seems to have thought so too. Fortunately he seems to have found an exciting angle to the story to liven things up:
Global warming pushes up building insurance costs
Flash floods and giant hailstones help increase claims by 15% and insurance premiums by 10%.
Golly.
Thing is though, if you actually refer to the AA pages on the index, there is not a word of global warming. In fact the only comment on matters meteorological in the explanatory sections is this:
Simon Douglas, director of AA insurance, points out that historically, home insurance has not made the underwriting losses that have been a feature of the car insurance sector.
“However, this is changing: even though house prices have been falling, the cost of rebuilding and repairing homes to the higher standards required by building regulations, has been steadily rising.
“Also, the recent harsh winter brought an upsurge in claims for buildings damaged by snow and ice while the legacy of the 2007 floods remains.”
So if anything it's cold weather causing the problems - it's nothing to do with global warming at all.
Patrick Collinson must have got his information from somewhere - he makes specific quotes from Simon Douglas of the AA which don't appear in the index pages, for example:
Simon Douglas, director of AA Insurance, said: "Insurers are beginning to reflect concerns about climate change in their premiums. The industry is expecting rising cost and frequency of claims for flooding, subsidence and storm damage.
One can only assume that there was a press conference or press release of some kind, although there is no sign of this in the AA's website. And note that Simon Douglas is talking about "climate change" and not "global warming". The actual index document refers to the effects of the "harsh winter". It's all a long way from global warming isn't it?
Either way it's remarkable to compare the official AA story to the heavily spun version released by the Graun. And I'd dearly love to know if the Graun version was spun into its final shape with the collusion of the AA or whether Patrick Collinson was working alone. Certainly, there is abundant evidence that the insurance industry is investing heavily in global warming (ahem) marketing, the scare being undoubtedly good for business - Collinson quotes Simon Douglas saying as much - "Insurers are beginning to reflect concerns about climate change in their premiums ." You don't need to be a rocket scientist to realise that if they are only reflecting "concerns" about climate change rather than actual claims by their customers, then they have just had a boost to their revenues with no corresponding increase in costs.
Ta very much.
And as far as I can tell, none of the other big media outlets have mentioned the global warming angle (there are a couple of electronic outlets covering the story in the same way, but it's possible these have just cannibalised the Guardian story). This then leaves us with the juicy possibility that a factual version of the story went out to insurance industry readers, while a fictionalised version was released to a sympathetic journalist at the Guardian. Would the Guardian stoop so low?
Your guess is as good as mine.