Bishop Hill Booker on insurance
Feb 26, 2011 Climate: WG2 Booker looks at the involvement of the reinsurance industry in keeping the global warming thing alive, and quotes favourably from Willis Eschenbach's article at WUWT on the subject of Nature's recent article purporting to link flooding to global warming (which I confess I missed, but will now devote some time to).
When your results represent the output of four computer models, fed into a fifth computer model, whose output goes to a sixth computer model, which is calibrated against a seventh computer model, and then your results are compared to a series of different results from the fifth computer model, but run with different parameters, in order to show that flood risks have increased from greenhouse gases…” you cannot pretend that this is “a valid representation of reality”, let alone “a sufficiently accurate representation of reality to guide our future actions”.
Reader Comments (41)
Andrew, can I thank your readers for first alerting me to this extraordinary paper in Nature which really deserves to become a cause celebre in the misuse of science. I would have acknowledged them in the article had Willis Eschenbach's superb dissection of the paper not been published by Watts Up With That on Friday, leaving me as usual with inadequate space to give credit where it is due,The full version of the study is of course hidden behind Nature's paywall, but should any Bishop Hill-ites wish to read the whole paper it is proudly reproduced on the website of Risk Management Solutions:
http://www.rms.com/Publications/Nature_DLohmann_0211.pdf
Thank you Christopher for taking the time on a Saturday evening to pop over here. Much appreciated.
Risk Management Solutions Ltd were involved in the complaint about the Great Global Warming Swindle. Steve McIntyre looked into their allegation and found them somewhat wanting.
http://climateaudit.org/2007/05/03/risk-management-solutions-ltd-and-the-38-professors/
Having skimmed through the paper that Christopher linked to, I have to say that I am amazed that this garbage gets published. As Christopher says in his article, it is all based on models, which are based on assumptions which have no scientific validity. Had I (in my day job) produced a report like this, based on models and unjustified assumptions, I would have quickly been looking for another job. No that's not correct, I wouldn't have dreamt of producing such a report, because I would never have got it verified and if I had, then I would have been laughed at when trying to justify it to a set of peers, whose job was to try and tear it to pieces.
It says something about Nature if they publish such cr@p.
Yes indeed, RMS was not just involved in the Ofcom complaints against the Great Global Warming Swindle, it played a central role in that campaign to discredit the Channel 4 programme. As I described in my book The Real Global Warming Disaster, one of the major sets of complaints was organised by Bob Ward, then a director of RMS. It was he who lined up the famous '37 professors' to sign his complaint, including Peter Stott and Myles Allen. Ofcom chucked out all their complaints. In his role as chief self-appointed attack dog for the warmist industry Ward likes to use the complaint system, He has twice tried it on with me, by lodging extraordinarily tortuous and time-wasting complaints about my Sunday Telegraph column with the Press Complaints Commission. His links with various of the lavishly funded interests which stand to benefit financially from promoting the AGW scare, such as RMS and now the Grantham Institute at the LSE, may help to explain why he can afford to be so dedicated to his inglorious vocation.
Good article as usual by Mr. Booker although a rather depressing one. If anyone out there expected the tories to change tack on this issue then I suggest they take a long, hard intake of breath and not listen to this guff from non other than Greg Barker when he was shadow minister for flood, plague, pestilence and climate change.
http://live.edie.net/_Shadow-environment-minister-Greg-Barker-criticises-Government-policy/audio/160264/25995.html?b=
It's not pretty especially considering he has now got the power to carry out his threats.
All that model nonsense mumbo jumbo certainly isn't science but is more than sufficient bafflegab to con the rubes into paying higher insurance premiums.
Pure sales job . . . magnificent.
Thanks to Christopher Booker, great article.
Once again the usual suspects in the finance industry are shown to be the principal driving force behind the promotion of this scam.
Environmental Defense Fund has an annual revenue of over 100 million dollars
http://edf.org/documents/8857_AR08_Financial_Comment.pdf
EDF Board of Trustees is made up of finance industry figures, retired financiers, a Walmart family guy and a few others.
Carl Ferenbach
Chair
Managing Director, Berkshire Partners, LLC
http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=365
I find it hard to take any company seriously that has the word 'solutions' in its title.
BTW, can Christopher Booker (as a founder member) explain why Private Eye seems so reluctant to discuss AGW? I should have thought it was just up their street.
“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.”
“The $82 Billion Prediction”
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/11/82-billion-prediction.html
The politicians with the "science is settled" and therefore their endorsement of the models has handed the insurance industry an amazing opportunity. Historic data has now been rendered meaningless. It no longer matters if extreme weather incidents have been reducing for a decade, if the models say there is a risk going forward you will pay! Do not expect a refund or reduction in premiums if the predictions are not forthcoming, because the increased profits will be needed to further “improve” the models, which of course are needed to forecast profit not risk.
This is one of the more pernicious uses of the AGW "computer models".
Booker's Nature Trick
I'd seen Willis's post on WUWT and showed it to my better half who'd heard all about the flood paper on the radio travelling to and from work. She was flabbergasted. I hadn't made the connection with RMS, and that amazes us even more. Thanks for making that link Christopher.
I am pleased to anounce that there is no conspiracy involved with the AGW whats-a-ma-jig (as I will call it).
There's just a confluence of interests - thus:
(1) just cause corruption (UN and all wishers for a better, kinder, more gentle old-worldy world)
(2) individual self interest (grant seekers/ needers, politicans, who-evers)
(3) politicans (again) just wanting your vote (you being those fearing conflagation)
(4) greenies wanting to take us back to a better ...... etc
(5) merchant bankers and others operating in financial markets and wishing to avoid central bank regulation and to skip to a more unregulated marketplace (aka carbon credit trading)
(6) insurance companies seeking wider margins to cover risks
(7) administrators generally from local state and national governments and instrumentalities seeking more power, prestige and money
(8) administrators generally in international organisations seeking more power ..... etc
(9) nice people generally who have swalled the cool aid that has been fed to them constantly since early childhood and just want to be protected from all the nasty frightful things that can happen.
(10) add your own villians below - this is a start
But be reassured, there is NO conspiracy, so rest easy and pay your taxes lik a good lad or lass.
Green Sand. That just proves what a scam this is. If the models were correct, then the increased premiums would pay the increased costs of the damage caused by the increased hurricanes and profits would stay the same. Mark Saunders has effectively admitted it is a scam.
There seems to be a theme developing amongst sceptics that 'the argument is won' and CAGW is dying (for example, Stephen Milloy's influential JunkScience site reducing its focus on this topic). But is that really the case? Where I live there is much talk about the area becoming a 'green energy hub', and I'm sure everyone else here could tell a similar tale. These measures grind relentlessly on.
Maybe I'm being unrealistic, but I can't help feeling somewhat dissatisfied. There are very few on the warmist side who have stood up and admitted their faith in climate science was massively misguided, even when presented with uncomfortable facts like CO2 mitigation having an adverse effect on the poor (who knew?). Indeed the likes of Brian Cox, Ben Goldacre and Simon Singh seem to be redoubling their efforts, and these still carry much weight among the (sadly) influential chattering classes.
Monbiot of course (as Ben Pile points out in this excellent article) believes that the only reason his message is losing ground (a moot point, in my opinion) is due to the great Satan ExxonMobil's funding of 'astroturfing'. More generally though, I think a hell of a lot of people still 'believe in the science' but think that the economic situation has postponed efforts to delay our certain doom.
please delete the crap from xixiwyhs
DougieJ
Indeed, the CAGW steamroller continues crushing everything in its path. I've just got a brochure about launching the South West Environmental iNet, a £2.4 million initiative supporting the Low Carbon Environment Goods and Services companies in the South West. As long as taxpayer money pours in (and the economic situation doesn't seem to be making much difference yet), then those profiting from CAGW will continue unabated.
DougieJ
I share your pessimism. The problem is that most sceptics who comment here are rational types with high IQs and a laudable faith in their fellow men. Only a few of us are twisted proto-greens with dodgy left-wing pasts and an unhealthy interest in the social sciences.
We realise it’s not enough to win the scientific argument. Social facts exist independently of the will of rational human beings, and can sometimes take on monstrous forms. Ben Pile at Climate Resistance is beavering away at the philosophical angle. It will take a lot of input from those with a knowledge of social science, politics and history to first analyse, and then begin to influence, this pernicious movement.
AusieDan correctly puts 'just cause corruption' first in his list. I'm certain that all but the most fanatical true believers in CAGW privately think the science is less settled than is made out, but fundamentally they agree with the overall goals, so 'move along, nothing to see...'
The Moonboot's minions went into full 'the papers are peer reviewed mode' to qeull any outbreaks of reason on CiF following his silly article in the Grauniad which stated that said papers provided new evidence that AGW was linked with the 2000 floods. Any sceptical poster who attempted to make the simple point that computer models feeding computer models ad infinitum did not constitute any sort of evidence was soon shouted down. Willis Eisenbach's post on WUWT deconstructed the ridiculous conceit of the paper in Willis' usual succinct and cogent style, and Christopher Brooker has completed joining the dots by illuminating the backgrounds of the authors of this piece of nonscience.
After Willis' delightful dissection of this Nature paper, Mr Booker's essay dots the 'i's and crosses the 't's with his links to the insurance scam, ahem, schemes for which this paper provides the 'scientific' basis.
The Moonbat's minions in his rapid response team are all over CB on the Telegraph. The duty trolls - the usual suspects - are busily trying to trash his column and support the computer models.
There is one, with the id 'Savant', who appears every week and relentlessly attacks CB as only a rabid dog will. In one rebuttal to him, another poster suggested that he (Savant) take the trouble to read Willis Eschenbach's article about flooding etc on WUWT. Savant's response was:
"Why should we have to make money for Skeptic causes by reading Eschenbach`s article.
These are just devices to boost the visitor numbers to sites, so there is more income for the owners."
By such an admission, I think savant qualifies to be known by his first name: 'Idiot'.
Maybe Christopher Booker wasn't aware of Catlin Arctic Survey. Never mind the publicity blurbs from corporate interests. The survey's sole objective is to find evidence for global warming so they can sell more insurance policies to gullible souls. http://www.catlin.com/cgl/about_us/arctic_survey_2011/
It is possible that insurance companies are building up a case for a legal challenge against 'carbon polluters'. So far, they've refrained from pursuing or funding CAGW related cases because they know that while the evidence for CAGW can stand up in the court of public opinion, it will fail in the court of law. Courts look at evidence from both sides of the argument, not just one side as is the case in the mainstream media.
As one who is paying an outrageous price for homeowners insurance, this infuriates me. Who would have thought that the insurance companies would hype the risk and inflate their rates? (sarcasm intended) I am going to collect these articles and send them to my congressman.
If sHx looks at the Risk Management Solutions website ('who we serve'), he will see that the list of re-insurance companies RMS gives as being among its clients includes Catlin Holdings Ltd I covered the farce of the Pen Hadow 'Arctic Survey', the pitiful promotional stunt Catlin sponsored in 2009 to whip up business, at some length, both in my oolumn and in The Real Global Warming Disaster. sHx is also right that RMS and others are actively investigating ways to bring vast compensation claims on behalf of communitiese and firms who can argue that they are being damaged by climate change
It is good to see this paper getting more attention - the "Myles' Fludd" posting was one of the more interesting threads on this blog in the last few months. The recent Freeman Dyson thread also touched on models, and in the discussion, a couple of people included a quote from Trenberth which appeared to suggest that he was claiming models were not worth much. I fear this is probably not what he meant. E.g. he talks about models providing projections rather than predictions. This is not in itself a problem. Take this analogy: if you throw a dice, I can't possibly predict that you'll get a two. But if you throw it one hundred times, I can project that you'll get fifteen or so twos. So there is a difference between deing able to predict the weather exactly in three days or decades time, and being able to project that on average there will be more rain, or it will be warmer/dryer etc.
Also, the GCMs are very complicated, and they must inevitably leave out some important details. And when projecting, there are some things that cannot possibly yet be known (e.g. the emissions scenario). In itself, not being able to account for some details would not be important provided that the models could be shown to yield a roughly correct range of outcomes. My feeling is that Trenberth does believe that the models correctly project the range of possible outcomes. But to be sure of that, you need to test the models, and you need to test them in a robust way that does not in any way assume that they are in fact correct. It is in this aspect that some studies at least seem to fail quite badly.
For Myles' Fludd, I can't see any compelling evidence that the models retro-predicted the increased probability of the 2000 floods in a robust way. An A2000 climate model was built and simulated repeatedly. Some reference A2000N reference was built, intended to model the year 2000 weather but with climate change 'turned back' to its 1900 state. This A2000N model, upon simulation, gave much less rain than A2000 on average. But how do we know that using the same methodology, A1999, A2001, A2002, A2003 etc would not all have given a lot more rain than the references A1999N, etc.? I'm not aware that the UK was notorious for its prolonged drought at the turn of the 20th century. There just does not seem to be a lot of testing of the methodology used. Eschenbach sums this up very nicely: "My point is that until you test, really test your model by comparing the output to reality in the most exacting tests you can imagine, you have nothing more than a complicated toy of unknown veracity." My research is in a rather different area of science, but it also involves computer modelling. I'd agree 100% that models have to be tested to destruction. GCMs and their ilk are tested, of course, but from what I can understand, they're not tested enough.
Christopher Booker, my apologies, sir. I didn't check RMS website, but I stand corrected.
The reason I thought Catlin Arctic Survey ought to have been mentioned is that that event was one of the road to Damascus moments for me. I didn't know that Catlin was an international insurance corporation until after I read about it and concluded that it was a farce. The media treated the story otherwise.
I hoped you'd have mentioned Catlin in your last column. I wasn't aware you'd covered it previously. So, my apologies for that, too. And it is good to see you drop by our neck of the woods.
The Mr. Bob Wards of this world have a very high opinion of themselves, so high that they think that they can safely play God, unfortunately for them, that is a delusion, safety in this chaotic world of our is also a delusion.
Play while you can Mr. Ward, the anger of millions will decimate your soul.
As Phillip Bratby says this statement is, in effect, an admission that this whole thing is a scam.
I know I don't need to spell it out for my fellow intellectuals (!) on this site but for my own peace of mind ...
"Use my models to pitch your premium rates at a level which will give you 30% more profit. Why? Because everyone will believe the models but you and I know ..." I'd better stop there to preserve the Bishop's integrity, I suppose!
In fact, snotrocket, the usual "duty trolls" (apart from savant and later on dwrice) have been conspicuous by their absence this weekend though a new one calling itself Dutton Peabody put in an appearance last evening.
Savant obviouslyh has some kind of personal vendetta against Booker. He's marginally more coherent than the average troll and occasionally manages to give the impression that he knows a bit of science. But his mind is just as closed as all the others.
BTW, can Christopher Booker (as a founder member) explain why Private Eye seems so reluctant to discuss AGW? I should have thought it was just up their street.
Feb 26, 2011 at 10:46 PM | James P
Its because the editor (Ian Hislop) is a fully paid up member of the scare, as shown by his comments on the matter when appearing on Have I Got News For You!
Completely off topic but germane. The Irish have just had an election and it appears all six Green Party members of the Dail have been turned out. So there is hope!
As far the current topic, I believe Phillip Bratby expressed my feelings better than I could have so I leave it at that.
If you wanted an example of impenetrable English, the first three pages of this Nature paper are perfect. Indeed, there is one sentence which appears to me not to be English at all, but that doubtless is me being a numpty. However, remaining with the first three pages which purport to provide an overview of the methods and findings, the essence appears to be as follows: we plugged weather conditions for 2000 into our models, then we plugged assumed 1900 weather conditions into the same model and reached our conclusions. Of course, the correctness of the conclusions depends on the correctness of the models and the assumptions. Therein lies the problem. This isn’t science; it’s just people playing with computers, for there is no way of falsifying their conclusions.
Who was it - Winston Churchill, I think - who said:
'He who does not learn from history is destined to make the same mistakes again..' (Apologies if its a mis-quote)..
What we have now, is a situation where people who are not only 'not learning' from history - they are DELETING history..!
Example - the terrible floods in Queensland - and the brief (here in the UK anyway) news shot of the pole which recorded previous flood levels - with one from (I think) 1874, WAY higher than the highest water level achieved this time round..!
As far as the warmists and their disciples are concerned, the earth was in TOTAL equilibrium around 1980, and nothing (no records; nothing) happened before that - and all concerns must be based on computer models which project forward from that idyllic time in earth's climate.
The other point about insurance and floods - both here in the UK and, apparently, in Queensland - is the lunacy of local authorities allowing massive building projects on FLOOD PLAINS...
The clue is right there in the description of the area - but - hey - there are local taxes to be had...
Andrew,
take a closer look at the co-author Pardeep Pall, Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich.
The Institute is officially supported by SwissRe, another insurance giant.
Prof. Reto Knutti, IPCC author and member of the institute, presented the Pall et al. paper last week on the ETH blog:
http://blogs.ethz.ch/klimablog/2011/02/17/neue-studie-zeigt-mensch-beeinflusst-starkniederschlage
Many thanks to Christopher Booker and everyone else 'on the alert'. I hadn't realized the connection with RMS. Even in reading Willis' deconstruction of the "study" in "Nature", when I reached the part which noted that the "study" hadn't bothered to check the river flow rates, I used it as an excuse to just quit reading - that is, without getting the full significance of why Willis had made such a prodigious effort beyond that fact, other than just being "Willis".
Unfortuneately, when it comes to the CO2=CAGW scam, the plot always thickens, as per M. Stanton Evans' "Law of Inadequate Pranoia"*. And by now, does anyone think it's not criminal?
*~"No matter how bad it looks, it always gets worse."
Institutional cozenage. If one was of a cynical disposition, one might conclude that such practice was welcomed or indeed promoted by research funding policy. The softening up with media propaganda has been running for years, try this from 4 years ago-
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article2633673.ece
Anyone interested in CAGW as a social phenomenon, as opposed to a scientific one, might like to compare the last time Britain found itself in the grip of mass hysteria - the 60s (though then the worst effect one was likely to feel was a liking for flared trousers and songs in a Liverpool accent).
There’s a book which describes very well how the intelligentsia of a supposedly civilised country suddenly adopted wholly delusory beliefs about the world and their own importance in it. It’s “the Neophiliacs” by one Christopher Booker.
Catlin's Pen Hadow fiasco is not so much a cunning commercial scam as an ego-trip for the eponymous Stephen Catlin. Most of the warmist claptrap put out by insurers comes from pointy-heads in their research departments, which are more or less a branch of marketing and have very little to do with the prices they actually charge.
The idea is to con people that the insurers are "thought leaders" (ugh!) but really it is a scam perpetrated on management by the modellers, rather than one perpetrated on the buyers by management. Just like the CRU, NASA, the Met Office, Greenpeace and the IPCC, the name of the game is funding for their self-indulgent and low quality "research".
We have the situation now where climate modellers are creating virtual realities based on atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in order to support a hypothesis. That is the basis of the Myles paper in Nature - comparative virtualism. Rising levels of atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are being blamed for the 2000 floods because educated people blinded by faith are peering into computer screens whilst refusing to look at real world data.
The real world data for autumnal UK precipitation for periods of heavy rainfall couldn't be clearer - there is no trend. Also the heavy rainfall that caused the 2000 flooding was less than a similar event in 1931.
The 2000 floods had absolutely nothing to do with rising levels of CO2. Urbanisation, the extent of the road network, the building of houses on flood plains, and modern farming methods are clearly to blame for the extent of the flood damage. The conclusion is stark, parts of the UK have become less resilent to flooding.
Now if researchers had addressed those real issues and not tried to invent virtual worlds in order to derive pseudo-scientific conclusions then we would better prepared to deal with the natural vagaries of our weather.