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Is the world becoming uninsurable?

(charleshughsmith.substack.com)
478 points spking | 1 comments | 17 Jan 25 00:32 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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phtrivier ◴[17 Jan 25 08:26 UTC] No.42735258[source]▶
Former CEO of AXA, a major French insurer, famously announced that a world at +4°C would be "uninsurrable" [1].

That was 10 years ago.

It's true that most predictions about climate are wrong - most of the time, they're optimistic. (Not always, fortunately [2])

[1] https://www.leparisien.fr/economie/business/special-cop21-un...

[2] https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/emissions-are-no-longer-fo...

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graemep ◴[17 Jan 25 10:16 UTC] No.42735974[source]▶
> most of the time, they're optimistic.

Evidence? Has anyone collated predictions over time and compared them with outcomes to date?

I can remember a number of specific predictions (e.g. that snow would be unknown in most of the UK by the early 2000s) that were pessimistic. Of course, I recall those because they got a lot of media attention at the time and the media reporting is biased to the most extreme predictions so its not a fair sample.

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soniman ◴[17 Jan 25 10:32 UTC] No.42736079[source]▶
HN just had a "Whoops we undercounted plant C02 absorption by 40% for the last 40 years" post so I would say the errors mostly go in one direction.
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1. marcosdumay ◴[17 Jan 25 16:04 UTC] No.42739244[source]▶
The errors on direct influences to warming have been overwhelming on the "too optimistic" direction. We are above the most pessimistic predictions from decades ago.

The errors on consequences of the warming... I'm not sure one can even talk about them without citing specific studies, because those things tend to have undefined timeframes and way into the future contexts (like this 4°C one... is this even possible to achieve by burning fossil fuels?)