As I have mentioned before, it would be foolish for the insurance industry to ignore global warming — and it has not. It has taken into account the rise of 15 centimetres in sea level since 1900...

For example, imagine a storm with wind gusts of 150 km/h. Your roof is barely holding. You are insecure but you hope and it holds... But due to "global warming" a similar storm brings winds 10 per cent stronger...  at 165 km/m of wind, your roof looses a few tiles or a sheet of metal. The plaster work below gets ruined by rain. Your electric network is zapped and your computer gets waterlogged... The small opening let a lasting gust of wind through and the entire roof is destroyed. Damage? Though it is hard to calculated without access to the insurance empirical data, I would guesstimate and I would not be far wrong, that with an increase of 10 per cent in strength of storm activity (say a rise of 0.5 degree C could lead to such increase). the damage bill simply doubles. For example Sandy's damage bill is estimated at US$45 billion. Without "global warming", that is with a storm that would not reach as high as New York and with less intensity and wearing off the coast, the damage bill could have been between zero and twenty billions at most such as the storm last year...

I believe that in the mist of the insurance industry dungeons, there are some number crunchers preparing the new hike in premiums all around the world, holding their breath, otherwise the insurance industry would go down the gurgler in a jiffy, within 5 years from yesterday.... And this hike only to cover cost. profit would come second best since the trick would be to minimise the hike as not to loose custom to the competition...

Clouds diagram a-coming soon...

POLLS SHOW that many members of the public believe that scientists substantially disagree about human-caused global warming. The gold standard of science is the peer-reviewed literature. If there is disagreement among scientists, based not on opinion but on hard evidence, it will be found in the peer-reviewed literature.

I searched the Web of Science for peer-reviewed scientific articles published between 1 January 1991 and 9 November 2012 that have the keyword phrases “global warming” or “global climate change.” The search produced 13,950 articles. (See methodology.)

I read whatever combination of titles, abstracts, and entire articles was necessary to identify articles that “reject” human-caused global warming. To be classified as rejecting, an article had to clearly and explicitly state that the theory of global warming is false or, as happened in a few cases, that some other process better explains the observed warming. Articles that merely claimed to have found some discrepancy, some minor flaw, some reason for doubt, I did not classify as rejecting global warming. Articles about methods, paleoclimatology, mitigation, adaptation, and effects at least implicitly accept human-caused global warming and were usually obvious from the title alone. John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli also reviewed and assigned some of these articles; John provided invaluable technical expertise.

This work follows that of Naomi Oreskes (Science, 2005) who searched for articles published between 1993 and 2003 with the keyword phrase “global climate change.” She found 928, read the abstracts of each and classified them. None rejected human-caused global warming. Using her criteria and time-span, I get the same result. Deniers attacked Oreskes and her findings, but they have held up.

Some articles on global warming may use other keywords, for example, “climate change” without the “global” prefix. But there is no reason to think that the proportion rejecting global warming would be any higher.

By my definition, 24 of the 13,950 articles, 0.17% or 1 in 581, clearly reject global warming or endorse a cause other than CO2 emissions for observed warming.

The list of articles that reject global warming is here. The 24 articles have been cited a total of 113 times over the nearly 21-year period, for an average of close to 5 citations each. That compares to an average of about 19 citations for articles answering to “global warming,” for example. Four of the rejecting articles have never been cited; four have citations in the double-digits. The most-cited has 17.

Of one thing we can be certain: had any of these articles presented the magic bullet that falsifies human-caused global warming, that article would be on its way to becoming one of the most-cited in the history of science.

The articles have a total of 33,690 individual authors. The top ten countries represented, in order, are USA, England, China, Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia, France, Spain, and Netherlands.

Global warming deniers often claim that bias prevents them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals. But 24 articles in 18 different journals, collectively making several different arguments against global warming, expose that claim as false. Articles rejecting global warming can be published, but those that have been have earned little support or notice, even from other deniers.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/environment/why-climate-deniers-have-no-scientific-credibility/

Blame the shock-jocks and their owners/handlers — especially Uncle Rupe and the carbon industry lobby...

Typhoon Bopha, the strongest tropical storm to hit the Philippines this year, has slammed into a southern island, killing at least six people, destroying homes, cutting power and forcing the cancellation of flights and ferry services, officials said.

The state weather service said Bopha made landfall on Mindanao island's east coast at dawn on Tuesday, raking across the island of 10 million people, packing gusts of up to 210km an hour and bringing heavy rain.

At least six people were confirmed dead and dozens injured, officials said.

Aviation and shipping were suspended, with 80 flights grounded and thousands of ferry passengers stranded at ports as the coastguard ordered vessels to stay in port, the civil defence office said.

Power has been cut off in at least eight municipalities in southern Surigao del Sur and Davao Oriental while parts of Agusan del Sur province are flooded, Civil Defence chief Benito Ramos said.

More than 41,000 people had moved into nearly 1,000 government shelters across the island by early Tuesday, the Civil Defence in its latest bulletin.

The commercial centre of Cagayan de Oro, one of Mindanao's largest cities, was hit by flooding as rivers overflowed following heavy rain.

School holidays were declared in Mindanao and large areas of the central Philippines.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2012/12/201212415828801945.html

In order to tackle the looming catastrophe of climate change, we must first change the way information flows. Social media can help, writes Jonathan Green.

It could be that we don't quite have the mechanism to deal with this yet, the whole end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it thing. The vocabulary and processes that currently carry our public debate seem unequal to the task of leading what seems to be a discussion we need to have.

Take this ABC evening news bulletin from Monday. Some context first: the latest dispatch from the midpoint of the climate talks in Doha was far from good. The gathering heard gloomy predictions: temperature rises of between four and six degrees by the end of the century, a glimpse of a coming and quite probably unstoppable calamity. The picture was little short of apocalyptic.

So, to the news.

Item one:

The chance of a pre-Christmas interest rate cut firmed today.

Item two:

Customers angry about their rising bills confronted Melbourne's water retailers at a public forum in the city this afternoon.

And item three, 

Climate scientists say they're shocked and astonished by the latest data about global greenhouse gas emissions. They've hit an unprecedented high ... And China is responsible for most of the new growth in emissions. Scientists now warn the future's looking far more dangerous.

It is here, in the sobering report that follows, that we learn a little more about the seemingly inexorable ecological forces combining to transform our planet within the next two lifetimes. Stock images: ice, steam, cooling towers. We then move smartly to item four: 

Victorian health officials are analysing samples from a Bundoora cooling tower... As they investigate three cases of legionnaires' disease...

How do we invest scientifically substantiated reports of the impending end of the world with the significance something so, ah, earth shattering, might merit? How do we delineate the routine clutter of the day from the latest urgings that we face, and should heed, a universal and existential threat?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-06/green-how-can-anything-rival-the-threat-of-climate-change/4410172?WT.svl=theDrum

--------------------------------

Was Item five, the pregnant princess?.... Possibly, unless it was a "sports news item", "Warney could still rip the South African apart"... who knows...

By the way Andrew Bolt jumps in the air is showing that, hopefully, we're starting to make a small dint in his lies and his hugely erroneous dangerous views... We're kicking his hubcaps... But the like of him  and other idiots control most of the information channels...

That's why we need to have a people's media... 

May Andrew Bolt's house be destroyed in the next storm (or flooded by the next tidal surge), wherever he lives...

UN climate talks are heading into the final stretch with a host of issues unresolved, including a standoff over how much money financially stressed rich countries can spare to help the developing world tackle global warming.

That issue has overshadowed the talks since they started last week in Qatar, the first Middle Eastern country to host the slow-moving annual negotiations aimed at crafting a global response to climate change.

Tensions built up on Thursday - the penultimate day on the schedule - as the Philippines called for action to keep global warming in check, citing the devastation caused by a powerful typhoon that killed about 350 people.

"I appeal to the whole world, I appeal to leaders from all over the world, to open our eyes to the stark reality that we face," climate envoy Naderev Sano said to applause from delegates.

"An important backdrop for my delegation is the profound impacts of climate change that we are already confronting. As we sit here, every single hour, even as we vacillate and procrastinate here, the death toll is rising."

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/12/2012127072125988.html