Climate Myths Debunked: The Real Reason Behind Rising Insurance Costs

How Economic Factors, Not Severe Weather, Drive Insurance Hikes

Recent reports by mainstream media, such as the New York Times, suggest that rising insurance costs are due to more severe weather events. However, this narrative overlooks several critical factors and aligns with the misleading claims of the climate-industrial complex. In reality, the surge in insurance costs is driven by economic challenges like inflation, increased construction costs, and regulatory constraints that prevent insurers from adjusting premiums or canceling policies. This complex economic environment, rather than an increase in severe weather, is the primary reason for the insurance industry's current financial strain… and it’s easy to prove.

First of all, the IPCC reports low confidence in past trends for hail and wind activity due to limited high-quality data. In fact, table 12.12 in the latest IPCC AR6 report summarizes the observed and projected changes in severe convective storms, including hail and wind. The table indicates that there is low confidence in observed trends and low confidence that such trends will develop by 2100 for even the most extreme SSP5-8.5 scenario in all 4 wind subcategories and hail.

Although there appear to be no trends identified in global intensity or frequency of hail, mean wind speed, severe wind storms, tropical cyclones, etc., let’s take a closer look at the USA as that was the focus of the NY Times article.

Table 12.8 from the IPCC AR6 report summarizes the projected changes in various climatic impact drivers in North America, with varying levels of confidence. As evidenced by the table above there is low confidence in the direction of change associated with hail in all 6 subregions. Mean wind speed is projected to go down in the Western US and not change elsewhere. Severe wind storm is projected to increase with medium confidence in 3 of the 6 subregions.

As I have stated before, projections for the future are unfalsifiable and thus fall outside the realm of the scientific method. Therefore, let's examine the past decade or two to assess how the number of hail and wind storms has changed, as well as the reported damages associated with these events.

First, let’s take a look at the number of reports of hail events, which are claimed to be significantly increasing and causing substantial financial losses for insurance companies. Data from the NOAA's Storm Prediction Center shows that the overall number of hail events has not dramatically increased over the past decades. While there have been fluctuations year-to-year, the trend does not support the narrative of a significant rise in hail events. This suggests that the perception of increasing hail-related damage may be overstated or influenced by other factors.