I suppose some of their motovation is to justify higher premiums, but the justification is relatively harmless; it will not increase AGW or worldwide losses.
I assume they would rather have less claims to pay and hold lower rates.
And they do admit that the 2008 worldwide losses included the Sichuan earthquake in China.
I think they are mostly adding their voice to the effort to have AGW taken seriously - not going really well and made even tougher with the recession.

Perhaps the good and somewhat cynical 'side' to this report and the events that it is trying to illustrate is that: adversity drives advancement, productivity, and resilience.

In the same way that many of the parts of the world subject to 'seasons' and difficult 'regular' weather patterns are often more productive (with comparable populations and resources available) than their tropical and sub-tropical counterparts (i.e. south US vs north US, south Europe vs north Europe, anywhere along the equator vs anywhere north of the 35th parallel).

This will hopefully lead to better housing, infrastructure, and productivity in the 'susceptible areas'. If not perhaps people will move, consolidate, and otherwise challenge themselves to make a better system around them. Adversity is the only thing that ensured our survival as species in the past and it'll be our reaction to it via technology that will determine our success in the coming generations. If it doesn't kill us, it'll likely make us stronger and we'll become a better society for having gone through it. (and ridiculous insurance premiums often lead to changes in behavior and technology - witness housing along the florida coast)

Earthquakes are mapped as under 10% of their major losses, with climate warming accounting for the rest of the huge increases.

Let insurance premiums increase massively and watch business and the public take climate change VERY seriously.

Most of the developed world can export technology but not fossil fuels.

Anyone can throw plenty of energy to fulfill a given task, only valuable work can do it with less fuel or resources only available at home.

Investment in technology creates jobs, always.

According to this study/simulation:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n6/abs/ngeo202.html
hurricane frequency would go down, but hurricane intensity would go up by increases in atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations.

Now, does this mean, reducing the dependence on foreign oil by investing in technology and creating jobs at home is a bad thing?

>>Please stop wasting tax dollars on fraudulent, religious causes, such as Global Warming and start >>focusing on actual problems. Regulating breathing (CO2 >>- a non-polutant) is not the answer.

CO2 exhaled from biomass is part of the short term ecological carbon cycle. This carbon was taken out of the atmosphere by plants to make our food only in the very recent past. This is different from the carbon being released from fossil fuels which has been stored in geological formations for millions of years.

There is a very strong relationship between CO2 concs and temps; I am at work now so don't have the link to the graph. Along with warmer temps it is highly likely that Greenland will melt. This would rise sea levels by 7 meters. This in itself is all that needs to be agreed upon to justify reducing GHG emissions, beyond all the social benefits incurred from breaking our reliance on oil corporation energy monopolies.

"This would rise sea levels by 7 meters. "

LOL!!! You blew it with that one! Nobody, absolutely NOBODY (sane people anyway), believes that. You discredit yourself by stating such fantasies. The Globalwarmism extremists used to claim a one, possibly two meter, rise. Now they have backed off from that. But seven meters? LOL!!!

'scientist types' are the ones who discovered that increasing global CO2 levels lead to increasing global temperatures - they're not the ones lagging..

You denialists talk about climate scientists making wild claims but that's the pot calling the kettle black; check out Stan's "Earthquakes are now AGW?"

Dude they didn't say that. They were only comparing their loses from climate change AND earthquakes, they didn't say one caused the other.

Or that "the Earth has been on a cooling trend for many years" bull.

The 11 warmest years all occurred in the last 13 years.

"The correlation between CO2 ppm and average global temperature is fact - PERIOD."

"The earth is flat and the sun does not pass under it in the night, but travels through the northern parts as if hidden by a wall".
Severian, Bishop of Gabala (d. 408)

It's interesting to see the denialists back at the wheel

(would wonder if they set flags on this site so they can vent their angst against any mention of AGW. They certainly get in early,(dont mind the misplaced order of posts as the site is under construction)

These posters have volumes to say but only one simple message and take every opportunity to skew the content of any AGW symathetic report.

An example of language designed to embarras, humiliate and put down those readers interested in hearing more and all sides of the subject.

"So call us Gullible, idiotic." "absolutely NOBODY (sane people anyway), believes that." "fraudulent, religious causes, such as Global Warming.

Discredit the authors:
"Well, at least this charlatan" ( —Peter Höppe, head of Munich Re’s Geo-Risks Research unit to give his proper title) "is admitting his real motivation. In the past a protection racket was just that... A protection racket."

Or hows this for summing up climate science and then implications for future climate according to the current understanding (or science)

"This is just silly! Does anyone actually believe that the climate has not changed over the Earth's existence? The problem here is that some radicals are trying to convince people that that is the case - that climate has NEVER changed and now, all of a sudden, human beings are responsible for the climate changing (formerly termed Global Warming but re-branded Climate Change since the Earth has been on a cooling trend for many years and the Globalwarmists have been proved wrong)."

Take note any scientists who believe in AGW. This may just convince you!

">>For you non-scientist types (most of the Globalwarmists out there such as Al Gore)"

"Bunco O'Dumma "

You discredit yourself by stating such fantasies." "The Globalwarmism extremists used to claim a one, possibly two meter, rise. Now they have backed off from that. But seven meters? LOL!!!"

On the last comment the skewed response was to this statement.

"Along with warmer temps it is highly likely that Greenland will melt. This would rise sea levels by 7 meters. This in itself is all that needs to be agreed upon to justify reducing GHG emissions, beyond all the social benefits incurred from breaking our reliance on oil corporation energy monopolies."

In fact if all the worlds permanent ice melts the sea level will rise by some 60 -70 meters. This is no fantasy. This is a nightmare.
This too is a possibility, not likely with our understanding of how the climate systems have operated in the past. But nonetheless possible over time with runnaway climate change.

"Three years ago, there was more support among climatologists for the idea that warming would result in more intense storms,
The final nail was driven earlier this year by none other than Emanuel himself, who reversed his stance after his own refined computer models predicted no significant increase in either frequency or intensity of storms."

Heres the skew
Actually: "According to this study/simulation:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n6/abs/ngeo202.html
hurricane frequency would go down, but hurricane intensity would go up by increases in atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations."

Forgive me the error in my ways for seeing a trend amongst "this type" of poster as there seems nothing new to say, just stirring the same possum.

It's not that I'm a religious fanatic, That I have a vested interest in "wasting tax dollars on fraudulent, religious causes" destabilising govt's or bringing society or civilisation to its knees.

Show a reasoned rational argument and people will take it seriously, but as all that is on offer is the ranting argumentative paranoid conspiracy fantasies and irrational denialism in the face of expert opinion my immediate interest is to put your opinion in perspective.

Yes, climate has varied in the past and it has varied for many different reasons, some better understood than others. The present day climate change is very well understood and is different. Simply noting that something happened before without humans does not in any logical way show that humans are not causing it today.

For example, we see in ice core records from Antarctica and Greenland that the world cycled in and out of glacial periods over 120Kyr cycles. The cause for that climate cycle's timing is fairly well understood to be the results of changes in the orbit of the Earth, though the mechanism behind the resulting response has not been conclusively established. These orbital cycles are regular and predictable and they are definitely not the cause of today's warming. The other important difference between the glacial-interglacial cycles and today is the rapidity of the current change. The rate of warming is on the order of 10 times faster today than seen in the ice cores.

Such rapid warming on a global scale is very rare in the geological record, and while it may not be unprecedented, there is very strong evidence that whenever such a change has happened, whatever the cause, it was a catastrophic event for the biosphere.

This is quite true that the natural fluxes in the carbon cycle are much larger than anthropogenic emissions. But in the natural process, for roughly the last 10K years until the industrial revolution, every gigatonne of carbon going into the atmosphere was balanced by one coming out. What we have done is to alter only one side of this cycle. We put approximately 6 gigatonnes of carbon into the air but, unlike nature, we are not taking any out.

Thankfully, nature is actually compensating in part for our emissions, because only about half of the CO2 we are emitting is staying in the air. Nevertheless, since we began burning fossil fuels in earnest over 150 years ago, the atmospheric concentration that was relatively stable for the previous several thousand years has now risen by over 35%. So whatever the total amounts going in and out on their own, humans have clearly upset the pre-existing balance and altered significantly an important part of the climate system.

It's very true that the earth is warmed, for all practical purposes, entirely by solar radiation. So if the temperature is going up or down a reasonable place to find the cause would be the sun. Well, it turns out that it is more complicated than one might think to detect and measure changes in the amount or type of sunshine reaching the earth. Detectors on the ground are too susceptible to all kinds of interference from the atmosphere. After all, one good cloud passing overhead can cause an instant shiver on an otherwise beautiful, warm day, but not because the sun itself changed. The best way to detect changes in the actual output of the sun versus changes in the radiation reaching the earth's surface because of clouds, smoke, dust or pollution is by taking readings from space.

This is a job for satellites. According to PMOD at the World Radiation Center there has been no increase in solar irradiance since at least 1978 when satellite observations began. This means that for the last thirty years, while the temperature has been rising fastest, the sun has shown no trend.

There has been work done on reconstructing the solar irradiance record over the last century before satellites were available. According to the Max Plank Institute where this work is being done, there has been no increase in solar irradiance since around 1940. This reconstruction does show an increase in the first part of the 20th century that coincides with the warming from around 1900 til the 1940's. This trend in irradiance is not enough to explain it all, but it is responsible for a large portion of that trend in temperature.

The idea that man can not have any measurable impact on the natural warming and cooling of Earth is clearly wrong and I'll give one example where one man caused the temperature to raise 1 degree all across America for three days. On 9/11 Bush ordered the grounding of all airplanes over America, without high altitude jets creating contrails the skys cleared and brightened, more sunlight reaching the ground caused the temperature raise.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2058273530743771382