Washington Post (August 22)
“As a heat dome promises to smash more records this week across swaths of the Midwest, South and Southeast. The country can expect that extreme heat, which already kills more people than hurricanes, tornadoes and floods combined, will only worsen in the coming summers.” Cities can do little “to reduce the intensity of hurricanes” or change the path of tornadoes, but they can intervene to “reduce heat-wave intensity.” Almost “80 percent of the U.S. population lives” in cities where “the urban heat island effect can increase temperatures by 8 degrees.” Measures like requiring “reflective building materials, such as cool roofs;” and “increasing green spaces” can lower “peak temperatures by as much as 2 to 9 degrees Celsius.”
Tags: Cool roofs; Green spaces, Extreme, Floods, Heat dome, Heat wave, Hurricanes, Intensity, Intervene, Records, Reflective building materials, Summers, Temperatures, Tornadoes, U.S., Urban heat island
Tampa Bay Times (July 11)
“On Tuesday, Farmers Insurance informed the state it was dropping home, auto and umbrella policies across Florida, potentially affecting tens of thousands of people. It’s the fourth company to leave the Florida market in the last year — most citing rising risks from hurricanes. Farmers, a large company with a national presence, also has reduced new business in California, citing extreme weather and wildfire threats.”
Tags: Auto, California, Dropping, Extreme weather, Farmers Insurance, Florida, Home, Hurricanes, New business, Policies, Rising risks
New York Times (October 3)
“Hurricanes and recessions are alike in many ways,” and we might be able to understand both better by thinking about the other. Both phenomena “cause enormous damage,” “are hard to predict” and “depend on feedback effects,” but “a recession doesn’t leave yachts stacked up on shore like a child’s toys.” Still, the damage from a recession can be just “as severe and is certainly more widely spread than a hurricane’s. Hang on to your hat.”
Tags: Damage, Enormous damage, Feedback effects, Hang on, Hurricanes, Phenomena, Predict, Recessions, Severe, Understand, Yachts
Washington Post (September 29)
“Climate change is rapidly fueling super hurricanes. An unprecedented number of storms rated Category 4 or stronger have lashed the U.S. shoreline in recent years.” Factors include “the warming waters…that give hurricanes more energy to release through crushing winds and pounding waves.” Moreover, climate change may be slowing the movement of storms, giving them “a greater opportunity to strengthen and destroy as long as day-to-day conditions remain ripe.”
Tags: Category 4, Climate change, Energy, Factors, Fueling, Hurricanes, Shoreline, Storms, Super hurricanes, U.S., Unprecedented, Warming, Waters, Waves, Winds
Financial Times (June 2)
“Cloudy with chance of hurricanes for Wall Street.” Jamie Dimon the head of JPMorgan Chase, started the rush to use “meteorological metaphors to make sense of the economic turbulence.” After speaking of big storm clouds and a hurricane striking the economy, other bankers followed suit. Only a few, like Goldman Sachs chief John Waldron, refused to play along. He rejected the use of “any weather analogies,” but largely agreed the outlook is complex and dynamic, “The confluence of the number of shocks to the system, to me, is unprecedented.”
Tags: Bankers, Cloudy, Complex, Dimon, Dynamic, Economic turbulence, Economy, Goldman Sachs, Hurricane, Hurricanes, JPMorgan Chase, Metaphors, Meteorological, Shocks, Storm clouds, Unprecedented, Waldron, Wall Street
Financial Times (August 25)
“Things are bad. Silicon Valley is choking on wildfire smoke. Louisiana is expected to be hit by two hurricanes this week. Britain had its wettest February on record and faces it lowest wheat harvest since the 1980s…. We either hammer carbon emissions or they will hammer us every year harder and harder.”
Tags: Carbon emissions, Hurricanes, Louisiana, Silicon Valley, Smoke, UK, Wettest, Wheat harvest, Wildfire
Reuters (September 15)
“Business owners who are trying to get back on track after hurricanes Harvey and Irma now face a different sort of challenge: trying to recoup lost income from their insurers.” Some experts predict approximately $70 billion in property losses from flooding in Texas alone. But recouping insured property loses is much easier than lost income. “Exclusions in the fine print of policies, along with waiting periods and disagreements over how to measure a company’s lost income, make business interruption claims among the trickiest in an industry renowned for complexity”
Tags: Business, Business interruption, Claims, Complexity, Exclusions, Flooding, Harvey, Hurricanes, Insurers, Irma, Lost income, Owners, Policies, Property losses, Texas
Time (January 4)
“Sea surface temperatures have risen globally in recent years as a result of man-made climate change,” but not uniformly. Though more hurricanes are being spawned in the middle of the Atlantic, temperatures along the U.S. coast “have remained relatively cool,” providing protection. Many storms “hit Caribbean islands hard but leave the U.S. largely unscathed.” Alas, the favorable “surface temperatures that protect the U.S. could easily disappear.”
Tags: Atlantic, Caribbean, Climate change, Coast, Hurricanes, Man-made, Sea, Temperatures, U.S.
Boston Globe (May 10)
The U.S. is shrinking. “Just since 2000, the estimated area of the 50 states has declined by about 5,500 square miles, more than the size of Connecticut.” Since 1940, the U.S. has generally been shrinking. Coastal erosion, hurricanes, rising sea levels and improved mapping are to blame. Perhaps this bad news is good news for U.S. property owners. Could the decrease in supply help raise property values?The U.S. is shrinking. “Just since 2000, the estimated area of the 50 states has declined by about 5,500 square miles, more than the size of Connecticut.” Since 1940, the U.S. has generally been shrinking. Coastal erosion, hurricanes, rising sea levels and improved mapping are to blame. Perhaps this bad news is good news for U.S. property owners. Could the decrease in supply help raise property values?
Tags: Erosion, Hurricanes, Rising sea levels, U.S.
