Lloyd's Joins Green Hysteria

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lloyd's of London, the world's oldest insurer, offered a gloomy forecast of floods, droughts and disastrous storms over the next 50 years in a recently published report on impending climate changes.

"These things are fact, not hypothesis," said Wendy Baker, the president of Lloyd's America in an interview on Monday. "You don't have to be a believer in global warming to recognize the climate is changing. The industry has to get ready for the changes that are coming."

In a report on catastrophe trends Lloyd's is disseminating to the insurance industry, a bevy of British climate experts, including Sir David King, chief scientist to the British government, warn of increased flooding in coastal areas and a rapid rise in sea level as ice caps melt in Greenland and Antarctica.

Northern European coastal levels could rise more than a meter (3 feet) in a few decades, particularly if the Gulf Stream currents change, the report says.

Floods, which now account for about half of all deaths from natural disasters, could multiply and become more destructive, with annual flood damages in England and Wales reaching 10 times today's level, according to some studies.

At the same time, drought patterns that are already forming in some parts of the world are going to get worse, particularly in southern Africa.

Even the lush Amazon may dry up, and with less vegetation, more carbon dioxide will leak into the atmosphere, making the global warming problem even worse, the Lloyd's study says.

My Thoughts:

The way the story is written it gives the impression that the Ms. Baker is saying that her predictions of the catastrophic future are facts that are indisputable. Is Wendy Baker just plain stupid or is this story intentionally misleading? I'll give Ms. Baker the benefit of the doubt for no other reason than a track record of a national media that continues to push an agenda without any regard of what facts are.

A fact, by definition, is something processing the qualities of being actual. I agree drought patterns could worsen, the ice caps could melt and coastal levels could rise, but none of this constitute a fact. Only when it happens will it be a fact. I actually think that stories like this is a disservice to the "green" political agenda because when the global warming debate is framed in such a disingenuous way it diminishes any creditability the argument and the people who frame the argument might have.

The only fact we have is that the planet in the last hundred years has gotten warmer. Do we have to do something about global warming? I'm not sure we can. However, it might be a good idea to conserve as a means to preserve. Lets not let the propaganda get hotter than the planet.