Australian Insurance Exec. Warns Of Rapidly Rising Climate-Related Losses

[hatrack]

"Insurance Australia Group (IAG) chief executive Michael Hawker is warning that global warming could lead to an increased incidence of high-cost storms and floods in New Zealand and Australia.

"There is indefatigable evidence that global warming is going on... simultaneously there has been an almost linear increase in the frequency and velocity of storms and of drier periods," he said. "In our view it's only getting worse because what is causing it is car emissions and green house gases and they are increasing at the present time."

For IAG, the owner of State Insurance and NZI, the storms like those in the lower North Island in February this year and Melbourne in December 2003 are far costlier than even the massive Australian bushfires.

The storms which lashed New Zealand early this year were estimated to have caused up to $200 million dollars in damage and IAG said it had received more than 1,000 individual claims as a result. Australia's largest general insurer had 5,500 claims for house repairs in Victoria against 350 in the Canberra bushfires."

EDIT

http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=communique&newsid=5401