Irene's warning: Expect more storms

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Irene's warning: Expect more storms

EXCERPTS ONLY --

“Precipitation levels are clear links to climate change,” said Rachel Cleetus, a climate economist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit group based in Cambridge, Mass., that focuses on environmental, nuclear, food and energy issues.
“There are still people who feel this is just a chance series of events. But some insurance companies are already planning for this,” Cleetus said. “Allstate officials have come out and said, ‘We’re living in an altered environment now.’ ”


Like Long Island, New Jersey recorded its wettest August since 1895: 16.64 inches, more than 12 inches above the average August rainfalls from 1981 to 2010, says professor David A. Robinson, the state climatologist at Rutgers University.

Those risks are taken seriously by major players in the insurance industry, especially the biggest re-insurance companies – financial players who back up companies against their losses.
But a new study of insurance companies doing retail business in six states, including New Jersey, found relatively few have concrete strategies and working plans to deal with additional risks from changing climate.

Among 88 companies in that selection from a 2010 survey by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, more than three-quarters agreed climate change poses issues to their business, yet only 11 companies reported having formal policies to deal with those threats, according to the report issued Sept. 1 by Ceres, a nonprofit coalition of investment and environmental groups that works for sustainable business practices.


http://www.mycentraljersey.com/article/20110918/NJNEWS10/309180023/Irene-s-warning-Expect-more-storms?odyssey=nav%7chead



Long before we turn into Water World, our food supply will be endangered --

You can see the effects on vegetation right now, in fact -- and that's been a growing

truth over the last 10-15 years -- but more seriously now.

[RKP5637]

1. K&R!!! n/t