265: Monster Hurricanes are Caused by Them

Christiana: [00:01:47] Yeah, I mean, it's not so difficult to understand right. So we know that the Atlantic Ocean has been hotter than average over the past 18 months. Hotter ocean means, of course, more evaporation. That's pretty simple to understand. And that means if there's more evaporation, that means there is more moisture in the air, which means that when it rains, it rains harder and more rain, and that there's more flooding due to more rain when the storm hits the land. I mean, honestly, what is difficult to understand about that, that is such a simple logic to understand. So let's just be clear that it is not a complicated equation here to understand that heating oceans lead to more intense storms, and that oceans are heating up because of the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. So I think that is, is that not somewhat lucidly simple?

Paul: [00:03:01] Yeah, it's simpler than the, can anyone pronounce AMOC long hand, the Atlantic Meridional Oceanic Circulation.

Tom: [00:03:09] The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.

Paul: [00:03:12] There you go, you could do it right. That's complicated right. But let's not talk about that. You're absolutely right. Now, Tom, you said this Atlantic hurricanes, I believe, and you know, you have three non meteorologists here. But I think these hurricanes originate in the Atlantic. They then go over the Gulf of Mexico. And that's really where they pick up this intense heat. Because the Gulf of Mexico has been sort of like I mean it's obviously very big, but it's it's kind of smaller than the whole ocean and is and has been getting hotter and hotter. And that's where they build up this super power. And, you know, let's come on to talk about the damages. But I think the critical.

Christiana: [00:03:42] And the point is they turn from hurricanes that we've always had right. Nobody can say, oh, we've never had hurricanes. And now we have no. They turn from normal hurricanes into monster hurricanes, that's the problem. We're now dealing with monster hurricanes.

Tom: [00:03:59] And hurricanes that go through this extreme rapid intensification. I mean, I remember some listeners probably saw them, we can put a link to it in social media. Some of the meteorologists forecasting, particularly the second of these two hurricanes, Hurricane Milton, as it rapidly intensified. And there was this one very striking thing that was circulating online where a meteorologist actually became incredibly emotional and choked up as he looked at the potential damage and the speed of impact and the wind speeds and just projecting forward at that point, it hadn't made landfall, as to what this was going to mean for those people and for the place it was going to hit. I mean, this is shocking people who have spent their lives following it.

Paul: [00:04:35] I saw him talk about that afterwards, actually, because it became a meme. And he said, look, you know, I was talking about millibars and that just wouldn't mean very much to people. But he said the speed with which the millibars fell, I knew, he said at that moment, he felt a gut punch of the damage that was going to come and and let's just say a little bit about damage, because I know we're going to come on and talk about insurance. But the critical point about damage is that it has a kind of hockey stick characteristic based upon things like wind speed and storm surge. So it's the point being this is nonlinear damage. Every additional foot or meter of storm surge increases considerably the damage over the previous foot or meter. Every additional ten miles per hour of wind increases the damage considerably more than the previous ten miles an hour of wind. So you you get this exponential impact as the wind speeds get higher and as the storm surge gets bigger, which is why you're not looking, you know, the storm might be 10% worse or 20% worse or 30% worse than a normal storm, but that can lead to a 30%, 100%, a 300% increase in the damage.

Tom: [00:05:44] Yeah.

Christiana: [00:05:45] Now, luckily, Milton turned out to be not as damaging as everyone had predicted, and we're truly grateful for that. However, as you already mentioned, Paul, insurance companies are not closing their eyes to this. They are realizing that this is a situation that they the risk of which they can no longer take on their books. So private insurance is, large insurance companies are already raising premiums, or in fact, they are dropping certain homes or even certain areas saying we cannot insure this anymore because the risk is just too high. It is just not financially doable for us, or, and here is just the third thing they're doing, is they're making it more and more difficult for homeowners or building owners to sue insurers if they don't pay back for the damage. So what what people in Florida and other storm wrecked states are having to do is resort to state backed insurance, which is really pretty paltry. But it is the insurance plans of last resort. And Tom, you were with me I believe what this has done, this whole discussion about insurance and the fact that people may not be able to buy homes anymore because without insurance you can't even take a mortgage. So, you know, we're and especially those people who are most vulnerable and who still don't have a home or who lose their home here, again, hitting the most vulnerable population. But, Tom, sorry, you I think you were with me at that meeting before the Paris Agreement, where we met with the CEOs of all of the large.

Tom: [00:07:47] It was the CEO's of all the insurance companies. And also Nick Robins, if you remember, the brilliant, head of the now LSE professor who really drove this. But anyway, carry on with the story. But it was Nick, wasn't it.

Christiana: [00:07:57] When I heard them say that if we go above a two degree average temperature, that we move into a world that is uninsurable. A world they're not saying a home. They're not saying a particular region, a particular state. They're saying a world that is uninsurable. I mean, I will never forget that. That just drove like, you know, a dagger into my gut. And we're we're on that, we're in that direction.

Paul: [00:08:31] They're just, you know, I'm not exactly going to correct you, but I'm just going to add a little bit of colour. You said insurance companies are getting their heads around this. I'm going to put a link in the show notes to a book from the world's largest reinsurance company right.

Tom: [00:08:48] Reinsurance being a company that takes the risk off the insurance companies by providing insurance to them, yeah.

Paul: [00:08:53] The people, the insurers who insure insurance companies sounds crazy, but actually, if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense when you have catastrophic risks. So this company is called Munich Re is the world's largest reinsurance company and this book is called, Weather Catastrophes and Climate Change: Is There Still Hope for Us? And the reason I'm drawing your attention to this is the book was published in 2005, 19 years ago, link in the show notes. So this is not new, but it's I think what's so interesting about what you're saying, Christiana and Tom is, is that it is the impact of insurance on property values that is the kind of wild card that we're starting to see really surface, and a lot of this is about perception. You know, would you want to have your, you know, your pension invested in properties in Florida.

Tom: [00:09:47] Well, it's an interesting I mean, one thing that I have to say is, do you remember a couple of years ago that Stuart Kirk, the head of responsible investing at HSBC, gave this speech where he said, who cares if Miami is underwater in 100 years. You know, we can shift the insurance premiums. We'll still make money out of this. You know, this is just nutjobs worried about the end of the world. You know, first of all, that mask slipped. And we talked about that at the time. And he's no longer at HSBC, he's now at the FT, actually. But first of all, what a crazy thing to say because he was claiming the risk was decades away compared to where it was now. And secondly, what that shows you is that big financial institutions aren't going to be the ones who get ruined when these things come through and destroy homes. They will have structured things so that it's the most vulnerable people who live there.

Christiana: [00:10:27] Exactly.

Tom: [00:10:27] Who actually end up taking the devastating, life changing financial hits.

Christiana: [00:10:32] Exactly. Yet again.

Tom: [00:10:35] Yet again. 

Christiana: [00:10:37] Yet again. That social injustice.

Tom: [00:10:40] Now, there's one thing I wanted to bring up that's slightly different. Do you want to keep talking about insurance for a sec?

Christiana: [00:10:44] No. I want you to talk about the crazy ideas that are being levied about.

Tom: [00:10:49] Well, I mean, I have to say, Christiana, I did see Marjorie Taylor Greene come out and say that actually, this has all been created by the Democrats. And I thought maybe it was time to come clean about that weather directing room you've got hidden under your house in Costa Rica where you use you use the.

Christiana: [00:11:05] I know, don't say that in public, please. That's not fair.

Paul: [00:11:09] So Marjorie Taylor Greene is a member of the US Congress, is that right?

Tom: [00:11:13] She is.

Christiana: [00:11:13] And what did she say?

Tom: [00:11:14] I think Christiana, I think you should let her have it. She said that these hurricanes are being directed by the Democrats in order to prevent Republicans from voting in the presidential election. So the circuitous jump of logic.

Christiana: [00:11:28] Excuse me Tom, hold on, can you just say that once again? Because but slowly, because it really deserves.

Tom: [00:11:34] Ok.

Paul: [00:11:34] I'm having a weird dream or I'm recording the podcast. I'm not sure which one it is. 

Christiana: [00:11:37] A little bit more intention.

Tom: [00:11:38] Well well, the weird sort of like through the looking glass is for the first time, she is accepting that humans can create the weather and are changing the climate, but comes at it from completely the wrong angle. It's like when you talk with a child and they use children's logic to come to totally the wrong conclusion about something, in that very sweet way.

Christiana: [00:11:55] Honestly, Tom, please don't insult children.

Tom: [00:11:58] So anyway, so she said that these hurricanes are being directed by the Democrats in order to effect Republican engagement and turnout in the presidential election. This is a grown up who is elected, who in the world's largest economy is a lawmaker. And that has spread like wildfire online. And we've entered this moment where these conspiracy theories are taking the place, this is the heart breaking bit of what should be solidarity with people who are affected by these things. It robs us of the sense of community solidarity and makes us argue with each other and fight each other about the nature of reality, and it's outrageous. Christiana, I think you should let her have it. You've got that look in your eyes.

Paul: [00:12:44] The guns are all sound. This looks like it might be a broadside.

Christiana: [00:12:47] I mean it really. You have to just laugh at a statement like that, if it, if it weren't so tragic, right.

Paul: [00:12:54] If it weren't so tragic. Yeah.

Christiana: [00:12:55] Absolutely irresponsible and unfeeling, but yes, as you point out, Tom, she is correct about the fact that these monster hurricanes are man made. Absolutely correct. Now, let's just be clear. It's not the frequency, as we have said, but the intensity of these storms that is indeed man made. Now the question then is by whom, made by whom. Who holds the smoking gun? Well, it's pretty simple. Just follow the money. Just follow the money. Who is making money from the fact that these storms have become monster storms? Well, it's the fossil fuel companies that have known since the 1970s that their products are at the root of so much destruction. And yet, far from shifting toward clean fuels, they continue to extract and sell the polluting stuff because they're so attached to their caustic profits. Now, the tragic part of this is responsibility is that once the monster intensity of these storms has been unleashed by the smoking gun, by the fossil fuel companies, no one can control where they go and what they do. So the fossil fuel companies have taken storms from natural normal storms to monster storms unleashed the monstrosity of these storms.

Christiana: [00:14:35] But then they and no one else can control what the storms do, where they go, what their direction is. If they could, and here is my answer to our new favourite woman. If the fossil fuel companies could control the storms that they have turbocharged, one could be tempted to think in her logic that at least in the United States, they would direct those storms toward maybe Democratic leaning states in order to teach them a lesson. But that's utter nonsense, right. Utter nonsense, because no one can control the location or direction of these hurricanes. So, I mean, I have seldom heard, no, I have heard someone say something almost at the level of this, which is when someone else sitting in Capitol Hill several years ago, fortunately, I don't remember her name because it was also a woman said that climate change was produced by spots in the sun. That is the level. That is the level of understanding that we have, sadly, among some members in Capitol Hill. How is it possible.

Paul: [00:15:55] I mean, it is true, of course, you know, the sun does influence the climate over a long period of time, but the the detail I've done this before, but I'm sorry, I'm going to do it again. The detail of everything you just said, Christiana, is incredibly well captured in the lawsuit by the state of California against the oil and gas companies. So I am again going to send that link and it'll be in the show notes. If people want to really read the evidence that substantiates everything Christiana has just said, it'll be in the show notes in the in the state of California. I mean, Tom, let me ask you a question, you're you're the most sort of cunning political person I've ever met in my life. Are people.

Tom: [00:16:31] I'm not sure if that's a compliment.

Christiana: [00:16:32] Oh boy Tom, you're in trouble now.

Paul: [00:16:33] That's not a compliment.

Tom: [00:16:34] Not a compliment.

Paul: [00:16:35] But it's a fact. So, you know, I'm really glad that you're on our side of this very sinister table. Is it the case that some people who are thinking quite hard about the forthcoming election are thinking to themselves, this could be a dangerous story about climate change, a rational debate about climate change could start up by putting something crazy out about Democrats and making the storms. Are we going to pull the debate into crazy town and away from a rational discussion of climate change. Is that the real secret objective of Marjorie Taylor Greene's crazy tweet? Because she probably doesn't believe herself that some kind of unseen, you know, cloud seeding airplanes from the Democrats that somehow don't show up on satellites have been doing this. She doesn't really believe it. It's a it's a it's a diversion of attention.

Tom: [00:17:23] I mean, I obviously don't I've never met her, but I you would be amazed at what some of these people do believe actually. So I wouldn't make that complete assumption that she doesn't believe that. I think it's entirely possible that she does. But to answer your question, I think that there is both probably a level of ignorance and a level of sort of cynical strategy, cynical, cynically based strategy to try to distract people. I think when these things happen, actually, and this is the Trump playbook, right. Be more outrageous, be more outlandish, make more ridiculous claims. The story becomes that news, and you remain in the news and in people's minds. And then the real issue moves on and we as humanity lose one more opportunity to focus on what's real. Because we're distracted by the fluff that we're deliberately putting out and craziness and. 

Paul: [00:18:12] The emotion. 

Tom: [00:18:12] The hysteria and the twist. You know, we go round and round in that, and people die and the world gets warmer and we we inch towards these moments of catastrophe. There's one other thing that I want to point out here, do you want to go ahead, Christiana?

Christiana: [00:18:26] No, I would just say, and we begin to normalize this Tom. The fact that people lose lives, that they lose livelihoods, that they lose their homes, that they lose their towns. We begin to normalize this. This is not normal.

Tom: [00:18:43] Yeah.

Christiana: [00:18:43] This is not normal. This should not be happening. And the fact that we begin to normalize and just like, oh, okay, another hurricane and on we go. Seriously.

Tom: [00:18:54] Yeah.

Christiana: [00:18:55] So irresponsible. So irresponsible.

Tom: [00:18:59] And within this this we're recording this on Friday the 11th of October. Three days ago, BP abandoned their target to reduce their cut in oil output that they have been putting in place while these hurricanes in between the first Hurricane Helene that hit, 220 people died, and then Hurricane Milton came along and 20 people died, or the numbers are still going up. That was the moment at which they decided that they were going to change strategy. And I have to say, it really hit me.

Christiana: [00:19:30] Smoking gun.

Tom: [00:19:31] Well, it really hit me.

Christiana: [00:19:32] What did I just say.

Tom: [00:19:33] For lots of reasons, you may remember a few years ago, Christiana, this was Shell actually when Ben van Beurden was removed, and Wael Sawan came in as the CEO and I had a meeting with him, and they also have rolled back on their targets. And and we had a moment in that meeting where I went and I tried to channel my inner Christiana, and we talked about objectives and fossil fuel. But there was a moment at the end where I said to him, look, this is there's no one else, there's not going to be anyone else coming along to lead these companies, Shell and BP and others, apart from the people who are in position now, no one else is going to be able to make a difference in the time frame that we need you to. This is either on you. This is it. Now you have a moment where you have the destiny of millions of people in your hands. You can either make the responsible choice, or you can just let it slip away and say, it's more important to me to make money. And this move by BP is evidence of what they chose.

Paul: [00:20:25] I'm going to I'm just going to tell you what I think they would say if they were on the podcast. And I want your response. They would say, I've got this job because the shareholders elected me effectively, or the shareholders want me in this job. I have been given indications by the shareholders that if I don't stop this renewable stuff, they're going to get rid of me and get a different chief executive. So I've got no choice here. I've got no agency here. I think that's what they'd say to you. And how would you respond to that?

Tom: [00:20:54] So I would say that, first of all, I hear you. No one said this was going to be easy. And the second thing I would say is, how the hell can the CEO of one of the world's largest and most powerful corporations claim a complete absence of agency and power, of course you have agency of power. Of course you have ability to move things and move, bring your investors with you. Be a visionary. Be a leader. Everybody saying I am just a subservient person to these other external forces. And I have no agency, no ability to move things on my own right, that is an excuse, right. That's obviously an excuse.

Paul: [00:21:28] And I agree with you and my actually, my recommendation if I was chipping in in this conversation is Shell and BP, you have not been shrinking violets before in terms of trying to influence government. If you're not making enough profit out of renewables, go and talk to governments about how.

Tom: [00:21:42] Change the rules.

Paul: [00:21:42] To make renewables, change the rules. You've done it a hundred times before. But just as you said, Tom, I agree with you. They cannot pretend that they do not have agency here because those companies have tremendous resources and tremendous political clout. Christiana is thinking.

Tom: [00:21:56] Christiana is mad.

Christiana: [00:21:58] I'm mad. I am really mad because I take it, Paul, your, your argument is exactly how they hide behind this irresponsibility. And, you know, it's basically I'm going to disappear into the woodwork and, you know, let things move along the way, that that guarantees my salary and my bonus. Et cetera. Et cetera. Et cetera. 

Paul: [00:22:24] Yep.

Tom: [00:22:24] Yeah.

Christiana: [00:22:27] And you know.

Paul: [00:22:27] Not good enough, not good enough.

Christiana: [00:22:29] It's just not good enough. I really I really wonder what would happen, how would the world be a different place if the current CEOs of the big five fossil fuel companies got together in a room and said, right, all five of us are going to change this. Because I do take the argument that one of them cannot compete unjustly against the other in this ship, I take that. But what would happen if we, by some miracle, had CEOs of these fossil fuel companies that had a backbone, that had a moral GPS, who said, let's get together in a room and let's figure out how are we going to change the trajectory of these companies. Because, hell, they've known this since the 1970s. It's not like they just found out. They know it and they continue to do it. What is the excuse for that!

Paul: [00:23:37] And that, Christiana, is the story of the hurricanes.

Tom: [00:23:41] Yeah.

Christiana: [00:23:42] That's the story of the hurricanes. Exactly. Because the monster hurricanes, not all hurricanes, but the monster hurricanes are caused by them.

Tom: [00:23:52] All right.

Paul: [00:23:53] Mic drop.

Tom: [00:23:54] I think, well, I think that's an episode title, actually. The monster hurricanes are caused by them, so I think we can put that out. Christiana, Paul, thank you. I mean, this was we pressed this emergency broadcast button because we wanted to come in and just reflect on the devastating nature of this moment. And where we've come to actually is not only the devastating nature, but the outrageous and.

Paul: [00:24:15] And I'm going to throw in something else, hearts out to the victims of the hurricane and hearts out to the millions of people facing famine as a result of extreme weather. So let's just put this on a continuum. 

Tom: [00:24:28] Yeah.

Christiana: [00:24:28] Yes, because it's not just these hurricanes, right. It is around the world, famine being caused by hydrological cycle interruption and disruption.

Tom: [00:24:39] Yeah.

Christiana: [00:24:39] So thank you for that Paul. Hearts out.

Tom: [00:24:43] All right. Thanks friends. We're going to be continuing with our episode next week. How to live a good Life in Climate crisis. Back to regular programming soon. Thanks for joining us today. Talk to you soon.

Paul: [00:24:53] Bye bye.

Tom: [00:24:54] Bye. 

Christiana: [00:24:54] Bye.