Imagine you’re feeling sick. Your local doctor says you have a certain illness. You don’t want to believe it, but it’s kind of important, so you convene a bunch of specialists. They give the same diagnosis. Then just to be sure, you convene literally thousands of doctors from all over the world, make them work for decades, and they come up, time and again, with the same diagnosis, and 99.9% of them agree about it. In fact as time goes on and you don’t do anything about it, the diagnosis gets worse as the illness progresses and the diagnosis slowly comes true. That group of thousands of specialists is probably right, yeah?

Then along comes your old uncle – let’s call him Mr Abbott – and he says he doesn’t believe the diagnosis. He has no data, no models, but as a lawyer, he knows better. He says what would doctors know anyway? So, who is probably right about global change – the lawyers and amateurs, or the world’s assembled climate scientists?

As Natural Hazards professionals, it would be wise to prepare for the probability of climate change. There is no credible evidence to suggest it isn’t going to happen. Even though the perils data are noisy and don’t show it that well yet, the major insurance and reinsurance companies who work with perils as part of their daily portfolios believe in Global Change and the potential effects on natural perils.Click Here To Get More On This Paper!!!!

1. Read the IPCC 2007 Synthesis Report Summary for Policymakers, sections 1-5. (Copy and paste this URL into a browser and read through the sections);

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/spm.html

2. Read how Global Change might impact on natural perils (Copy and paste this URL into a browser and read through the sections);

http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/images/uploads/SREX-SPMbrochure_FINAL.pdf

3. Consider the stance of Munich Re, one of the world’s largest reinsurers, to climate change. They have >11,000 staff and an annual income ~Au$32 billion, and they have a research arm to keep tabs on trends and patterns in perils. Because they pay for global damages, they have a deep understanding of losses and keep a very close eye on climate predictions and trends. Interestingly, their outlook is less conservative than the IPCC – Munich Re say that the effects of climate change are on us now. Read about it at;

http://www.munichre.com/en/group/focus/climate_change/default.aspx