They’ve been telling us for decades, that we must change our path. The chairman and CEO of Allstate Insurance says that we have seen a dramatic increase in the amount of hailstorms, golf balls, football-sized hail (he said it not me), straight-line winds to 80 miles an hour, 120 tornadoes … you see a lot more severe weather," in a conference call to Wall Street analysts.
The number of natural disasters in 2010 set a new record at 247, according to the Insurance Information Institute. This broke the previous record of 200 events set just one year before, in 2009. Each of the last three years saw $13 billion in damage, $10 billion of which was damaged. This is higher than the costs of most hurricanes and 80 approaches the $18 billion cost of the 9/11 attack.
2011 is already threatening to eclipse with $9.5 billion already racked up on the April tornadoes across the south. The Allstate Chairman said that some people think that this is a cycle and that these catastrophes will pass as another natural cycle, but the climate scientists have been assuring us that this is not the case, so Allstate is viewing this as a permanent change.
From the LA Times, May 20, http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2011/05/20/20climatewire-inland-storms-growing-in-violence-drive-insu-96465.html?pagewanted=2&ref=earth