Climate Alarmism for Fun and Profit
Via Roger Pielke Jr, we have the unedifying spectacle of at least one leading IPCC scientist engaged in selling alarmist predictions of what climate change might do to your property in a new venture called Climate Appraisal Services LLC. If you get a free report, you get temperature measurements for your address, some information about UV radiation and some chilling maps of how much of the USA will be under water if sea level rises 20 feet (and we can’t be bothered to build sea defenses, presumably).
Now, for $30 you can get a report that gives you all this and more:
- Will your home be submerged from climate change?
- How many hurricanes can you expect this season?
- How strong are the tornadoes near you?
- How close do you live to a fault line that may quake?
- What is your fire risk, and how long is your drought cycle?
- How much damage from flood has occurred in your area?
- Are Lyme and other vector diseases a factor in your area?
- How close are coal plants and superfund sites to you?
- How many rivers near you have turned red with blood?
- How much at risk are you from plagues of locusts?
- Can you protect your firstborn with a simple sign on your door?
Okay, I may have added the last three. But, as Roger says,
Call me a skeptic or a cynic but I’m pretty sure that the science of climate change hasn’t advanced to the point of providing such place-specific information. In fact, I’d go so far as to suggest that if such information were credible and available, it’d already be in the IPCC. The path from global consensus to snake oil seems pretty short.
Indeed, one would think that actuaries would be beating a path to their door.