Nobody is going to be ready when a Category 5 hurricane slams into Southeast Florida, flattens Miami, bankrupts insurance companies, threatens a foreclosure crisis, and sends financial shockwaves across the world.
The conventional wisdom is that a scenario like this is so unlikely to occur that it’s almost not worth discussing. The odds of a worst-case hurricane making landfall in Florida in any given year is low, insurance companies have sophisticated strategies for mitigating risk, and the financial system by and large is insulated from physically destructive events. (Even 9/11, for instance, caused a stock market downturn that only lasted a month.)
Yet in recent weeks VICE spoke with financial, political and scientific experts—including a former special assistant to President Barack Obama, the dean of science of a major Canadian university, and a UK organization on the global vanguard of disaster modeling—who believe that conventional wisdom has its limits. Without wanting to be seen as alarmists by overstating dangers, these experts think it’s crucial that we question and challenge common assumptions around financial risk.
They point out that a warmer climate is making hurricanes more severe and destructive. Above-average temperatures are increasing the rainfall of tropical cyclones between 5 to 10 percent, while rising seas add to the intensity of flooding.
At the same time, there are structural aspects of the insurance industry that are more opaque and perhaps riskier than the public thinks, creating the potential for localized financial damage from a massive hurricane to quickly spread internationally, a process similar to what happened during the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008.
Though even the worst physical disasters have had little impact historically on global markets, there is reason to believe that above a certain financial (and even psychological) threshold, natural catastrophes can weaken economies and ultimately lead to damaging recessions. Given all that, the experts VICE spoke with think it’s reasonable to wonder whether society is massively underestimating the economic dangers posed by rising global temperatures.
This has disturbing implications for all cities on the front lines of extreme weather, and Southeast Florida in particular. It could mean, under a specific set of conditions, that Miami is a ticking financial time bomb waiting any day now to be detonated by climate change.
One version of a worst-case hurricane for Florida is a storm that makes landfall just south of Miami, heads slightly inland, then moves steadily up the east coast. This is the scenario of maximum devastation, explained Shahid Hamid, a finance professor at Florida International University’s International Hurricane Research Center, because part of the hurricane will be able to draw heat from the ocean while slamming Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, Melbourne, Jacksonville, and Orlando with the strongest possible winds. “The hurricane is basically buzzsawing through the cities,” Hamid said.
If this were to happen, it could also create a ten-foot storm surge that demolishes homes and blocks the streets with debris. “South Florida is not remotely prepared for a Category 3 or higher hurricane,” Bryan Norcross, who was a TV meteorologist in Miami during Hurricane Andrew, which killed 65 people in 1992, warned the Washington Post in 2017. “People will be stuck in buildings with no power, no water, likely little or no communications, and no way to get out or get people in with supplies and aid for an extended time after the storm.”
Hamid thinks “the probability is very low” of this ever happening. But he added that the scenario almost became real in 2017. “When I saw the track of [Hurricane] Irma that was being predicted, two to three days out, it looked similar to the track of our worst-case scenario.” Irma killed dozens of people as it ripped through the Caribbean, but mellowed as it approached Florida. “Fortunately the hurricane weakened and moved west to the less populated areas,” Hamid said. Over 60 percent of homes in Florida lost power and ten people died. Still, he added, “We dodged a bullet.”
This time we may not be so lucky.
When Hurricane Andrew made landfall in Florida it destroyed over 125,000 homes and caused $26.5 billion in damage. To this day it’s still considered one of the most destructive hurricanes ever. But the value of coastal property in Florida has grown from $870 billion to more than $3.7 trillion in the intervening years.
When today’s worst-case hurricane lands in Miami it could cause $150 billion of insured losses, according to Hamid’s estimates. That only includes wind damage to people’s homes, not to structures like strip malls and office buildings, nor flooding losses from a storm surge. In 2015, Boston-based catastrophe modelers Karen Clark and Company projected insured damage losses from a massive hurricane striking Miami directly at $250 billion. But even that number could be low.
Last year, the Centre for Risk Studies at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School modelled a slightly different catastrophe than the one described by Hamid. In this one, a Category 4 hurricane first makes landfall in Florida Bay, slightly south of Miami, with 147 MPH winds. It then heads northwest, blasting Tampa, crossing the Gulf of Mexico, and making a second landfall as a Category 3 hurricane near Pensacola. In this scenario most of Florida’s coastal airports and seaports experience heavy damage. “Further exacerbated by port closures, national import and export rates fall by approximately 5% within a fortnight of the disaster,” writes the Centre for Risk Studies. It takes two years to fully rebuild everyone’s homes. The total physical damage exceeds $1.35 trillion.
This is an important threshold. “In disasters we commonly see today… you’ve got losses in the hundreds of billions of dollars,” Oliver Carpenter, a research assistant at the centre who studies natural catastrophes and the global economy, told VICE.
As financial fallout from the disaster spreads from Florida it may put $2.35 trillion of world GDP at risk.
The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season for example caused $282 billion in damage. “That’s relatively fickle in the grand scheme of things,” he argued. For reference, about $169 billion was traded each day on the New York Stock Exchange as of 2013. Hurricane Katrina, which caused $125 billion in losses and may have had a total economic cost of $250 billion, had a negligible impact on financial markets even as it caused massive amounts of human misery and death. Based on historical experience, it’s reasonable to conclude that even the most destructive catastrophes pose relatively little risk to the wider economy.
But damage over $1 trillion may challenge that logic. “That’s the threshold when these losses have a noticeable impact and spread to the global economy,” Carpenter explained. The Centre for Risk Studies estimated someone with a high quality investment portfolio could see a 6 percent drop in returns following the worst-case Miami hurricane. As financial fallout from the disaster spreads from Florida it may put $2.35 trillion of world GDP at risk.
Though this likely wouldn’t cause a recession, “the weakened economies that result would be more vulnerable to any other shocks that could occur coincidentally during the recovery period and make a recession more likely,” the centre’s study reads while discussing catastrophic natural disasters in general.
It adds that this is “thought to be towards the upper end of current scientific constraints, but it is plausible that even larger magnitude events could occur.”
A storm of this size may have dire impacts for insurers. Hamid estimates Florida’s private insurers have the capacity to pay about $60 billion in claims following a major catastrophe. A Category 5 hurricane demolishing Miami is “way beyond the capacity of the insurance companies,” Hamid argued. “Some of the companies certainly will go under.”
That $60 billion safety net includes something called reinsurance, or insurance for insurers. Knowing that an unexpected disaster could drive them bankrupt, insurers pay companies such as Munich Reinsurance Company or Berkshire Hathaway to take on some of the risk.
These reinsurers also don’t want to be on the hook for a disaster. So they trade financial risk among themselves in the “retrocession” market. “It’s a complicated market and it’s very opaque,” said Matt Davison, the dean of science at Ontario’s Western University and co-author of a 2016 Bank of Canada paper looking at systemic risk in reinsurance. “Sometimes risks are traded, and then traded again, and then traded again in complicated layers and even the people trading them are no longer quite exactly sure which risk they’re buying.”
As long as losses don’t exceed a certain threshold, the system spreads and dampens financial risk. “But what we wanted to look at is, ‘What happens if one company in the chain fails?’” he said.
The trigger may be a disaster—or, more likely, a series of them—more costly than anything in recent human history. “There are relatively few such potential events,” Davison’s paper argues, “although one such might be a Miami hurricane.” In the aftermath, a reinsurance company could receive a gigantic claim from an insurance company it has trouble paying.
“Something like that happens,” Davison said, “it weakens [reinsurance] Company A. At the same time, Company A is believing it’s going to get a big check from Company B through the retrocession market, and it doesn’t, because Company B is bankrupt. Now Company A is even weaker, it goes down. Now [Company A’s] contracts with Company C are in question. And the whole thing spins out of control.”
This is similar to what happened in the financial crash of 2008. Risky mortgages were bundled into “collateralized debt obligations” and traded on financial markets. “[It] led to financial products that were thought to be very safe, they turned out to be not safe at all,” Davidson said. “In some ways the retrocession market has some formal similarities on a financial structure basis.”
Davison is quick to add that this on its own doesn’t mean the reinsurance sector is unsafe. Under most circumstances the trading of risk helps prevent a spiraling crisis: “I don’t want to be alarmist here and say, ‘Oh wow there’s going to be another financial crisis coming from insurance.’ I don’t believe that’s the case.” For a Florida hurricane to pose systemic risk to the sector, “there kind of needs to be a uniquely bad constellation of events,” he said.
Yet we’re moving into an era of extreme weather that’s challenging our ability to assess and manage risk. A paper published last year in the academic journal Nature Climate Change noted that warmer atmospheric temperatures are causing multiple stresses at once on our natural and social systems.
In 2018, for instance, heat waves and drought in California led to the worst wildfires in state history and the bankruptcy of utility company PG&E. That same year, Hurricane Michael became likely the strongest hurricane to hit Florida—and the US—since Hurricane Andrew. Disasters will become more interlinked and harder to predict, leading one of the paper’s authors to describe a future that’s “like a terror movie that is real.”
But it’s an open debate whether the insurance industry—or the wider financial system—actually faces any near-term risk from climate disaster. Daniel Schwarcz a University of Minnesota law professor and insurance expert who’s testified before US congressional committees, told VICE “most of the risk of climate change really isn’t being held by insurers right now.”
Policies for property damage are renewed annually. “Insurers are only exposed for the next year and they’ve survived things like Katrina,” he noted. “There could be some terrible storms in a given year and frankly they could really hit the industry hard but they can always recalibrate.”
Insurers can leave risky markets or raise prices. “They understand that there’s massive risk associated with climate,” Schwarcz said. “They’re not taking it on.”
That strategy has worked fine in the past. But Moody’s Investor Service argued last year that climate change is challenging long-held assumptions. “Risk modeling and pricing will experience an extra layer of uncertainty since climate change tends to produce an unpredictable environment that makes assessing and pricing risk more difficult,” it wrote. Despite that warning, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett told Yahoo Finance in 2018 that climate change is “not really an insurance risk.”
In an ideal world, the insurance industry would help us adapt to a warming planet by informing the public of risks. Insurers determine the likelihood of disasters using catastrophe models. The cost of those disasters is then factored into insurance rates, and when rates rise high enough, towns and cities relocate away from high-risk areas, or at least they should.
That’s not what’s happening in Florida, which in recent years has seen a record-setting coastal real-estate boom, even as the risk of flooding and hurricanes intensifies. In 2017, for example, a Florida developer sold over $300 million worth of units in a building called the Bristol, making it the most expensive condo development in Palm Beach County history. Though the boom shows signs of slowing down, there are currently homes worth a combined $6.4 trillion at risk of flooding in Miami Beach alone.
None of this would likely be possible without state subsidies that reduce the price of insurance and expose Florida to huge financial risk. If a series of weather events devastates Florida, “losses could leave the state in a financially awkward position,” wrote storm risk expert Lorilee Medders in 2017. “The state would virtually be forced to tax the business and tourism base more heavily to make up the shortfall—a risky option. In some worst-worst case scenarios, Florida could face wide-scale population emigration, sustaining a heavy loss of its tax base.”
Michael Wara, a lawyer and research fellow at Stanford’s Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, explained to VICE in January that if this comes to pass, “You could easily see the state of Florida go bankrupt.”
This increases pressure for a bailout from the federal government. One form the bailout could come in is through a huge payout of claims from the National Flood Insurance Program, which insures 1.7 million Florida households against flood disasters. Even though the federal program is in over $20 billion of debt, it’d be extremely difficult to deny aid to people suffering in the wake of a catastrophe. “It’s just too hard for political leaders to say, ‘No, we’re going to stand firm in our fiscal beliefs and not get help to our constituents,” said Alice Hill, a former special assistant to President Barack Obama and a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.
Even with a federal government bailout, a severe enough hurricane could cause a psychological tipping point for developers, insurers, realtors, buyers, and investors who decide it’s just too risky to stay in Florida. “What we want to prevent is that canary in the coal mine effect where insurance companies pull out of the Miami market, which could have a catastrophic economic impact even before the climactic events,” Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said in February.
Alternately, homeowners who face skyrocketing insurance costs in the wake of a disaster may walk away from their mortgages, threatening a foreclosure crisis. “When I was in the White House, there was talk of how much do we really want [these risks] to be widely known?” Hill said. “You could have a sudden fall in the market prices without a hurricane. It could be just a mass realization that all of this property is severely compromised. That would be highly destabilizing to real estate markets.”
Warnings have gotten louder over time. In 2016, Sean Becketti, chief economist at mortgage company Freddie Mac, argued that climate change could trigger financial chaos by destroying coastal property and forcing millions of people from their homes. “The economic losses and social disruption may happen gradually, but they are likely to be greater in total than those experienced in the housing crisis and Great Recession,” he wrote.
The parallels with 2008 don’t end there. Over the past decade there has been a boom in the growth of “catastrophe bonds,” insurance products transferring the risk of hurricanes and other disasters to buyers on Wall Street and beyond—a secondary market that is different from the traditional reinsurance market.
Managers who work in the industry have explicitly compared what they’re doing to the creation of mortgage-backed securities in the 2000s, a financial innovation that transferred mortgage risk to Wall Street and helped cause the 2008 crash when those mortgages turned out to be much riskier than people thought.
Industry analyst Jay Patel warned in 2016 that people who invest in catastrophe bonds may not “understand what exactly they are getting themselves into. This sounds eerily familiar to the way investors behaved towards another seemingly obscure bond market before the financial crisis.” Catastrophe bond site Artemis replied that this is “a lazy way to avoid delving into the idiosyncrasies of what is a sophisticated asset class.”
Nobody outside the readers of a few arcane industry journals seemed to notice that exchange, however. “There are not many journalists paying any attention to the insurance industry,” Ross Hammond, who works on the activist campaign Insure Our Future, told VICE. “But when insurance insiders are making comparisons to the subprime mortgage crash it’s probably worth looking into.”
It blows Hammond’s mind that industry leaders—and our entire society for that matter—continue to treat climate change as an easily predictable threat. “In the case of a Category 5 hurricane hitting Miami,” he said. “That ain’t going to be gradual.”
Sissyfuss on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 12:34 pm
A trillion dollar weather catastrophe would force the insurance tables to sink as the water tables rise in Florida. Irma had my friends in Jupiter scared witless. They say many insurance companies have already fled. The race is between California and Florida for who hits rock bottom first. I call it a tossup.
Davy on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 1:30 pm
“Greenpeace Co-Founder Rips “Pompous Little Twit” Ocasio-Cortez As “Garden-Variety Hypocrite” On Climate”
https://tinyurl.com/y29w2tta Zero Hedge
“Greenpeace Co-Founder, Dr. Patrick Moore, has been in an ongoing spat with New York Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) over the overly-ambitious Green New Deal that could quadruple the national debt. Moore, who has since split with Greenpeace, now refers to himself as the “sensible environmentalist.”
“After AOC suggested in late February that she was “in charge” until someone comes up with a better plan, Moore fired back, tweeting: “Pompous little twit. You don’t have a plan to grow food for 8 billion people without fossil fuels, or get the food into the cities. Horses? If fossil fuels were banned every tree in the world would be cut down for fuel for cooking and heating. You would bring about mass death.”
“Several hours later, Moore explained: “You are delusional if you think fossil fuels will end any time soon, maybe in 500 yrs. AOC’s attitude is unjustifiably condescending. She is a neophyte pretending to be wise. Her kind bring ruination if allowed to be “in charge”. (from the cheap seats).”
“Moore has continued his criticism, calling AOC a “garden-variety hypocrite like the others” who has “ZERO expertise at any of the things you pretend to know.”
makati1 on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 5:06 pm
Sissyfuss, your observation is spot on. Soon many areas will be un-insureable, except through some government plan. Only those who have the financial resources to constantly rebuild will be able to live on the beach. That is only one area where we can see the results of climate change. California is also enjoying floods and mud slides. The wild Jet Stream is causing havoc in weather all over the US. Snow, ice and minus temps in March. It certainly is getting in interesting.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=-116.55,60.88,425
Darrell Cloud on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 5:57 pm
What will happen is most of those coastal homes will get wiped out by a storm surge. Th insurance company will then tell the home owners that they are SOL because their policies don’t cover flooding.
I just rebuilt a dock destroyed by Irma. The home owner policy did not pay one then dime on the !3,000 bill.
Sissyfuss on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 6:03 pm
Mak, it gets less interesting with each new accelerated tipping point. I understand Mob wanting to go Michael Ruppert on himself when it goes south. I’m curious to see how I’ll react when the bottleneck closes down on all of us.
makati1 on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 6:17 pm
Sissyfuss, I don’t think any of us know how we will handle the future. All we can do is try to prepare to make it as painless as possible. However, MOB’s out is not for me. If billions can live under conditions we consider primitive, so can I. I’m already downgrading at my own pace.
Twice in my life, I was involved in accidents that could have been my end. Since then, I have not feared death. After all, when it happens I will not exist to feel regret anymore than a light bulb does when it burns out. Nothing, only my friends/family who will remember me, for a while. Dust to dust.
Shortend on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 6:48 pm
Davey, Patrick Moore is NOT…was NEVER EVER a co-founder of Greenpeace! Why this persists is beyond reason and BS in the kindest words.
Patrick Moore frequently portrays himself as a founder or co-founder of Greenpeace, and many news outlets have repeated this characterization. Although Mr. Moore played a significant role in Greenpeace Canada for several years, he did not found Greenpeace.Jun 27, 2014
Who Founded Greenpeace? Not Patrick Moore. | ScienceBlogs
Moore has worked for the mining industry, the logging industry, PVC manufacturers, the nuclear industry, and in defense of biotechnology. In October 2008, Greenpeace issued a statement distancing itself from Moore, saying he “exploits long gone ties with Greenpeace to sell himself as a speaker and pro-corporate spokesperson, usually taking positions that Greenpeace opposes.”[5]
Moore has been criticized for his relations with “polluters and clear-cutters” through his consultancy. His primary income since since the early 1990s has been consulting and publicly speaking for a variety of corporations and lobby groups such as the Nuclear Energy Institute. [7], [8]
Davy on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 6:51 pm
thanks for the update shortend. My point was more directed at AOC. She is a nutcase and will rip apart the Democratic party. Someone needs to put a muzzle on the bitch.
Outcast_Searcher on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 6:52 pm
There ya go doomers. If you’re going to doom, pick something that might feasibly happen in coming decades instead of endlessly throwing FUD from the theatre of the absurd.
Reinsurance is a thing, so I’m not buying that one storm destroys the global economy. However, increasing carnage from climate change as humanity does little aside from wave their arms as they burn more carbon — seems inevitable.
Shortend on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 6:54 pm
I reside in South Florida and expect this to occur. A front row seat of collapse..worth every penny. BTW, this winter has been Paradise…today 85 degrees, breezy, sunny and low humidity. Felt like I was in the best place of this world!
Shortend on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 6:57 pm
No, Davey your point was to use a co-founder of Greenpeace to rip her apart and discredit her…say it as it is.
The Democratic Party is all fluff…choice between Pepsi and Coke…or more like Zero Coke. Far too late for politics to count.
Davy on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 7:11 pm
Sorry shortend. I was just caught red handed lying through my teeth again. I do that a lot.
Shortend on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 7:20 pm
Thanks Davey…just like your boy Trump
Free Speech Message Board on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 7:42 pm
Americans are slaves today and the police officers are the slave patrol.
DerHundistLos on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 8:12 pm
I retired as an EVP for one of the world’s largest insurance syndicites. Insurance “works” due to an extensive data set of outcomes based on a myriad of underlying conditions. I can assure you rapid climate change has the insurance industry scared shitless. How do you set reserves and premiums without loss experience.
I laugh when I read comments from cornucopians like outcast searcher. The insurance industry spends tremendous sums for the most current and accurate scientific estimates. The last reports I saw prior to retirement convinced me we’re** totally flucked.
It’s one thing if we choose collective suicide, but what of the millions of innocent and defenseless species we are condemning to the extinction abyss.
“We are” means you, me, and the vast majority of the population. A very small subset of the population comprised of the mega-wealthy, military, and high ranking government officials have a two stage survival plan.
DerHundistLos on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 8:22 pm
Well done, Shortend.
“Davey your point was to use a co-founder of Greenpeace to rip her apart and discredit her…say it as it is.”
I must respectfully disagree with the second half of your message. This sentiment is exactly what the Republicons (and their Davy surrogates) want people to believe so they refrain from participation in elections.
Davy on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 8:55 pm
“After all, when it happens I will not exist to feel regret anymore than a light bulb does when it burns out. Nothing, only my friends/family who will remember me, for a while. Dust to dust.”
Awww, poor widdle makato.
I plan on using a couple of hundred million from my inheritance, to have my body cryogenically frozen and launched into low Earth orbit in a space capsule.
Sucks to be one of the 99.9999999%, doesn’t it.
LMFAO!
Go Speed Racer on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 9:10 pm
Well if a Class 9 hurricane
took out Mar A Largo
and Roger Stone”s house,
that would be OK.
Right?
Cloggie on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 10:26 pm
“we’re** totally flucked.”
Is that bad, to be “totally flucked”?
Cloggie on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 10:43 pm
Haha, the Miami waterfront gets a good wash, so what. Entire Germany was burned to the ground by self-styled “liberators” with an imperial global conquest agenda. Ten years later the Germans with their “Wirtschaftswunder” were on their feet again. Financial collapse is so overrated. It will be a good opportunity to get rid of the dollar as global reserve currency once and for all and set up a new post-Bretton-Woods financial system to the benefit of all, not just 5% of the global population.
Financial collapse, bring it on.
Shortend on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 12:15 am
Cloggie, be careful what you wish for, Tiger.
This ain’t the era of the Marshall Plan and there was a lot less going on in 1945 than today. But if it should, what a way to go!
JuanPee identity theft on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 4:58 am
Not Davy
Davy on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 8:55 pm
Davy on Sun, 3rd Mar 2019 7:11 pm
Davy on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 5:03 am
“No, Davey your point was to use a co-founder of Greenpeace to rip her apart and discredit her…say it as it is.”
Short, Ah, I referenced an article without comment, my god did it upset your extremist sensibilities. LOL. AOC is just what the country does not need. A more moderate and smart version would be something good. A dumbass living on a golf course in south Florida is not someone to believe in AOC. I think you are just being a hypocritical asshole playing like you care about the environment.
Shortend on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 6:42 am
Yes Wavey Davey it obviously did piss me off.
AOC did NOT rip apart the party…
The real culprit was Anothony Weiner!
Ha, ha…and as far as a nutcase, won’t throw that out here, especially from the posts you’ve written over the years, my friend!
Davy on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 6:48 am
It is an honor to be called a nut case by someone like you. Go play some golf obviously you don’t have enough skin to handle this board.
Shortend on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 7:09 am
Better to play golf than play with the nut jobs here with you…time for you to play with those goats on that farm you claim to be on working so hard while texting posts here all day and night.
Oh, my honors for you just started, dope
Davy on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 8:00 am
Short, AH, you attacked me first now you want the last word. LMFAO. I could be playing golf down in south Florida with the other stupid lazy end of lifers. I chose a different course.
Davy on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 8:16 am
I got the last word. That means I win.
So there! dumbass
NathanPhillipsAKAfmr-paultard on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 8:32 am
i admit it getting difficult to tell who is supertard who is not
JuanPee is a mindless prick on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 9:53 am
Not Davy
Davy on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 8:16 am
The Real JuanPee on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 9:53 am
JuanP on Thu, 30th Jun 2016 4:56 pm
I think I could use my antisocial, psychopathic, sociopathic skills to convince people to vote for Trump. I can be very convincing when I want and I am excellent at manipulating people.
JuanP on Sun, 30th Aug 2015 5:40 am
…then you simply have a higher opinion of humans than I do. But what can I do? I am after all an admitted antisocial misanthrope. I just think most people suck!
JuanP on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 10:58 am
I stopped caring about humanity’s future a long time ago once I realized it was a waste of my time and energy. Now I think that it would be best for life on Earth if we ceased to exist as a species.
JuanP on Wed, 14th Sep 2016 9:59 pm
I struggle with the fact that I belong to the same species; I find myself emotionally and intellectually incapable of accepting the fact. That is why I consider myself a sui generis individual rather than a human animal.
JuanP on Sun, 26th Jun 2016 12:22 am
As far as I am concerned human beings are a bunch of arrogant and retarded ignorant fools and they deserve what’s coming. Call me selfish if you want, I don’t give a fuck!
JuanP on Fri, 15th May 2015 11:21 am
I did therapy for over a decade and most of it was a waste, but I had one therapist for a year who understood my issues and that helped, though I am still thoroughly screwed up.
JuanP on Tue, 22nd Dec 2015 6:57 am
They make me smile and happy and give me a brief respite from my cronic and acute depression.
JuanP on Sun, 17th Aug 2014 8:19 pm
I have suffered from cronic and acute clinical depression for most of my life, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
JuanP on Mon, 23rd May 2016 8:53 am
I was just telling my wife yesterday that I would very willingly give my arms, legs, tongue, eyes, ears, nuts, and dick to experience life like normal people do for just one hour to know what it feels like. I have been a seriously depressed realist since I have a memory. My first memory of my life is of leaning against a tree alone in my kindergarten’s playground looking at all the other kids playing, thinking how stupid their behavior was, and wondering why I wasn’t like them. I basically don’t interact with normal people anymore. They have nothing to offer me and I don’t want to give them anything.
I am back, bitches! I just got back from a surfing vacation in Costa Rica. I am recharged and refreshed, and ready to continue fucking with the Exceptionalist and his multiple personalities for the foreseeable future.
Shortend on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 10:23 am
Davey just went a Missouri massage spa and got nailed… caught trafficking and tricking sheep and goats… Being an animal pimp fits right in with his honors…LOL
Robert Inget on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 10:31 am
With every un-natural disaster (insurance) rates
go up all over the nation.
Go back 20 years. ONLY insurance companies were warning of AGW at the time. Ins cos just kept laying off bets and raising rates. At some point even reinsurers will simply close the para mutual windows, in effect leaving town, leaving developers and rich folks w/o any financial way to hedge the climate market.
At that point the market collapses. City, state & federal services collapse for lack of funds.
For a generation some sort of society
exists in Florida for the poor and outcast till salt intrusion forbids any future human habitation.
Think in human time frames. Older retired folks buying a condo in sponge foundation Florida
is no gamble. (whatthefuckdotheycare)
If a tornado rips through your city destroying a few dozen homes, how many are insured for windstorm damage? Half? a third?
Davy on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 10:44 am
I’d like to play golf, but it always just turns into a big argument. I’m not sure why? Last time one of the other girls cold cocked me by the 7th hole. I’m better off all alone and by myself.
JuanPee identity theft on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 10:56 am
Not Davy
Davy on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 10:44 am
Robert Inget on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 10:58 am
Will it be harder to get insurance in Australia?
(watch Australia’s summers as preview of what to expect here)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-06/could-climate-change-make-australia-uninsurable/10783490
Davy on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 11:01 am
What’s da madder short for brains? Are you embarrassed you are one of those dumbshit end-of-lifers that lives in a stupid old folks gated golf community? BTW, I get some from my wife not a spa like you old guys in Florida do.
JuanPee is a prick on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 11:03 am
Although short for brains you are a step up from the illegal alien juanpee who needs to be deported.
Robert Inget on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 11:22 am
IMO we will soon become far to disaster prone to insure. W/O insurance, (hedging) everything, I mean EVERYTHING stops.No more thinking about GROWTH.. Just survival of the richest. Those able to self insure.
City and state govs will fight back for a time with
mandated insurance for everyone. Problem is…
It’s regional. There’s no loss sharing across the nation. Clearly, say what ya want about Florida but FL will never have an earthquake or blizzard.
California has its wild fires and earthquakes but zero hurricanes or sub freezing crop ruining weather.
I have no idea what series of events will convince
the current US Administration of the seriousness
of our situation. All we know today, it’s way late
to stop GW. So, just throw up your arms, put on the MAGA Hat and pretend nothing is happening.
Robert Inget on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 11:46 am
Correction:
I wrote ‘Only insurance companies were warning of GW’ That’s not entirely true.
In 2010, for the first time, the Pentagon focused on climate change as a … clear evidence of climate change and how those changes will affect future military and …
https://www.climate.gov/teaching/resources/pentagon-and-climate-change-earth-operators-manual
Jan 18, 2019 – The U.S. Defense Department has issued a dire report on how climate change could affect the nation’s armed forces and security, warning that …
https://www.bloomberg.com/…/in-dire-report-pentagon-warns-bases-imperiled-by-cli…
https://psmag.com/environment/our-government-is-in-two-minds-over-climate-change
It’s no wonder. Trump listens to Putin but not our own Pentagon or National Security people.
Davy Has a Penis Fetish on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 11:53 am
JuanPee is a prick on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 11:03 am
Shortend on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 11:54 am
What’s the matter Hillbilly Wavey Davey, being out in the sticks got you down and jealous? Seems you can’t relate to your trailer park inbred neighborhood….that’s too bad…got outside take a break from the computer keys and pull some weeds.
Too much…Missouri…crack capital
Davy on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 12:08 pm
I love cock. So what.
JuanPee is a prick on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 12:50 pm
Not Davy
Davy Has a Penis Fetish on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 11:53 am
Davy on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 12:08 pm
Davy on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 12:54 pm
short for brains, you have done this before. You decide you are going to go on Peak oil dot come after and absence and look to fuck with someone. LOL. You are just a prick like juanpee. At least you do have some comments with substance. JuanPee does nothing but mindless shit. One can only wonder WTF is going on in his head.
Davy on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 1:31 pm
Oops, sorry everyone. I was projecting again.
Anonymouse on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 2:04 pm
Wait a minute duhmass Davy. Are you saying Shortend……is NOT a JuanP sock puppet? Wtf? How is that even possible when everyone is a JuanP dirty sock?
Well ok, mak isnt, and Nederliartard presumely is not one either. Well all know your sock-puppet mentor Nonytard is not a JuanP sock. He has own army of socks, but those apparently, are fine and dandy with you. And you know I am not (But I am associate), which is….almost? as good?
Anyhow, you hardly ever see anyone around here that isnt an illegal dirty JuanP sock-puppet (or associate) anymore.
So duhhhhmass delusional davytard, are you 100% certain Shortend is not, a JuanP sock? I mean what if you are wrong and he is? Wouldn’t you look like a dumbass, or a nutter if you failed in your sacred daily, ok, hourly duty to call him, or…someone out for being a dirty JuanP sock? Better safe than sorry you know.
Mrs. JuanPee is a cunt on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 2:06 pm
Not Davy
Davy on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 1:31 pm
Anon is a pussy on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 2:08 pm
anonymouse is a lunatic
Davy on Mon, 4th Mar 2019 2:23 pm
Y’all know I’m real emotionally upset when I start using the ‘C’ word.