Email 277, May 2003, Mike Hulme: "the argument about rising damages over the last 20-30 years...says more about the insurance industry than it does about climate change...it is very difficult to pull out the climate signal from such data and even harder to pull out the anthropogenic climate signal"

Email 277

- the argument about rising damages over the last 20-30 years (cf. M-R report and others) I think says more about the insurance industry than it does about climate change (i.e., I would not use these data as the primary basis for judging whether extreme weather was changing); it is very difficult to pull out the climate signal from such data and even harder to pull out the anthropogenic climate signal (and also to extrapolate such curves out to 2060 and claim, as some have done, that we then face climate damage of 50% of GWP is not wise)

Hat tip: AJ