News

Allen, R.J., Zhao, X., Randles, C.A. et al. Surface warming and wetting due to methane’s long-wave radiative effects muted by short-wave absorption. Nat. Geosci. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01144-z

Clouds are a wild card in climate models because we do not understand all the factors that affect their formation and effect on warming. This paper finds a potential offset of some of the warming potential for methane because it may increase the formation of clouds.

Li, Q., England, M.H., Hogg, A.M. et al. Abyssal ocean overturning slowdown and warming driven by Antarctic meltwater. Nature 615, 841–847 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05762-w

Dangendorf, S. et al., 2022. Acceleration of US Southeast and Gulf Coast Sea-Level Rise Amplified by Internal Climate Variability. – This comes out of Tulane. The caveats at the end of the paper are important, but are being ignored by the media.

Assignment

We will finish our discussion of homeowner’s insurance, then start with flood insurance.

We are going to take a deep dive into the National Flood Insurance Program. Prior to the NFIP, there was no flood insurance available for residential housing and small businesses. This limited development in coastal and high risk inland flood areas to extremely cheap housing  or housing for the those who were rich enough to not care if their house was destroyed by flooding. Starting in 1968, this federal benefits program fueled a massive migration to high risk flood areas on the rivers and the coast by providing highly subsidized flood insurance. This has had massive unintended consequences as climate change increases the flood risk for these areas and many of the property owners can not afford unsubsidized rates. Many lawyers and insurance brokers do not understand the NFIP policy limitations and claims process. The NFIP looks like insurance, but the policy is a federal regulation, not a contract. Filing and appealing a claim are governed by federal regulations and subject to administrative law constraints. This is an area fraught with bad client counseling and malpractice. We are going to explore the policy issues posed by the NFIP. We also going to get into the weeds so you will know enough to competently counsel clients on the NFIP.

A Brief Introduction to the National Flood Insurance Program

FEMA, Answers to Questions About the NFIP (April 2022)

Slides – Introduction to Flood Risk and the NFIP

This is the official guide to the NFIP. Read to p. 42. There is a glossary at the end that you should refer to as you see new terms.