The Concerned Insured: 2012 Weather Forecast- Should We Be Worried?

(Make sure you check out the video at the bottom!)

A New Year’s Intro

It’s finally a new year.  Resolutions have been made, fireworks have been put away for a while, and people are becoming concerned with what the end of this year will yield.  With this worry comes the theory that following one of the most record-breaking years for damaging weather, 2012 may hold even more devastation than its predecessor.  The people of the world are worrying, and so are insurance companies.  But will it really be the end of the world?  Well, we like to think it won’t be.

2011-2012:  What’s the Weather Look Like?

2011 certainly has brought some intense weather that have taken many lives, and destroyed many more.  People have been evacuated from their homes, lost their jobs due to shut downs from flooding, and lost loved ones.  Some scientists say that with La Niña taking its course over the world, bringing cooler temperatures to Pacific waters, that it will bring about more cyclones and flooding to Australia who has already been hit pretty hard by fierce weather conditions.  Then, as it clashes with warmer airs, there may be even more hurricanes and tropical storms during the season and with that, more flooding and destroyed homes.  This past year when Irene took charge of the east coast, she took with her an estimated $10 Billion or more in economic losses.  $10 billion that insurance companies have had to pay back to insured businesses, homes, vehicles and so much more.

So Is there Cause to worry?

Essentially, yes.  But we wouldn’t call it worry, we would call it concern.  As homeowners, property owners or anyone who has large tangible assets, it is your duty to be aware of your surroundings and your environment to make sure that you are safe, or at the very least prepared for anything that may come your way.  The earth’s climate is changing, and people should be conscientious of that, and do what they can to protect themselves.  Preparing your home for a hurricane, snow storm or wind storm by boarding up vulnerable windows and doors, or buying a generator for your home in case the power goes out are just a couple of precautions that can protect your belongings, or keep you warm in the winter.  Doing your research before you plan on building a home on a flood plain is an easy way to make sure that your future is better protected from the unexpected.  It is understandable that some do not have a choice as the place they live has been there for generations.  But if you do not have insurance, or you are underinsured for the risk associated with your property, how are you going to pay out-of-pocket if the worst happens?

The World is Warmer, But Not Our Hearts.

The polar ice caps are shrinking in vastness and volume according to scientists.  Experts are continuing to blame greenhouse gasses from industries and transportation, as well as deforestation and pollution.  And Americans are quick to blame the other.  Many have switched their light bulbs out for more efficient ones that save energy and money.  Some of us drive hybrid cars to cut down on fuel consumption and emissions.  Even fewer have solar panels for their homes to utilize the most powerful and renewable source of energy available to us on earth.  We are seeing a change in how we use our technology and how we feel towards a changing global climate and economy.  But we are far from perfect.  It’s easy to blame other countries and cultures for their portion of emissions.  Blaming them is not the way to make things better.  Really, it is kind of ironic if you think about it.  We drive hybrid cars and blame China and Japan for all of their emissions.  And yet it is the Japanese who are producing these vehicles in their country and shipping them back to the US so that we can feel more secure about how we are “playing our part” to save the world.  We don’t demand that there be a production of electric cars because a lot of people don’t see it as a sustainable or plausible alternative.  There are tablets that can charge wirelessly using a docking station that isn’t plugged into a wall, so why can’t satellites transmit energy from what they harvest directly from the sun wirelessly?

It’s Not Us, Blame Them!

Blame Russia, blame China, blame the Middle East and oil-producing conglomerates.  We can blame anyone we want, but laying blame is never going to accomplish anything.  You want people to start driving electric cars?  Commission police cruisers that are solely electric.  Take government funding and improve them so that they can beat any sports car that runs on gasoline off the line.  Make them perform better, travel further distances on a charge, and design them to visually “wow” onlookers.  People will start to wonder:  “Why does the government get to harvest this great technology, and we are all left in the proverbial dust?”  They are going to start wanting that technology themselves and demand will grow.  Soon there will be enough demand that manufacturers will see a positive outcome from investing in making available these vehicles to the private sector.  More will be purchased, new designs will come out, demand will continue to grow, supply will also grow, and then these vehicles will become more affordable to all societal classes of any income.  Hell, maybe every vehicle will run off of the power those satellites and even solar panels around the world generate, and power will be like radio signals, prolonging the life and charge of every battery/engine in the network.  The government needs to make an example and create the trend, and the people will follow.

Stay on the Right Track

You don’t have to wait for your government to produce crazy new technologies that will better protect and serve you.  Right now, you can do things yourself to make sure that your worldly possessions are kept safe, and your homes and families are prepared for the unexpected.  So maybe some countries are more guilty than others, but we are all guilty, and the year is coming.  So be ready, be smart, and prepare yourself, because the weatherman isn’t always right, and Mother Nature isn’t always predictable.

Oh, and don’t do stuff like this:

We Miss You Bob Marley…

The Intro

Another day of drifting is upon me.  It moves along, but time seems far from slipping.  Dragging my weight like a starved horse pulls a wagon, I’m doing my best to perform before I get the whip.  Writing would seem like a good idea if when I typed out my thoughts, they didn’t come out as gibberish from the missed keystrokes caused by nodding off.  Reading just leads to the story playing out in my head.  And when I think the story is over, I finally open my eyes and realize that I’ve only just begun.  But at least it was an epic journey.  I even got to save the princess!

Could Really Use a Nap

Talking about being tired.  Writing about it probably doesn’t contribute much to what I’d like to accomplish.  Just makes me think about it more, and how badly I want to avoid the nod, which in turn, brings the nod.  How I stay awake to manage the days is not unlike most other Americans’ ways of keeping focus.  You’ve got your coffee:  It’s prepared with cream and sugar, (or sometimes neither), just the way you like it to help you forget that it tastes awful.  The buzz is good though, and if there is one thing that you learn from college, it’s how to get a buzz on.  Although not necessarily a route to belligerence, this coffee permits a habit that many people do not see or acknowledge.  This habit often turns into an addiction, and addictions can get expensive.  So I have learned thus far into my life travels with many trips to the place where “Americans run on.”

Not that I have ever really gone anywhere–and not that I wouldn’t love to see the world before it all blows up–but I consider myself to have a good perspective on how I treat and feed my body.  I know that most of the things I feed it are unhealthy, and the things I do with my body can be sometimes pretty dumb.  The point is, just because I know these things, doesn’t mean that they are going to stop me from doing them anyways.  It’s not because I have this incessant ticking for free will, but just because, it doesn’t bother me.  I’m not dying right now, so why not?

America!

Yes, freedom does have some role on the whole, but I consider my behavior pretty primal.  And whose isn’t to some varying degree?  I want a burger or pizza, I’ll go out and get a burger or pizza.  I don’t want to spend a day picking up heavy boxes and moving them up and down six flights of stairs, so I don’t (unless of course, I need the extra mulah).  While this might not be the best perspective for making myself some decent money sometime in the future, or being the next “Sexiest Man Alive,” it is a well-developed mindset that I fear is instilled in much too many people these days.

Let’s take this idea, go for the social awareness side of things for a moment and take a look at the automotive industry.  How many people do you suppose know that there have been proven studies about the effects of carbon emissions on the global climate?  Well, if you haven’t heard anything about this, you might want to pick up that remote and put the news on that “Previous Channel” button.  Point being:  People know that this is happening.  Flipping the coin now, how many people to you think actually give a flying Pegasus about it?  I would venture a guess that that number of people is significantly larger than the former.

Here we go…

So what is everyone waiting for?  If we’re talking about my generation here (Y, Z, Omega, whichever you prefer) then they’re probably waiting for a solution to be handed to them.  Just like our cellphones and laptops, MP3 players and tablets, we just want it given to us, without having to work very hard for it.  And it’s a terrible habit, no doubt.  Needless to say, technology has skyrocketed in the past two decades, but generations have declined.  A lot of children don’t know what they would do without power for a day, and a lot of teenagers don’t know how they could live without the convenience of sending a text message to their friends in other classes.  How can we possibly dream of “One love, one life, let’s get together and feel alright” when these little electronics that newer generations love so much, are just pushing everyone so far away from one another?  We have cars to get us places, but it seems that cellphones–and what have you–have almost replaced that commodity to a point where cars now have to have mobile capabilities in order to reach these new markets.  We want everything handed to us.  Why?  Because we have everything we “need” right in the palm of our hands.

I’m ranting.

What worries me is this:  When the world starts to fall apart, and everyone’s productivity and lifestyle is completely reliant on their devices working properly; when skyscrapers become vacant, oil turns to diamonds and water’s owned by the government; when the world that is today–and will likely still be tomorrow–suddenly gives the human race a big dope slap, will that be the time where we all realize that there was a lesson to be learned?  Probably not.  Being the stubborn race that we are, we will probably try to rebuild everything from the ground up using new methods and ideas that we think will be so much better improved from the last time me did it all.  Maybe it will work for a few decades, a few centuries, or a millenia.  But what goes up has to fall–unless we’ve forgotten that gravity exists.  We’ll consume.  And our thirst for consumption will grow so great that we will have no choice but to seek out our necessities in worlds beyond our own.  This is sounding strangely like a Science Fiction direction isn’t it?  I could go on, dreaming of spaceships and unicorns and warp-speed police chases, but I really just want to stick with today.

Let’s Stick With Today

Today is one of those days:  It’s gloomy, cold, rainy, and I listened to NPR on the way to work (because I don’t have TV).  Not that this world is against us, but I think that had Pangea never split up, we’d never have been so divided (physically and principally) as people.  The vast majority of civilizations would be based on a general respect for the land where all people reside, and there would be less conflict because, well, you’ve gotta live with these people.

Boundaries would be well-understood by everyone because obviously, there isn’t much out past the shore but water.  Of course there would be little niches of thieves and rogue groups not wishing to conform, but it would be a world where that was accepted, and expected, because the power of the nations together could not be impaired by the weak and malicious.  Hell, maybe we’d all even have the same currency.

World, Please.

It’s been too long that people have been separated and segregated by fault lines and invisible guidelines, barriers between cultures.  It has brought on scrutiny, curiosity, fear and even death to many innocent people who thought nothing more of their actions than “This works for me, I must be doing it right.”  As I take another swig of my delicious high-sugar energy drink and spit another sunflower seed shell into the trash I say:  “Get a grip people.”  Few of us remember the days where our houses were nothing but the skins of beasts; when we were lucky enough to get ahold of anything substantially sustainable in the middle of winter.  Few of us can recall when we had no heat or food at our fingertips, waiting to be plucked from the shelves of grocery stores like forbidden fruit.  And few of us seem to want to change anything but our status to let our networks know how friggin’ tired we are today.  When I think about these things as if I were posing a question about how we are going to think ahead and fix a problem before it really becomes a problem to all of the spoiled rotten humans here on earth,(long sentence), I hear the response as something like this:

“Contemporary, shmemporary.  Wait’ll Twitter gets a load’a this loser.  Thinks he can change the world.  HA!  Well he can’t change me!  I’ve got free will motherlover.  Come on everyone!  Let’s show off our free will by doing whatever we want and forget these guys telling us how we should protect our investment in this world as a life form!  We’re gonna drive these hummers that we don’t need but worked so hard to get, drink this fancy bottled water from springs in Fiji, buy a third home that we’ll visit one week out of every year and throw our wrappers and bottles on the ground, five feet away from a trash barrel.  Why?  Because we can and we will.”

Reaction

What do I even say to that?