Har Har Har Global warming crap

[Seth]

So now the cost of living and doing business includes paying lawyers and surveyors and new taxes and attending planning committee meetings. The family that runs and lives in the inn has done nothing to bring this on themselves.

Well, this is what insurance companies call an "act of God."

And they exclude them from coverage under most policies. This is why the US government offers flood insurance, an unprofitable part of disaster relief, to promote the general welfare and help provide for the common defense against floodwaters and other acts of God. Secularism FTW.

Excuse me but the "general welfare" would be to tell them "Sorry, but that's not something the government can help you with, you should probably move somewhere else."

The taxpaying public did nothing to bring it on either, so why should they be responsible for bailing out the inn owners?

A Sandy rolls around, who's gonna clean up the taxpayer's roads and sewage systems when what's left of your home is plugging them up and you're broke?

The state disaster management team. But they aren't going to rebuild your home for you and may in fact send you a bill for negligently allowing your stuff to clog up a public storm sewer. Or maybe they'll give you a pass the first time, but not the second or subsequent times.

The taxpayers will pay one way or another.

The question is "pay for what, and how many times?"

A private insurance with a smaller pool of policyholders would be more expensive both before and after.

Damned right it would. It would reflect the actual cost of predicted claims plus profit. That's the whole point.

And look at BP and Exxon fighting in the court system for years to lower damage payments. Do you think the representatives of insurance companies don't work as hard for their employers?

My argument depends on it.

What's to stop insurance companies from raising their auto liability rates to compensate for the hit of a big storm in the property and casualty or homeowner's departments? Laws and courts?

Consumers.

What do the taxpayers collect in taxes from a business wiped out by a flood or the people who used to work there?

The question is what don't the taxpayers have to pay in taxes to bail out a business built in a flood hazard zone.

The opportunity cost of a big flood disaster is epic. Better to help rebuild the cotton gin and its tax stream once every hundred years than to let it fail.

If it was once every hundred years, I'd agree. But it's not. Lots of somebodys in mostly the same seven or eight states get wiped out on a regular basis because they live in a known flood hazard area where they shouldn't be living in the first place and shouldn't EVER be subsidized to rebuild even ONCE, much less a couple of times.

Did you know that the remains of Indian villages have been found in Puget Sound three-hundred feet BELOW sea level?

Did they have earthquake insurance?

Can't recall if my policy covered "earth movement" or not, but then again that's another reason I lived where I did: it's geologically relatively stable.

Should we compensate that tribe for the effects of "global warming."

Do they have insurance against that? The wording of the contract would typically prevail.

That's the point. If they had private insurance against it then the voluntary pool they were in pays for it. We're discussing socialized flood insurance here where everybody pays for private losses.

Land use law is very clear on the subject, if beach erosion takes the property in front of your home and submerges it under the ocean you lose title to that submerged land and it becomes property of the United States because it lies beneath "navigable waters."

Guffaw. Riparian law is anything but clear. Boundaries usually don't change by avulsion, but may in cases of accretion and reliction they do.

Sorry, you are correct, I couldn't remember the word "reliction", and your right, "avulsion" is the sudden tearing away of land but reliction and avulsion are the gradual shifting of the riverbed over time.

Then again, state laws vary.

Yes, they do, and that's how it's supposed to be.

Sometimes, the federal government has to come in and build levees to help end the legal, as well as personal and economic chaos of water.

No, sometimes the federal government CHOOSES to inject itself into a state's rights matter. Usually though it's because of navigability issues not property rights issues.

If you live along a river and the centerline of the river defines your property boundary, and the river erodes a new channel on your land, your property line still ends at the centerline of the river, wherever the river decides to move and your neighbor gets title to the newly-revealed lands.

Maybe. Maybe not. But it's best not to call a land boundary to something like that if you can help it. Usually judges decide, and they have lots of precedents for any call they want to make. States along the Mississippi have entire bodies of legal arcana devoted to state riparian boundary issues, and there's still some intra-state hostilities related to certain islands and other parcels in and along the Mississippi.

Yup. Not a federal issue.

If you build near a coast line one of the perils you face is avulsion or erosion of the shoreline. If it happens, well, too bad you're just screwed because that's how life is.

Unless you live in certain parts of Washington. Then you retain title to a fee holding that has avulsed or relicted into tidal submerged land. And one of the rights accrued by the avulsion or reliction is control of not only the surface, but the rest of the water column as well.
So you can farm geoducks and oysters, and you can have a private surf break, because you own it in fee. You can also fill it or put a cofferdam out there, assuming you comply with other federal and state laws.

So long as you don't interfere with public navigation on navigable waters.

Then there are cases of senior boundary lines along a waterway. Then a whole parcel can move onto land someone else owns. Then it's a real legal mess, and a judge will decide.

Yes, based on STATE law, not federal usurpation of state's rights, except in cases of Commerce Clause navigability.

Ft Adams, Ms. has some original city lots that were staked from the street to the river by Elicot,the same guy who surveyed and staked the Washington Mall. They started out roughly 40x100'and are now 40' wide by ~6.5 miles deep. The river took a big bend into Louisiana back before they built the levees and fixed the river. Louisiana lost the Supreme Court case by virtue of the language of the conveyances back in the 1820s.

Based on state law.

Then there's my property called to the high tide line of Shelikof Strait on the west side of Kodiak. One of the first 200 US Surveys in Alaska, it ostensibly calls for 10.5 acres between 2 corners and a handful of meanders along a curved high tide line. But the ground rose a bit during 2 9+ earthquakes and a 30" volcanic ashfall since 1899, and the original stone monuments which demark the back and sides of my parcel are now further away from the high tide line than originally. Now in Texas, the state might hold title to the new gap formed by accretion and avulsion, but in Alaska, I still own to the tide line and so the parcel has gained acreage. Even though there is an Avulsive Act in this state that fixes the high tide line for properties at a certain date for other local properties, mine is grandfathered to the actual MHW and original monuments.
But I haven't had any need to test this legal opinion in the courts, so it's anyone's guess.

Not to muddy the waters, but anyone who claims riparian law is clear in the US is clearly talking out his ass.

Well, you're quite right, but the point I was trying to make was that the general public does not owe a duty of compensation to an individual whose real property is "taken" by an act of nature. Neither the State of Hawaii nor the federal government owe compensation to the homeowners whose homes were destroyed and buried by lava flows from one of the volcanoes. There is no public duty found anywhere in the Constitution or indeed the body of federal law that makes the federal government liable for such injuries. In fact sovereign immunity makes it perfectly clear that the government IS NOT liable for such damages, period.

But what has happened with the Flood Insurance Program is that Congress has chosen to make the tax-paying public responsible for mitigating and compensating those who knowingly live in flood zones for the consequences of their actions, and I argue that this is bad public policy. I would even go so far as to agree that for reasons of compassion and good public policy that starting now, someone who suffers a hurricane loss could be compensated in cash for that loss through the program, but that the quid pro quo is that by accepting that government payment they transfer title to the hazard-prone property, which reverts to the state and may not be improved again or sold by the state to private persons.

[piscator]

So now the cost of living and doing business includes paying lawyers and surveyors and new taxes and attending planning committee meetings. The family that runs and lives in the inn has done nothing to bring this on themselves.

Well, this is what insurance companies call an "act of God."

And they exclude them from coverage under most policies. This is why the US government offers flood insurance, an unprofitable part of disaster relief, to promote the general welfare and help provide for the common defense against floodwaters and other acts of God. Secularism FTW.

Excuse me but the "general welfare" would be to tell them "Sorry, but that's not something the government can help you with, you should probably move somewhere else."

So Eminent Domain them right out? Naa. The government shouldn't be in the business of telling people where to live.

What's to stop insurance companies from raising their auto liability rates to compensate for the hit of a big storm in the property and casualty or homeowner's departments? Laws and courts?

Consumers.

That works so effectively. Like when one of my brothers in law jumped out of the boat and pushed it off one of the Chandaluer Islands, then jumped back in and tracked oil all over the boat this summer. One supposes he could merely stop patronizing BP stations until my mom (the boatowner) is magically made whole, or take a number and wait for a court date to file a damage claim for the cost of the boat cleaning. Meanwhile, he's out for the shoes he wore, and the soap he had to buy, and his time cleaning the hydrocarbons out of the boat but he can rest assured that a few generations from now, enough consumers will have voted with their feet and weeded out the bad apples in the oil business. Just like that only with the corpses of insurance companies formed as LLCs in a regulation free and magical Libertarian environment, right?

What do the taxpayers collect in taxes from a business wiped out by a flood or the people who used to work there?

The question is what don't the taxpayers have to pay in taxes to bail out a business built in a flood hazard zone.

Yeah. The Federal government and Louisiana and the taxpayers of New Orleans had to pick up the tab for evacuating and protecting the property of Arco and Marriot on Claiborne Ave in New Orleans regardless of whether they had flood insurance. You and I had to pay for their fucking ignorance. I guess the rain falls on the just and unjust alike...

The opportunity cost of a big flood disaster is epic. Better to help rebuild the cotton gin and its tax stream once every hundred years than to let it fail.

If it was once every hundred years, I'd agree. But it's not. Lots of somebodys in mostly the same seven or eight states get wiped out on a regular basis because they live in a known flood hazard area where they shouldn't be living in the first place and shouldn't EVER be subsidized to rebuild even ONCE, much less a couple of times.

But they entered into a contract to do just that and paid up their ends. It would work the same way with private insurers, except they'd be less likely to pay claims, and they'd do the obvious and distribute the losses off on everyone else too. Gotta keep the lights on, right?

Did you know that the remains of Indian villages have been found in Puget Sound three-hundred feet BELOW sea level?

Did they have earthquake insurance?

Can't recall if my policy covered "earth movement" or not, but then again that's another reason I lived where I did: it's geologically relatively stable.

And you inherited it. That and a national heritage of flood control.
A slight butterfly twitch in the deterministic chain, and you could have inherited vast holdings close to sea level in Louisiana, and your attitude would be different.

Should we compensate that tribe for the effects of "global warming."

Do they have insurance against that? The wording of the contract would typically prevail.

That's the point. If they had private insurance against it then the voluntary pool they were in pays for it. We're discussing socialized flood insurance here where everybody pays for private losses.

No guarantee of that in the absence of a taxpayer funded regulatory environment. So the taxpayers would be on the hook for at least part of it regardless.

Land use law is very clear on the subject, if beach erosion takes the property in front of your home and submerges it under the ocean you lose title to that submerged land and it becomes property of the United States because it lies beneath "navigable waters."

Guffaw. Riparian law is anything but clear. Boundaries usually don't change by avulsion, but may in cases of accretion and reliction they do.

Sorry, you are correct, I couldn't remember the word "reliction", and your right, "avulsion" is the sudden tearing away of land but reliction and avulsion are the gradual shifting of the riverbed over time.

Then again, state laws vary.

Yes, they do, and that's how it's supposed to be.

No. It's supposed to be wholesome and Constitutionally sound laws. They can be the same from one state to the next.

Sometimes, the federal government has to come in and build levees to help end the legal, as well as personal and economic chaos of water.

No, sometimes the federal government CHOOSES to inject itself into a state's rights matter. Usually though it's because of navigability issues not property rights issues.

So the taxpayers have to fund river navigation too? I'm outraged. What if I want to opt out of this needless expenditure that I feel picks my pocket while doing very little for me personally?

If you live along a river and the centerline of the river defines your property boundary, and the river erodes a new channel on your land, your property line still ends at the centerline of the river, wherever the river decides to move and your neighbor gets title to the newly-revealed lands.

Maybe. Maybe not. But it's best not to call a land boundary to something like that if you can help it. Usually judges decide, and they have lots of precedents for any call they want to make. States along the Mississippi have entire bodies of legal arcana devoted to state riparian boundary issues, and there's still some intra-state hostilities related to certain islands and other parcels in and along the Mississippi.

Yup. Not a federal issue.

Until disputes between states require adjudication. As has and does happen all the time.

If you build near a coast line one of the perils you face is avulsion or erosion of the shoreline. If it happens, well, too bad you're just screwed because that's how life is.

Unless you live in certain parts of Washington. Then you retain title to a fee holding that has avulsed or relicted into tidal submerged land. And one of the rights accrued by the avulsion or reliction is control of not only the surface, but the rest of the water column as well.
So you can farm geoducks and oysters, and you can have a private surf break, because you own it in fee. You can also fill it or put a cofferdam out there, assuming you comply with other federal and state laws.

So long as you don't interfere with public navigation on navigable waters. [/quote]

How can it be "public" navigation through your property if you didn't quitclaim those parts of your title to a ROW, or grant easements for public ingress and egress? Who am I to use the power of the many to encumber your title willynilly and whenever it's convenient? You own it and pay taxes on it. It's not public until you say so.

Then there are cases of senior boundary lines along a waterway. Then a whole parcel can move onto land someone else owns. Then it's a real legal mess, and a judge will decide.

Yes, based on STATE law, not federal usurpation of state's rights, except in cases of Commerce Clause navigability.

In some states maybe. Not in others. And then what happens to the formerly adjacent taxpayer and landowner who just got forced off his land? One assumes private charities can choose to help him, as they may. Right?

Ft Adams, Ms. has some original city lots that were staked from the street to the river by Elicot,the same guy who surveyed and staked the Washington Mall. They started out roughly 40x100'and are now 40' wide by ~6.5 miles deep. The river took a big bend into Louisiana back before they built the levees and fixed the river. Louisiana lost the Supreme Court case by virtue of the language of the conveyances back in the 1820s.

Based on state law.

No. It was Federal and adjudicated in Federal courts. One state law can't override another's when in direct conflict. Both states are equal before the law, so a sound federal decision had to be based on the language of the competing claims (at taxpayer expense).

Then there's my property called to the high tide line of Shelikof Strait on the west side of Kodiak. One of the first 200 US Surveys in Alaska, it ostensibly calls for 10.5 acres between 2 corners and a handful of meanders along a curved high tide line. But the ground rose a bit during 2 9+ earthquakes and a 30" volcanic ashfall since 1899, and the original stone monuments which demark the back and sides of my parcel are now further away from the high tide line than originally. Now in Texas, the state might hold title to the new gap formed by accretion and avulsion, but in Alaska, I still own to the tide line and so the parcel has gained acreage. Even though there is an Avulsive Act in this state that fixes the high tide line for properties at a certain date for other local properties, mine is grandfathered to the actual MHW and original monuments.
But I haven't had any need to test this legal opinion in the courts, so it's anyone's guess.

Not to muddy the waters, but anyone who claims riparian law is clear in the US is clearly talking out his ass.

Well, you're quite right, but the point I was trying to make was that the general public does not owe a duty of compensation to an individual whose real property is "taken" by an act of nature. Neither the State of Hawaii nor the federal government owe compensation to the homeowners whose homes were destroyed and buried by lava flows from one of the volcanoes. There is no public duty found anywhere in the Constitution or indeed the body of federal law that makes the federal government liable for such injuries. In fact sovereign immunity makes it perfectly clear that the government IS NOT liable for such damages, period.

But what has happened with the Flood Insurance Program is that Congress has chosen to make the tax-paying public responsible for mitigating and compensating those who knowingly live in flood zones for the consequences of their actions, and I argue that this is bad public policy.

That might be, especially if everyone paid the same premiums. But they don't. People who live in areas of greater than 1% annual probability of a flood pay much much more than those who don't. I and most here agree that the taxpayers don't need to fund those who build knowing a flood is an eventuality sooner than later. Those people can't get flood insurance anyway, so it's a moot point.
But we're talking about areas with a .2-1% probability of a flood in a given tax year. Now the problem is manageable with a large enough pool of premium payers (and good weather). The good years almost cover the bad, and masses of upstanding tax payers aren't rendered permanently destitute by acts of nature. On the whole, taxpayers come out ahead.

[Seth]

So Eminent Domain them right out? Naa. The government shouldn't be in the business of telling people where to live.

I agree. It's not an action in Eminent Domain to condition an offer of compensation on surrender of title to the land. It's a conditional offer which the individual may reject. However, if he rejects it he gets no compensation for the damage he has suffered.

What's to stop insurance companies from raising their auto liability rates to compensate for the hit of a big storm in the property and casualty or homeowner's departments? Laws and courts?

Consumers.

That works so effectively. Like when one of my brothers in law jumped out of the boat and pushed it off one of the Chandaluer Islands, then jumped back in and tracked oil all over the boat this summer. One supposes he could merely stop patronizing BP stations until my mom (the boatowner) is magically made whole, or take a number and wait for a court date to file a damage claim for the cost of the boat cleaning. Meanwhile, he's out for the shoes he wore, and the soap he had to buy, and his time cleaning the hydrocarbons out of the boat but he can rest assured that a few generations from now, enough consumers will have voted with their feet and weeded out the bad apples in the oil business. Just like that only with the corpses of insurance companies formed as LLCs in a regulation free and magical Libertarian environment, right?

What makes you think that your mom has a right to an expedient and convenient settlement for the alleged damages? She has to prove her case and BP is entitled to defend against that claim because it may be a false allegation. Perhaps the oil involved was spilled by a tanker from Saudi Arabia, in which case BP is not responsible.

Of course she does have a perfect right to refuse to patronize BP for whatever reason.

What do the taxpayers collect in taxes from a business wiped out by a flood or the people who used to work there?

The question is what don't the taxpayers have to pay in taxes to bail out a business built in a flood hazard zone.

Yeah. The Federal government and Louisiana and the taxpayers of New Orleans had to pick up the tab for evacuating and protecting the property of Arco and Marriot on Claiborne Ave in New Orleans regardless of whether they had flood insurance. You and I had to pay for their fucking ignorance. I guess the rain falls on the just and unjust alike...

Thanks for confirming my thesis.

The opportunity cost of a big flood disaster is epic. Better to help rebuild the cotton gin and its tax stream once every hundred years than to let it fail.

If it was once every hundred years, I'd agree. But it's not. Lots of somebodys in mostly the same seven or eight states get wiped out on a regular basis because they live in a known flood hazard area where they shouldn't be living in the first place and shouldn't EVER be subsidized to rebuild even ONCE, much less a couple of times.

But they entered into a contract to do just that and paid up their ends. It would work the same way with private insurers, except they'd be less likely to pay claims, and they'd do the obvious and distribute the losses off on everyone else too. Gotta keep the lights on, right?

No, they would distribute the losses onto the voluntary risk pool, not "everyone else." That's the whole point.

Did you know that the remains of Indian villages have been found in Puget Sound three-hundred feet BELOW sea level?

Did they have earthquake insurance?

Can't recall if my policy covered "earth movement" or not, but then again that's another reason I lived where I did: it's geologically relatively stable.

And you inherited it.

No, I worked for 48 years to qualify to own it.

That and a national heritage of flood control.

Appeal to common practice fallacy.

A slight butterfly twitch in the deterministic chain, and you could have inherited vast holdings close to sea level in Louisiana, and your attitude would be different.

Red herring fallacy. If I had property in Louisiana then I would need to recognize the risks of living there and deal with them myself rather than trying to shove off my losses onto the taxpayers.

No fucking taxpayers contributed to my labor in plowing out the farm lane when it snowed. No taxpayer contributed to digging the ditches and irrigating the fields, or fixing the fences, or cutting the weeds, or repairing the flood damage to the banks of the stream. I did that. All of it. On my dime, not someone else's.

Should we compensate that tribe for the effects of "global warming."

Do they have insurance against that? The wording of the contract would typically prevail.

That's the point. If they had private insurance against it then the voluntary pool they were in pays for it. We're discussing socialized flood insurance here where everybody pays for private losses.

No guarantee of that in the absence of a taxpayer funded regulatory environment. So the taxpayers would be on the hook for at least part of it regardless.

Why?

Land use law is very clear on the subject, if beach erosion takes the property in front of your home and submerges it under the ocean you lose title to that submerged land and it becomes property of the United States because it lies beneath "navigable waters."

Guffaw. Riparian law is anything but clear. Boundaries usually don't change by avulsion, but may in cases of accretion and reliction they do.

Sorry, you are correct, I couldn't remember the word "reliction", and your right, "avulsion" is the sudden tearing away of land but reliction and avulsion are the gradual shifting of the riverbed over time.

Then again, state laws vary.

Yes, they do, and that's how it's supposed to be.

No. It's supposed to be wholesome and Constitutionally sound laws. They can be the same from one state to the next.

They are. Just because they are different from state to state doesn't mean they are unconstitutional. That's the whole reason that the Republic exists and that state's rights exist and the federal government is a government of LIMITED powers and authorities.

Sometimes, the federal government has to come in and build levees to help end the legal, as well as personal and economic chaos of water.

No, sometimes the federal government CHOOSES to inject itself into a state's rights matter. Usually though it's because of navigability issues not property rights issues.

So the taxpayers have to fund river navigation too? I'm outraged.

Of course.

What if I want to opt out of this needless expenditure that I feel picks my pocket while doing very little for me personally?

Then move to another state where they don't tax you for navigational improvements to public waterways.

If you live along a river and the centerline of the river defines your property boundary, and the river erodes a new channel on your land, your property line still ends at the centerline of the river, wherever the river decides to move and your neighbor gets title to the newly-revealed lands.

Maybe. Maybe not. But it's best not to call a land boundary to something like that if you can help it. Usually judges decide, and they have lots of precedents for any call they want to make. States along the Mississippi have entire bodies of legal arcana devoted to state riparian boundary issues, and there's still some intra-state hostilities related to certain islands and other parcels in and along the Mississippi.

Yup. Not a federal issue.

Until disputes between states require adjudication. As has and does happen all the time.

Right. Between STATES.

If you build near a coast line one of the perils you face is avulsion or erosion of the shoreline. If it happens, well, too bad you're just screwed because that's how life is.

Unless you live in certain parts of Washington. Then you retain title to a fee holding that has avulsed or relicted into tidal submerged land. And one of the rights accrued by the avulsion or reliction is control of not only the surface, but the rest of the water column as well.
So you can farm geoducks and oysters, and you can have a private surf break, because you own it in fee. You can also fill it or put a cofferdam out there, assuming you comply with other federal and state laws.

So long as you don't interfere with public navigation on navigable waters. [/quote]

How can it be "public" navigation through your property if you didn't quitclaim those parts of your title to a ROW, or grant easements for public ingress and egress? Who am I to use the power of the many to encumber your title willynilly and whenever it's convenient? You own it and pay taxes on it. It's not public until you say so.

In a Libertarian society you would be correct. However in the existing society the lands underlying navigable waters belong to the State, generally speaking, and if they don't there is an easement of navigation over those lands.

Then there are cases of senior boundary lines along a waterway. Then a whole parcel can move onto land someone else owns. Then it's a real legal mess, and a judge will decide.

Yes, based on STATE law, not federal usurpation of state's rights, except in cases of Commerce Clause navigability.

In some states maybe. Not in others. And then what happens to the formerly adjacent taxpayer and landowner who just got forced off his land? One assumes private charities can choose to help him, as they may. Right?

Yup. Or he can foresee a problem and petition for redress and a change to the laws so that he will not be dispossessed of his lands unfairly before it happens, or perhaps appeal after the fact.

Ft Adams, Ms. has some original city lots that were staked from the street to the river by Elicot,the same guy who surveyed and staked the Washington Mall. They started out roughly 40x100'and are now 40' wide by ~6.5 miles deep. The river took a big bend into Louisiana back before they built the levees and fixed the river. Louisiana lost the Supreme Court case by virtue of the language of the conveyances back in the 1820s.

Based on state law.

No. It was Federal and adjudicated in Federal courts.

What federal law was it adjudicated under?

One state law can't override another's when in direct conflict. Both states are equal before the law, so a sound federal decision had to be based on the language of the competing claims (at taxpayer expense).

Ah, no federal law.Thank you. Just because the federal courts resolved a dispute between the states doesn't mean it's a federal law being enforced. The court looks at both state laws and the provisions of the Constitution and prior precedent and makes a judgment based on those laws. There is no federal law that says that such a boundary dispute shall be resolve thus and so.

Then there's my property called to the high tide line of Shelikof Strait on the west side of Kodiak. One of the first 200 US Surveys in Alaska, it ostensibly calls for 10.5 acres between 2 corners and a handful of meanders along a curved high tide line. But the ground rose a bit during 2 9+ earthquakes and a 30" volcanic ashfall since 1899, and the original stone monuments which demark the back and sides of my parcel are now further away from the high tide line than originally. Now in Texas, the state might hold title to the new gap formed by accretion and avulsion, but in Alaska, I still own to the tide line and so the parcel has gained acreage. Even though there is an Avulsive Act in this state that fixes the high tide line for properties at a certain date for other local properties, mine is grandfathered to the actual MHW and original monuments.
But I haven't had any need to test this legal opinion in the courts, so it's anyone's guess.

Not to muddy the waters, but anyone who claims riparian law is clear in the US is clearly talking out his ass.

Well, you're quite right, but the point I was trying to make was that the general public does not owe a duty of compensation to an individual whose real property is "taken" by an act of nature. Neither the State of Hawaii nor the federal government owe compensation to the homeowners whose homes were destroyed and buried by lava flows from one of the volcanoes. There is no public duty found anywhere in the Constitution or indeed the body of federal law that makes the federal government liable for such injuries. In fact sovereign immunity makes it perfectly clear that the government IS NOT liable for such damages, period.

But what has happened with the Flood Insurance Program is that Congress has chosen to make the tax-paying public responsible for mitigating and compensating those who knowingly live in flood zones for the consequences of their actions, and I argue that this is bad public policy.

That might be, especially if everyone paid the same premiums. But they don't. People who live in areas of greater than 1% annual probability of a flood pay much much more than those who don't.

But they pay nothing near the actual cost of claims, so those costs are still unfairly burdening those who are in that risk pool against their will.

I and most here agree that the taxpayers don't need to fund those who build knowing a flood is an eventuality sooner than later. Those people can't get flood insurance anyway, so it's a moot point.

Strawman.

But we're talking about areas with a .2-1% probability of a flood in a given tax year. Now the problem is manageable with a large enough pool of premium payers (and good weather). The good years almost cover the bad, and masses of upstanding tax payers aren't rendered permanently destitute by acts of nature. On the whole, taxpayers come out ahead.

Which justifies the redistributionism how, exactly?

[piscator]

What's to stop insurance companies from raising their auto liability rates to compensate for the hit of a big storm in the property and casualty or homeowner's departments? Laws and courts?

Consumers.

That works so effectively. Like when one of my brothers in law jumped out of the boat and pushed it off one of the Chandaluer Islands, then jumped back in and tracked oil all over the boat this summer. One supposes he could merely stop patronizing BP stations until my mom (the boatowner) is magically made whole, or take a number and wait for a court date to file a damage claim for the cost of the boat cleaning. Meanwhile, he's out for the shoes he wore, and the soap he had to buy, and his time cleaning the hydrocarbons out of the boat but he can rest assured that a few generations from now, enough consumers will have voted with their feet and weeded out the bad apples in the oil business. Just like that only with the corpses of insurance companies formed as LLCs in a regulation free and magical Libertarian environment, right?

What makes you think that your mom has a right to an expedient and convenient settlement for the alleged damages? She has to prove her case and BP is entitled to defend against that claim because it may be a false allegation. Perhaps the oil involved was spilled by a tanker from Saudi Arabia, in which case BP is not responsible.

Of course she does have a perfect right to refuse to patronize BP for whatever reason.

They still have the shoes. A simple super gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer analysis will confirm Macondo crude. The costs of the lab and expert witnesses will be added to the claim, and BP will exhaust the appeal process. I expect some sort of tentative settlement in around 2050, assuming BP doesn't buy the lab in the interim. That's the power of consumer choice working for all of us! It'll work great with insurance companies after they do away with the NFIP...

If it was once every hundred years, I'd agree. But it's not. Lots of somebodys in mostly the same seven or eight states get wiped out on a regular basis because they live in a known flood hazard area where they shouldn't be living in the first place and shouldn't EVER be subsidized to rebuild even ONCE, much less a couple of times.

But they entered into a contract to do just that and paid up their ends. It would work the same way with private insurers, except they'd be less likely to pay claims, and they'd do the obvious and distribute the losses off on everyone else too. Gotta keep the lights on, right?

No, they would distribute the losses onto the voluntary risk pool, not "everyone else." That's the whole point.

Unfounded assumption to generate a strawman. Libertarian magic dust would remove regulation and oversight, so you'd be paying for flood damage claims with your newly inflated auto liability premiums because the flood insurance premiums went to lobbying legislators to remove oversight and onerous regulations which interfere with profits. Regulations which keep insurers from mixing pools to increase profits.

A slight butterfly twitch in the deterministic chain, and you could have inherited vast holdings close to sea level in Louisiana, and your attitude would be different.

Red herring fallacy. If I had property in Louisiana then I would need to recognize the risks of living there and deal with them myself rather than trying to shove off my losses onto the taxpayers.

Taxpayers, policyholders...What's the difference? You're socializing risk whatever you do. You can't get flood insurance anyway without the government. The private sector tried and can't make it worth their while.

No fucking taxpayers contributed to my labor in plowing out the farm lane when it snowed. No taxpayer contributed to digging the ditches and irrigating the fields, or fixing the fences, or cutting the weeds, or repairing the flood damage to the banks of the stream. I did that. All of it. On my dime, not someone else's.

But taxpayers will send the helicopter to pull you off your roof when it floods, and NFIP policyholders will pay to help you rebuild. It was your choice to plow and irrigate. And it was the taxpayers choice to institute FEMA and the NFIP.

Should we compensate that tribe for the effects of "global warming."

Do they have insurance against that? The wording of the contract would typically prevail.

That's the point. If they had private insurance against it then the voluntary pool they were in pays for it. We're discussing socialized flood insurance here where everybody pays for private losses.

No guarantee of that in the absence of a taxpayer funded regulatory environment. So the taxpayers would be on the hook for at least part of it regardless.

Why? [/quote]

Because law enforcement aint free. Neither is locking up insurance criminals. BTW, it's flood insurance policyholders who pay flood insurance claims, unless the flood maps are obsolete due to new weather patterns. Only then would all taxpayers be on the hook to make the program solvent. It costs taxpayers more than that to call out the National Guard to rescue Libertarians after a big snow event.

They are. Just because they are different from state to state doesn't mean they are unconstitutional. That's the whole reason that the Republic exists and that state's rights exist and the federal government is a government of LIMITED powers and authorities.

I don't care. But it does cost every taxpayer when conflicting state laws result in a state boundary dispute that has to be surveyed and adjudicated by the federal courts. Where's your Libertarian rage when that happens?

No, sometimes the federal government CHOOSES to inject itself into a state's rights matter. Usually though it's because of navigability issues not property rights issues.

So the taxpayers have to fund river navigation too? I'm outraged.

What if I want to opt out of this needless expenditure that I feel picks my pocket while doing very little for me personally?

Then move to another state where they don't tax you for navigational improvements to public waterways.

That's federal. The USCG places and maintains navaids, and NOAA charts them. And the USACE dredges rivers and builds revetments and levees. Where's your antiSocialistic resentment over that? I bet you can't even see the Mississippi or Ohio or the Columbia from your landholdings. Why aren't you in arms against this obvious theft of your $$ with no direct return?

If you live along a river and the centerline of the river defines your property boundary, and the river erodes a new channel on your land, your property line still ends at the centerline of the river, wherever the river decides to move and your neighbor gets title to the newly-revealed lands.

Maybe. Maybe not. But it's best not to call a land boundary to something like that if you can help it. Usually judges decide, and they have lots of precedents for any call they want to make. States along the Mississippi have entire bodies of legal arcana devoted to state riparian boundary issues, and there's still some intra-state hostilities related to certain islands and other parcels in and along the Mississippi.

Yup. Not a federal issue.

Until disputes between states require adjudication. As has and does happen all the time.

Right. Between STATES. [/quote]

Right. And who adjudicates that? Oregon is not bound by Washington state law or courts. So the Federal courts have to burn federal tax $$ to solve these pissing matches between states. Your federal taxes go to pay for unnecessary squabbles that will never benefit you in the slightest. You sound happy about that, but the NFIP burns your ass as Socialism?

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federa ... /case.html

If you build near a coast line one of the perils you face is avulsion or erosion of the shoreline. If it happens, well, too bad you're just screwed because that's how life is.

Unless you live in certain parts of Washington. Then you retain title to a fee holding that has avulsed or relicted into tidal submerged land. And one of the rights accrued by the avulsion or reliction is control of not only the surface, but the rest of the water column as well.
So you can farm geoducks and oysters, and you can have a private surf break, because you own it in fee. You can also fill it or put a cofferdam out there, assuming you comply with other federal and state laws.

So long as you don't interfere with public navigation on navigable waters.

How can it be "public" navigation through your property if you didn't quitclaim those parts of your title to a ROW, or grant easements for public ingress and egress? Who am I to use the power of the many to encumber your title willynilly and whenever it's convenient? You own it and pay taxes on it. It's not public until you say so.

In a Libertarian society you would be correct. However in the existing society the lands underlying navigable waters belong to the State, generally speaking, and if they don't there is an easement of navigation over those lands.

I just told you that wasn't so in that state. You hold a fee title to the land under that water and that water itself. You can grant an easement if you want, bit it's your choice to encumber your title or not with an easement or some other conveyance, no one else's.

Then there are cases of senior boundary lines along a waterway. Then a whole parcel can move onto land someone else owns. Then it's a real legal mess, and a judge will decide.

Yes, based on STATE law, not federal usurpation of state's rights, except in cases of Commerce Clause navigability.

In some states maybe. Not in others. And then what happens to the formerly adjacent taxpayer and landowner who just got forced off his land? One assumes private charities can choose to help him, as they may. Right?

Yup. Or he can foresee a problem and petition for redress and a change to the laws so that he will not be dispossessed of his lands unfairly before it happens, or perhaps appeal after the fact.

Regardless, a judge will decide. He'll likely order a replat to fix the troublesome boundary if done before the fact. The landowners will pay for that. They'll also pay to lawyer up. But it's a state matter, so it's all good, right?

Ft Adams, Ms. has some original city lots that were staked from the street to the river by Elicot,the same guy who surveyed and staked the Washington Mall. They started out roughly 40x100'and are now 40' wide by ~6.5 miles deep. The river took a big bend into Louisiana back before they built the levees and fixed the river. Louisiana lost the Supreme Court case by virtue of the language of the conveyances back in the 1820s.

Based on state law.

No. It was Federal and adjudicated in Federal courts.

What federal law was it adjudicated under?

What state law could a conflict between 2 states be ruled under? The "Better" state? A disinterested third state?

The Federal laws were the Land Ordinance of 1785 , and the Act of the Public Domain North and West of the Ohio... 1789. These are the basis of the US Public Lands Survey System, the mechanism to measure aliquots of federal lands given to private homesteaders and commercial concerns, for free. As well as common law doctrines.

One state law can't override another's when in direct conflict. Both states are equal before the law, so a sound federal decision had to be based on the language of the competing claims (at taxpayer expense).

Ah, no federal law.Thank you. Just because the federal courts resolved a dispute between the states doesn't mean it's a federal law being enforced. The court looks at both state laws and the provisions of the Constitution and prior precedent and makes a judgment based on those laws. There is no federal law that says that such a boundary dispute shall be resolve thus and so.

So you're a judge now? You need some better clerks. See above.

But what has happened with the Flood Insurance Program is that Congress has chosen to make the tax-paying public responsible for mitigating and compensating those who knowingly live in flood zones for the consequences of their actions, and I argue that this is bad public policy.

No. That falls on NFIP policyholders. And if a parcel floods regularly, whoever owns it is on her own because it's uninsurable because it puts an unfair burden on the rest of the policyholders. Which is why your righteous indignation is wasted flogging a strawman.

That might be, especially if everyone paid the same premiums. But they don't. People who live in areas of greater than 1% annual probability of a flood pay much much more than those who don't.

But they pay nothing near the actual cost of claims, so those costs are still unfairly burdening those who are in that risk pool against their will.

Very few insureds do. That's sort of the point of insurance and pooled risk.
And the insureds made a choice to own the property covered by the insurance. So you can't claim it is against their will. If they don't like it, they don't have to own the property.

I and most here agree that the taxpayers don't need to fund those who build knowing a flood is an eventuality sooner than later. Those people can't get flood insurance anyway, so it's a moot point.

Strawman.

Yours. NFIP policyholders pay for their insurance. Properties that have 2 flood insurance claims have to be protected by a new flood control structure, or be removed from the program regardless if the property has changed hands or not.
It's not a case of you having to pay to make everyone whole after a flood. Policyholders pay for that, just like it were regulated private insurance.

But we're talking about areas with a .2-1% probability of a flood in a given tax year. Now the problem is manageable with a large enough pool of premium payers (and good weather). The good years almost cover the bad, and masses of upstanding tax payers aren't rendered permanently destitute by acts of nature. On the whole, taxpayers come out ahead.

Which justifies the redistributionism how, exactly?

[/quote]


Because the policyholders have a contract and pay flood insurance premiums. This makes floods cheaper for every taxpayer, since they don't have to pay for soup lines afterwards.

[piscator]

But back to the point: Flood insurance premiums are going up for a lot of homeowners and businesses due to climate change over the last 36 years. More and more severe storms are inundating larger areas, and seal levels and storm surges are rising. Even if you take Katrina and Sandy off the reckoning, flood damage claims are increasing. If the Flood Insurance Rate Maps don't reflect this, then the taxpayer is on the hook when FEMA doesn't charge enough to keep the National Flood Insurance Program solvent. It's a big shit sandwich.

[mistermack]

But back to the point: Flood insurance premiums are going up for a lot of homeowners and businesses due to climate change over the last 36 years. More and more severe storms are inundating larger areas, and seal levels and storm surges are rising. Even if you take Katrina and Sandy off the reckoning, flood damage claims are increasing. If the Flood Insurance Rate Maps don't reflect this, then the taxpayer is on the hook when FEMA doesn't charge enough to keep the National Flood Insurance Program solvent. It's a big shit sandwich.

It's very odd, in the US. There are only three states, Louisiana, New York, and New Jersey that account for the vast majority of flood claims. Take them out, and the level is actually very low. Could it be that climate change is concentrated in those three states?

Another point is that it's the SIZE of the claims that has increased, and caused the premiums to shoot up. The same thing has happened in motor insurance, and that's hardly affected by the climate.
The average flood claim in 2012 was over 34,000 dollars.

NFIP Statistics
Floods are the #1 natural disaster in the United States.
From 2008 to 2012, the average flood claim amounted to more than $34,000.
From 2003 to 2012, total flood insurance claims averaged more than $3.0 billion per year.
In 2012, the average flood insurance policy premium was about $650 per year.
People outside of high-risk areas file over 20% of NFIP claims and receive one-third of disaster assistance for flooding.
The NFIP paid more than $1.2 billion in flood insurance claims to all policyholders in 2012.
2012 CLAIM REPORT FOR THE TOP 10 STATES AS OF 2/14/13:
State Total Number of 2012 Claims
Louisiana 9,624
New Jersey 8,932
New York 6,851
Florida 2,902
Mississippi 1,657
Texas 1,497
Connecticut 1,242
Virginia 552
Maryland 408
Delaware 394
State Total 2012 Claims Payments
Louisiana $436,253,603
New York $288,950,075
New Jersey $272,790,020
Florida $62,089,078
Mississippi $36,923,219
Texas $34,529,450
Connecticut $27,527,169
Virginia $11,107,399
West Virginia $5,090,446
Oregon $5,068,826

http://www.floodsmart.gov/floodsmart/pa ... /stats.jsp

[Seth]

But back to the point: Flood insurance premiums are going up for a lot of homeowners and businesses due to climate change over the last 36 years. More and more severe storms are inundating larger areas, and seal levels and storm surges are rising. Even if you take Katrina and Sandy off the reckoning, flood damage claims are increasing. If the Flood Insurance Rate Maps don't reflect this, then the taxpayer is on the hook when FEMA doesn't charge enough to keep the National Flood Insurance Program solvent. It's a big shit sandwich.

Wouldn't be a problem if the feds simply said, "I'm sorry, that's not something government can or should help you with, we suggest that you move to higher ground."

[piscator]

But back to the point: Flood insurance premiums are going up for a lot of homeowners and businesses due to climate change over the last 36 years. More and more severe storms are inundating larger areas, and seal levels and storm surges are rising. Even if you take Katrina and Sandy off the reckoning, flood damage claims are increasing. If the Flood Insurance Rate Maps don't reflect this, then the taxpayer is on the hook when FEMA doesn't charge enough to keep the National Flood Insurance Program solvent. It's a big shit sandwich.

It's very odd, in the US. There are only three states, Louisiana, New York, and New Jersey that account for the vast majority of flood claims.

That's not odd, that's stupid. What you have is a snapshot dominated by Hurricane Sandy storm surge. You just grabbed 1 year, 2012, and called it the normal.

Take them out, and the level is actually very low. Could it be that climate change is concentrated in those three states?

Could be that 2012 wasn't a big flood year, outside of that little Cat 5 hurricane that slammed into one of the more monied locations on the planet. Could be that the NFIP is typically quite solvent, makes little to no demands on taxpayers, and provides a good and valuable service for a reasonable cost. But then, your arguments would be with Seth rather than me.

Another point is that it's the SIZE of the claims that has increased, and caused the premiums to shoot up. The same thing has happened in motor insurance, and that's hardly affected by the climate.
The average flood claim in 2012 was over 34,000 dollars.

See these million-dollar beach homes on Long Island? Most are "summer homes", only occupied for a few months of the year, typically by second and third tier NYC execs trying to bust into the big leagues. Rising sea levels have taken their nice beach, and now they are going to have to raise their cottages or suffer the indignity of having an unsightly sea wall erected [at taxpayer expense], which will spoil their ocean views, all because of the pricks at FEMA. You can bet every one of those dwellings maxed out their NFIP claims @ $500k though.

But the thing is, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Insurance is going to go up for everyone, and it's because of climate...

If there were one American industry that would be particularly worried about climate change it would have to be insurance, right?

From Hurricane Sandy’s devastating blow to the Northeast to the protracted drought that hit the Midwest Corn Belt, natural catastrophes across the United States pounded insurers last year, generating $35 billion in privately insured property losses, $11 billion more than the average over the last decade.

And the industry expects the situation will get worse. “Numerous studies assume a rise in summer drought periods in North America in the future and an increasing probability of severe cyclones relatively far north along the U.S. East Coast in the long term,” said Peter Höppe, who heads Geo Risks Research at the reinsurance giant Munich Re. “The rise in sea level caused by climate change will further increase the risk of storm surge.” Most insurers, including the reinsurance companies that bear much of the ultimate risk in the industry, have little time for the arguments heard in some right-wing circles that climate change isn’t happening, and are quite comfortable with the scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels is the main culprit of global warming.

“Insurance is heavily dependent on scientific thought,” Frank Nutter, president of the Reinsurance Association of America, told me last week. “It is not as amenable to politicized scientific thought.”

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/busin ... d=all&_r=0

Insurance Coverage Crossroads: The Insurance Industry Appears Largely Unprepared to Weather Risks of Climate Change
By Kate Margolis
Bloomberg Law
July 08, 2013

The potential effects of greenhouse gas emissions on the climate have been discussed for several decades, and collected data is now confirming that warming of the atmosphere and oceans is playing a direct role in the more frequent occurrence of extreme weather events. However, according to a recent report by Ceres, many insurers are unprepared to weather these changes.

Ceres analyzed insurers’ responses to a survey conducted by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) designed to capture insurers’ readiness to deal with the impact of climate change risks. It found that only 23 of the 184 insurers surveyed have developed a comprehensive business plan to address climate change. Of those 23, the majority are large foreign-based insurers. In general, Ceres found that small insurers are far less prepared than large insurers, and property and casualty insurers have substantially more knowledge about climate change risks than life and health insurers.

Climate change-related catastrophes can threaten insurer solvency due to the potentially large numbers of policyholders affected. Public awareness about the role of climate change in the development of so-called “superstorms” seems to be gaining some traction, in part due to Superstorm Sandy, the latest in the series of ever-increasing shocks to the insurance industry. Yet it appears the insurance industry as a whole has not reached its “watershed moment,” despite the fact that “the potential liability for insurers is astronomical,” with“[h]undreds of billions, perhaps trillions” in private property and public infrastructure at risk in U.S. coastal areas alone.

If insurers fail to take proactive measures to deal with the effects of climate change on their business, the availability of affordable insurance—the safety net that undergirds global economic growth—will be in question. The insurance market responded to Hurricane Katrina by severely contracting available coverage or withdrawing entirely from the states directly affected. As recommended by Ceres in its report, insurers must work with state insurance regulators so that their premiums and reserves sufficiently incorporate climate-related loss data. If artificially low premiums are required by regulators, insurers unprepared for the effects of climate change may ultimately be forced to withdraw from the market....

http://www.ceres.org/press/press-clips/ ... ate-change

[mistermack]

Too long, didn't read all that copied and pasted crap.
If 2012 wasn't typical, so big deal. Being the most recent year, it was the first one that came up on google. I didn't choose it, it chose me.
What it does illustrate is that flooding is not a big problem, except for coastal states, from tropical storms and hurricanes.

This is nothing to do with climate change. Those things have been happening for thousands of years. What HAS changed, is all of the expensive property that has been built in coastal areas, as you mentioned. Which is why the value of claims has skyrocketed, as I mentioned.

That is fuck-all to do with global warming. It would all be happening anyway.
In a fair system, the people who have expensive coastal property wouldn't be being subsidised by flood policies of those who live inland, with little chance of flooding. In a market economy, I honestly don't see the justification for that, if that's how it works.

I would have two separate different classes of insurance. Normal flood insurance, and tropical storm insurance.
So that those who don't suffer from coastal storms don't pay for the effects of it.

Or just have a totally free market, with insurance premiums being based on risk, which is as it should be.

[piscator]

Too long, didn't read all that copied and pasted crap.

Aww hell, it was just some nonsense about private free market insurers having to raise rates or go under due to Anthropogenic Global Warming. Nothing that need concern you or this thread. It would probably have made your head feel funny anyway.

[Tero]

Here's a tip:do not buy beach front property

[mistermack]

Too long, didn't read all that copied and pasted crap.

Aww hell, it was just some nonsense about private free market insurers having to raise rates or go under due to Anthropogenic Global Warming. Nothing that need concern you or this thread. It would probably have made your head feel funny anyway.

Why do you do all this copy and paste? Do you not have any confidence at all in your own opinions?
Actually, don't answer that, it's becoming clear now.

If I want to read something, I'll find it myself. I appreciate links, but acres of copy and paste just indicates an idiot trying to look clever to me. A bit is ok, if it's just factual stuff necessary to provide backing for what you posted.
But you just copy and paste from journalists or blog sites. It's a bit pathetic.

If I feel like reading what a journalist, or a blogger thinks, I'll choose it myself thanks.

[mistermack]

Here's a tip:do not buy beach front property

Tero, just a glance at your graph reveals that you give no source, but it's probably accurate.
But also, it's perfectly obvious that it bears no relation whatsoever to CO2 levels. There has been a steady rate of sea level rise, originating WAY before CO2 levels experienced any significant rise. So it's perfectly logical to conclude that whatever made sea levels rise in the period from 1870 to 1950 also made them rise from 1950 to 2013. And that was certainly not CO2 levels.

It's almost certain to be the effects of coming out of the little ice-age, which probably shrank the ocean waters by a similar amount. Levels were bound to rise in response to that change, but it takes time for the warmer surface water to circulate down below.

[piscator]

Too long, didn't read all that copied and pasted crap.

Aww hell, it was just some nonsense about private free market insurers having to raise rates or go under due to Anthropogenic Global Warming. Nothing that need concern you or this thread. It would probably have made your head feel funny anyway.

Why do you do all this copy and paste? Do you not have any confidence at all in your own opinions?
Actually, don't answer that, it's becoming clear now.

If I want to read something, I'll find it myself. I appreciate links, but acres of copy and paste just indicates an idiot trying to look clever to me. A bit is ok, if it's just factual stuff necessary to provide backing for what you posted.
But you just copy and paste from journalists or blog sites. It's a bit pathetic.

If I feel like reading what a journalist, or a blogger thinks, I'll choose it myself thanks.

Well son, if you play your cards right and keep delivering those pizzas, you may one day actually have something worth insuring. I'm just trying to save you the sort of rude shock over insurance prices that will consume the rest of your life with resentment and hostility at things you don't understand. It's my little way of making the world a little better for the rest of us.
That, and I couldn't find a brightly colored Marvel Comics version.

[Seth]

Here's a tip:do not buy beach front property

Oh my God! The sea has risen twenty whole centimeters since 1880. Run! Hide! Panic! We're all gonna DROWN! Destroy the world economy trying to reverse a 20 cm sea level rise! Do anything that sounds good no matter how stupid or useless it is!

Fuck...