by Judith Curry

On March 22, I will be testifying before the Senate Budget Committee on the topic “Risky Business: How Climate Change is Changing Insurance Markets.”

The web site for Hearing is [here], you should be able to watch  on C-SPAN.

Here is the list of witnesses:

• Eric Anderson, President of Aon

• Nancy Watkins, Principal & Consulting Actuary at Milliman

• Dr. Benjamin Keys, Professor of Real Estate, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

• Judith Curry, President of Climate Forecast Applications Network, Professor Emerita at Georgia Tech

• Jerry Theodorou, Director of Finance, Insurance and Trade at R Street Institute

All of these individuals look interesting and representative of a broad range of perspectives

Note that I am the only witness with “climate science” in my remit.  This Hearing clearly isn’t about climate science, but based on various assumptions about climate change and its impacts.

I hear through the grapevine that this is a tough Committee to testify before.  Should be interesting.

So I heard about this Hearing from a Congressional staffer last Monday afternoon, and received my official invitation on Wednesday, with written testimony due next Tuesday at 10 a.m.  So this gives the witness a week to prepare, if you start working right after the call from the staffer (gambling that the individual will actually be invited to testify).

My written testimony is almost finished (need to work on conclusions and formatting).  I was able to use some material from my book (condensing and simplifying), which helped me pull this together.  This is an interesting (and newly relevant) topic for me, given its emphasis on risk.

I will post my written testimony in a new blog post Wednesday morning before the Hearing starts.  This should be an interesting Hearing, stay tuned.

Note: I am able to testify via Zoom, so I don’t have to travel.  Out of the horrors of Covid-19, one useful practice has emerged: having people travel to meetings or Hearings to present in person is not necessary.