CNN’s Climate Con Exposed: Real Estate, Not Storms, Fuels Skyrocketing Insurance Costs
17 hours ago Anthony Watts 21 Comments
In a recent article, titled “Why climate risk could affect your credit score for buying a home,” CNN’s Andrew Freedman describes a new report by FirstStreet that claims to show how “climate risk” could impact credit scores and mortgage lending due to an alleged increase in the frequency and severity of weather-driven mortgage foreclosures. This narrative is highly misleading, if not outright false. The claim that climate risk is a new and emerging driver of credit risk ignores fundamental climatic and economic realities – namely, extreme weather has not become more common or severe. In addition, the surge in insurance claims in coastal areas is driven by rising population density, development, and escalating property values, not climate change.
CNN and FirstStreet present the concept of “climate risk” as a quantifiable, standalone factor that can be measured and projected in the same way as credit scores or debt-to-income ratios. But “climate risk” is a nebulous term, not one scientifically validated or even clearly defined. It conflates weather events with long-term climate trends. Weather is immediate, measurable, and historically recorded – hurricanes, floods, tornadoes. Climate, on the other hand, is a statistical average of these events over 30 years or more. The term “climate risk” is a misleading invention designed to imply that weather events are becoming more severe or frequent, despite a lack of supporting data.
The data on for the severe weather events that cause the most damage do not support FirstStreet’s or CNN’s claims of rising climate change driven costs.
Hurricane Frequency and Intensity:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/05/21/cnns-climate-con-how-real-estate-not-storms-drives-insurance-costs/
