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Earth Businesses

A Majority of Companies Are Already Feeling the Climate Heat (bloomberg.com) 41

Posted by msmash from the no-longer-hypothetical dept.
Climate change is already having an impact on companies around the world. More than half of companies surveyed by Morgan Stanley experienced climate-related operational disruptions within the past year, including increased costs, worker disruption and revenue losses. Extreme heat and storms caused the most frequent disruptions, followed by wildfires and smoke, water shortages, and flooding.

The US spent nearly $1 trillion on disaster recovery and climate-related needs over the past year, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analysis, while nearly two-thirds of Tampa metro businesses reported losses from hurricanes Helene and Milton.

A Majority of Companies Are Already Feeling the Climate Heat More | Reply

A Majority of Companies Are Already Feeling the Climate Heat

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  • It doesn't happen.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If the entire state of Florida was underwater because of rising sea levels, Republicans (standing in water up to their armpits) would claim that it wasn't happening. And if it is happening, it's Joe Biden's fault.

      The US spent nearly $1 trillion on disaster recovery

      That's OK. They'll just eliminate the agencies which spend that money. Problem solved.

      .... two-thirds of Tampa metro businesses reported losses from hurricanes Helene and Milton.

      And they will keep voting for politicians who will tell them to fuck off when they need help.

      As the old saying goes .... you can't fix stupid.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by dddux ( 3656447 )

      For as long as the 0.1% keep multiplying their billions, everything is fine.

      When they start to lose too much money due to climate change, you're gonna hear about it, though!

      • Yeah, then they will get cars banned and flying will be reserved only for the super rich (or anyone that can afford 10k on a plane ticket with 9.5k of it being carbon fees).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      That is not how it works. Major back-insurers are have already been rpicing climate change in for something like 10 years and are planning to raise premiums by a _lot_ because that will be needed. And these people are as politically neutral as you can get.

  • One of the things that I keep seeing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday July 04, 2025 @02:15PM (#65497146)
    Is CEOs telling me that AI isn't going to take jobs while privately they're telling everyone and anyone that they're going to cut their workforces in half within the next 5 years.

    Climate change is the same thing.

    You have governments and CEOs that say everything is fine but when it comes to the actual money and the actual Financial reports you're going to find them singing a completely different tune.

    I don't think there's anything that can stop the shit storm that's going to hit us all now. The time to stop it was last November and we didn't do that.
    • I like the "hope method". Just hope and everything will turn out just fine.

    • Re:One of the things that I keep seeing (Score:4, Insightful)

      by BrightCandle ( 636365 ) on Friday July 04, 2025 @03:36PM (#65497308)
      The time to stop was the early 1980s when we were sure it was happening and knew what the result was going to be. It was definitely urgent by the early 2000s after Kyoto had failed. Now its all over but for the dying we have already emitted enough to end our species, there is just a lag before the planet heats up and all the last tipping point is breached.
      • I was a kid in the early 80's, and remember when Reagan took down the Solar Heaters from the White House. There is a lot of good things to be said about Reagan. etc. etc. However. That was the wrong direction. As an Engineer, I would promote having every home in America to have a water heating system on the roof. We don't need to burn Oil to have a "good life", we simply need think things through.
        • How do you keep the water from freezing?

          • If the water is stored on the roof, you will be heating your home in freezing environments, so that heat will naturally rise up to keep the water above freezing point. Not so far fetched.

            Alternatively, you store all the water 10ft under ground and pump it back up. It won't freeze there either.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by XXongo ( 3986865 )

            How do you keep the water from freezing?

            Does your car have a cooling system? How does it keep the coolant fluid from freezing?

            --
            (EV owners: move on to next question)

            • Does your car have a cooling system? How does it keep the coolant fluid from freezing?

              The water in my SUV's radiator is kept from freezing with a toxic additive called ethylene glycol. We use water heaters to heat water intended for bathing, cleaning, and cooking so adding something toxic is far from ideal. Would the rooftop solar water heaters have a loop of pipes separate from where the tap water comes from? That sounds complicated and therefore expensive. Then is the matter that a leak could develop in the piping that separates the two loops which could then result in poisoning people

      • The time to stop was the early 1980s when we were sure it was happening and knew what the result was going to be.

        Three Mile Island had a partial meltdown in 1979, and this happened while The China Syndrome was in theaters which didn't help public opinion on nuclear power. Then was the rapid unscheduled disassembly of Chernobyl in 1986 that made even more people uncomfortable with nuclear power.

        If we had better public relations while the public was informed of what happened at TMI then we might not have had the same opposition to nuclear power develop. There were no deaths, no injuries, and any radioactive gases rele

    • Huh? CEOs are most certainly telling people IN PUBLIC that AI will take people's jobs. Especially the ones in the business of selling AI solutions.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      The problem is, the insurance industry already is building in climate change into their actuarial tables. They know it's real because it leads to real money being paid out by them - everything they can insure is affected.

      And the DoD knows it's real as well - because they're having to prepare for unrest caused by climate change - from immigration, to natural resources, water, or other things that people will go to war over.

      You can deny it all you want, but companies are going to feel the effects. The DoD wil

  • Yeah, but (Score:3)

    by denny_deluxe ( 1693548 ) on Friday July 04, 2025 @02:47PM (#65497210)
    These same companies will keep buying politicians that deny the obvious evidence of climate change before their beady little eyes, so no fucks given.
    • This is evidence of the nasty feedback loop of an Oligarchy. Billionaires should not be in the equation of who is elected and what laws are passed in a Representative Democracy.
      • Billionaires should not be in the equation of who is elected and what laws are passed in a Representative Democracy.

        And how do you propose to prevent them from having any influence while still maintaining a Representative Democracy? No matter how you dance around it, everybody is supposed to be represented, one way or another and if you don't let the billionaires have their say, it isn't representative, is it?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gtall ( 79522 )

          It isn't that they require being represented that is the problem. If all they did was vote like normal people, we'd be fine with them. The problem is they have enough money to buy the pols. I haven't yet seen a fix for that, but it does create a doom-loop.

        • Billionaires should not be in the equation of who is elected and what laws are passed in a Representative Democracy.

          And how do you propose to prevent them from having any influence while still maintaining a Representative Democracy? No matter how you dance around it, everybody is supposed to be represented, one way or another and if you don't let the billionaires have their say, it isn't representative, is it?

          You would need to restrict campaign financing to the equivalent of "if you can't vote for them, then you can't contribute to them". That reduces it to individuals within a rep's district.

          • So if you have some kind of business in each district, your company can keep bribing..err I mean donating? McDs and Blackrock would be doing just fine then.

            • So if you have some kind of business in each district, your company can keep bribing..err I mean donating? McDs and Blackrock would be doing just fine then.

              Can McDs or Blackrock vote? No? Well then they shouldn't be able to contribute anything then. Only individuals.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Chaset ( 552418 )

            I think I've seen an idea where it goes even further. NO contributions to political candidate/party. Period.
            All elections are publicly funded with all candidates getting the same amount. They can all buy the same amount of commercial time/posters/etc.
            If the revolution comes and we get to do a do-over, I think we should try this method first.

            Before we go there, we can at least stop allowing corporate donations. Why should a few board members have political "speech" powers that leverage the resources of al

      • Billionaires should not be in the equation of who is elected and what laws are passed in a Representative Democracy.

        No, billionaires should not have any increased say over elections and laws due to their wealth than any other person. However, they should still be allowed the same voice as everyone else in supporting or opposing ideas although in practice holding them to that is going to be extremely hard to do.

        • I don't understand, Musk dropping $250 million to elect Trump is not obvious to everybody? Musk buying twitter and amplifying all of his posts is hard to understand? We in the USA are living in an Oligarchy. That is not hard to understand.

  • Hurricanes often hit Florida, so blaming hurricane damage on "climate change" is clearly a gross oversimplification. It probably made the hurricanes worse, but it's not a binary switch. Similarly for a lot of those things. And there are probably some places where climate changes improved things. (A lot fewer, I'll admit.)

    This piece strikes me an as oversimplification, probably for political reasons. Yes, a lot of disasters were made worse by climate change. I suspect that pine beetles have continued t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Hurricanes often hit Florida, so blaming hurricane damage on "climate change" is clearly a gross oversimplification.

      It is. All it shows is that you are stupid, because _you_ are the one making that statement. No actual expert does. What the actual experts say is that likely hood and average severity increases due to climate change and will continue to increase. That is an entirely different statement. Yes, I get you are far too dumb to see that difference.

    • I like things sustainable and predictable. If a crop of food grew here or there before, I would like it grow there later. For example. MAGAs are just gambling. You are gambling that in the future that crop will grow there. You wish that food will grow elsewhere. MAGAs wish for things, and you can wish in one hand and shit in the other, and see what fills up first.

      • If you wish nature to be consistent, then you will (over time) be very disappointed.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by ndsurvivor ( 891239 )
          Eh fuck it, you MAGAs are just stupid. I was going to post that a change in a 100 years is different than a change over a 100,000 years, but you MAGAs are just too stupid to comprehend that. I am talking to the wind.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jwymanm ( 627857 )
      The term climate change is intentionally vague. Yes the climate changed since yesterday so a hurricane happened. China meanwhile is dominating and destroying the rest of the world and building like nothing is happening. It. Isn't. Climate. Change. It's people blaming stuff on climate just not doing things because they are terrible at doing things or regulations have made it impossibly expensive to do them.

  • I'm sure the billionaires will be fine. (Score:3)

    by Arrogant-Bastard ( 141720 ) on Friday July 04, 2025 @04:42PM (#65497476)
    After all, they're building climate refuges/bunkers in places that they expect to survive what's coming and that are sufficiently remote that the probability of a mob showing up at the front door is quite small. They know that climate scientists are right, and they suspect it's going to be worse than predicted. (Which is a good bet, because if you actually take the time to read things like the IPCC reports, you'll notice something that's common to all science in every field everywhere: the projections are never exactly right. You'll also notice something else: time after time, those predictions haven't been pessimistic enough. In other words, the real world gets worse faster than the models predict; the models are adjusted with this new data; and then the real world gets worse faster than the models predict.)

    And that's not the scary part. Nor is the part where wars over water happen (because that's right in front of us) or the part where areas become uninhabitable (same) or where hurricanes devastate areas that "can't" be hit by hurricanes (already history) or where record-setting fires, floods, droughts, etc. happen constantly (also already history). No, the scary part -- if you understand stochastic processes -- is that there is nothing anywhere in the mathematics of global warming that guarantees that the process is linear and stable. There are things that strongly suggest that there is a point at which it's neither, and of course there's a lot of debate over what that point is. If it's not clear what "nonlinear and "unstable" mean: imagine a century's worse of warming in a year. Imagine what kind of weather becomes possible if that happens. And then realize that it won't end there. If we go over that threshold, whatever it is, we're not coming back. All the frantic efforts to engineer our way out of it won't work and all the belated changes that we should have made decades ago won't help.

    There is no hell hot enough, no torture chamber cruel enough, for the people who are driving us to this future.

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