In the last episode of Risky Science, we examined skepticism around climate-conditioned catastrophe models with Roger Pielke Jr.—questioning how much weight long-range climate assumptions should carry in near-term insurance and capital decisions.

Today’s discussion is a direct counterpoint.

My guest is Dave Jones, former California Insurance Commissioner and now director of the Climate Risk Initiative at UC Berkeley Law. His recent article argues that insurance itself has become the clearest early-warning signal of climate risk—describing property insurance as the “canary in the coal mine,” and warning that the canary is already dying.

This conversation is timely because the stress is no longer theoretical. Catastrophe losses are accelerating, insurers are pulling back from high-risk regions, and residual markets are expanding rapidly. Jones argues that neither deregulation nor rate increases will be enough if the underlying drivers of loss continue to intensify.

We’ll examine California and Florida as live case studies, what mitigation and modeling can realistically achieve in the near term, and where the practical limits of insurance may already be coming into view.

Register for the January 8 Risky Science Podcast Live

In this episode, I’m joined by Roger Pielke Jr., a researcher known for his work on the use—and misuse—of models in risk and policy decisions. Pielke is a polarizing figure in climate research, particularly for his views on how climate change should—and should not—be incorporated into catastrophe models used for annual insurance and reinsurance decisions.

It was a timely conversation, especially as Pielke has recently used his Substack, The Honest Broker, to critique the current state of climate-risk analytics and modeling. Whatever your view of his conclusions, they offer a challenging and well-informed perspective on how risk models are being used today.

Register here for the January 8 Risky Science Podcast Live

This week on the Risky Science Podcast, I’m joined by Dr. Phillip Mulder of the University of Wisconsin, co-author of a newly released research paper examining how these insurance pressures are influencing who buys, who moves, and who can no longer afford to stay.

The research has drawn significant attention, including coverage in The New York Times. Dr. Mulder explains how one of the primary underlying forces in this emerging economic crisis is a series of “reinsurance shocks” — repricing events driven in part by catastrophe model estimates that are reverberating throughout the U.S. economy.