counting the cost of climate change

OK, I'm going to jump to a conclusion here without any real depth of understanding.

The floods that have wrecked half of Sheffield, killed three people and are threatening to collapse a dam are a direct result of climate change. There I said it.

Unless you're wilfully ignorant you will have heard scientists predicting the first effects of climate change upon our weather systems. They include warm, cold, dry winters and warm, wet summers. Well, warm and wet is what we have right now so here it is, people: Climate change is here now and you can see the financial costs it will incur unless we take drastic steps to limit it. The clean-up bill from the current flooding is going to cost hundreds of million. Flood prevention already takes up two thirds of the Environment Agency's budget, do you want that to increase? Because I'll tell you something for sure- Gordon Brown is not going to increase the Agency's budget without cast-iron evidence of the costs associated with it. Seeing as the Labour government have already shut down the CEH and stole £68 million from Research Council's budget and seeing as that sort of data just doesn't come for free . . . . well, work the rest out for yourself.

Wikipedia on the economic costs of climate change:

"According to a 2005 report from the Association of British Insurers, limiting carbon emissions could avoid 80% of the projected additional annual cost of tropical cyclones by the 2080s.^[86] A June 2004 report by the Association of British Insurers declared "Climate change is not a remote issue for future generations to deal with. It is, in various forms, here already, impacting on insurers' businesses now."^[87] It noted that weather risks for households and property were already increasing by 2-4 % per year due to changing weather, and that claims for storm and flood damages in the UK had doubled to over £6 billion over the period 1998–2003, compared to the previous five years. The results are rising insurance premiums, and the risk that in some areas flood insurance will become unaffordable for some."

Additional

Johann agrees:

"This week's storm-floods follow hard on the floods of 2000 and 2001, which the distinguished meterologist Philip Eden says would have only naturally happened once every 750 years."