Insurance Firms May Join Pollution Fight : The industry fears potential catastrophes, such as floods, brought on by smog-induced changes in the climate.

Before Christmas, Earthwatch reported that the ocean off our coast commences a process of “upwelling” water from its deepest reaches to take on oxygen before flowing back around the globe.

Over eons, this process has left sediment on the sea bottom that is now being studied as a long-term record of the planet’s health.

The new data suggests that global climate can frequently “turn on a button,” changed by little things--even human activity--according to Dr. James Kennett, leader of the UC Santa Barbara Marine Science Institute.

There’s more to the story than last week’s column could cover. Here’s the rest:

In about 90 days, the sun and the sea are soon going to be linked in a big environmental story because of the global-warming issue. Historic climate and weather changes, recorded in the sea bottom, along with recent episodes of severe air pollution trapping the sun’s light, may be impacting a major world industry: insurance.

This spring, the United Nations is convening a major powwow on climate change, with large delegations expected from both the fossil fuel and insurance industries. The only tribe as powerful as the coal and oil interests, insurers are weighing the possibility that recent weather catastrophes are the first real results of human-induced climate change.

Fearing that the worst is yet to come, they see their interests conflicting directly with those of the fossil fuel industry in the controversy over carbon emissions, that cause smog.

The president of the Reinsurance Assn. of America, Franklin Nutter, said recently, “The insurance business is first in line to be affected by climate change . . . it could bankrupt the industry.”

Last time something like this happened, the issue was shoddy, dangerous building practices. So the insurance companies fought for strict building codes. They might have to stand up for strict pollution standards this time. This month they convened a National Hazards Group. We will see its handiwork in March.

Meanwhile, while the titans square off, ordinary California homeowners are already finding notifications of flood-insurance rate hikes in their mail. In some cases, mercifully not yet in our county, it’s a 50% increase.

In south Los Angeles County, along the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers, whole towns are having rates increased and the locals are fighting it because it’s affecting real estate values.

Insurance actuaries are recalculating risk factors that had been stable for decades. This has also triggered new, complex federal requirements that flood insurance be obtained prior to mortgage transactions.

Purchases and sales are being impeded. It’s like a reverse neutron bomb--an environmental problem that, regardless of whether it might harm people’s health, is affecting their property. This sort of thing could spawn legions of anti-smog activists.

“It’s quite easy to change the climate. A volcanic eruption, a lot of rain altering oceanic salinity, increased carbon emissions,” explained UCSB’s Kennett. So far, according to his latest calculations, the planet’s climate has “flickered,” as he termed it, 21 times over the eons, going from hot to cold, from ice to typhoon.

Only the most recent flood has been recorded by eyewitnesses: Both the ancient Hebrews and the Chumash put out news releases 11,000 years ago. You know the one preserved in Genesis 7, 8 and 9, but perhaps not the one attributed to the 19th-Century tribal chronicler, Maria Solares.

Since the unveiling of data such as Kennett’s, and the arrival of the insurance industry in the middle of these environmental goings on, Solares’ version no longer seems merely quaint. Now, it evokes a sensibility more and more people share as we all enter the 25th Earth Year.

Here’s what the Chumash chronicler says: “Spotted Woodpecker, Sun’s nephew, was the only one saved in the flood. We don’t know why the flood came or how it started, but it kept raining and the water kept rising higher and higher until even the mountains were covered.

“All the people drowned except Woodpecker, who found refuge on top of the tallest tree in the world. The water kept rising until it touched his feet. He cried out to Sun, ‘Help me, Uncle! I am drowning! Save me!’ Sun held his torch down low and the water began to go down again.”

That was when the world was smogless--and all power was solar. There now seems to be hope this can happen again. Happy New Year.