“This job is an engineer’s dream. You get to build stuff, then you get to blow them up.” If you’re still on the fence about the nearterm threats posed by climate change, I suggest you follow the money and check in with the big corporations with the most to lose. Insurers and reinsurers don’t need any more convincing that climate change is a real threat, and some of them see 2017 as a tipping point. The NYT takes you inside a lab where a team of researchers is destroying things — with wind, water and fire — to help insurers manage the increasing risks of extreme weather.

+ “You look at the media images and you see new subdivisions, new strip malls and new buildings with water up to the rooftop … Those shouldn’t be happening.” Even if insurers come up with stiffer building requirements, it won’t matter if people and politicians don’t enforce those rules. Reuters: Unfettered building, scant oversight add to cost of hurricanes in US.

+ France trolls Trump by funding US climate scientists. (The program is called Make Our Planet Great Again…)