Dear friend,

Has black become white and white become black?

Has the world gone crazy? Have we gone crazy?

This is what we ask ourselves at Reinsurance Towers as we sit down, turn on our computers and gawp at the world around us.

Another day, another disparity in windstorm estimates.

RMS reckons European winter storm Emma cost between €300m and €700m.

Quite a wide margin of error, you might think, and fair enough, since the storm only blew through at the weekend, affecting multiple countries etc etc.

But then AIR says it probably cost €750m - €1.3bn.

So you see my dilemma - there's not even an overlap between one and the other!

They are mutally exclusive. One is from Mars and the other is from Venus.

It suddenly reminded me of a line from a Dire Straits song (don't ask how!) called Industrial Disease about street preachers at London's famous Speakers' Corner.

"Two men say they're Jesus - one of them must be wrong!"

So, which of these two technological evangelists are we supposed to believe?

Do we believe A and not B?

or B and ignore A?

Or just conlcude that both are probably wrong.

Faith in modelling is hard won and easily frittered away.

But modelling firms can so often be their own worst enemy.

Maybe it's time to climb down from the soap box?