The Center for International Environmental Law thinks that Credit Agencies are miscalculating the risk of climate change – that climate change might be the cause of the next financial crisis.
According to the CIEL report;
Anthropogenic climate change associated with 4°C or greater warming (a “≥4°C climate scenario”) has disastrous impacts on the environment, people, and the global economy. However, this ≥4°C climate scenario is based on a business-as-usual climate change trajectory that may not continue. There is a growing trend in international, national, business, consumer, legal, regulatory, and social efforts to mitigate climate change. For instance, 193 nations have agreed to limit global warming below 2°C (a “2°C climate scenario”). Despite the movement away from business-as-usual, credit rating methodologies are not factoring in a dynamic climate change trajectory. Instead, they appear to assume a ≥4°C climate scenario. Assuming a ≥4°C climate scenario artificially inflates the credit ratings and financial value of companies causing global warming and could expose rating agencies themselves to legal liability.
Read more: http://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/CIEL_CRA_Brief_24Jun2015.pdf
In my opinion, if there is a business sector which can make just about anything else look good, its green investments. Along with well known Federal backed disasters like Solyndra, the history of alternative energy investment is littered with many lesser known green failures, such as ECOtality, Abound Solar, Fisker Automotive, the list goes on (source Breitbart ).
The green sector is so unattractive, the British government had to set up their own investment bank, to lend money to people whose businesses are then supported by generous government handouts.
When the government finally runs out of money, as recently happened in Spain, everything falls in a heap – only the lawyers end up getting rich.
Given Europe and America’s continued insane infatuation with green policies at any cost, given the track record of failure and ruin, in my opinion pouring people’s pensions into green follies is far more likely to trigger a financial crisis, than investing in fossil fuel businesses.
Even the BBC and the Guardian, despite their green rhetoric, remain heavily invested in fossil fuels.
Credit Agencies, unlike politicians, can be sued if they offer poor advice, so generally they try to stick to offering good advice. Which is awfully inconvenient for greens looking for capital. A substantial amount of the world’s wealth is invested with funds which substantially base their investment decisions on the advice of credit agencies.
The “climate cartels” may have problems this year!
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
4C would put us away above the Holocene Optimum which just isn’t going to happen with the Holocene continuing its decline. Counter forcings have already given us an 18yr pause that has caused so much heartburn that CAGW climate scientists that aren’t already suffering with depression symptoms
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/11/depressed-climate-scientists-advised-to-use-f-word/
are busy erasing the “pause” and El Ninos, most likely under orders to do so. They’ve whacked the LIA, the MWP, HCO and other Molies but these keep jumping up again because they are real. I’m reminded of swamp bugs swimming ever so faster and trying to find the coolest spots in a billy pail as it heats up for tea. We will need some kind of huge stone monument with the names of all the worst of them (the useful idiots will be excused, I guess, as white noise) to ensure we don’t forget about this terrible period.
Aah. Crunchy Tea, my favorite.
Gary P
“the useful idiots will be excused, I guess, as white noise”
Facilitators in – if the watermelons get their way – something approaching genocide, as the Third World is denied the benefit of electricity [as it’s from coal, the demon coal – or the demon nukes, or gas or oil . . .].
Mmmmm – wind power will bring Africa out of the Third World.
I’m told.
I don’t know.
Whilst an amnesty for some is sensible, do all the trolls, even, deserve that?
Where are our ever-punctilious warmistas, alarmists – and worse – when we discuss their appointments with – say: –
– Various escalating penalties, from drinking half a pint of custard. to apologising on line . . . .
Auto.
It’s amazing how the old radicals from the 50’s and 60’s who started the environmental movement have become the mainstream. While generally good intentioned they were also sloppy in their research and thought process. They were allowed to be. That hasn’t changed. Now the laid back moderate or conservative types are simply saying, “hey, wait a minute” That’s all you have to do or say to be called a wacky and dangerous zealot or denier by these old radicals . The new radicals like climate change skeptics are not allowed to be sloppy. I think it’s better we stay calm and rational and never reactionary. Sooner or later these types old or young won’t be able to take the smell or sound of their own bs.
I invested in Green Energy and Recycling in Australia a decade ago. Lost a packet. No need to sell out, they all went bankrupt.
I invested in Big Oil and Coal after that, and made all my loses back, and more. Despite Green Energy government incentives. There is a message there, and I am glad I listened.
I no longer trust ANY scientific announcement, or any Government predictions. They all lie. I do my own reading.
Since the climate changes at a pretty slow pace and the fact that humans can adapt, the risk should be ZERO.
the Credit Agencies should take note:
25 June: Boston Globe: Steve Annear: City solicits guesses on when lingering snow mound melts
Trying to secure a meeting with Mayor Martin J. Walsh? All you have to do is guess exactly when the giant South Boston snow mound, a lingering reminder of the relentless winter, will finally dissolve.
On Thursday, Walsh’s office launched a contest inviting residents to weigh in on social media and predict the pile’s demise…
Although it’s officially summer, and temperatures have soared into the 80s, the snow mound refuses to go away…
To enter the mayor’s contest, participants have to tweet Walsh using the hashtag #BOSMeltNow. The message should include the month and day a contestant believes the snow will finally disappear. Submissions are due by July 15.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/06/25/mayor-walsh-wants-residents-guess-when-snow-will-melt/OZ0ZAHnvxn0GCk3MimtPWN/story.html
IceAgeNow comments: BTW, the pile is at sea level.
That’s mist like because all their calculators are tied up working out their share of CAGW Swill
What happens if as the uk met indicates that we may be
heading towards a new little ice age?
The UK government announced this weeks that it plans to sell off up to 70% of its Green Investment Bank.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-33263710
This follows on from an announcement the previous week that the UK government will withdraw all subsidies for new onshore wind power developments from 1st April 2016. It does look as if the new majority government may not be as blindly committed to the climate change cause as its predecessor. I’m just hoping their next move will be to scrap the iniquitous 9% renewables obligation which is added to every domestic gas and electricity bill in the UK, which does nothing to impact climate change, but pushes ever more people into fuel poverty.
As things stand renewable energy is simply not cost effective and without massive tax payer subsidies and the 9% UK renewables obligation would simply not be used. Take a look at the history of the Edinburgh-based wave-energy company Polamis; despite considerable success in trials of its technology, when it ran out of money not a single private investor showed any interest in buying the company. So what did the blinkered pro-renewables Scottish government do? They kept it afloat it with tax-payer money.
Since when didn’t Credit Rating Agencies miscalcutate risk? In my opinion they are overestimating it in virtually everything, except green energy.
“We conclude the failures of credit-rating agencies were essential cogs in the wheel of financial destruction,” according to the report submitted by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in January 2011. “The three credit-rating agencies were key enablers of the financial meltdown. The mortgage-related securities at the heart of the crisis could not have been marketed and sold without their seal of approval.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/politics-financial-fraud-and-the-big-three-credit-ratings-agencies/5428603
I will say this for them, they tend to err in both directions, unlike some Agencies.
They are also the bottom of the barrel for financial analysts. Generally young, building their résumés, and woefully naive of how things work in real life. I’ll never forget sitting next to one at lunch at a thing called the American Secuition Forum in Las Vegas in early 2008.
She believed a typical home foreclosure could be accomplished in a single day.
Correction: “Securitization”.
Mods: Can you give me a break on this one? I didn’t realise that word was in the hyperlink.
Do not underestimate this end-run. It’s neat in its use of a non-existent future threat to make the prophesy self-fulfilling.
Game is to bully insurers, etc, to give up on investment in hydrocarbons. Thus Big Oil/Gas cost of capital goes up, investment is potentially lower which means supply less than it would be in a free market, therefore HCs more expensive, therefore ‘cleantech’ less disadvantaged and apparently more necessary as a stop-gap.
And we have grinning idiots like BOE governor Mark Carney helping push this by trying to skew the all-important regulatory framework in a major centre like London and egging on the EU to do the same, all under the guise of improving ‘financial stability’.
Oil cos have also been a little too fly in this move to accept all the doom-mongering and to lobby for a carbon tax. I read this as them thinking they can buy off further punitive measures by increasing a cost which their customers not they will pay. They seem to have overlooked the fact that their Green haters are trumpeting the accession as a confession that Big Oil is fully aware that it will destroy the planet if it continues on its present course. Truly dreadful PR
This is an insidious way to return us to Peak Oil by fiat and hence to advantage that ludicrous waste of capital which most so-called ‘alternatives’ represent
Also not to be ignored is this canard of the ‘subsidies’ which Big Oil enjoys, by which the Khmer Vert mean the tax-breaks – i.e., the partial abstinence on the part of the state from its ability to steal as much of those firms’ income as it can.