Reposted from Dr. Roy Spencer’s Blog
February 17th, 2020 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
Langham Huntington Hotel in Pasadena, CA.
Last week I was privileged to present an invited talk (PDF here) to the Winter Roundtable of the the Pacific Pension & Investment Institute in Pasadena, CA. The PPI meeting includes about 120 senior asset managers representing about $25 Trillion in investments. Their focus is on long-term investing with many managing the retirement funds of private sector and state employees.
They had originally intended the climate change session to be a debate, but after numerous inquiries were unable to find anyone who was willing to oppose me.
Like most people, these asset managers represent a wide variety of views on climate change, but what they have in common is they are under increasing pressure to make “sustainable investing” a significant fraction of their portfolios. Some managers view this as an infringement on their fiduciary responsibility to provide the highest rates of return for their customers. Others believe that sustainable investing (e.g. in renewable energy projects) is a good long-term investment if not a moral duty. Nearly all have now divested from coal. Many investment funds now highlight their sustainable investments, as they cater to investors who (for a variety of reasons) want to be part of this new trend.
My understanding is that most investment managers have largely been convinced that climate change is a serious threat. My message was that this is not the case, and that at a minimum the dangers posed by human-caused climate change have been exaggerated. Furthermore, the benefits of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (e.g. increased agricultural productivity with no sign of climate change-induced agricultural harm) are seldom mentioned. I showed Bjorn Lomborg’s evidence for the 95% reduction in weather-related mortality over the last 100 years, as well as Roger Pielke, Jr’s Munich Re data showing no increase in insured damages as a fraction of GDP.
One meeting organizer took considerable professional risk in insisting that I be invited to provide a more balanced view of climate change than most of the attendees had been exposed to before, and there was considerable anxiety about my inclusion in the program. Fortunately, my message (a 30 minute PowerPoint presentation [pdf here] with a panel discussion afterward) was unexpectedly well-received. An e-mail circulated after the meeting claimed that I had “changed the dynamic of future meetings.” The Heartland Institute was also involved in making this happen.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti gave a speech at the first night’s dinner, in which he (as you might expect) mentioned the challenge of climate change, reducing “carbon” emissions, and his young daughter’s anxiety over global warming.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti addresses the Winter Roundtable of the PPI Institute, 12 February 2020, Pasadena, CA.
The experience for me was gratifying. Even those few participants who disagreed with me were very polite, and we all got along very well. In what might be considered a bit of irony, on my flight to LAX we flew past the failed Ivanpah solar power facility southwest of Las Vegas, which produced a blinding white light for about 5 minutes.
Ivanpah solar energy facility in California’s Mojave Desert on 12 February 2020, taken from about 33,000 ft. altitude.
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Great presentation. Hopefully, you will be invited back and maybe even have the opportunity to debate. One question – you mention the failed Ivanpah solar installation. Can anyone provide current data on what is happening there or with Crescent Dunes for that matter? There is a lot of news that is a few years old, but I am not finding much about how well these farms are currently working. Are they meeting their objective? How much fossil fuel are they using to compensate for any gap in energy production., etc?
“Their focus is on long-term investing with many managing the retirement funds of private sector and state employees.”
Well, I don’t know if this qualifies, but…
Trump wants to plant a trillion trees. Google says we already have 3 trillion of them on Earth, and the Earth is already greening, but assuming we want more…
Tree-planting is sustainable, anybody can do it, and it soaks up evil CO2. It’s healthy exercise. And best of all for investors, lumber is expensive, hence it yields profits down the line.
I remember way back when the investment community divested themselves of Big Pharma companies that did business in targeted “racist” African countries. These same “portfolio managers” soon discovered that some of the very same divested Big Pharma companies also provided drugs that made childbirth easier and safer for black women. Without these beneficial drugs, those very same black women would be exposed to birth-related complications and even death. That’s what happens when money managers mix their deals–the Law of Untended Consequences takes over. A good thing most of these dim-witted investment managers were not smart enough and IQ challenged to get into medical school.
Dr. Spencer,
Thank you for sharing your presentation with WUWT readers.
You say on slide 4 of your power point presentation, “MY MESSAGE: 1. Slow warming is occurring, probably mostly from CO2, but there is no climate “crisis” or “emergency.”
The next slide says: “1. The climate system has warmed in recent decades, with 2010-2019 the warmest decade in the instrumental record (last ~150 yrs). 2. At least some (most?) of this warming is due to increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuel burning”
Your next slide says, “Natural causes of climate change are largely not understood. Climate can change without any forcing (it’s a chaotic system).”
Several slides later you cite an alarmist headline that claims, “Global Warming of Oceans Equivalent to an Atomic Bomb per Second”; but this is followed by your own remark, “But Guess What…? The sun puts the energy equivalent of 300 atomic bombs into the ocean every second.”
Although you aver that the modest warming of the Earth is probably due to CO2, you also claim that natural causes are “largely not understood”; midway through the lecture you state that the solar input to the oceans is at least 300 times the rate of CO2 forcing.
Would you explain this seeming contradiction? I appreciate any comments.
“Natural causes of climate change are largely not understood.
Climate can change without any forcing (it’s a chaotic system).”
The first statement invalidates the second statement.
But the second statement implies that the first statement will not change.