Acclaimed climate scientist Judith Curry believes climate change is a ‘wicked’ problem, complex and no simplistic ‘solution’ like cutting emissions or carbon taxing people will do anything to stop Mother Nature. She was the UK’s Global Warming Policy Foundation's guest speaker last week, and talked about “Climate Uncertainty and Risk.” If only the acclaimed climate scientist had been speaking to the participants of the climate risk webinar that I sat through that same day, presented by the Office of the Superintendent for Financial Institutions. (OSFI supervises federally regulated financial institutions and pension plans, to contribute to public confidence in the financial system.)The contrast between the two webinars was sad. Shocking.Unlike Dr. Curry, who recently published a book — 'Climate Uncertainty and Risk,' the same title as her presentation —none of the speakers at the OSFI climate uncertainty event were climate scientists... And it showed.One person in the opening comments said: “…increasing from 1.5°C to 2°C above pre-industrial levels will be far worse than going from 1.0°C to 1.5°C. So, as we get into higher and higher temperature ranges, we expect that the impacts will not be linear and will scale much more quickly....”Dr. Curry would emphatically not agree with any of those comments. It would behoove the busy banking sector to sit down and watch her presentation, review her power point and read her book by the same name. As Dr. Curry points out, climate is a ‘wicked’ problem — meaning multi-faceted, unpredictable, uncontrollable and fraught with unexpected dynamics and impacts, most natural.OSFI is no doubt influenced by international banking parameters, but by forcing banks, financial institutions and pension funds to assess climate risk of their clients, they essentially will be skewing markets and creating losses, rather than managing them.There are the new BASEL Core Principles for banking, which include climate-risk reporting. And there’s the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) which has developed new climate risk scenarios. (However, the NFGS reference point is the 2018 IPCC SR1.5 report, which unfortunately employed the implausible scenario known as RCP 8.5.) The most recent IPCC AR6 Physical Sciences report judges that extreme scenario as low likelihood.The NGFS uses a ‘downscaling’ method (a mathematical method that attempts to apply results from global climate models with 30 to 200 km gridded areas, to smaller local areas). This tends to result in higher temperature projections, as outlined in “Facts vs Fortune Telling” (pg. 2, pg. 38-39) which critiques Prof. Katherine Hayhoe’s report on Alberta’s Climate Future which used a similar downscaling technique.Factually, the climate emergency is over when RCP 8.5 is removed from the equation.Maybe that’s why prominent green billionaires developed the “Risky Business” report in 2014, which uses RCP 8.5 as ‘business-as-usual.’ But that was the same year Dr. Curry testified to the US Senate that carbon dioxide is not the control knob that can fine tune climate, and that the case for human caused global warming was weakened by recent evidence.Climate science and climate finance parted ways that year and have not cross paths since.At least one of the same “Risky Business” green billionaires, Michael Bloomberg, is influential in the banking climate risk sector. Also his philanthropy is part of the massive ClimateWorks group, pushing ‘green’ solutions and carbon markets by funding environmental groups. The OSFI, the Bank of Canada and NGFS all rely on out-of-date materials for framing their climate risk scenarios. Why does the implausible scenario RCP 8.5 show up again in OSFI’s 5.2 Physical Climate Scenarios? My best guess? It's probably because it is the only way you can squeeze a climate emergency out of the data. Millions of dollars are invested in “NetZero solutions” which have no future if there’s no climate emergency.Even more absurdly, the OSFI is only working with two key ‘climate’ risk hazards (See 5.5) — riverine/coastal flooding and a novel index “fire weather” risk.That’s NetZero nonsense right there.Climate change refers to changes in regional weather patterns over 30+ year periods; flooding and wildfire risks are seasonal. For society, building on a flood plain creates the risk. As for wildfire, the risks are related to behavioral and property/community fire risk management, as outlined in FireSmart recommendations.Natural Resources Canada is already doing wildfire weather risk reporting. Wildfire is mostly driven by fuel load, age of forest stand, transient weather/atmospheric conditions, and wildland-urban interface. The risk changes from day to day, often hour to hour, and place to place due to dozens of factors. Not something a bank can forecast.“Weather” is an intangible element that no one can manage; wildfire risks can be quantified and well-managed with properly implemented community plans. There’s no use making a wildfire management plan and then shelving it. Consider Kelowna’s fate last year.Likewise, the sources for OSFI flood and wildfire weather ‘data’ will be RiskThinking.AI and ClimateData.ca — both of which rely on computer simulations, which in turn rely on the assumptions used in their algorithms.ClimateData.ca describes RCP 8.5 as “the high emissions scenario, shows us a future where there are few restrictions on emissions.” This is false. RCP 8.5 projects an implausible future where more coal than exists on earth is burned, where population is 3-6 billion more than the UN projects, and where world crude oil production in 2100 would have to be about four times that of 2015 to meet the assumed demand, about twice the level of proven crude oil reserves!Professor Jessica Weinkle has testified to US Senate on the serious conflicts of interest at play in the world of climate risk reporting — they are quite evident in the NGFS report sponsors and mirrored in the sponsors of RiskThinking.AI.The IPCC itself said that “long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”Should Canada be banking on mandatory climate astrology?
Acclaimed climate scientist Judith Curry believes climate change is a ‘wicked’ problem, complex and no simplistic ‘solution’ like cutting emissions or carbon taxing people will do anything to stop Mother Nature. She was the UK’s Global Warming Policy Foundation's guest speaker last week, and talked about “Climate Uncertainty and Risk.” If only the acclaimed climate scientist had been speaking to the participants of the climate risk webinar that I sat through that same day, presented by the Office of the Superintendent for Financial Institutions. (OSFI supervises federally regulated financial institutions and pension plans, to contribute to public confidence in the financial system.)The contrast between the two webinars was sad. Shocking.Unlike Dr. Curry, who recently published a book — 'Climate Uncertainty and Risk,' the same title as her presentation —none of the speakers at the OSFI climate uncertainty event were climate scientists... And it showed.One person in the opening comments said: “…increasing from 1.5°C to 2°C above pre-industrial levels will be far worse than going from 1.0°C to 1.5°C. So, as we get into higher and higher temperature ranges, we expect that the impacts will not be linear and will scale much more quickly....”Dr. Curry would emphatically not agree with any of those comments. It would behoove the busy banking sector to sit down and watch her presentation, review her power point and read her book by the same name. As Dr. Curry points out, climate is a ‘wicked’ problem — meaning multi-faceted, unpredictable, uncontrollable and fraught with unexpected dynamics and impacts, most natural.OSFI is no doubt influenced by international banking parameters, but by forcing banks, financial institutions and pension funds to assess climate risk of their clients, they essentially will be skewing markets and creating losses, rather than managing them.There are the new BASEL Core Principles for banking, which include climate-risk reporting. And there’s the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) which has developed new climate risk scenarios. (However, the NFGS reference point is the 2018 IPCC SR1.5 report, which unfortunately employed the implausible scenario known as RCP 8.5.) The most recent IPCC AR6 Physical Sciences report judges that extreme scenario as low likelihood.The NGFS uses a ‘downscaling’ method (a mathematical method that attempts to apply results from global climate models with 30 to 200 km gridded areas, to smaller local areas). This tends to result in higher temperature projections, as outlined in “Facts vs Fortune Telling” (pg. 2, pg. 38-39) which critiques Prof. Katherine Hayhoe’s report on Alberta’s Climate Future which used a similar downscaling technique.Factually, the climate emergency is over when RCP 8.5 is removed from the equation.Maybe that’s why prominent green billionaires developed the “Risky Business” report in 2014, which uses RCP 8.5 as ‘business-as-usual.’ But that was the same year Dr. Curry testified to the US Senate that carbon dioxide is not the control knob that can fine tune climate, and that the case for human caused global warming was weakened by recent evidence.Climate science and climate finance parted ways that year and have not cross paths since.At least one of the same “Risky Business” green billionaires, Michael Bloomberg, is influential in the banking climate risk sector. Also his philanthropy is part of the massive ClimateWorks group, pushing ‘green’ solutions and carbon markets by funding environmental groups. The OSFI, the Bank of Canada and NGFS all rely on out-of-date materials for framing their climate risk scenarios. Why does the implausible scenario RCP 8.5 show up again in OSFI’s 5.2 Physical Climate Scenarios? My best guess? It's probably because it is the only way you can squeeze a climate emergency out of the data. Millions of dollars are invested in “NetZero solutions” which have no future if there’s no climate emergency.Even more absurdly, the OSFI is only working with two key ‘climate’ risk hazards (See 5.5) — riverine/coastal flooding and a novel index “fire weather” risk.That’s NetZero nonsense right there.Climate change refers to changes in regional weather patterns over 30+ year periods; flooding and wildfire risks are seasonal. For society, building on a flood plain creates the risk. As for wildfire, the risks are related to behavioral and property/community fire risk management, as outlined in FireSmart recommendations.Natural Resources Canada is already doing wildfire weather risk reporting. Wildfire is mostly driven by fuel load, age of forest stand, transient weather/atmospheric conditions, and wildland-urban interface. The risk changes from day to day, often hour to hour, and place to place due to dozens of factors. Not something a bank can forecast.“Weather” is an intangible element that no one can manage; wildfire risks can be quantified and well-managed with properly implemented community plans. There’s no use making a wildfire management plan and then shelving it. Consider Kelowna’s fate last year.Likewise, the sources for OSFI flood and wildfire weather ‘data’ will be RiskThinking.AI and ClimateData.ca — both of which rely on computer simulations, which in turn rely on the assumptions used in their algorithms.ClimateData.ca describes RCP 8.5 as “the high emissions scenario, shows us a future where there are few restrictions on emissions.” This is false. RCP 8.5 projects an implausible future where more coal than exists on earth is burned, where population is 3-6 billion more than the UN projects, and where world crude oil production in 2100 would have to be about four times that of 2015 to meet the assumed demand, about twice the level of proven crude oil reserves!Professor Jessica Weinkle has testified to US Senate on the serious conflicts of interest at play in the world of climate risk reporting — they are quite evident in the NGFS report sponsors and mirrored in the sponsors of RiskThinking.AI.The IPCC itself said that “long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”Should Canada be banking on mandatory climate astrology?
