Examining ESG

Ho hum, another week and another litany of ESG errors revealed. It's not hard to find folks, but when will regulators and policymakers awake to this reality? Likely not until the general culture has turned against them - and the tide is turning.  In science this week: • Another powerful study shows that temperature causes CO2 and the human influence on CO2 is not discernable. • Climate change may cost 1% to 2% in a century, but net-zero policies will cost 700% more. • Clarity on the Lytton BC heat dome of 2021. • Fraud in sea level rise measurement alteration. • Canadian arctic ice reporting bias. In Economics/Investment: • Businesses worry about ESG fraud. • Blackrock faces pressure about ESG. • Canadian banks say sustainable finance pledges may not curtail emissions growth • Noticing that the energy transition is not happening • Energy companies start to find their voice at last. • Bonuses padded by cryptic ESG claims draw scrutiny. • ESG has spawned a bul...

  A whole lot of science this week: Temperature and CO2: cause and effect The IPCC’s new hockey stick Holocene temperature variations Iceland’s ice not melting Greenland near lowest temp of last 10,000 years The end of el-Nino brings cold for the coming years No trend in Rainfall   Also a bunch of Investment/Economic articles: The regulatory climate disclosure fraud Flawed ESG statistics Canadian fund disclosures required, but complete lack of due diligence by regulators ESG series in Invesmtent Executive, again no due diligence Exxon on the offensive Banks shoot themselves in the foot by adopting ESG Nearly useless battery energy storage Diversity hiring is racist   And then Absurdities: Chopping down 120,000 to place industrial wind turbines to save the environment A true ban on fossil fuels would quickly force a reality check. Will any...

 This week in science we start with an academic study of how research reports in ecology have become so distorted and exaggerate their findings, followed by an article that explains how the growth of assets in risky areas explains greater economic damages, even as human damage has plummeted. Next comes a debunking of the infamous stripes graphic, an explanation that climate models are hugely biased upwards when compared to measurements, and last up we see falling flood risks. In Investment/Economics we kick off with what government should (not) do about climate change, then an article explaining how bank research on net zero is near zero, followed by how climate change is not detected in insurance losses. Next we see how DEI is filled with fraud, ESG debt is bleeding clients, and Blackrock is turning down climate proposals. We continue with the injustice of "clean energy" minerals, the impossibility of electrifying all vehicles, and the dumping of a business leader who dared ...

Imagine you are a leader for a company that manages investments or insurance products, and you have spent a bunch of money adding ESG/sustainable/responsible and the like capabilities to your stable of money managers. You also added ESG overlays to all your other management teams, paid consultants to design and implement all this and put ESG prominently in your marketing. Then, the investing public, financial advisors, and regulators started to recognize the deep errors and biases in the whole ESG movement, and found that much of the terminology you used, the claims you made, the marketing materials you created and the products you offered were firmly based on false scientific claims, false economic benefits, false social values and in fact were terribly harmful to humanity. Might some reputational, regulatory, and even legal damages follow? This blog is an effort to persuade Canadian and international investment managers to tread much more carefully before adopting ESG and similar ide...

Imagine you are a leader for a company that manages investments or insurance products, and you have spent a bunch of money adding ESG/sustainable/responsible and the like capabilities to your stable of money managers. You also added ESG overlays to all your other management teams, paid consultants to design and implement all this and put ESG prominently in your marketing. Then, the investing public, financial advisors, and regulators started to recognize the deep errors and biases in the whole ESG movement, and found that much of the terminology you used, the claims you made, the marketing materials you created and the products you offered were firmly based on false scientific claims, false economic benefits, false social values and in fact were terribly harmful to humanity. Might some reputational, regulatory, and even legal damages follow? This blog is an effort to persuade Canadian and international investment managers to tread much more carefully before adopting ESG and similar ide...