Weekly ESG clippings #42 - cosmoclimatology, global greening, nuclear renaissance, ESG harm, unsustainable, dropping DEI, Canadian energy poverty, the next big scare
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 ideologies.
For example, look in the Absurdities section below for a story about how rooftop solar has been sold like other door-to-door scams and is starting to unwind. Is this something to be associated with?
This week in science we have a look at cosmoclimatology, global greening, and a changed conclusion about the jetstream.
In Investment/Economics we have two more episodes in 'Juice" and a commentary on the series, a warning that ESG scrutiny can harm reputation, unsustainable sustainability, DEI rejection, and Canadian energy poverty.
Finally, in Absurdities we bring you rooftop solar scams and faking climate change deaths.
SCIENCE
Below are links to a series of articles on cosmoclimatology, a subject which has fascinated me since I first encountered it over two decades ago. Note that I am very familiar with the author of the articles and the links to the scientific literature, and the work is highly credible, notwithstanding that the publisher of the articles is not a scientific journal or mainstream media. While there is ongoing debate about the specific mechanisms by which the Sun and other celestial drivers modulate the Earth's temperature cycles on a wide range of time scales, I have no doubt the influence is dominant over all other drivers.
Part 1: Climate ‘detective story’ upends politically correct science "Dr. Veiser discovered that the Earth warmed and cooled periodically on time scales of tens of millions of years throughout the Phanerozoic, the geologic eon that covers the time period from about 600 million years ago to the present."
Part 2: Solving the cosmic climate mystery! "...Dr. Jan Veizer, the Distinguished University Professor (emeritus) of Earth Sciences at the University of Ottawa and Institute for Geology, Mineralogy and Geophysics of Bochum Ruhr University in Germany. Veizer was surprised to note that the Earth warmed and cooled periodically, switching back and forth between ice house and hot house, following an approximately sinusoidal pattern with a periodicity of about 140 million years throughout the Phanerozoic, the geologic eon that covers the time period from about 600 million years ago to the present."
"...Professor Nir Shaviv of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in which Shaviv said that he might have an explanation for the periodic temperature changes Veizer had observed over the Phanerozoic. Shaviv explained that he had been working with galactic cosmic ray (GCR) flux, or variation, over the same time interval and that that variability has a periodicity similar to that which Veizer had found in temperature." See the graph below
1. A strong Sun causes slight warming on the Earth due to increased solar energy input to our planet.
2. A strong Sun also causes a stronger solar magnetic field.
3. This field reduces the amount of GCRs that can enter the solar system, and so Earth’s atmosphere.
4. So fewer clouds form, amplifying the initial warming by the Sun."
Part 4: Global Warming is not the problem. Earth is entering a new era of Global Cooling From a linked scientific article: "The impact of carbon dioxide on climate change is secondary and negligible compared to the effects of a long-term variation in the atmospheric water vapor concentration, the Earth's Bond albedo and the total solar energy of the quasi-bicentennial cycle reaching the Earth."
The global greening continues despite increased drought stress since 2000 "The global greening is an indisputable fact. The rate of global greening increased slightly."
#Gettingworse: floods edition "A flood will occur somewhere around the world this year. And when it does we know what the experts will say: they're getting worse because of climate change. How do they know floods are getting worse? The same way they know everything is getting worse: because with climate change everything is getting worse."
Update to aircraft observations and reanalysis depictions of trends in the North Atlantic winter jet stream wind speeds and turbulence "Three more Northern Hemisphere winters (2021–2023) of European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis v5 (ERA5) data and the North Atlantic Oscillation series have become available. These winters can be used to extend the 2002–2020 wind-speed time series in our article (Tenenbaum et al., 2022; figs 2 and 4). When we add these new years to the previous results, the statistical significance assigned to the now 22-year North Atlantic winter jet stream increase within the Global Aircraft Data Set (GADS) boxes disappears. We take the boundary for significance as a value above the 95% confidence level." "The result is that the primary conclusion of Tenenbaum et al. (2022), that the wind speeds near the North Atlantic winter jet stream exit region increased by 2.5% per year, changes to 1.4% per year. But more crucially, it is no longer statistically significant."
INVESTMENT/ECONOMICS
Juice (episode 3) - Green Dreams The Osage Nation is in the midst of the longest-running legal battle against wind energy in American history. The tribe’s fight against Rome-based Enel is reminiscent of the themes in Martin Scorsese’s epic film, Killers Of The Flower Moon. But the tribe’s resistance against Enel’s rent-seeking is only one example of the fights against alternative energy projects that are happening all across rural America.
JUICE (Episode 4) - Nuclear Renaissance The global nuclear comeback is real, even in Japan, where the accident at Fukushima Daiichi still looms large in the public’s consciousness. For proof of that comeback, we went to Canada, where a tall, Toronto-based emergency room doctor named Chris Keefer ignited a groundswell of support to expand and refurbish Ontario’s fleet of nuclear reactors.
Comment On The Robert Bryce Series "Juice: Power, Politics, And The Grid" "Rather than a simple “deregulation,” what occurred was that one regulatory framework was replaced by another. The new framework had a meaningful “deregulatory” aspect, in that an element of competition has been introduced into the portion of the system where the electricity is produced. However, that change was accompanied by the imposition by regulators of a market structure that is non-sensical and dangerous. This market structure was imposed by the government, rather than being devised by private actors, and in that sense was not “deregulation” at all.
"The regulators have set up two markets into which producers can bid: a “day ahead” market, and a “real time” (right this second) market. The lowest price wins.
"Whoever came up with this market structure was a complete idiot. On an electrical grid the most valuable thing is reliability of supply. This government-created structure puts no value on reliability of supply, and instead advantages unreliable and useless wind and solar production. Anybody who happens to have electricity to supply right now (i.e., a wind turbine owner when the wind is blowing) can underbid the reliable producer for this minute or hour or day, and force that reliable producer to go idle. And thus we now have the brave new world where on windy days wind producers force all the thermal plants offline, while prices drop near zero (or even become negative at times); and then when the wind is calm the thermal producers can charge exorbitant prices needed to cover their capital costs over a handful of hours of production. Consumer prices soar."
BlackRock Warns Shareholders That ESG Scrutiny Could Harm Its Reputation and Business In the risk disclosures section of its annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday, BlackRock added a section noting it "faces increasing focus from regulators, officials, clients and other stakeholders regarding ESG matters."
Is the global march towards sustainable development unsustainable? "Regulations related to climate risks could prove a costly burden for Canadian corporations, institutions." "The planned reset of global corporate capitalism to save the planet continues to stumble toward the great unknown, in the sense that even after decades of effort the machinery to expand regulatory control over investment and business decisions remains bogged down in murky conceptual clay. Developments in regulatory and legal circles suggest 2024 will be a pivotal year for the revolutionary ideas that are supposed to lead to a fundamental transition from bad economic policy to green."
"All of this is taking place on a shaky theoretical foundation in economics and environmental change. The 1987 Brundtland Commission simplistically defined sustainable development as “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Exactly what “needs” are is unclear. Maybe it was intended to capture Marx’s slogan: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Meaning: Take from wants of the developed world and give to the needs of the developing world?"
Yale turns its back on DEI policies Yale University announced it would reinstate standardised testing requirements in the autumn of 2025. Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeremiah Quinlan stated that Yale’s test-optional policies hurt the disadvantaged students it was trying to help: “Our analyses have found that applicants without test scores have been less likely to be admitted; concerningly, this was especially true for applicants from lower-income backgrounds and those attending high schools with fewer college-preparatory courses.” Yale’s decision makes it the third elite American university to reverse course after Dartmouth College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Does this mean that the tide could be turning?
"Now, as the progressive haze has begun to clear, universities such as Yale and Dartmouth have come to their senses. But their susceptibility to cultural trends should still be concerning, as these decisions should be based on quality evidence. So there is still a way to go before anti-meritocratic DEI policies are fully removed from college admissions."
Energy poverty in Canada As many as a fifth of Canadians face “energy poverty” due to high costs, says the Canadian Journal of Public Health. “Depending on the measure, six to 19 percent of Canadian households face energy poverty,” said a peer-reviewed study led by a McGill professor: “In Canada home heating during the winter months is a matter of life and death.” Maybe, just maybe, we can't "carbon tax" our way to prosperity after all.
ABSURDITIES
Rooftop Solar Industry On The Brink Solar customers across the country say that salespeople obscure the specific terms of the financial agreements and cloud the value of the products they peddle. Related court cases are starting to pile up. “I have been practicing consumer law for over a decade, and I’ve never seen anything like what we are seeing in the solar industry right now,” says Kristin Kemnitzer, who represents Jones and says her firm gets “multiple” calls every week from potential clients with similar stories.
The Next Big Climate Scare: Counting Climate Change Deaths "With deaths from natural disasters and famine declining, and since fewer people die in warmer temperatures, the case for counting deaths from global warming is poor at best. But don’t underestimate the ability of climate alarmists to create fear by exaggerating the data."
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