By John A. Charles, Jr.
Relying on computer models to predict the future has always been risky. Now we know it’s the basis of climate change securities fraud as well.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) recently wrote the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that several California cities have claimed in lawsuits against oil and gas companies that those companies failed to disclose known climate risks associated with fossil fuel use. Yet those same cities have made bond offerings in which they tell potential investors that it is impossible to predict future risks of climate change.
For example, San Francisco predicts in its lawsuit against the oil industry that it will be subjected to as much as 0.8 feet of additional sea level rise by 2030, with short-term costs of $500 million and long-term costs of $5 billion. Yet the City tells potential bond investors, “The City is unable to predict whether seal-level rise will occur.”
The County of Santa Cruz claims in its fossil fuel lawsuit that there is “a 98% chance that the County experiences a devastating three-foot flood before the year 2050.” Meanwhile, in efforts to sell its own municipal bonds, the County reassures investors that it is unable to predict such floods.
This confirms what has long been suspected: Climate change alarmists just make stuff up to scare the public.
John A. Charles, Jr. is President and CEO of Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization.
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2-20-18-Climate_Change_Alarmists_Can’t_Get_Their_Story_Straight
David Appell
It’s impossible to predict future climate, because no one knows how much CO2, methane, nitrous oxide etc we will emit, year-by-year, along the way. Nor changes in the Sun’s irradiance, or major volcanic eruptions, etc.
The best that can be done are PROJECTIONS, which use assumptions about the greenhouse gases the world will emit, and when. Will the future see more coal use? Will carbon capture prove useful? Etc.
And there are uncertainties for these projections, because, like all science, the measured numbers that go into a projection aren’t perfectly known — they have error bars. And it’s not perfectly known how clouds will respond, or how exactly sea ice or glaciers will melt, and so on for many factors. This means the best that can be done are projections with error bands around them.
But we don’t need exact numbers to understand that climate is changing very fast, and 2+ C of warming will be troublesome.
San Francisco was properly communicating the science. It’d be good if the Cascade Policy Institute would do the same.