Given that the environmental movement generally and its climate alarmist subset tend to be anti-capitalist, whether logically or not, it is logical that when they find capitalists apparently endorsing their point of view they feel vindicated. Even the plutocrats get it, they cry. But there’s a difference between welcoming support and hallucinating it. And thus it is that Scientific American bellows “Big Banks Quietly Prepare for Catastrophic Warming” when in fact big banks do not prepare for catastrophic warming, quietly or otherwise.

We won’t belabour the point here that Scientific American has essentially abandoned science when it comes to climate. They are no longer interested in testing hypotheses, double-checking unusual results and expressing skepticism about initial claims of a breakthrough. Instead we’ll belabour the point that they are talking, or yelling, to themselves here.

The piece is full of the usual lurid hype typical of an António Guterres or a pre-jihadi Greta Thunberg. Even the opening sentence is a shade purple:

“Top Wall Street institutions are preparing for a severe future of global warming that blows past the temperature limits agreed to by more than 190 nations a decade ago, industry documents show.”

Blows past. The language of sports not science. But it gets worse. And not only because, of course, it blames Donald Trump:

“The big banks’ acknowledgment that the world is likely to fail at preventing warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels is spelled out in obscure reports for clients, investors and trade association members. Most were published after the reelection of President Donald Trump, who is seeking to repeal federal policies that support clean energy while turbocharging the production of oil, gas and coal — the main sources of global warming.”

Booooooo Trump. And yay going off the deep end:

“The stunning conclusion indicates that the bank believes the planet is hurtling toward a future in which severe droughts and harvest failures become widespread, sea-level rise is measured in feet rather than inches and tropical regions experience episodes of extreme heat and humidity for weeks at a time that would bring deadly risks to people who work outdoors.”

Yeah? What bank document says any of that? The JP Morgan Chase & Co. one, which they do eventually link to, does not contain the word “hurtle”. As a “Climate Report” it naturally expresses some sensitivity to the worldview and the investment concerns of its more Net Zero-inclined clients, though interestingly it insists up front that “We don’t ‘boycott’” and also that “We believe in free enterprise”. But it then talks about potential risk in subdued and prudent ways.

OK, not entirely. It does actually outline a “Stress Scenario” based on RPC8.5. But it talks about “severe” weather in cautious hypothetical terms, including mentioning that “financial losses due to severe weather events have not been material to the Firm.” It never alludes to “harvest failure” or “crop failure”. It does not mention, even as hypothetical, a sea level rise in feet. Or “extreme heat”; as befits investment firms, it only uses the word “extreme” once, in the phrase “the Firm continues to leverage the DNZE scenario as an extreme transition risk NGFS scenario” which is more likely to cause confusion or somnolence than alarm. It definitely doesn’t contain the word “deadly”.

As for Morgan Stanley, they eventually mumble that:

“Morgan Stanley’s climate forecast was tucked into a mundane research report on the future of air conditioning stocks, which it provided to clients on March 17. A 3 degree warming scenario, the analysts determined, could more than double the growth rate of the $235 billion cooling market every year, from 3 percent to 7 percent until 2030.”

So rapid growth in the air conditioning market in the next five years and eight months is the apocalypse? You’d think so since:

“The new warming estimates come as heat-trapping gases continue to rise globally and as international commitments to limit the burning of oil, gas and coal that’s responsible for the bulk of emissions have stalled. Meanwhile, megabanks like Wells Fargo are backsliding on their previous climate pledges and exiting from the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a United Nations-backed group that encouraged members to slash their emissions in line with the Paris Agreement. Morgan Stanley, which in October watered down its climate-related lending targets, declined to comment.”

Ahem. You're actually saying banks are backing away from Net Zero. Which isn’t quite what your headline implied.

In assessing this kind of torque, it’s important to bear in mind that large institutions of all sorts are the scene of internal maneuvering and that activists aim to capture outfits, or just committees, that will enable them to amplify their message and claim broader support than they really enjoy.

Thus the Scientific Alarmism piece also claims that:

“Morgan Stanley’s frank assessment of the air conditioning market follows a trade association briefing in February in which industry officials argued that the financial sector needs a coordinated messaging campaign to regulators, investors and the public that the Paris targets are no longer within reach – and banks should not be expected to pursue them. ‘The world is not on track to limit temperature rise below 2°C — and limiting warming [to] 1.5°C is almost certainly unachievable,’ the Institute of International Finance wrote in bolded text, citing analyses from the energy research firm the Rhodium Group and the Climate Action Tracker, an environmental collaborative.”

Now a “frank assessment of the air conditioning market” is a long way from a cry that the Earth is on fire. But the “Institute of International Finance” here means a “Sustainable Finance Monitor” newsletter from its “Deputy Director, Sustainable Finance”, its “Senior Policy Associate, Sustainable Finance”, and its “Managing Director and Head of Sustainable Finance”. In short, its resident climate obsessives.

What they say, what the Institution as a whole maintains, and what its members think are three very different questions. And yes, this newsletter does regurgitate all the clichés about passing 1.5°C, “major extreme weather and climate events, including floods, tropical cyclones, extreme heat and drought, and associated wildfires”. And the Rhodium Group and the Climate Action Tracker are not exactly middle-of-the-road outfits in this regard. But in terms of apocalyptic rhetoric, or its absence, the first of the “Takeaways for Financial Institutions” in that newsletter is:

“If global climate policy trajectories worsen and the Paris Agreement’s long-term 1.5°C target is breached, financial institutions are likely to face an array of strategic challenges.”

Not exactly “we are all going to die”, now is it? In fact we cannot think of any period in history where financial institutions were not likely to face an array of strategic challenges. Even before the invention of money the need to keep a full granary posed complex problems. And how’s this for world ends, film at 11? The second and last “Takeaway” is:

“Exceeding a 1.5c warming goal could lead to a wide-spread recalibration of financial institutions’ climate goals – but also create a chance for a more pragmatic understanding of how financial institutions can meaningfully support decarbonization.”

We are all going to recalibrate. And have opportunities. So the Scientific American piece leans heavily on, and gives the last word to, “Gautam Jain, a former investment banker who is now a senior research scholar at Columbia University”:

“Wall Street knows how to run the numbers, and right now the smart money expects warming to exceed 2 degrees, explained Jain, the former investment banker. ‘These guys are not making assumptions out of the blue,’ he said. ‘They are following the science.’”

Which does not say, and they do not say it says, that such warming will be disastrous. So Scientific American does it for them, throwing a charismatic form of life into the abyss for dramatic effect:

“The global Paris Agreement, from which the U.S. is withdrawing under Trump, aims to limit average temperature increases to well below 2 degrees Celsius. Scientists have warned that permanently exceeding 1.5 degrees – a threshold the world breached for the first time last year – could lead to increasingly severe climate impacts, such as the demise of coral reef ecosystems that hundreds of millions of people rely on for food and storm surge protection.”

And if the bankers didn’t say it, they dang well should have. So Scientific American says they did, and trusts readers not to follow the links.