Stuart Kirk, a leader in HSBC’s responsible investing team, has been suspended for casting doubt on some of the more hysterical claims made by climate alarmists at a speech he made last week. BBC News has more.
HSBC has reportedly suspended a senior executive who accused central bankers and other officials of exaggerating the financial risks of climate change.
Last week, Stuart Kirk, a leader in the bank’s responsible investing team, said: “There’s always some nut job telling me about the end of the world.”
At the weekend, HSBC’s boss Noel Quinn posted on social media that he did not agree “at all” with the comments.
The firm declined to comment on reports that Mr Kirk has been suspended.
Mr. Kirk, who is global head of responsible investing at the bank’s asset management division, was suspended pending an investigation into a speech he made at an event last week, according to the Financial Times, which first reported the story.
His role, which is based in London, involves considering the impact of investments on environmental, social and governance issues.
HSBC came under pressure to sack Mr. Kirk after he gave the presentation entitled “Why investors need not worry about climate risk” at a conference on Thursday.
In the address he made light of the risks of major floods and said that he had to spend his time “looking at something that’s going to happen in 20 or 30 years”.
During the 15-minute address at the FT Moral Money Summit, Mr Kirk said “Climate change is not a financial risk that we need to worry about.”
“Unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings are ALWAYS wrong,” a slide shown as part of the presentation said.
Later in the presentation, he said: “Who cares if Miami is six metres underwater in 100 years? Amsterdam has been six metres underwater for ages and that’s a really nice place.”
Mr. Kirk did not immediately respond to a BBC request for comment.
Worth reading in full.
If any readers have a copy of Stuart Kirk’s presentation or know how to get hold of it, please get in touch. We’d like to publish it on the Daily Sceptic.
Stop Press: Here is Stuart Kirk’s talk entitled “Why investors need not worry about climate risk“.
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What are the climate mullahs so fearful of that they react so harshly to “heretics”?
We know its not climate change they fear.
What’s the scam the head of HSBC is protecting?
Are they following the money which is following the science? I assume it’s academic to them whether the world gets warmer, colder or stays the same, as long as there’s money to be made from whatever is perceived to be happening. So I think my answer is, losing money.
Going off at a tangent, I’m beginning to wonder whether signed up governments around the world actually paid anything for the vaccines, just agreed to use them all. That might explain why we have so many, call it the Billy Bunter effect.
I’ve just read the article below and a dark thought has crossed my mind.
https://www.sciencealert.com/first-patient-injected-with-experimental-cancer-killing-virus-in-new-clinical-trial
Believing that common colds acted as a free regular service for the natural immune system ie helping to keep rogue cells in check, after reading the article it occurred to me that I may have been looking at the motivation for mRNA jabs in completely the wrong way, perplexing.
Some fairly mainstream climate hysterics in the US have called for the execution of “deniers”.
Who precisely?
I’ll have to look it up, bear with me.
Sorry Beowulf I can’t find it now. Read it on Mark Steyn years ago but it seems to have been memory holed.
“Honkong and Shanghai Bank” ….hmmmm /..pause for thought there .
Hasn’t Shanghai just been in the news?
just look at how many billions have been “invested” in all the renewable crap. (I say “invested” as they don’t actually work so not an investment in the normal sense)
The term is rent-seeked.
There’d be no market for them without taxpayer subsidy.
No dissent allowed in the New Normal …. See, it’s not just the sacrosanct Covid mantras.
They know that the “Climate Change” is a lie. That’s why they are so afraid of those criticising it.
The talk (or at least some of it?) is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfNamRmje-s
Worth downloading before it’s pulled
Not as eye opening as expected. More of a swan song, he seems confused, cheesed off and has clearly forgotten that he works for HSBC, other than that I can see why they let him go. It’s a bank for god’s sake.
What a legend. He can wear his reprimand as a real badge of honour.
Yes, it’s a good talk. It’s telling that his critics haven’t bothered to explain why they think he’s wrong, they just assert that he’s wrong.
The banks are set to make huge profits from the green agenda — it certainly doesn’t suit them to have one of their officials saying that they shouldn’t get to make these profits.
How? If green industry is expensive and unprofitable, they would stand to make even bigger profits betting against the “green agenda”.
Who is holding a metaphorical gun (or perhaps even a real one) behind their head insisting they go along with it?
It’s heavily subsidised by taxpayers and levies on fuel bills. Big Green is rising as Big Oil falls. It’s up there with Big Parma, and just as ruthless.
People are being bombarded by blatant lies from the likes of the Biased Brainwashing Cult. It shouldn’t be surprising, that when someone does their own research and forms an opinion based on the evidence, that it becomes impossible for those subject to the brainwashing to both accept the validity of the science, and follow their brainwashing.
Result: people act stupidly, usually trying to make the evidence they are being stupid disappear or shut up.
Does this mean there’s cheap property available that the rich are desperate to off load on Sandbanks? Thought not.
Of course I wouldn’t bother booking a holiday in the Maldives as they will be underwater soon. Despite the fact they are building several new airports to boost tourism.
Yes, at the current rate of area increase, I calculate that the Maldives were underwater about 1200 years ago. Time-Travellers, be WARNED!!!
Another victim who would wish they where a member of the free speech union
Mr. Kirk’s point, that investors need not worry about climate change, is totally valid. The predicted catastrophes are too far into the future to matter when we make decisions today. I explained this a while ago here
He could have gone a lot further. I’d have said “we have alarming models that persistently overstate the small amount of warming we are seeing since the end of the mini ice age. On a longer times scale we live in a deepening ice age that started 2.8m years ago, the last time the planet was this cool was 220m years ago. Glaciation at both poles is exceptionally rare through earth’s history. Co2 concentrations are 20 times lower than during the Cambrian due to sequestration. Why is a species evolved in the tropics concerning itself about a small amount of warming, when the last climate event was a major glaciation just 20000 years ago” The mistake he made was not being truthful enough. Hais he spoken the truth he’d have simply been ignored.
*Had he spoken the truth….
“Later in the presentation, he said: “Who cares if Miami is six metres underwater in 100 years? Amsterdam has been six metres underwater for ages and that’s a really nice place.”
That is one of the smartest comments on this whole fiasco that I have ever heard.
Big kudos.
(PS that doesn’t mean that I accept the anthropogenic Climate Change hypothesis or think that there really will be a six meter ocean rise over the next century, just that humans are capable of coping with anything the primitive force known as ‘Mother Nature’ throws at us).
That is the wrong message. It is one if resilience and adaptation. The current trend is you cannot survive without government planning and control.
No wonder he has been silenced.
Totally agree, although I would add that the vast majority of the population in the UK is worshipping at the Green altar and doesn’t need anything to be forcibly imposed top down.
Hopefully that is going to change quite soon as the Climate Change chickens come home to roost via massively increasing energy and fuel prices and general knock on inflation.
Isn’t Miami in Florida – the Florida in the United States, that is, not the Florida in Cuba?
I loved it when Canadian former prime minister Kim Campbell said of a hurricane that he was “rooting for a direct hit on Mar-a-Lago”. Anyone who didn’t smile at that statement is a miserable git.
“Mother Nature” has now been multiple jabbed by Gates and chipped by Schwab – she no longer has a place in the New World Order!
The Climate Change agenda is not being imposed top down by either transnational groups / individuals or national governments (though both are certainly taking advantage of it), but is being wholeheartedly embraced by large majorities of populations who have adopted environmentalism as their religion of choice for several decades now.
The challenge is primarily ideological, not political or conspiratorial.
Actually no – climate change has consistently come a long way down the electorate’s list of priorities in opinion polls. It’s possible that has changed very recently, but if it has, then that’s just the way these tyrants operate. As with COVID, they have the media spread misinformation (in this case, out of context reports of bad weather) until the electorate demands their own enslavement. The policies are being imposed from above, just as the WEF’s beloved digital ID is.
A lot of the narrative that people believe in the “climate emergency” has been based on a UNDP online survey from January 2021, which I remember completing myself. As discussed here: https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/largest-climate-opinion-poll-also-one-of-the-worst it was a poor survey, and online surveys are rough and subject to bias at the best of times. 40% of those who agreed there was a “climate emergency” said in their answers to followup questions that we should not rush to act. The survey did not indicate support for the kind of policies that are being proposed.
“Actually no – climate change has consistently come a long way down the electorate’s list of priorities in opinion polls.”
I didn’t say anything about its place in voters’ priorities, merely that the overwhelming majority believe in the alleged reality of harmful anthropogenic climate change.
It would be surprising if they didn’t as all the main political parties, TV channels, monarchy, universities, civil service, local government, celebrities etc etc fully endorse the pseudo-science, and environmentalism (including its Climate Change Book of the Apocalypse) has been indoctrinated into school children for around the last 25 years.
This poll series between 2008 and 2019 conducted by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) shows that throughout this prolonged period an average of over 90% of the British public have bought into the theory and around 80% are either fairly or very concerned (scroll down to graph)
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-rolls-reveal-surge-in-concern-in-uk-about-climate-change/
All the above means that the highly intrusive and increasingly economically crippling Climate Change policies have not had to be imposed top-down.
I am not sure who you are identifying as ‘these tyrants’, but you did mention the WEF. Like all such transnational networking and lobbying bodies they have no direct executive authority, any policies they propose have to be implemented by national governments.
So no tyranny possible.
If on the other hand you were referring to the UK government itself it is not in fact acting tyrannically over Climate Change (see all the above).
Neither did it do so over the admittedly wildly illiberal and counter-productive Coronavirus measures; these too were eagerly embraced by a compliant population (ultra-health is a subset of the overall Green ideology).
The apparent underlying theme of your piece – that policies in apparently democratic countries like the UK are in reality controlled against the wishes of the population by a combination of shadowy transnational bodies (often of the banking or financial variety) and a de facto tyrannical state – is usually designed to undermine faith in the benefits of multi-party liberal democracy by attempting to show them to be a sham.
The solutions being proposed (and obviously I am not suggesting you were doing so in your own reply) usually take the form of some sort of non-democratic communist or fascist style of government.
Or a ‘true people’s democracy’ as the proponents usually label these totalitarian and oppressive systems, much to the wry amusement of George Orwell.
No not kudos. He’s trying to debate lunatics on their terms. He’ll lose by default as he’s pretending the whole con has a reasonable scientific basis, so he’s volunteered himself to be executed Thomas Moore stylee. Twain has a quote about debating with fools.
I was pointing purely to that single witty statement made by Stuart Kirk, which in a few choice words completely destroys the excuses put forward by the Climate Change movement for catastrophically harmful policies such as the abandonment of fossil fuels without even having to touch upon the alleged (in my opinion pseudo) science behind the theory.
It is worth noting Kirk wasn’t challenging climate change as such. His broad point is the rhetoric around it is sensationalist and we are forgetting our amazing ability to adapt even if some of the predictions come true.
I’d argue Kirk is perceived as dangerous because he posits a view most of us can embrace. Even if you disagree with climate change theory, and I certainly do, his approach is to see what happens then adapt. A perfect balance of the competing ideas. Which is the problem. They can’t tax us if the goal is to wait and see.
See the FT article: “HSBC suspends banker over climate change comments”.
There’s a battle at the top of HSBC.
What investors? What funds? Whoever they are, they appear to pack some clout.
HSBC is one of the big powers in Hong Kong.
Assuming Joe Biden wasn’t just having a “senior moment”, the US policy of “strategic ambiguity” towards Taiwan – to wit, not saying whether or not the US will join Taiwan in a war against the People’s Republic of China – has been binned. But…at least I haven’t read any British MSM article recently that “explains” that the government in Taiwan views Taiwan as an independent country. It doesn’t and it never has done. Both Chinese governments view Taiwan as part of China. (Note to the idiot at the Foreign Office who tells the British MSM’s China desks what lingo to use: get your finger out!)
What dark times we are moving into – the Corporates and Banks taking over the world under the corrupted WHO and the UN!
Not much space for Free Speech ,democracy and the Nation State.
CAGW is like covid, it gives the government an excuse to financially rape the taxpayer whilst enriching their chums and corporate sponsors.
Yes, permanent state of emergency
This now constitutes dangerous fringe lunacy.
Look at that climate racist.
I bet he thinks men are male and everything.
Of course HSBC are pissed off, CAGW is one of the bigger frauds they have helped carry out against the public, the last thing they want is for their staff making a fuss and spooking the marks.
My former university physical science department sends out a quarterly magazine. Seems much of the funding for research projects is now based on the premise of global warming. Few academics are going to bite the hand that feeds them.
They all know what the authorized narrative is … some of them might even believe it. Others don’t believe it, but just know they can’t challenge it.
We’re sunk as a society either way. We are either being led by nincompoops who cannot think for themselves and/or by people who know that key policies are based on lies … and do nothing about this (i.e. don’t care)
This man has to stay after school and write on the chalkboard 100 times: “I will NOT question the authorized narrative.”
The same punishment applies to EVERY executive and employee at EVERY large organization in the world, most importantly those who work in the mainstream media.
Comply/agree … or else …
Refusing to question what you’re told is science!
Yep. Should be “journalism” as well.
Today, if you don’t accept the authorized “science,” you can be drawn and quartered. We really have regressed as a civilization. We’re going to need another intellectual awakening.
The speaker was the “leader in HSBC’s responsible investing team …”
The job titles tell us everything we need to know.
As a shareholder I will write to them demanding they allow diversity of opinion
Interesting story, shows how the banking industry is a main source of this pseudo science crap. He also neatly highlights what I describe as their climate sales pitch, which runs along the lines of – “do what we tell you to do, or the world is going to end”. Thats essentially what they are saying with the “climate catastrophe” sales pitch, which never ever considers the effects of all the geoengineering programmes they have been running for many decades and how that could affect the weather ie deliberately changing the weather might have the effect of changing the weather, just maybe. Climate science is a load of fraud and junk, cooked up by the chief occultist scammers, who think this is a way they control everyone and force people via trickery and illusion – ie lots of bullsh*t spread through the mainstream media and academia – and most importantly fear – to get people to respond to their lies and manufactured crises. Its now a case of raising the alarm as far and wide as possible so people know this is what they are doing. Its government via terrorism and they can f**k off because the game is up and they have been well and truly busted.
Heres one of their books which talks about using climate to scare people:
Report from Iron Mountain
https://www.pdfdrive.com/report-from-iron-mountain-e57187892.html
Climate risk is what sells their insurance. He will be sacked for doing a Ratner…
Anybody who won’t toe the line will be cast aside, there is money to be made from this scam and an eye-watering amount at that. Of course HSBC will have their fat, greedy snouts in the trough
I agree with Kirk’s broader point, but there are some pretty ridiculous assertions in that presentation.
A couple of examples: he claims that one of the highly unlikely explanations for asset prices rising despite the claimed climate risks is that investors could all be wrong. That isn’t a requirement though. It could simply be that investors are wrong on average. That’s plausible, certainly more so than the idea that (in his words) “every single one of us” is wrong.
He then goes on to insinuate that the predictions around the reduction in GDP (e.g. a potential 5% reduction) are a single, point-in-time cost – that might be borne once in the year 2100 and then forgotten. This is clearly absolute rubbish – these are cumulative impacts that rack up over time – think compound interest for mortgages.
I’ll watch the rest of the presentation in good faith, but it’s hard to take someone too seriously if they’re complaining about hyperbole while making such deeply flawed hyperbolic statements as this.
It’s a bit shocking that he’s been fired for these very mild remarks, if he was. Good reminder for me to keep my mouth shut at work. I even deny that global warming exists although to be frank there isn’t much point going there with these people. I should probably also not mention that I have no problem investing in small arms manufacturers.
I work in investment management and it’s all about sustainability and ESG at the moment. It’s not hard to see why. We don’t work for the end asset owners (pension fund members). We work for the Trustees of the pension funds. They want to keep themselves busy and want to be seen to be doing good. We need to dance to their tune. Also, we want to keep ourselves busy and want to be seen as being good. If I may be cruel, for people that are a bit thick this topic is a very easy one to be busy with (I work in quite a technical role).
first rule of climate change club is you dont criticise climate change club.
What exactly has Stuart Kirk said that isn’t 100% factual? Thanks DS for the presentation. I look forward in due course to Kirk’s interview on Triggernometry or Unherd. It is Governments (including of our own) who encourage these Green loons and their crackpot ideas. If they are so confident of their science why have all opposing viewpoints been systematically crushed and/or defunded? Its actually a form of totalitarianism.
On a positive note HSBC customers suffering with Moneypox will be able to swing by a local branch
We have masses of mediocre scientists with group think about climate change and the competent scientists who have properly studied climate like Patrick Moore (the Canadian one) and William Happen continue to say there is no proof that CO2 is causing significant global warming either now or in the future, are ignored by MSM and governments. The mediocre bunch of incompetents are busy producing falsely engineered computer models where the data has been adjusted, inaccurately measured or researched to demonstrate the answers they want to see. When all of these models give similar results its because the data is falsely changed to ensure they do.
CO2 is a basic componenent needed for life on earth and it makes up about 0.0425% of our atmosphere which is what 425 parts per million mean and doesn’t sound such a big number when expressed as a percentage. By burning fossil fuels, in terms of CO2, we are just returning to our atmosphere a part of what the plants took out of it over millions of years and in some areas of the world it has improved plant growth to help reduce starvation. There are other things produced which are polltants and need to be reduced, but CO2 is not one of them.
I really hope those people at HSBC eventually do some proper scientific research and realise their stupidity.
Indeed SH. There is also a very detailed book about the fraud by A.W. Montford “The Hockey Stick Illusion”. Well worth reading especially about the establishment’s opposition to his challenging it.
The Climate Change Cancer has to be removed and soon before it destroys our country. Considering the UN intent for a massive reduction in world population explains much of recent government policy.
“Climate Change” has become a political project, not a scientific one.
His core point, that whatever happens with climate change in 20+ years should have no impact on today’s decisions by hard-nosed investors, was presented very well.
The reasons why he must know it could be career-limiting are:
(1) HSBC probably expects it’s executives to toe a more politically-correct line on climate change – so his core message should have been surrounded with worthy sentiments about the need to reduce emissions and prevent Miami from sinking.
(2) His role involves ethical investment, so even if his presentation was changed to be less flippant and more politically correct, he still couldn’t present it himself – he could have given it to a colleague from a less ‘ethical’ department, though.
To me it looks like he’s had enough of HSBC and isn’t worried about the consequences. Good for him – conventional wisdom needs to be shaken up occasionally.