To paraphrase the misquote of Mark Twain..

Above, an Australian Broadcasting report on the impending demise of one of that country’s leading export industries – coal. I’m posting just the first few minutes of a much longer report, available here.

If there’s any doubt, Bloomberg investment columnist Barry Ritholtz underlines the point here:

A new Mercer research report, “Investing in a Time of Climate Change,” is fascinating for what it is (and isn’t): a pure investment thesis, not a screed on science or politics.

The report is especially timely, given a new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report showing the so-called global-warming hiatus was the result of an error in measuring ocean temperatures. There has been no slowdown in warming, according to the latest data.

I don’t want to debate the science, but rather to focus on the investment risks the report discusses. As we have noted before, this is a question of industry market share, corporate profits and investment performance — not science.

In the real world, climate-change deniers are and will be giant money losers.

I expect those who suffer from cognitive dissonance over whether global warming is real will soon be greeted by a brutal Darwinian result in the markets. I don’t make many forecasts but here is one: It is only a matter of time before the deniers exist only in think tanks funded by the fossil energy industry and oddball conspiracy groups.