When will transition stop being a future risk?

In my LinkedIn posting career I’ve gone toe-to-toe with Professor Cliffe, a proponent of climate scenario analysis, on the importance of evidence-based risk management many times.  I think it’s critical, he’s far from convinced.  On a recent post of his on the climate transition and the risks it poses to banks, the following comment was made:

“Completely right that you can't rely on past data to assess future transition risk. The whole point is that transition hasn't happened in the past!  This is why we need to develop new ways of analysing these risks.”

I really don’t want to single out any one commenter like this – indeed, if you surf through the discussions of transition risk among senior regulators and industry professionals, you’ll find similar sentiments as those expressed here.  But unpacking it is instructive.

The commenter does a good job of distilling the notion of “future risk” in very few words.  The reach of the “futuriskas” is very wide and they often speak from positions of authority.  Little wonder that their ideas, however ill-conceived, have gained traction in an industry in the early stages of grappling with a difficult topic.

For me, the main question the comment raises is this: when, if ever, will the future finally arrive?  When, according to the future riskarians, will we be able to start using empirical methods to analyze transition risk, and perhaps even to predict it accurately?