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Climate Change Debate: Why So Many Skeptics?
And why only NOW?
Have you noticed that the number of skeptics about global warming is on the rise? Here's a quote from a June 26 Wall Street Journal story titled, "The Climate Change Climate Change":
The number of skeptics is swelling everywhere. A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming. In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic ... today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France ... [the geochemist] Claude Allegre [who] twenty years ago ... was among the first to trill about man-made global warming ... has since recanted. New Zealand last year ... suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program. [There are] now more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers.
The explanation for this change of heart, according to the article, is simply "...reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02."
Now, we at Elliott Wave International are no climate experts, so we won't take sides. Market timing is our expertise, and to us, the most interesting question is: Why is this change happening now?
You have to see our April 2008 socionomic* report "Elliott Waves Regulate Commodity Prices and Environmentalism" for the answer. (You can read it online now, free, via the link on p. 9 of the June 2009 Socionomist, the new monthly publication of The Socionomics Institute.) It presents an eye-opening chart spanning almost 100 years of commodity prices, with the dates of major environmental laws and events plotted against it. Here is the summary of what you realize when you see this chart:
"Important progress in the environmental movement -- government actions, legislation, or group actions that require broad consensus -- occurred during the impulsive legs of waves III and V in the CRB index. In contrast, pro-environmental legislation is largely absent during commodity price declines."
Our April 2008 report went one step further: It forecast a coming major top in commodity prices. A couple of months later the CRB Index started a huge plunge:
And now that commodity prices have crashed, we are seeing rising numbers of climate change skeptics -- exactly as our April 2008 environmental report had predicted:
"The downturn in the CRB Index should usher in a period of lessening popular concern about the environment and material setbacks for the environmental movement."
*Socionomics is the new science of social prediction. You can read The Socionomics Institute's latest forecasts now in the new, July 2009 Socionomist. (You also get instant access to the June issue and the April 2008 environmental report.) Here's what you'll find inside:
- "War on Drugs" -- can you forecast how and when it may end using the Elliott Wave Principle? Yes, you can. Read the study on pp. 1-6, complete with historical comparison charts going back to the 1920s Prohibition era.
- Serial Killers & the Stock Market -- there is a surprising connection. See pp. 7-8 of the July Socionomist.
- Nuclear Tests & the Stock Market -- chart on p. 8 shows you why North Korea's recent nuclear test may be just the first of the series.
- Also: Election results; body art and tattoos; lawyer layoffs and other signs of changing social mood -- read about them on pp. 8-10 of the July 2009 Socionomist now.