Warren Bevan

http://www.kereport.com/2013/05/18/metals-minerals-investment-conference/
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The Global-Warming Panic Is a Distant Memory

By Robert Prechter, editor of The Elliott Wave Theorist

A non-event that recently had the media buzzing was the dearth of discussion of the global-warming issue during the presidential debates, not to mention nearly everywhere else on earth over the past year.

This is another social change predicted in The Elliott Wave Theorist in the face of vicious opposition. This excerpt highlights the key points:

Sometimes scientists herd as much as investors do, and this study [by NASA] appears to be a case of extreme expression following a long-established trend. I am not a climatologist, but I am a student of manias and herding, and that is what the global-warming craze appears to be about.

My purpose here is not primarily to make a case against man-made global warming. My primary intent is to take a look at the question from the point of view of a social psychologist to decide whether it appears to be the result of hysteria. The points above establish that there are two sides to the global-warming question. Yet only one has captured the public's imagination (and I choose that word consciously). The global-warming scare is highly reminiscent of the Alar scare, in which Congress called upon the expertise of movie stars; the ozone-depletion scare and the acid-rain scare, which have all but vanished; the claim that pesticides were making frogs lame (it turned out to be a virus); the rash of reports of devil worshippers, who were never found; the national child-care molestation hysteria, which turned out to be almost entirely contrived; the panic in Europe over poison in Coca-Cola; and any number of like manias. Hysteria often signals the end of a trend.

There is powerful evidence of herding at the social level on the global-warming issue. Commentary on the subject is even selling theater tickets. And like all past social trends that were ending, there is a rush to extrapolate. The temperature data from which modelers at NASA derive their extrapolations are scant, the projection is extreme, and their tone is strident. When any writers, including scientists, extrapolate 29 years' worth of temperature data to predict an imminent apocalypse of biblical proportions in an environment of waxing social focus, rising panic, and calls for government obstruction, one must acknowledge the likelihood of social-psychological forces behind such a report and investigate whether the data support the prediction.

The crowd fearing global warming rejects as heretics professors and scientists who challenge all these methods and conclusions, whether they be at MIT or Stanford. Such rejection is akin to what happens near the end of a financial mania, such as the peak of the real estate mania [in 2005], when bears were dismissed as delusional.

GW advocates told me that doubting man-made global warming is akin to denying evolution, but the GW movement has not a little taste of old-time religion in its accompanying admonition of humanity: Man is evil; he is destroying the earth; he is "fouling his own nest," as one scientist on the Web says. Scientists are usually good at their fields but not necessarily at recognizing their own political, moral, and philosophical biases.

One thoughtful scientist took issue with the term "hysteria." But the term applies here to social activity, not the overt behavior of any particular individual. In 2005, when I was speaking about real estate hysteria and warning people against investing in property, people sporting a rather bemused expression would coolly respond, as if instructing an alien who lacked understanding of the way things worked on Earth, "They are not making any more land" and "It's all about location." They would say this with utmost calm. They had thought about it and sifted through the evidence. They were not hysterical but rational and thoughtful. At least, this was the appearance of behavior at the individual level. At the collective level, something else was going on. The number of people participating in the real estate market was unprecedented, and their borrowing, building, and bidding activities, collectively, were extreme.

Advocates of man-made global warming may appear sober as judges individually, but they are participating in a mass movement, complete with press releases, student rallies, pop concerts, movie documentaries, and an underlying tone of moral crusade.

I think the current frenzy over the subject is probably a symptom of peaking cycles in both climatic temperature and social psychology. But unfortunately 70 years from now most of us won't be around to know the answer. What I expect, based upon observing mass movements, is that this fear, too, will go away.

–The Elliott Wave Theorist, June and July 2007

http://www.caseyresearch.com/cdd/how-to-spot-a-market-top