Smart Money

There is Coin on the Table

Climate change is not a scientific proposition.  The reason is straightforward.  For any scientific discipline or inquiry, propositions must be falsifiable.  

Climate change, we are told, is universal.  It happens all the time.  A climatic event, such as recent snow storms in the United States or heat waves in Australia, are said to be "outside the norm", above average, even extreme events.  But, then the archives and databases are searched and we are told the recent heat wave in Australia produced temperatures that had not been recorded for over eighty years.  In other words, eighty years ago similar temperatures were experienced.

So far, so good.  Now, however, overlay another paradigm: global warming.  The reigning belief amongst politicians, world leaders, some scientists, and the media is that the globe is warming.  For most of us this means we are to expect temperatures to rise.  The cause is put down to humanity releasing ever growing amounts of carbon based gases into the atmosphere.  This creates a "greenhouse" effect.  Or so the scientific proposition has it.  But if that theory is truly scientific, it must be testable, and subject to data or experimentation that would make it is untrue or false.

At this point the card sharp joins the game.  He blithely tells us that global warming is so universal that any climatic event , whether hot or cold, flood or drought, storm or calm, manifests global warming.  Climate change means global warming.  Suddenly a false, marked card has been slipped into the deck.

So the "scientific" proposition has now morphed.  Global warming actually is the same as climate change.  Release of carbon dioxide causes climate change which is the same as global warming.  So, absolutely freezing temperatures in the United States represents climate change (things have changed from a few weeks ago when temperatures in Detroit were warmer).  And climate change is the same as global warming.  Therefore, freezing cold temperatures are in fact an evidence of  global warming!

We kid you not.
  This is the actual ratiocination which controls the mind of most politicians, bureaucrats, talking heads, and media.  It is profoundly unscientific.  It has not one shred of scientific credibility about it, because no evidence, no condition, will ever falsify the proposition.  The most cold temperatures imaginable are said to provide evidence for universal global warming.  Why?  Because any change in the climate is an evidence for global warming.

When this sort of irrational group-think overtakes investment markets, huge fortunes are waiting to be made if you invest in the opposite proposition.  Some will protest vigorously at the immorality of such a proposal. But we are not proposing that one would profit from actual climate change or global warming, but from the near universal belief in climate change and global warming.  And, that, is a very different thing.  When a consensus becomes overwhelmingly believed without proper foundation, money can be made.

Here is but one example.  Because of global warming, we are told, sea waters will rise.  Coastal properties (of which there are a fair few in New Zealand)  will be subject to flooding and erosion.  Therefore, coastal properties will drop in price: fewer people will want to buy them because of the calamities to come.  Here is an example of the alleged doom that awaits:

The climate change debate has hogged headlines recently but its influence on humanity is undeniable. In the first of a six-part series called Living on the Edge, reporter Deena Coster takes a deeper look at what it means for Taranaki.

The rough and rugged Taranaki coastline will be unrecognisable in 100 years' time.  Houses once dotted along the coast will be lost, as coastal erosion and rising sea levels steal away the very land they rest on.  Rising sea levels are a symptom of climate change and are slowing eating away at the edges of the place we call home.

Living on the beachfront has always been highly prized in Kiwi culture but for residents of coastal communities around New Zealand feeling the pinch of climate change, it is becoming more like an albatross around their neck.  Described by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as the "nuclear-free moment" of her generation, the world's changing climate can no longer be ignored.  It's a threat not lost on people like Ray and Edith Tito, as it literally laps near the back door of their East Beach home in Waitara, North Taranaki.

From a comfy seat in her lounge, Edith can chart the changes to her coastal backdrop on a daily basis.  It feels unstoppable and attempts to talk the New Plymouth District Council (NPDC) into doing something about it have so far been unsuccessful.  "It's been two years now since we've tried to pressure them but they've not moved. They don't want to know," she says.

It's a similar sentiment 13 kilometres north where Onaero residents have renewed their calls for NPDC to complete a rockwall at the beach settlement.   In 2015, the council spent $150,000 on emergency repairs to the wall but further work has stalled.  A report commissioned in 2013 found that within 50 years, six homes in Onaero would be at risk of succumbing to the sea, and within a century, 14 homes would be lost, with another 10 at risk of going the same way.  [NZ Herald; emphasis, ours]

If one does effective research, and is patient, and the hype over global warming continues to grow, the price of coastal residences will start to fall.  The more doom and gloom, the bigger the bargain to be had.

And when you have a Prime Minister who compares global warming to the threat of nuclear war you have all the rhetorical hype needed to devalue coastal residential properties.  Short the Prime Minister's hype and savvy investors who do their research and are patient can make fortunes.  As the saying goes, buy at bargain prices, and sell when global warming (er, climate change) has become a distant collective memory or part of a once mad, mad, mad world.  All that is required is a sufficiently long term investment horizon to wait for the global warming canard to vaporise and for coastal properties to become, once again, a close thing to paradise.