A Melman Minute
By: Leonard Melman
For a change, we are pleased to note potentially
important news which may in fact prove beneficial to the mining community at
large and the junior mining industry in particular. We are referring to the
sudden - and unexpected - release of news items which seriously question the
accuracy of the entire “Global Warming” scenario, a scenario which has been
received as virtual Gospel by the media, the education establishment, the
Hollywood establishment, the Nobel Prize committee and portions of the
scientific community, in addition to huge portions of the general public.
First, the Daily Telegraph of London just released a
news item that 31,000 scientists have signed a petition denying that man is
responsible for global warming. The petition was originally created in 1998 in
response to the Kyoto Protocol, languished for a while, but has been gathering
new signatures at an accelerating rate over the past year since its re-release.
Their petition concludes that the implementation of
the Kyoto Protocol would, “…harm the environment, hinder the advance of science
and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.”
Arthur Robinson, President of the Oregon Institute
of Science and Medicine, concluded that, “…If this many American scientists will
sign this petition, you certainly can’t contend that there is a consensus on
this subject.”
Second, Lorne Gunter of Canada’s Financial Post just
authored an article which notes that two highly esteemed scientific institutions
have released authenticated data which shows that, “there will be no more
warming for the foreseeable future.” The scientific institutes are the
“Leibnitz Institute of Marine Science” and the “Max Planck Institute of
Meteorology.” These two eminent institutions; named respectively for Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibnitz, a famous 17th century mathematician who was the
co-inventor of calculus, and Max Planck, 1918 winner of the Nobel Prize for
physics and a renowned contemporary of Einstein; have been gathering verifiable
data on ocean currents for several years and their work was further
authenticated by the fact that their information was processed through United
Nations supercomputers.
Several items contained in Gunter’s article are well
worth noting:
-
Global temperatures have already been falling
for a decade since their peak in 1998,
-
Global temperatures fell by 0.7 degrees
Centigrade last year, the biggest movement in either direction since global
averages have been calculated,
-
Southern Hemisphere ice coverage reached its
greatest summer extent in the last 30 years this past January
-
Even the head of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations group that helped create the
Global Warming frenzy in the first place, had to admit that, “…there has
been no warming so far in the 21st century.” (our bold emphases)
The relevance to mining, at least in our opinion, is
this: there has been a juggernaut afoot by governments around the
industrialized world to enact horrendously restrictive environmental legislation
that could not but have a negative impact on junior mining as it would likely
impose expensive and time-consuming new restrictions on exploration and
development of mining projects. However, given the authentication of this new
information, some of it coming from the IPCC itself, perhaps those legislative
bodies will take a second look at the laws they have been in such a determined
rush to enact and hold back from further processing until the underlying issue
is subject to open and intense debate.
For ourselves, we are confident that any true and
scientific objective analysis of Global Warming, particularly as presented by
their high priests Gore and Suzuki, will find itself in agreement with the
British judge who recently concluded that before Gore’s book or movie entitled
“An Inconvenient Truth” could be read or shown in British schools, it had to be
accompanied by a warning regarding the biased nature of and lack of scientific
authenticity of the material presented.
Financial markets in North America were showing
clearly divergent directions after two hours this morning. Canadian markets
were buoyed up by rising precious metals and petroleum prices while American
markets sagged under the weight of further negative economic data. Near 9:00 AM
PDT, the Dow Industrials were down about 150 points while the TSX was ahead by
over 100 points.
American markets were hit hard by news that the
Institute for Supply Management (ISM) manufacturing index remained in negative
mode (under 50) for the fourth consecutive month during May while the Commerce
Department showed that overall Construction Spending dipped in April for the
sixth tine in seven months. The financial markets also had to digest news that
Wachovia Corp., one of America’s leading banking institutions had just forced
their chairman, Ken Thompson, out of office and the largest savings and loan
association, Washington Mutual, had just replaced their chief executive, Kerry
Killinger.
Both of these companies’ stocks have suffered during
the past year and, as their charts clearly indicate, the fact that they
rebounded so feebly from their bottom levels is interpreted by some observers as
an indication that the financial problems which have afflicted American banking
and credit institutions during the past year are far from resolved.
As can be seen clearly, Wachovia, in fact, has just
crashed to a new low for the year and their short term trend is hard down.
Likewise, Washington Mutual has also smashed to a new yearly low this morning.
In our opinion, it is most significant that these
giant corporations have utterly failed to find major support for their shares
and continue to inflict giant losses on their shareholder accounts. Our
interpretation is the there will be continued difficulties facing the American
economy, difficulties which will force the Federal Reserve Board to continue
their stimulative policies which, we believe, over time will weaken the American
dollar and mitigate toward higher precious metals prices.
Those precious metals are higher this morning with
gold ahead by about $10 and once again nearing the $900 level (all prices US$).
Silver is up slightly at $16.90 and platinum was holding above the $2,000 zone.
Both major metal share indexes are modestly higher while base metals are trading
generally close to unchanged on average. Currency markets are quiet while oil
is ahead by about one dollar to just above $128 per barrel.
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