Al Gore says global warming is a planetary emergency. It is difficult to see how this can be so when record low temperatures are being set all over the world. In 2007, hundreds of people died, not from global warming, but from cold weather hazards.

Since the mid-19th century, the mean global temperature has increased by 0.7 degrees Celsius. This slight warming is not unusual, and lies well within the range of natural variation. Carbon dioxide continues to build in the atmosphere, but the mean planetary temperature hasn’t increased significantly for nearly nine years. Antarctica is getting colder. Neither the intensity nor the frequency of hurricanes has increased. The 2007 season was the third-quietest since 1966. In 2006 not a single hurricane made landfall in the U.S.

South America this year experienced one of its coldest winters in decades. In Buenos Aires, snow fell for the first time since the year 1918. Dozens of homeless people died from exposure. In Peru, 200 people died from the cold and thousands more became infected with respiratory diseases. Crops failed, livestock perished, and the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency.

Unexpected bitter cold swept the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2007. Johannesburg, South Africa, had the first significant snowfall in 26 years. Australia experienced the coldest June ever. In northeastern Australia, the city of Townsville underwent the longest period of continuously cold weather since 1941. In New Zealand, the weather turned so cold that vineyards were endangered. Read more about 2007 cold here.

David Deming is a geophysicist, an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis, and associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma.

In a paper published December 2007 in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Petr Chylek et al found another source of model error when they found climate sensitivity is reduced by at least a factor of 2 when direct and indirect effects of decreasing aerosols are included. Their abstract:

An analysis of satellite and surface measurements of aerosol optical depth suggests that global average of aerosol optical depth has been recently decreasing at the rate of around 0.0014/a. This decrease is nonuniform with the fastest decrease observed over the United States and Europe. The observed rate of decreasing aerosol optical depth produces the top of the atmosphere radiative forcing that is comparable to forcing due to the current rate of increasing atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Consequently, both increasing atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases and decreasing loading of atmospheric aerosols are major contributors to the top-of-atmosphere radiative forcing. We find that the climate sensitivity is reduced by at least a factor of 2 when direct and indirect effects of decreasing aerosols are included, compared to the case where the radiative forcing is ascribed only to increases in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. We find the empirical climate sensitivity to be between 0.29 and 0.48 K/Wm−2 when aerosol direct and indirect radiative forcing is included.

Icecap Note: This amount is likely still an overestimate because of the assumption that all warming was due to radiative forcing, discounting natural factors, yet the conclusion undercuts the disaster scenarios. Put that together with lack of a long-term increase in precipitable water as noted by Pielke and found in Wang et.al., 2007 here and the oversimplified handling of the solar and oceans, and you can pretty much discard the climate models as an reliable tool for assessing future climate.

Chapman and Walsh in “A synthesis of Antarctic Temperatures” in the Journal of Climate 2007, used monthly surface air temperatures from manned and automatic weather stations along with ship/buoy observations from the high-latitude Southern Hemisphere to develop a gridded database with resolution appropriate for applications ranging from spatial trend analyses to climate change impact assessments.

The data in the figure above clearly indicate a post-1958 warming of Antarctica and much of the surrounding Southern Ocean. From approximately 1970 to the end of the record, however, temperatures of the region simply fluctuated around an anomaly mean of about 0.12°C, neither warming nor cooling over the final 32 years of the record.

This latter observation is truly amazing in light of the fact that the region of study includes the Antarctic Peninsula, which experienced phenomenal warming during this period. Nevertheless, the mean surface air temperature of the entire region changed not at all, over a period of time that saw the air’s CO2 concentration rise by approximately 47 ppm (about 15% of its 1970 value, as per the Mauna Loa CO2 record).

Clearly, the entire continent of Antarctica, together with much of the Southern Ocean that surrounds it, has been completely oblivious to the supposedly “unprecedented” radiative impetus for warming produced by anthropogenic emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases over the last three decades of the 20th century ... and even a bit beyond. See more here.

A new book aims to soothe children’s fears over global warming. Holly Fretwell wrote, “The Sky’s Not Falling: Why it’s Ok to Chill About Global Warming,â€� because she says today’s environmental hysteria was scaring her two kids. â€�I really wanted to provide something for kids that gave them the whole gambit. Something that gave them the full piece of information, and not just a little tiny piece of it to try to distort their view of the world,â€� said Fretwell, a natural resources policy expert, and economics college professor.

�It’s a great book for kids, as well as parents, as well as just adults who want to get some kind of a primer on what’s actually happening out there, and what global warming really is,� said Fretwell. “It says what the policy recommendations are, what the costs of some of those recommendations are, and what some alternatives are for us.� No matter where parents stand on global warming, Fretwell says the best thing we can do for our kids is to encourage them to be critical thinkers. See story here.

For how to access this book, see this release here.

The solar physics community is abuzz this week. No, there haven’t been any great eruptions or solar storms. The source of the excitement is a modest knot of magnetism that popped over the sun’s eastern limb on Dec. 11th, pictured below in a pair of images from the orbiting Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). It may not look like much, but “this patch of magnetism could be a sign of the next solar cycle,” says solar physicist David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center.

See full size image here.

For more than a year, the sun has been experiencing a lull in activity, marking the end of Solar Cycle 23, which peaked with many furious storms in 2000--2003. “Solar minimum is upon us,” he says. The big question now is, when will the next solar cycle begin?

It could be starting now. “New solar cycles always begin with a high-latitude, reversed polarity sunspot,” explains Hathaway. “Reversed polarity “ means a sunspot with opposite magnetic polarity compared to sunspots from the previous solar cycle. “High-latitude” refers to the sun’s grid of latitude and longitude. Old cycle spots congregate near the sun’s equator. New cycle spots appear higher, around 25 or 30 degrees latitude. The region that appeared on Dec. 11th fits both these criteria. It is high latitude (24 degrees N) and magnetically reversed. Just one problem: There is no sunspot. So far the region is just a bright knot of magnetic fields. If, however, these fields coalesce into a dark sunspot, scientists are ready to announce that Solar Cycle 24 has officially begun.

Peaking in 2011 or 2012, the cycle to come could have significant impacts on telecommunications, air traffic, power grids and GPS systems. (And don’t forget the Northern Lights!) In this age of satellites and cell phones, the next solar cycle could make itself felt as never before.

Icecap Note: Though Hathaway is among some solar physicists who believe cycle 24 will be very active (though 25 very quiet), the majority believe it will continue the decline started in cycle 23 which peaked 25% lower than the two previous cycles and forecasts. See a compilations of forecasts here. Also note cycle 23 would have lasted 11 years 7 plus months, more than a full two years longer than cycle 22. Longer cycles usually lead to colder temperatures. Leif Svalgaard notes it was at rather low latitude (for a new cycle spot). This is usually a sign of a weak cycle. The stronger the cycle the higher the latitude of the first spots.