I read all this week with great attention all the discussion regarding the temperature data from NASA’s GISS and other sources. If the exact dimension of the positive anomaly in Russia can be disputed, there is no doubt October was much warmer than average in that region. Russian press reported it was the warmest October on record in Moscow.

The October global temperature discussions once more reveal how unreliable all these metrics are. In fact, I suggest the reading of a very interesting post I read this week at Climate Skeptic exactly on this matter.

I tell my listeners and reader over here in Southern Brazil that October was near average globally (UAH data), but in the next day there is a report on the papers and on television that the month was the warmest on record on Earth. Of course, the average listener and reader start to question where my first information was correct. NASA is contracting the information from the day before. Try to tell people that the agency that has sent the man to the moon cannot measure the temperature on Earth correctly and you get a credibility problem with regular people. But the readers of ICECAP are not regular people and they know NASA, in fact, had some serious problems.

Every month, I take a look at these global maps not only to track the planet trend, but also to compare with my local reality. It is common to see very important discrepancies. I believe much of you do the same and have reached the same conclusion. If Steve McIntyre was surprised to see the warmer than average October in Toronto, I can say the same on Rio Grande do Sul. Both GISS and Met Office data for last month indicated a warmer than average October in Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state of Brazil where I live. Take a look at the circles in this map:

See larger images here

In fact, October was not 1C warmer than average here. It was very close to the average with some minor positive or negative deviations, depending on the station. It was a very wet month with a cold start. Both conditions prevented a large positive anomaly as depicted by GISS and the Met Office. For this matter, take a look at the maps for October in Brazil with the anomalies for low temperature (minima) and high (maxima). The maps were generated early this month by the officials Brazilian weather bureaus: Cptec and Inmet.

See larger images here

Temperature in the metropolitan area of Porto Alegre (4 million people) was 0.1 below average last month, but the same area appears in the map as above average. The truth it was a mild and comfortable October over here with few very warm days. I am sure the same discrepancies with local reality can be found in many other areas in the world. For that and other reasons, I still believe UAH and RSS are much more reliable. At least they do not have almost the entire African continent in gray. See full post here.

Here’s another way of looking at things: global warming is good. And if there’s any bad news at all about global warming, it’s that it might be about over. Some years ago I stumbled onto Charles Perry with the US Geological Survey in Lawrence KS when I was trying to track down some information on climate. In the scientific community, Charles has established himself as a firm believer that the harmonic cycles of solar output have huge cause-and-effect relationships with not only our short-term weather but also our long-term climate.

In brief, there’s nothing really constant about the amount of energy being emitted by the sun. It’s almost like the sun has a heartbeat - with waves of energy coming in on a roughly 11-year sunspot cycle. Those short-term cycles then make up larger and longer-term cycles. And in those cycles, which have been going on for thousands and thousands of years, Charles has documented alternating periods of warming and cooling. While global warming has gotten a lot of bad press today, Charles feels events in history show warmer climates have been accompanied by more rain, longer growing seasons, more crops and more land to settle on-times in which civilizations have prospered. Contrasting that are periods of global cooling - times in which human populations probably declined because of cold, drought and war.

As mentioned, Charles has correlated those alternating periods with events in history. For instance, there was a warming period from 33,000 to 26,000 years ago which may have allowed the Cro-Magnon Man to migrate northward and populate Europe by blending in with or eradicating the resident Neanderthals. Another warm period ushered in the Bronze Age,which began about 3800 years ago. During this favorable climatic period, people migrated northward into Scandinavia and reclaimed farmland with growing seasons that were at that time probably the longest in more than 2000 years.

The great empires of the Bronze Age came to an end with the Centuries of Darkness chill, but warming returned during the Greco-Roman Age. During this period, philosophy made its first important advances with the thoughts of Aristotle. However, when the climate cooled again, the Roman Empire ceased. A flourishing Viking culture in Greenland met the same fate during the Little Ice Age, which ran from about l280 to l860. The little ice ages are cooler periods, which last several centuries. They occur about every l300 years. By the year l000, the Vikings had discovered Greenland, where their settlements started producing wheat and livestock. But after l200, the climate began to cool rapidly. The frozen harbors of Greenland failed to open in the summer -thus, trade with Europe dropped off sharply. By l400, Europe’s contact with Greenland had been lost. A slight warm-up about l500 allowed ships to make it back to Greenland, but by then the stranded Viking population had starved to death - with their graves becoming shallower and shallower as the permafrost returned.

Many today say our current global warming is because of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Charles disagrees. He says while we do have global warming, it’s still not to the same level as when the Vikings were farming in Greenland. “Therefore, the magnitude of the modern temperature increase being caused solely by an increase in carbon dioxide appears questionable.” On the other hand, solar output variations to climate change may be significant. Read more here.

The USA has two daunting problems - the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression; and President-Elect Obama’s energy policies, which will severely deepen the economic crisis. Obama stated in a San Francisco Chronicle television interview that he wants to implement an aggressive CO2 cap-and-trade system that could bankrupt coal companies.  He further stated that energy prices will necessarily skyrocket.  Obama believes that global warming is a critical issue, and he supports the use of solar energy, wind power and biodiesel. To his credit, Obama also supports a market approach and technological development.

In 2007, US primary energy consumption consisted of oil (40%), natural gas (25%), coal (24%), nuclear (8%) and hydroelectricity (2%). As a percentage of total proved reserves of fossil fuels, the US holds just over 2% of the world’s oil, 3% of natural gas, but almost 29% of global coal. See this.

Energy projects have been constrained due to fears of catastrophic global warming, allegedly caused by increased atmospheric CO2 from burning fossil fuels. However, global warming is just not happening anymore. For the last decade, average global temperatures have not increased. Since January 2007 all global warming has disappeared, as average temperatures plummeted to 1979 levels - when accurate satellite measurements began.

Global cooling is now occurring and is expected to continue for the next twenty to thirty years, due to the recent shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation from its warm to cool phase. See here and here.

Despite shrill claims of ice cap melting, Arctic sea-ice extent is now at its highest seasonal level since modern satellite measurements began in 2002 – more evidence of global cooling. For decades, the US has experienced a huge balance of trade deficit, due primarily to high oil imports. Energy self-sufficiency has been the goal of recent US Presidents, without success. There is now an opportunity to address both these serious challenges, by rejecting global warming myths and creating an energy strategy based on true, verifiable facts.  Here is the outline of a responsible and economic Energy Strategy for America:

1. Reject CO2 taxes and cap-and-trade measures used to “fight global warming”. Examine the satellite data, the only accurate global temperature measurements in existence. Climate Dyslexics please note: The Earth is cooling, not warming. Global cooling should last for twenty to thirty years and could be severe. 

2. Generate much more electrical energy from abundant US coal reserves. Use existing technologies to control real atmospheric pollution from SOx, NOx and particulates, but do not control CO2. In the future, if CO2 sequestration becomes economically attractive (for enhanced oil recovery) or is proved necessary (in the unlikely event that global warming becomes a real problem), retrofit the coal plants with expensive CO2 recovery equipment at that time. 

3. As rechargeable battery technology continues to improve, electric and gasoline-electric light vehicles will become commonplace.  The power infrastructure already exists to fuel this fleet, and refueling can be done during off-peak periods, when power plants are underutilized. This major change in the light vehicle fleet will shift energy consumption from foreign oil to domestic coal.

4. Re-examine corn ethanol and wind power, which do not work economically or effectively. Corn ethanol for motor fuel requires huge ongoing subsidies and severely distorts food prices. Wind power also requires big subsidies, and almost 100% backup with conventional power generation. Wind power can also cause critical instabilities in the electric power grid. Conduct a full-life-cycle energy balance on corn ethanol, wind power, biodiesel and solar energy, and also examine the environmental demands and pollution associated with these so-called “green” technologies.

5. Re-examine hydrogen. It is an energy medium, like electricity, but if implemented would require a huge new hydrogen infrastructure to be built at great cost, for no environmental or energy gain.

6. Avoid energy subsidies, especially ongoing operating subsidies, which distort economic decisions and create expensive industrial and environmental boondoggles. Wind power and corn ethanol may prove to be two such costly mistakes.

Instead of skyrocketing energy prices, this Energy Strategy for America will result in lower costs, improved balance of trade, and in time could even provide energy self-sufficiency for the USA. Read more here.

Allan M.R. MacRae is a Professional Engineer and writer on energy and the environment. In 2002 he predicted in a newspaper article that global cooling would recur. He does not work in the coal industry, accepts no compensation for his writing and holds no coal investments

It is disturbing that many recent statements on climate change by influential people are not supported by hard evidence. For instance, Professor Ralph Chapman’s statement that the globe risks a tipping point if emissions are not reduced by 2015 is unsupported by hard evidence, as is David Parker’s claim that if we do nothing to reduce emissions, New Zealand could be up to $500 million worse off by 2012. This is not true because, if we adopt the Emissions Trading Scheme, electricity bills alone will increase by more than $500 million each year.

These statements and government policies on greenhouse gases, carbon trading and promoting renewable energy are based on the beliefs that the world is warming due to man-made greenhouse gases; that promoting renewable energy will make a substantial difference to New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions; and that if New Zealand reduces its greenhouse gas emissions it would affect the world climate. All these beliefs are not true.

The evidence is unequivocal. Measurable, let alone dangerous, manmade global warming is not happening, and is not likely to happen in the future. The major cause for concern is the possibility of severe cooling. Global climate has always changed and recent climate changes are not unusual. The world was warmer in the mediaeval warm period, in the Roman warm period and on many occasions before then. During these periods agriculture and civilisations flourished. During cold periods like the little ice age there was famine, plague and war.

Both surface temperature records and the much more accurate records from satellite observations show there was a brief warming period from 1975-98. Since then, the world has cooled and is now at the same temperature it was in 1995. Nobody knows when, or if, world temperatures might increase. Since the research for the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report was completed in mid 2006, researchers have discovered that warming since 1975 is not caused by greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gas warming would be at a maximum 10,000m above the tropics.

Observations from balloons and satellites have shown that warming is not happening. Therefore greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are not a major factor in the world climate. This fact alone is sufficient to sink the manmade global warming hypothesis. Computer-based climate models provide the only “evidence” supporting claims that the world is warming, that it will be dangerous, that there will be rapid rises in sea levels and the like, yet these same models failed to predict the temperature peak in 1998 and the steady cooling trend that set in from 2002. It is obvious that the models have failed to predict major climatic events such as El Nino (1998) and La Nina (2007-08). The models are not an accurate representation of the world climate system and their input data is inaccurate, therefore their outputs are worthless. This fact alone is sufficient to sink the manmade global warming hypothesis. Read more here.

The reactions below are to new study in journal Nature: Global warning: We are actually heading towards a new Ice Age, claim scientists! as reported in the UK Daily Mail on November 13, 2008.

In Andrew Revkin’s Dot.earth blog, a few predictable responses: Hansen’s Bold Claim: ‘Another ice age cannot occur unless humans go extinct’ and MIT’s Wunsch says study is ‘science fiction’

1) NASA’s James Hansen: “Another ice age cannot occur unless humans go extinct.”

2) Carl Wunsch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has fired quite a broadside: “Surely this isn’t science in any conventional sense. Taking a toy model and using it to make a “prediction” about something nearly a million years into the future, is a form of science fiction-maybe interesting in the same way a novel is, but it isn’t science. The prediction itself is untestable-except a million years from now, and the model “tests” that quoted are carefully chosen to be those things that the model has been tuned to get “right,” with no mention of the huge number of things it gets wrong. How many times do “if”, and “may” get used in the paper?

If I make a four-box model of the world economy, and predict the US stock market level 500 years from now, who would pay any attention? Climate is far more complicated than the world economy, yet supposedly reputable journals are publishing papers that superficially look like science, but which are the sort of thing scientists will speculate about late at night over a few beers. It doesn’t deserve the light of day except as the somewhat interesting mathematical behavior of a grossly over-simplified set of differential equations. Why should anyone take it seriously? The wider credibility of the science is ultimately undermined by such exercises.”

Hansen’s comments don’t merit a response.  Wunsch though is a solid scientist and his comments have merit but as Dr. Roy Spencer so aptly put it “If you read Wunsch’s comments and replace “million years” with “hundred years”, his comments are a perfect description of the IPCC climate modeling process.