John Coleman, global warming, and ICECAP

John Coleman, who used to be a very popular national TV weatherman in the 70s and 80s, started the Weather Channel. At the time people thought he was a little loopy. Now he's setting himself up to be called loopy (or worse) again by proclaiming that global warming is the "greatest scam in history". He'll soon be given the Dr. Gray treatment and called a carbon shill, but that's not the interesting thing here.

The website he posted on is called ICECAP. From the info page it's supposed to be non-partisan promoter of the free exchange of ideas. Hard to say, but we do know the site is run by a real scientist, a man who was the initial director of meteorology at TWC, one Joseph D'Aleo. He's got some interesting ideas about what's causing some of the temperature swings, one of which is termed Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). From his paper:

Even before the PDO was discovered, climatologists had noted that an event called the “Great Pacific Climate Shift” occurred in the late 1970s with a major shift in Pacific ocean temperature regimes. It turns out the PDO mode went from predominantly negative as it had been since 1947 to positive and remained so most of the time since.

D'Aleo must clearly remember the brutal winter of 1976-77 that caused the Ohio River to freeze in some sections. Several years later scientists were speculating that water temperature anomalies in the North Pacific were to blame, but somewhere along the way that theory got lost in the woodwork. Glad to see it's returning--maybe we'll see a free exchange of ideas on it.

OK, probably not.

MORE 11/16/07

NASA has some interesting news about the Arctic as South America continues to suffer from one of the coldest winters in decades. But the IPCC says we've got to act, and act now. Confusing.