This is Joe D'Aleo's testimony at the Public Listening Session of the New Hampshire Governor's Climate Change Task Force. Click on the images below to see them full size.

Dr. D'Aleo is the founder of Icecap, a blog devoted to listing recent reports relevant to the climate change debate. He wrote Is Global Warming on the Wane? in the 2009 Old Farmer's Almanac to support their contention that we are entering a 50 year period of cooling.

My name is Joseph D’Aleo, I am a 20 year resident of Hudson NH.

I was a college Professor of Meteorology and Climatology, First Director of Meteorology at the cable TV weather Channel for 8 years. I am an elected fellow of the AMS and a Certified Consulting Meteorologist, I was a councilor for the AMS for 3 years. I was chair of the Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting. I was Chief Scientist at WSI Corporation now in Andover and their Intellicast.com I was a partner in a hedge fund for 4 years. In both those roles, I developed and used statistical models using cycles in the atmosphere, oceans and sun to predict climate future climate as far as a year in advance. I am executive director of Icecap.us, a climate change assessment web site

I believe in climate change, the only constant in nature is change. I believe man plays a role through land use changes like urbanization (which by the way is responsible for the slight warming in NH not seen in the surrounding states in northern New England – 11^th fastest town and city population growth among the 50 states (even small towns of 2000 or less can see a 2F warming.

I also believe natural forces cycles in the sun and ocean are the real climate drivers. I could show you how much better temperature changes have correlated with cycles in the ocean and sun than CO2 which has increased 30% since 1900.

The notion that CO2 is driving the warming is called into question by the fact that for 5 of the last 7 decades, US and global temperatures have fallen. The temperatures have declined 0.3F since 2002, the biggest decline this past 18 months (temps in blue) while CO2 in green increased 3.5%).

Here in the northeast, the UCS wants to tell us temperatures here in winter have warmed significantly starting in the cold late 1800s or during the last cold spell in the 1960s or 1970s. If you recognize there are cycles and look at changes max to max and min to min, you find no change in the northeast winter temperatures.

UCS says we may see 13F winter warming according to their climate models. These models are far more extreme than even Hansen or IPCC. How are they doing.

Why the cooling? After two decades from 1979 to 1998 in what is called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) warm mode that favors El Ninos which bring global warming, the Pacific is back solidly in the cold mode like it was the last time we cooled from 1940s to late 1970s.

The sun which reached the grand maximum in the 80s and 90s has gone into a deep sleep like it does every 200 years, similar to what was called the Dalton minimum in the Dickens era in the early 1800s which with the help of Mt Tambora, brought the year without a summer in 1816. (lead to 2C cooling not warming) (SLIDE)

What's more, even if the warming were real, drastic measures that would impoverish the residents of this great and beautiful state would bring no measurable effect. Using NCAR’s own model shutting down the state’s industries, stopping homeowners from burning wood or fossil fuels in their furnaces, and driving their cars, would reduce warming by 0.0006F by 2100).

All this pain would be for naught, the growth of emissions in China and India alone would wipe out all the benefit from the changes WITHIN JUST 1 WEEK!

I would like to address briefly the snow issue. UNH study says snow will diminish. Cities are becoming snowless. Promised last summer ski areas were in deep trouble. They set all time records and had best year on record in many areas.

This is an example of how the oceans play a role. Warm mode of the PDO meant more El Ninos – more snows for the east coast cities. Boston and NYC set single snowstorm records the last 5 years, BOS had snowiest dozen years of any dozen years going back to 1890 ending 2005 including the #1, 3 , 5, 7 and 12^th snowiest. NYC had 40 inches for the first time ever ending 2005/06 records go back to 1870s.

2000/01 and again last year La Ninas occurred and Pacific turned cold shifts the storm track north benefiting ski country; 2000/01 was a great snow year and I predicted at LSC in October last year would be a banner snow year for the north country. Last year new records set in Burlington Vermont, Concord New Hampshire, and Caribou, Maine. With the Pacific Decadal Oscillation now likely in a cold mode for the next 15 to 25 years, expect more years like this last one, not less. More snow and great tourism.

Gentlemen, I am all for conservation, incentives for the development and use of alternative energy and for innovation in industry but I would be strongly opposed to any state mandated cap or carbon tax (especially since carbon is a fertilizer and not a pollutant).

We, like the other states and countries need an energy policy, a realistic one, that recognizes the need for fossil fuel and nuclear and hydro and tides while we search for better ways.

You have an important job to do. A lot is riding on it. We need energy with the cooling coming.