Shifting of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation from its warm mode to cool mode assures global cooling for the next three decades.

“This has significant implications for the future and indicates that the IPCC climate models were wrong in their prediction of global temperatures soaring 1°F per decade for the rest of the century.”
Ummm.. where on earth does this come from? The IPCC does not predict a temperature increase of 1C/decade for the next century.
Also, where does Easterbrook derive his prediction of a 30 year cool-phase PDO – well, other than simply saying, the last one was that long? The PDO is not periodic.
Adn also, his conclusion requires that the PDO be a dominant, controlling driver of the earth’s planet. What is his basis for that assumption?

The most recent SST maps show there is no longer a cool area in the northern Pacific PDO area.
La Nina also appears to be on its last legs and a strong El Nino might develop. The Nino3.4 area is clearly well above average right now and the warmer waters are contining to expand in area.
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.7.17.2008.gif
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/anom_anim.html

Bob those are very intriguing charts and both the AMO and PDO residual are to a high correlation additive during the two principal warming periods during the last 100 years. Give that CO2 concentrations were at odds during these two periods, it pales in comparison as a correlative factor.
Looking at the current period (after 2000), The AMO and PDO appear to be in a subtractive period although one could argue that the path of the AMO residual needs more data points to confirm either way.
I will also check out some of your other links there as well.
On a personal point. I can’t tell you how important you, Anthony and many others who are doing the heavy skeptic lifting. If successful, we who do not have your knowledge and tenacity, will owe you a great debt along with untold millions who will never know the significant efforts that people like you have made in their behalf. No small recipient would be the credibility of science itself. This could be an enormous black eye and more damaging would be the perception in peoples minds of the potential economic harm that could have befallen them if they had signed on with a scientific ‘consensus’ that turned out to closer to a hoax than truth.
For all those who continue the struggle amidst criticism and mockery, never underestimate our appreciation of your importance to us.

I have one comment on the PDO shift to negative. I see in Figure 4 that the PDO shift was about 1999 or 2000, but it looks like it is closer to 2002 or 2003. If you look at the last negative PDO there are really not any El Nino’s in it, that makes me think the figure 4 should read a PDO shift at 2002 or 2003. Also (Leif will disagree) there was a geomagnetic shift is 2003, the 178.8 barycentric cycle ends close to there and we started the slide to solar minimum. Also if you look at the solar cycle you will have more CME’s and solar flares on the down side of a solar cycle than the up side, this is evident in 2003 to 2006 when temperature remained at a high level and then dropped off after the CME’s and flare subsided. I am of the opinion that CME’s and flares reduce the ability of nuclei to form clouds just like CRF may seed the nuclei. Less clouds one way and more the other. Anyway that is my 2 cents.

Those of us who have been following the debate for years will remember that in 2000, some sceptics were anouncing that the PDO had switched, only to see it to jump back up into warm phase in 2002. Now PDO is dropping again, I think it is a bit reckless to predict that this time it will stick, especially as it has not been negative for as long as it was in 2000-01.
If you look at the history, there has been a grand total of one clearcut switch from warm to cool. This is not much of a statistical sample on which to base a cycle. We should be just as hesitant about predictions that confirm our beliefs as ones that don’t. Just remember that our best solar scientists really don’t have a clue when the next solar cycle will begin, even though they have been studying the sun through 23 unambiguous cycles.

Re: Figure 3. I am glad Leif and Leon have already discussed the blue line, however I can’t immeadiately see how it results from smoothing given the end point of the blue line is below the last point in the data (and indeed any point in the data). How *exactly* was the blue line generated?
Having looked at the “global cooling data”, as far as I can see there is no cooling since 2002 unless you include the last year and a bit of data, e.g the trend is flat from 2002-2006 is flat, for example see
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2006/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2006/trend
We should not be making long-term predictions on global cooling that depends so strongly on a single years observations.
Also the 2002 start seems cherry picking, as it is starting the graph at an El-Nino period and ending it at a La Nina, why not start say in 2000, so including a whole ENSO cycle rather than a half-cycle?
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/to:2008/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/to:2008/trend
(possibly because you get a warming trend).

I think many people forget that the PDO wasn’t “discovered” by oceanographers or climate scientists, but by fishermen. Of course, they didn’t call it the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. For decades fishermen along the west coast noticed that cetain species of fish such as Perch migrated north and south. Biologists at the University of Washington discovered that these species were temperature sensitive and that thier migration patterns were dependent upon SSTs. I believe it wasn’t until 1997 that the PDO was fomerly defined. To say the PDO is only a statistical fabrication ignores the fact that there is a physical manisfestation of it, and it can be verified by observing the migration patterns of temperature sensitive fish.
Also, it should be noted that scientists in 1976 were surprised as anyone during the 1976 El Nino event when they noticed that “normally” cool SSTs off the coast of North America warmed a bit and stayed warm after the El Nino event went neutral. It wasn’t a large anomally, but it did catch some scientist’s eye. They knew sometthing fundementally changed and dubbed this warming the Great Pacific Climate Shift. Whether the PDO is a risidual as robust as the AMO or NAO I think misses the point. The PDO is important to both biologists and climate scientists. It isn’t difficult to coorelate global temperature anomalies to the phase of the PDO, nor is it too difficult to coorelate the patterns in ENSO to it.
People can still disagree witht the importance of the PDO to global climate, but the disagreement should center around the fact that a)no one yet can forecast ENSO events with any degree of precisions, b)We do not know with any certainty what the causes of ENSO are and c)What the true relationship of the PDO to ENSO really is. We also have only a tiny data base of SSTs that can be considered precise (less than 50 years), and must guess at past weather patterns. We have no idea what ENSO and the PDO were like during the LIA or MWP, and consequently have no way of knowing what was driving the Pacific Basin weather/ocean patterns from 850-1850.
What has consistently upset many sceptics is that just 30 years ago significant discoveries were made in the field of atmosphereic sciences, and those discoveries are now being overcome by the AGW narrative. We are lectured constantly that GHG concentrations drive everything -even ENSO. Everything is being subordinated to a trace gase called CO2. Until last year this narrative held firm. What sceptics should continue to remind everyone is the fact that ENSO still appears to be the main driving force of our climate based upon real, emprical evidence. The cooling we’ve seen in the last 15 months was not forecasted by the GCMs. The PDO shift expectations is based up concrete evidence of past SSTs, and global surface temperature trends. Of course, Mother Nature is full of surprises. Whether the current negative PDO will act like the last phase is anyone’s guess.