James Annan thinks global warming contracts may be overpriced

here.

Temperatures are now in for Jan and Feb 2008, and they are very cold, at +0.12 and +0.26 respectively (note how "very cold" is still well above the 1951-1980 baseline). So it will require a mean anomaly of 0.62 for the remaining 10 months to trigger the payout. That has happened precisely once before, in 2005. Clearly it is not impossible, but it can't be considered likely. We can do a little more analysis to look at the persistence of monthly anomalies. After detrending, the typical e-folding decorrelation time scale of anomalies looks like 4 months or so, suggesting that the relatively cold temperatures will persist for some time to come. That means the latter part of the year will have to really heat up to bring the average up to the top 5 threshold. I'd be more tempted to sell than buy on the contract at the current price, although I've not actually checked the seasonal predictions of modelling centres which could influence my attitude.

Also, Annan thought I was Chris Masse--not sure whether to laugh or frown.

UPDATE: Richard Harris reports on global cooling.