Eric, I have seen graphs of the predicted global temperatures from several different models and they all show a rapid increase during the questionable period. Not one of them indicate that a pause was conceivable. They would have thrown a skeptic out of the office had he suggested that a pause was remotely possible. Look into this if you do not believe it....a good first start is the latest BBC article in their science section.
I believe like you that most of these guys really work hard at building their models. The problem is that the climate is an extraordinarily complex system. Forcing inputs occur on a daily, monthly, yearly, and most likely other cyclic periods that are not well understood. The interactions between the various component systems also is quite complicated and not well understood. Every couple of years another major factor is uncovered and consequently added to the models in an effort to reduce errors. If you evaluate the performance of these guys relative to the state of the art, they get an A regardless of how well their models perform since there is no perfect model to compare them against. No one really knows how well the climate can be predicted by the most perfect model that man can devise. I venture to guess that the present state of the art is a long way removed from that ideal, but that is my opinion only and it is based upon the track record that I have observed over the years. I suspect that a model can be adjusted that will include the present pause, but no one can guess whether or not the expected behavior after the pause is completed will be accurately predicted. You appear to want to defer to the experts a bit too much Eric. I suggest that you use some of your excellent capabilities to question there performance against the known standard and insist that they measure up. After all, the advice that these guys is offering could damage the US and world economies when misused by politicians. It is quite important that they get it right. Dave -----Original Message----- From: Eric Walker <eric.wal...@gmail.com> To: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com> Sent: Tue, Aug 26, 2014 2:06 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:global warming? On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 10:52 PM, David Roberson <dlrober...@aol.com> wrote: Since the pause was 100% not predicted and instead should have been a more rapid rise, how much more in error could they be? How confident are you of this assertion? How on earth could you or anybody else believe that they will be correct in their predictions over a 100 year period with this sort of track record? Are you confident that they now have all the correct variables under control? Dave, I think you misunderstand my position. It's not that climate scientists should be given a free pass. It's also not that they haven't had a hard time predicting near- and medium-term trends in climate change; I wouldn't be surprised if they have had difficulties in this regard. I'm saying something more subtle than that: I believe it would take a lot of reading of actual journal papers and following of specific models to even be able to begin to evaluate the success of the field. What if there are some climate scientists working quietly off in a corner that are doing a very good job of accurately characterizing things up to now within certain ranges? That kind of detail would be all too easy to miss if one's only source of information about the field is the evening news. I strongly suspect that no climate skeptics here have made such an effort. Because there are surely some smart people in the field (as there are in any field), I would be wary of betting *against* some accumulation of real knowledge in the field. I'm sure there are people from Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, U. of Georgia, etc., that study climate science. Perhaps the only statements the careful ones can make about long-term climate change are vague ones that do not tell us much about specific temperatures. I wouldn't know, because I haven't followed the journals and the specific models (per point 1, above). So no free pass is needed. Just more than a little wariness to pass judgment on a field I haven't followed closely, given the great amount of effort I've had to spend just to start to get up to speed on a different field in the last couple of years (physics). Eric
