If the models and studies over the past few years had projected successively smaller temperature increases, would you believe them then?

“So by all means, continue to believe. Ignore all evidence to the contrary.”

Provide some, or point us to it. But make it valid evidence.

“Ignore the total lack of a successful prediction in any of these models.”

They have made some. If you’d done your homework, you’d know about them.

“Get your sandwhich board and a bell and get out on the streets proclaiming the world is going to end. Just make sure that you keep the date of our demise well in the future and don’t let facts get in your way.”

As I recall, only your side makes that claim — unless by “the world” you mean the civilization the developed world currently enjoys.

And by the way, it’s “sandwich.” After the Earl of. Look it up.

Yes, I think that can be easily done…

Thanks for the memory-jogger.

All I’m asking is, “Is it all right to use a comparison of the accuracy of these model based projections to actual observations is assessing the potential accuracy of the model’s higher CO2 projections?”

Using proper statistics over a long enough time to generate a statistically valid trend, computing proper uncertainty, yes. This applies to both model outputs and observed trend.

Recognize that short-term regional projections come with large uncertainty (”error bars”).

Asteroid Miner, where did you find this information? I find locating these records quite difficult.

Here’s a new report forwarded to me by Jenny Ross:

http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=42708

I haven’t had a chance to check the sources linked at the end. But I suspect this is another case of the data lagging behind the reality, Lou Grinzo. We had no fall color in New Jersey in 2008, everything just went to brown.

Not pretty.

“where accuracy on specific time-frames isn’t the goal.”

The goal, of course, is accuracy for specific CO2 ppm levels.

I don’t think I implied in any way that Hadley is lying about anything. I do want to know how much confidence I can put in their climate projections. Sticking to the atmospheric half. Hadley has for at least the last couple years put out an annual projection based on the most likely GCM output.

All I’m asking is, “Is it all right to use a comparison of the accuracy of these model based projections to actual observations is assessing the potential accuracy of the model’s higher CO2 projections?”

I thought the Hadley weather model and climate model are separate entities and it seemed you were saying they are one and the same in you response to Burke.

The climate model couples (the “C” in “GCM”) their ocean and atmospheric models.

That’s why I used the phrase “atmospheric half”.

It’s possible that you, not involved with Hadley, are right.

While Hadley, who is doing the work, is lying.

The Hadley Center regularly makes seasonal forecasts for Great Britain and also annual global temperature predictions at least for the last few years. I’m just wondering how accurate they’ve been.

Not so accurate. This is a hard problem, much harder than the averaged error-bar constrained climate predictions based on many runs, where accuracy on specific time-frames isn’t the goal.

It is raining too much here in Illinois. Agriculture has collapsed in Australia because the rain moved. There is a pattern already, and the result is famine.

One thing that worries me deeply (aside from the incessant thrum and hum of the denierbots) is the issue of the cognitive gap between what we think we know and what’s really going on with the climate. We’ve had a tidal wave of stories in recent months that all fit the general theme: “New study shows that X is worse than we thought”, where X is some symptom of climate chaos. This tells me two things:

First, despite the dedication, ingenuity, and all around braininess of the climate scientists, we still don’t know nearly as much about the mechanics of Earth’s climate as we’d prefer. As I say endlessly on my site, timing is everything, and in this case we managed to trigger climate chaos before we really knew how things worked. So we’re forced to play catch up.

Second, the real-world change MIGHT be accelerating. Even as science accelerates its efforts to understand what’s going on so they can close the gap, the actual change is still pulling away from us. (Deniers: Please don’t try to understand the concept of accelerating but still falling farther behind; it will only make you queasy.) I certainly hope this isn’t true, and that it’s just the normal and normally wholly appropriate caution of scientists that’s keeping them from eliminating that cognitive gap.

Dhogaza,

I thought the Hadley weather model and climate model are separate entities and it seemed you were saying they are one and the same in you response to Burke.

The Hadley Center regularly makes seasonal forecasts for Great Britain and also annual global temperature predictions at least for the last few years. I’m just wondering how accurate they’ve been.