On Saturday, April 4, 2015 at 3:26:23 PM UTC+1, RedAcer wrote:

This is a good place to start to see what climate models the IPCC is
using for it's reports.

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter8.pdf

Thanks for posting that. I tend to ignore the IPCC reports which I see as over 1000 pages of waffle. But I have read the FAQ which repeats the theme of the radio programs - the models don't work but we believe them because they are based on SCIENCE.

FAQ 8.1 it says:

"How Reliable Are the Models Used to Make Projections of Future Climate Change?

There is considerable confidence that climate models provide credible quantitative estimates of future climate change, particularly at continental scales and above. This confidence comes from the foundation of the models in accepted physical principles and from their ability to reproduce observed features of current climate and past climate changes."

Yet the models failed to predict the increase in Antarctic sea ice, and Jane Francis admitted that the models do not agree with her paleoclimate data.

"Model global temperature projections made over the last two decades have also been in overall agreement with subsequent observations over that period (Chapter 1)."

Oh yea? What about the hiatus?

"Nevertheless, models still show significant errors."

True.

"Significant uncertainties, in particular, are associated with the representation of clouds, and in the resulting cloud responses to climate change. Consequently, models continue to display a substantial range of global temperature change in response to specified greenhouse gas forcing (see Chapter 10)."

Aren't clouds rather fundamental?

If I recall correctly in both radio programs it was emphasised that all scientists are sceptics. Anyone else here call themselves a scientist :-)