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Great theories often fall flat when the assumptions they are based on are incorrect. Weather is chaotic, climate is not. Climate is the long term statistics of weather and is insensitive to initial conditions.

A good test of a model is it's ability to predict unknown phenomena, climate models of the 80's predicted a phenomena that is now called "polar amplification", they also predicted that the stratosphere would cool from increased CO2 while the troposphere would warm, both trends have been observed by sattelites. Other predictions have also been observed.

Here are a few reasons why you may get modded as a troll

The Mathematical definition for chaos comes from Lorenz who spotted the principle while studying weather models, to insinuate climate scientists are unaware of these facts is simply ignorant*.

There is a whole branch of science that is a sort of cross between climate science and geology, it's called paleoclimatology, to insinuate climate scientists have somehow missed natural variation is also ignorant.

The radiative forcings that effect climate have been taken into account in models, without the AGW component the upward trend in tempratures dissapears. To suggest climate scientists somehow missed the giant ball of flames in the sky is ignorant.

Here is a link (scroll down to the embedded video), that uses finite element analysis and basic physical/chemical laws to correctly reconstruct past CLIMATE regardless of the initial RANDOM values that define the weather. All the various models I am aware of have the same ability. The video is somewhat simplistic since it does not show the ocean currents and other features of climate that it predicts but if you have ever looked at weather patterns you will clearly recognise that hurricanes are predicted in the correct places, other larger features are much more acurately simulated.

ignorant* = Not an insult and definitely curable, watching TED talks is an excellent place to start the road to recovery.

Yep all science is tenative and it's models are constantly improving. As you probaly know the IPCC rate clouds as having a low level of scientific understanding, regardless of the outcome getting a better handle on the CR idea will assist in modeling cloud formation

What about cloud formation?

Clouds formation involves areosols and the IPCC reports state both phenomena as having a low level of scientific understanding. However Japan's Earth simulator does a very nice job of simulating clouds, precipitation and even hurricanes using the basic laws of physics. ( embeded movie half way down the page )

"Check out section 1.2 of the comments draft paper for Carlin's graphs of similar datasets."

I've seen enough of that report to determine it is a rehash of the descredited anti-science peddled by the CEI, my basic objection is that they are not Carlin's views, nor is it evidence, it is a summary of the discredited opinions of the lobbyists at CEI. I will simply assume section 1.2 is a rehash of Bob Carter's ingenuious conflation of upper troposhere measurements with surface measurements. Climate models correctly predict the cooling trend in the upper troposhere as observed by sattelites. IIRC this is due to the radative properties of CO2 and the increased distance between molecules at low pressure (ie absorbed IR energy is more likely to be re-relased as photons than preserved as kinetic energy in collisions). Please correct me if my assumption about section 1.2 is wrong.

"I'm not sure if you are familiar with (or at all interested in) this, but the "Climate Audit" blog is fairly interesting in terms of looking at the methodology and math of climate models, etc. Climate Audit and Real Climate are somewhat infamous for having a vicious feud going on as well."

Yes I am familiar with it and I followed the debate with interest as it unfolded. I wouldn't have called it a vicious feud, more a heated scientific debate, however these days realclimate (founded by M.Mann), all but ignores McIntrye (Founder of Climate Audit). As you probably know the debate was over the statistcal methods used in Mann's 1997 "Hockey stick" paper. You may also know that the debate culimnated in a congressional inquisition into Mann's paper, I say "inquisition" because who the hell holds a congressional inquiry on the veracity of a single paper? Anyway the National Academies of Sciences (who do know a thing or two about statistics) were dragged into the fray and asked to testify.

Many psuedo-skeptics such as those at CEI have since taken out of context quotes from that testiomony to tried and discredit Mann in the false belief that discrediting a single noteable paper would also dicredit the AGW hypothesis. However it seems nobody ever goes to the trouble of pointing to the text of the NAS testimony. Yes NAS qustioned Mann's confidence levels on certain statements but they also vindicated his methods and conclusions (much to the dissapointment of the inquisitors, I'm sure). To Mann's credit he has since addressed those critcisims with a follow up paper, the paper was peer-reviewed and published by his NAS critics in PNAS.

At the time the McIntyre/Mann debate was raging I respected McIntryre's tenacity and views, however since the inquisition he has failed to come up with any new papers on the subject (AFAIK his 2003 critique of Mann is his most recent paper). He has now also become a star attraction at the Heartland Institute's annual "Climate Confrences". In my book these developments currently disqualify him as a serious critic of Mann's work and I no longer frequent his site. As always YMMV.

BTW: From what I can find, the NAS testimony is not linked to by either RC or CA.

"I don't think we can gather enough processing power in my lifetime to do a reasonable simulation on a system that complex."

Sorry to hear of your premature passing. My condolences to your family.

"And they only need to increase that by 100,000 times to get to about the same number of neurons as a human brain, let alone the synaptic connections (which would be somewhere on the order of 2,000,000 times what they've done)."

Not as far fetched as it once seemed.

From the link: "At the end of 2006, the Blue Brain project had created a model of the basic functional unit of the brain, the neocortical column. At the push of a button, the model could reconstruct biologically accurate neurons based on detailed experimental data, and automatically connect them in a biological manner, a task that involves positioning around 30 million synapses in precise 3D locations."

Note that some major parts of the model are down at the molecular level. Since then experiments using data from brain scans have shown that the simulated neocortex appears to behave like a real one.

I doubt people (particularly the religious) will accept a computer consciousness. A good number of scientists belive animals are prue programming (nobody home just trainable automata) and there are a shitload of ordinary people out there who still don't belive climate simulations are usefull predictors (scroll down to embedded movie).

Ok, you have some fair and reasonable points and I think you should follow your skepticisim to where ever it leads, what follows is mainly just my opinion. OTOH I am quite capable of backing up the assertions I make if you want to talk specifics...

"Is there no way to eliminate this ethical dilemma of monetary motivators in science? Should we not work to eliminate it?

Unfortunately when large sums of money (or fame) are concerned, no (re:tabacco "scientists"). However we can work towards limiting it's effects by eductaing ourselves on the basic issues and insisting on peer-reviewed publications including the data sources that goes with them. As in the case of tabacco "scientists, science will eventually expose the psudeo-skeptics for what they are.

I see skeptics as well as scientists with real opposing theories as a good thing in any type of science.

Skepticisim is the foundation apon which science is built. IMHO the term "non-skeptical scientist" is an oxymoron. I am usually very careful about labeling someone a skeptic as opposed to a psudeo-skeptic, I believe from your responses that, like myself, you are the former.

"I just fear that this science is getting used by political agendas and has accumulated an almost religious following of zealots."

Yes, there are "alarmists" of both the ecological and economic variety, educating oneself on the science and proposed solutions will assist in spotting them. I think an international treaty implementing a cap and trade system is the best solution I have heard because it's basic mechanisim is easy to understand and firmly based in the "free market philosophy".

"I also distrust statistical data and computer models that are based on such data, especially when the data is retrieved from questionable sources"

Unfortunately there is no other way to analyse historical records and proxies other than with statistics and even if you get the stats right you then need to justify any extrapolation you make from them by other means, I belive the IPCC reports do this in a convincing manner. Computer models used for investigating the climate do not rely on statistics they use finite element analysis a method that is invaluable in a huge range of subjects, particularly fluid dynamics (ie: atmosphere and oceans are both treated as "fluids"). A nice visualization of a baseline for such a model from Japan's "Earth Simulator" can be seen here (scroll down past the still picture to see the embeded movie).

"My argument is mainly that the "skeptics" as you call them (I prefer to call them scientists with opposing theories) are not getting the funding and that this is anti-scientific."

I agree it would be unscientific if it were true. My argument is that these so called unfunded theories have already been debunked and that the "debate" in the mass-media is in the main manafactured by certain opinion columnists. I'm not saying there isn't a huge amount of genuine skeptical argument about things such as clouds, areosols, biological feedbacks, the behaviour of glaciers, ice shelves, etc, etc. However this does not change what is already known, what it does over the long term is narrow the error bars. In fact many of the people/institutions on both sides of those genuine debates are the same people/institutions the IPCC draws it's evidence from and none of them dispute the much maligned "consensus", although many of them sorely wish they could.

"Let's not forget about the sensors that are already near black asphalt parking lots, tar covered rooftops, and down wind from a rooftop heat exchanger. Remember all you climatologists. In the world of computing, it's garbage in, garbage out.

Those silly climatologists have a name for it, it's called the Urban Heat Island, they have known about it for decades. Here is an embedded movie (scroll down a bit past the still picture) from Japan's Earth simulator. It shows the garbage that emeges from the physical and chemical equations in their high resolution finite element models, the garbage comes complete with jet-streams and cyclones forming in the right places.

"At that point my bullshit detector went into overdrive, and I started looking if there were more scientists that don't agree with this 'the science is settled'."

I don't blame you one bit, science it's never "settled", that is what seperates it from all other philosphy and religion. I do not belive in geo-engineering as a solution, I belive uncontrolled geo-engineering is warming the planet and think that the IPCC SPM-4 gives a conservative estimate of what the effects may be, I say conservative because that is what I would expect from some 2500 experts representing the reputations of virtual every national science body on the planet coming to a "consensus" once every four years.

I am not a climatologist either but I have followed the science for at least 25yrs, every one of them as a skeptic. The "best science" we have says that we need to reduce our CO2 emmisions from the current ~10Gt/yr to ~3Gt/yr and that we have ~50yrs to do that. If you don't read any other link that I have posted please check out the list of "myths" many of which are actually half-truths. There is an increadible amount of FUD and politics surrounding this subject so by no means am I asking you to turn off your bullshit detector, it's just that the list gives a good starting point for your skeptical enquiries.

On the subject of super-computer models, they are no more or less useful for studying climate than any other physical phenomena and they certainly don't prove anything (AFAIK proof is confined to axiomonic systems such as maths). What they can do is make predictions that are testable and open up lines of enquiry, an example of which is "polar amplification". These finite-element models are capable of producing very good historical reconstructions. Unfortunately it's not easy to grasp this from numerical outputs but the people at Japan's Earth simulator have provided this visual reconstruction of a single year in an effort to demonstarte their capabilities (scroll down a bit for the embedded movie). I can't speak with as much confidence for the rest of the planet but as a long time observer of the weather patterns around Australia I can say that they are remakably accuarate right down to the hurricanes that emerge from the model in the right places at the right time of year.

Just to be clear the second list is made up from individuals while the first only contains scientific organizations, it excludes universities and individuals, including them would make the list unmanageably large. I don't know of a single reputable scientific organisation or university that is seriously at odds with "the consensus", certainly none appear in the list I offered although some of the individuals do hold respectable positions. An interesting excersice is to cross-check the claims of the individual skeptic with the organisations they work for.

As to your questions both have been around for many years and have been thouroughly debunked, but I will have a go. The first one about CO2 levels rising after the ice melts in an ice age is true but the claim that it is evidence against AGW is false. The regularly reccuring ice ages are caused by Earth's orbit (solar forcing), as the ice melts so does the permafrost. The melting permafrost relaeses methane which rapidly breaks down into CO2. Therefore CO2 goes up (feeds back) and ADDS to the warming caused by the shift in orbit. In otherwords CO2 is normally a feedback and that feedback mechanisim will compound the warming from our emmissions (human forcing). None of this refutes the physics that says CO2 is a GHG, nor does it refute the temprature rise expected from increased CO2. What it does tell us is that nature will add to our CO2 spike as the permafrost melts because of our CO2 spike. Personally I think the last sentance is the reason psudeo-skeptics continue to push this particular red-herring in the media.

The medieval warm period and the little icse age are different events and are the favorite fodder of media outlets such as the WSJ, they were real questions at one time and are much harder to debunk, so other than saying the conclusions are from proxy records I will just point to the RC links.

As for accuracy of the models, they have error bars but have a skim though the IPCC reports particlularly the SPM. Being a computer scientists my favorite model link is this movie of a single simulated year from Japan's Earth simulator.

"if you can explain these issues convincingly why do you let the media get away with not covering the counter argument?"

Good question, it's not from lack of trying by those involved and coverage by the media is usually a bit better outside the US (eg:BBC). The two questions you asked are not easy to understand for many people, maybe a better question is why do some people in the skeptics list get so much repeated media attention for their red-herrings and esoteric but misinformed details, despite both points being thouroughly debunked time and again? For instance why do we currently keep hearing about how cold it is the last couple of years when the fact is the hottest 10yrs on record (global average) have all occured in the last 12yrs? Why are the opinion columns (eg: WSJ) full of people who deny the Arctic sea ice is dissapearing when half of it's area and most of it's volume has already gone in just under half my lifetime? Why does the media constantly focus on rising oceans and hurricanes when (IMHO) the major threat from AGW is to agriculture and marine stocks?

I have been refering to the consensus in ambiguious terms above, however when a climatologists refers to "the consensus" they are usually referring to the falsifyable (and IMHO conservative) assertions in the IPCC reports. For seven years now many media outlets have failed to pick that up as

"Multi-Core technology is good for desktop systems as it is meant to run a lot of relatively small apps Rarely taking advantage of more then 1 or 2 cores. per app.In other-words it allows Multi-Tasking without a penalty. We don't use super computers that way. We use them to to perform 1 app that takes huge resources that would take hours or years on your PC and spit out results in seconds or days."

Sorry but that's not entirely correct, most super computers work on highly parallel problems using numerical analysis techniques. By definition the problem is broken up into millions of smaller problems that make ideal "small apps", a common consequence is that the bandwidth of the communications between the 'small apps' becomes the limiting factor.

"Back in the early-mid 90's we had different processors for Desktop and Super Computers."

The earth simulator was refered to in some parts as 'computenick', it's speed jump over it's nearest rival and longevity at the top marked the renaissance of "vector processing" after it had been largely ignored during the 90's.

In the end a supercomputer is a purpose built machine, if cores fit the purpose then they will be used.