Scientists cannot accurately predict the weather for next week. What makes you think they will know what the?

Climate isn't weather, it's essentially the sum of all weather. Weather is very chaotic and thus difficult to predict, but when you average out all that chaos over a long period of time, it becomes much more predictable.

A good analogy is betting in a casino, where the odds are against you. Sure maybe you'll come out ahead on a given bet or over a given day. That's very hard to predict. But if you keep gambling every day, over the long-term it's easy to predict you'll lose money.

There are many factors which affect the weather, but the climate is dominated by things like greenhouse gases and solar activity. Over the long-term, these factors will dominate over short-term variations. In fact, climate models are most accurate over time spans of about 40 years.

You can easily notice that all of the warmer answers are BS crap that they think they can fool everyone with. They act as if it is easier to predict the climate 100 years from now, than the weather 24 hours from now. Clearly this is stupidity in action. The overall climate is affected by many things that we have no current way of measuring, including changes to the ocean currents. Now their thought is that they can use a physical model instead of a statistical model. Their logic for this, is that if the amount of energy going in and going out of the system is known, then the overall effect to the temps will also be known. I actually agree with this point, but disagree that they are known. they are currently missing 30% of the heat. They don't know where it went! This is why a statistical model is appropriate. There is a large amount of uncertainty, and statistical models quantify uncertainty. The reason they do not like statistical models is that they are well aware that if they look at the problem using a statistical model, that the uncertainty is high enough that warming may not even be shown. They do not know the effects of clouds, (even whether or not they are negative or positive feedbacks. They do not know the effect of the oceans. They are simply guessing at the temperature sensitivity to CO2, based upon paleoclimate data, that 1.) Assumes all correlation is causation 2.) Does not even match with current temp records The only reason that the scientists are claiming the certainty that they are claiming is that they KNOW that no one wants to pay a scientist to say "I don't know". They are in a tough position, in which the world is asking them for answers and they are giving their best guesses. THey do not want to look stupid by admitting that it is their best guess. While this works for most people, SOme people who know what is going on, think it is absolutely foolish to pretend as if your guesses are actually reality. I, What are your qualifications? Clearly the poster never said anything about denying AGW, and most of your answer clearly does not address the question. So perhaps one of the things you might want to add to your qualifications to respond would be at least a second grade level of reading comprehension, cause you are certainly not demonstrating this.

I may be a little to close to the situation but I vehemently disagree with the premise that we can not present a weather outlook with a lead time of one weak. Though not rich in detail, a general regional forecast is very possible as can be seen at the link below.

Generalized conditions are much more easy to get right when predicting the weather. The study of climate is just such a generalization, the big picture is relatively easy to come by based as it is on fundamental physics, while the details pose a more perplexing problem based as they are on shorter term variability of significant magnitude which however does not impact the overall picture over the long term.

I've never heard one claiming that he could predict the weather 50 years from now. Is this a straw-man argument?

Or are you confusing "weather" with "climate?"

Weather and climate. It's the same thing for climate deniers.

However, there are big differences when talking about weather and climate in science.

They also have failed in their intermediate-range (10-20 year) predictions (Hansen).

Glad to see Dana concede that climate is "the sum of all the weather." That's true. That means that a certain number of "it's snowing in Houston" and "it's snowing in October" questions does add up to a question about the climate.

The Computer Models are only good 3 days ahead the years after word is just chaos

Garbage in Garbage out.

You have badly confused Climatology with Meteorology. Different people, different studies, different levels of precision, different timescales. It is like comparing historians to anthropologists.

But if you want to lump them all together, Meteorologists are very accurate. When the local meteorologist all agree that there a 90% chance of rain, you will take your umbrella with you. If they all agree there is zero chance of rain, you'll leave it at home. Climatologists are agreed that there is more than an 90% chance that mankind is warming our environment. Will you react to that by preparing?

They can't know. They're just upset that we know this now.

I wish I had a nickle for every story of a prediction gone bad by thinking a trend would continue forever.

Next Week:

North of equator: Cold

South of equator: Warm

:)