Hi Doug -

I came across your site by accident and have found it
most informative. Trained as a physicist, but working as
a software engineer, I find your approach to this problem
strongly resonant.

As I have only recently become more aware of the issues behind
the claims of "global warming" - curiously now being called "climate change" - I am not expert in the literature. Do you know if the various climate models do any back testing ?
Surely it is a necessary though not sufficient condition
that you be able to predict the past before one can have any
confidence that you can predict the future. Any models I have
worked on have had a "calibration" period and then a predicted
period both forward and backward in time. Even then, a model
can fall into the trap of being in effect a curve fitter
with no predictive value.

Regards,

JG Lipham