1) Certainly the models used have become more sophisticated, they can handle many more nuances (correctly gauging, for instance, the global temperature impact of a major volcano eruption such as Pinatubo in 1991), depicting regional ecological impacts, etc. And, of course, the science informing the models has developed colossally since the the early 1980s.
2) But no model of how much global temperatures will rise for a given rise in greenhouse gases, by say 2100, is likely to ever be more a rough educated guess, just as the most sophisticated financial predictions cannot provide more than a very general idea of what global average GDP per capita will be in 2100. One can only realistically talk in terms of scenarios, trends, ranges, and probabilities.
3) That, said, I have the impression (hard to track this down, but I don't think this example is an outlier or the result of pure luck: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/c... ) that already the rough 'back of the envelope, middle-range guesstimates' of the 1950s and '60s were quite close to what has happened since.
As for changes in climate science generally, over the past 30 years, one major area has been in paleoclimatology. Tree rings, ice cores, sediment records, etc. give us a much better idea now of the timing and mechanisms of past climate changes.
When I was little I remember a tornado survivor interviewed on tv. He said there were X amount of tornados at the same time. The weatherman said "stupid yokel! You were just scared that can't happen, I know better" then years later we invented new dappled radar, X amount of tornadoes together! It's never happened before! It's the end of time!!!!
Every year as a child the news would show horrible mudslides and storms hit Mexico. The old white men would say it's cause there a godless nation! Then the TV would interview an old Mexican farmer "it's a 100. Year cycle, on Christmas day a cold (or warm I forget) wind blows we call it El Nina then the storms follow. Soon on Christmas a warm wind will blow El Nino, then the north will get 100 years bad weather" funny how Noone remembers.
The real increase In tech is cable TV. With new 24 hour news, they needed 24 hrs if news if not real, than any would do. Killer bees mad cow y2k swine flu ice age ozone hole acid rain
If I can just clarify one point… you mentioned that there wasn’t a meaningful consensus that AGW was happening amongst scientists. Whilst this is probably true of the scientific community as a whole, within the realms of climate science there was a very clear consensus.
In fact, climate scientists (in the various forms they took back then) had been warning about the consequences of global warming and climate change since the 1950’s. It had been established decades earlier (Fourier, Baptiste, Arhennius etc) that greenhouse gases caused warming and it had long been known that these were accumulating in the atmosphere.
At the time there was no observable warming as it was being cancelled out by a strong negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Once the PDO switched to the positive phase there was enhanced warming, just as predicted. It was only then that the powers that be began to accept that the scientists had been right all along and it was then that the first steps toward tackling climate change were taken.
Global warming 1958 style:
In the climate world you now have satellites.
In the communications world you have the World Wide Web.
Saying that old predictions can be ignored and only the current ones count is ridiculous. All predictions are about the future. If you don't know enough to make a prediction then don't do it. In another thirty years the same argument can be made as an attempt to ignore the current crop of predictions.
As Longfellow once wrote: "We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done."
Climate science is no exception.
Climate change means what says...the climate is changing...not all at the same time, to the same degree or everywhere at once. As the blanket of CO2 gets thicker more heat energy is maintained. Most of this excess heat moves to warm sea water and melt ice. Ocean currents are effected and the jet stream becomes more erratic. Of course this is a big planet and the effect of excess heat is slow because the excess heat is small...small but steady. Simply holding up a series of thermometers tells you nothing. Climate change usually takes hundreds of thousands of years. This current change, now in motion has run less than 200 years. Everything north of 55 degrees North Latitude has already been effected because that's the largest land and ice mass area. I'm sure you could look these changes up... too bad most folks won't!
Chem. The whole AGW crisis was based on the warming seen in the 80's and 90's and no one mentioned a need to wait 30yrs then.
The science/physics is still the same, technology has changed we have better means of measurement now.
With a linear rise in CO2 not to see something similar with global temperature is meaningful and the longer the pause continues, the more the likelyhood of CO2 being a dominant factor is diminished.
You come up with excuses about ocean cycles (heat going in the oceans) and other natural effects, but that only proves that CO2 is less important than natural cycles.
From the way that denialists talk, you would think that science and technology haven't advance at all since the 1980s. They must be using computers from the 1980s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_6...
As far as the supposed failed predictions are concerned, we should thank God that they haven't happened yet. I would like to think that we can still save the polar bear and prevent New York from being flooded. We can only prevent either while they are still "failed predictions."
But what really matters is that Earth is warming and we are causing it.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010...
http://c1planetsavecom.wpengine.netdna-c...
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp...
In matters of climate, 30 years is more or less the minimum relevant interval. Thus, it necessarily follows that most of the meaningful climate predictions that have either come true, or actually proven false (that is, something was predicted to have happened enough before now that we can truly call the prediction false) are predictions from, at the latest, the early 80s.
At that point, climate science was... relatively new. Or, at least, a lot less of a mature science than it is now. There wasn't even a meaningful consensus among scientists that AGW was really happening and likely to be significant until a decade and change later.
Yet, skeptics (and "skeptics") often point to failed predictions from these (relatively) early days, as though they meaningfully reflect on what scientists are predicting now.
As... something of an illustration of principle, I'd like the realists reading this to list some changes in science and/or technology, and particularly in science and/or technology relevant to climate and/or weather, since 1983.
