Under-prediction of warming in the north is one of the most notable failures of climate models, although they are wrong on lots of other details as well. This i

Under-prediction of warming in the north is one of the most notable failures of climate models, although they are wrong on lots of other details as well. This is not a surprise: climate models are in important respects non-physical approximations to the real climate, and as such can't be expected to get the details right. Depending on your politics you can now accuse me either of making excuses for "the hiatus", or of being a Denialist, but all I'm really doing is pointing out that the public's expectations of climate models is both too high ("the science is settled") and too low ("global warming is a hoax!") There is a middle way between these extremes, one that acknowledges the uncertainty of the models (which are large) while at the same time recognizing that there is no physically reasonable way to double the CO2 content of the Earth's atmosphere without adding about 1 W/m2 to the heat budget. That we don't have a very good idea of how the Earth's climate will respond to that additional heating is not something we should find reassuring, and while there are plenty of good reasons for investing in nuclear, solar and other alternative power sources, there are also good reasons to invest in climate robustness: ensuring that our cities aren't entirely shut down by a rare snowfall, investing to protect the most vulnerable populations from climate variation from any source, and so on. Our economies are highly tuned up for the climate of the past 100 years, which was unusually stable. We should be aware that the kind of forward planning our parent's and grandparent's generations did based on the assumption of climate stability is not likely to be viable in future as the climate returns to its state of natural volatility, almost certainly helped along by anthropogenic contributions.