An article on the Nature website looks at the failure of global temperatures to rise in line with the climate models and finds a possible explanation in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. I notice what may be the start of a new meme emerging:
...none of the climate simulations carried out for the IPCC produced this particular hiatus at this particular time. That has led sceptics — and some scientists — to the controversial conclusion that the models might be overestimating the effect of greenhouse gases, and that future warming might not be as strong as is feared. Others say that this conclusion goes against the long-term temperature trends, as well as palaeoclimate data that are used to extend the temperature record far into the past. And many researchers caution against evaluating models on the basis of a relatively short-term blip in the climate. “If you are interested in global climate change, your main focus ought to be on timescales of 50 to 100 years,” says Susan Solomon, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
The idea that the predictions of climate models are only good over periods this long seems to represent a considerable upping of the ante, but it's one that I have heard elsewhere in recent days - if I remember correctly it was also mentioned by David Kennedy in his evidence to the Energy and Climate Change Committee. In the past, the community has stood by a period of 30 years (at least when it suited them), but it may well be that the public start to realise that the models have been running hot over periods of several decades, the climate modelling community has been forced to extend the limits.
100 years should ensure that all concerned make it to retirement.