Climate and weather perdiction are exactly the same in that thay are enormously complex systems involving a multitude of variables. Changing one or more inputs completely changes the results. Also if weighting factors are off even a small amount, the accumulation of error will render the prediction useless. That’s why early climate models are so far off and new models constantly need to be made (or old ones tweaked).
The bottom line is that both the climatologist and the meteorologist suffer the same problems – too little data, too little understanding of the data, and unpredicted variables entering the equations.
Meteorologists, of course, have to explain why they were wrong a day, week, or month down the road. A somewhat humbling experience, I imagine.
Climatologists, on the other hand, are disingenuous enough that they know that they won’t have to answer to anyone for decades – long enough to publish a few papers and enjoy a nice career. Now that’s luxury when you’re in the forecasting business. What arrogance!
To say one can predict the climate when we can’t predict the weather IS outrageous. You can correct me when climatology has established a track record – say in about 100 years.
I’m sorry, but I understand this far better than you think I do. Ask an engineer what happens when his data is just a little off or he forgot to account for something in the design.
