Climate Models: an Epic Fail!

Dr. Roy Spencer is a climatologist and long-time anthropogenic global warming (AGW) skeptic.  He's just done all of us a favor by plotting all 73 of the climate models used by the IPCC to support their predictions of AGW – along with the actual observations since the mid-'70s.  The data chosen is the “tropical mid-troposphere” temperature – the temperature of the middle of the troposphere (the lower 12 miles or so of our atmosphere, so about 6 miles high) at latitudes within 20&deq; of the equator.  He chose this particular data for two reasons:

1. The IPCC models make a clear prediction of rapidly increasing temperature in this area.
2. Since the 1970s, we have excellent objective observational data for this area (from both balloons and satellites), with more than enough data to allow the various sensors to be cross-calibrated.

On the chart below, the IPCC predictive models are the lines; the square and round dots are the actual observed temperatures.

As Dr. Spencer says, this divergence between the models and the actual observations isn't news – skeptics have been reporting it for years.  It's just becoming more and more obvious as the evidence accumulates that the IPCC models are fatally flawed.

There's no shame in their models being in error.  There's great shame in their defense of them, even in the face of solid evidence to the contrary.  That's not how science is supposed to work...