This is not a political position, it is an expert's evaluation after having looked at the code and documentation for some of the better models. You simply can't parameterize away as much of the physics as they do, or impose conservation conditions by hand the way they do, and expect a long-term integration to produce anything but the crudest approximation to reality.
System-wide averages are likely accurate in terms of scale. That is, global heat content is increasing at the order of 1 W/m2, probably not 0.1E-2 W/m2 and certainly not 10 W/m2. This is important, because 1 W/m2 is consistent with observtions and likely problematic in terms of local climate. The global economy is heavily optimized to the current climate, and even relatively modest changes would turn trillions of dollars of investment into malinvestment. This is a bad thing, if you care about global capitalism.
Climate scientists are not computational physicists. They have not spent most of their careers modelling systems that are ultimately subject to laboratory testing, and as such they have not seen their best laid plans gang aft agley.
I have long wondered how much of the hubris in climate prediction was coming from the policy level and how much was coming from the scientists themselves. This release suggests that it really is coming from the scientists, and that's unfortunate. Twenty years from now most of these predictions will prove to be false. That falsity will be in all directions: some will have temperatures or rainfalls far too low, some far too high. And the enemies of science will use that to further attack us.
Unfortunately, when I stand up and say this, I get attacked as an enemy of science by people who think they love science, but who are actually drawn to it simply as a useful stick with which to beat their political opponents.
