Climate Prediction Quotes

Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.

Do you think it will rain? Milo: But I thought you were the Weather Man? No, I'm the Whether man, for it is more important to know whether there will be weather, whether than what the weather will be.

According to a new UN report, the global warming outlook is much worse than originally predicted. Which is pretty bad, when they originally predicted it would destroy the planet.

It has become very difficult for anyone to argue that observed global warming is natural variability. We have good reason for being able to say that the world will be warmer by about a quarter of a degree in the next decade. It's the same reason we had 10 years ago when we said that the 1990s would be warmer than the 1980s: The planet is out of equilibrium.

Climate ... models bear about as much relation to reality as astrology.

It makes very little sense to believe the output of the climate models.

Computer models of the climate....[are] a very dubious business if you don't have good inputs.

The climate is changing. That's not the debate. The debate is how do we know what the ideal surface temperature is in 2100?

Contrary to popular accounts, very few scientists in the world - possibly none - have a sufficiently thorough, 'big picture' understanding of the climate system to be relied upon for a prediction of the magnitude of global warming. To the public, we all might seem like experts, but the vast majority of us work on only a small portion of the problem.

Let me state what the official IPCC prediction is: Sea levels could go up as much as three-quarters of a meter in this century, but there is a reasonable probability it could be much higher than that.

My dad joined Langley in 1964 as a co-op student and retired in 2004 an internationally respected climate scientist.

I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can't be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.

The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books - mine included - because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened.

This was the most anticipated natural disaster in history.

There is no real scientific debate over what is happening; of course there is debate over exactly how it is going to play out in the decades ahead, because this is a large experiment that we haven't done before, and no one knows precisely how one can ever precisely predict what effects this heat will have. But all the science in the last few years, or almost all of it, really serves to show that the effects are larger and more rapid than we had thought even a decade ago.

You can't say for certain what will happen to the weather in the long term.

It is almost possible to predict one or two days in advance, within a rather broad range of probability, what the weather is going to be; it is even thought that it will not be impossible to publish daily forecasts, which would be very useful to soci.

Computer modelling for weather forecasting, and indeed for climate forecasting, has reached its limits.

However useful computer models may be, the one thing they cannot be is evidence. Computer climate models are simply conjectures.

I've never been one to bet on the weather.

The latest scientific assessment has almost doubled the predicted rate of warming if no changes are made.

Some days, I'd feel better with Punxsutawney Phil in the Oval Office - at least he doesn't lie about the weather.

The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change.

Basic problem is that all models are wrong - not got enough middle and low level clouds.