Read here and here. As 'C3' readers know, I'm not the least smitten with climate models. I think they are genuine travesties designed with a primary purpose of misleading the public, politicians and policymakers. These two linked articles are from people multiple times smarter than moi, but confirms a sense that climate models, and their practitioners, border on being worthless.
Both articles are a highly recommended read, as they are very enlightening about the generic climate model failure. Below are excerpts form one of the authors, a renowned, premier physicist, which are pretty acerbic and candid regarding climate models (and the climate model "scientists").
"The standards in the climate modeling community have dropped below the level of the stinkiest excrements, however. People don't mind being totally sloppy and dishonest because virtually all of their colleagues are sloppy and dishonest, too. The interdisciplinary comparisons have been banned because all competent scientists from other disciplines are called "deniers". This whole discipline has been filled with garbage people and it has to be fully abolished, all the people have to be fired, and if it is needed, we have to start from scratch.
The climate modeling community as a whole is bringing zero to the society and to science...If some of these predictions seriously fail, it's likely to be due to a serious problem with the model, and this problem is enough to invalidate many other predictions. To summarize, even the modelers who are sometimes trying to verify and (in)validate the models - and care about the results - don't do it right and deny most of the empirical evidence we actually possess.
Do models have to be better than a theory?...This is an important point and I think that Judith Curry herself would answer "Yes". The "Yes" answer is a manifestation of the "computer model addiction" which is totally irrational and unscientific. Some people think that if they use a computer, especially an expensive one, their scientific work is immediately more scientific or more valid. They think that their brain has doubled in size and a new aura of intellectual authority started to orbit their skulls.
What a pile of crap...A good theorist usually doesn't need any computer to produce the right answers to many questions, to make many predictions. He can sort the things in his brain. He can do the calculations manually. It's because he actually understands the relevant physical phenomena - and their manifestations in many situations. He knows many actual phenomena and many angles from which he can look at them.
The "fundamentalist climate modelers" are very different. They're sub-par scientists who actually don't know the physical phenomena and can't calculate the predictions with their own brains. They use a computer program but they don't really know why the computer produces one answer or another: the computer is a "black box" that they decided to mindless trust. They're not bothered by their ignorance. In fact, most of them think that it is an "advantage" not to understand what's happening inside the computer program...But this kind of "science" should be classified as occultism."