You are correct; climate science is not rocket science. It is much more difficult than rocket science. Rocket science essentially involves reliability engineering based on exhaustive physical testing, and basic Newtonian physics. That is not to make light of steely-eyed missile men, but at least the problem domain is well understood.
Is there warming? Yes. Is the result 80 years from now likely to be anywhere near current model predictions? I claim the Scots verdict: not proven. And I'm unwilling (for example) to tell India they can't make life better for a billion of their citizens with coal-fired electricity on that basis.
Oddly enough, the warming from satellite data is much closer to 1 degree C per doubling of CO2 than the value promulgated by the IPCC. To quote Richard Feynman, it doesn't matter how pretty a theory is, or how brilliant the person who thought it up; if it doesn't match observations, it's wrong.
Oddly enough, the warming from satellite data is much closer to 1 degree C per doubling of CO2 than the value promulgated by the IPCC. To quote Richard Feynman, it doesn't matter how pretty a theory is, or how brilliant the person who thought it up; if it doesn't match observations, it's wrong.
That is nowhere close to true for climate science, as any honest scientist will admit if pressed. The complex feedbacks are poorly understood. The basic physics of CO2 warming without amplification would produce about 1 degree C of warming per doubling of concentration. In order to match historical climate behavior, the models assume amplifying feedbacks (the infamous "climate sensitivity") which triple or quadruple that figure. We cannot measure climate sensitivity. It is generated from the assumptions built into the model during hindcasting.
Although it is short (less than 40 years), I prefer the temperature record generated by satellite microwave sounding units, mainly because (a) the coverage is much closer to global and (b) the units average the signal from an enormous volume of air, which is exactly what you want. Thermometers, digital or analog, are inherently a point measurement subject to local perturbations.

Rick Mott ’73
Ringoes, N.J.