Ah, good point about medicine. If you had a neurological disorder, wouldn't you look at the results and track record of the doctor you were thinking of hiring? If s/he told you that there was this great new procedure but a few minutes of searching the net yielded doubts in your mind if the survivability of that procedure? But I guess in your mind, someone who is not a doctor has no right to question the medical opinion of a doctor.

You're right, I'm not a scientist. I am an engineer - nuclear engineer, for the record - which means I make a living applying scientific principles to make life easier and more cost effective. As such, I have more advanced education than most people in this country (likely including you). But I digress. I know of no rational person who would blindly accept the medical opinion of their doctor without some explanation or alternate opinion.

I have asked a really easy question. If the IPCC models are accurate then why is there is STATISITCALLY SIGNIFICANT deviation between what they say should be the global mean temperature today and what it actually is? If a theory is correct then it should conform to observable data with only minor, statistically INSIGNIFICANT, deviations.

I see that you are incapable of providing an intelligent response...instead resorting to childish ad hominum attacks to compensate for your inability to answer a simple question. You see, someone with nothing to hide who has an honest interest in understanding the truth would not call someone (who merely asks a question about an observed discrepancy in a product) a petty name. Such is very, very childish and is virtual proof in your inability to intelligently answer the question.

Saying that the models are "really complex" is not an intelligent answer. They don't have to be perfect but they do have to be reasonably close and that means that there cannot be any statistically significant deviations that are unexplainable. At the end of the day, the models are extrapolating data to what the global temps will be in 100 years. If the first 20% of that extrapolation does not correlate AT ALL with observed data then someone needs to go back to the drawing board and fix the model so it corrates with observed data. Until such time, the results are suspect especially with a 6-8 sigma delta (which is huge).

Unlike weather models, climate models actually do better predicting climate changes several decades into the future, during which time the short-term fluctuations average out. You have confused weather models with climate models, Mr. Engineer (which I find hard to believe given the pitiful understanding of science you exhibit).

This is good news, because with human-caused climate change, it's these long-term changes we're predominantly worried about. Unfortunately, You have a laser-like focus on the past 20 years. It's centuries we deal with. Not decades.

But I've broken a cardinal rule here: I am debating science with a non-scientist. Again, you don't know what you are talking about.

And about medicine? No, I don't trust "a few minutes of searching the web" over my physician. Only a moron would do that.

Only a moron would accept what their doctor told them without getting a second opinion or at least researching it. I need double knee replacement. I am going to research the various knees on the market and decide for
Myself which ones I'm interested in. Then I'll talk to my doctor and find out which one he plans to use and why and why it is a better fit than what I came up with. When my doctor told me I needed bilateral knee replacement, I asked "why?" I didn't say, "ok, when can you do it?"

The same is true with climatology. As far as debating science with a non scientists, I seriously doubt you are a "scientist" and I could quite frankly care less if you believe me or not on my educational background.

If the past 20 years was a minor blip then they would NOT constitute a statistically significant deviation. They would be an INSIGNIFICANT deviation. I really don't know why that's so hard for you to grasp. Perhaps it's because you don't understand statistics. Perhaps you could google "what does statistically significant mean" to come up to speed.