I've been following this debate for about a month now. It looks like it has moved into more serious discussion.

So, let me get this straight;
They can't predict shit that actually already happened?!?

Awww Man !
I was hoping that this whole global warming thing would work out... I live in Alaska and the winters are grim. I've even been driving my SUV extra miles to hurry things along. Now my hopes are dashed.

The problem with all of those computer models is that they all presuppose that increased CO2 levels will increase global temperature in some manner. So obviously they always show increased temp as CO2 levels go up. What they cant take into account are the literaly thousands of other factors that determine our climate. Ergo they can be used to project forward (since no one Knows what will happen) but when you try to use them to project past climate they are useless even when you supply the model lots of data about the conditions back then.

I've spent countless hours and taxpayer money researching this climate change phenomena. It can be all traced back to Ted Kennedy's flatulence. When you compare the temperature increase to his waist line/drinking binges. Well: the rest is a trivial exercise.
I plan on obtaining some more grant money to study these rumblings of Ted, comparing them to noise complaints, leveraging the knowledge into a sonic non-lethal weapon.

This McIntyre and McKitrick work has been kicking around for a couple of years. The fact that the Mann et al. graph doesn't show any of the known periods of climate directionality (i.e., the Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age, Modern Warm Period) has generally been explained away by the global warming crowd by positing that these periods were solely northern European phenomena. This is ludicrous on its face with even a minimal exposure to the relevant literature. In fact, Brian Fagan (archaeologist), who has written a book on both the Little Ice Age and the current warming period (which he attributes to human activity) specifically states in the former work that he is convinced the LIA was global in extent.

The most recent attempt to jury-rig the system is to project human influence as far into the past as possible. This is done to blunt the obvious criticism that climate variation, both the ones mentioned above and much earlier ones such as the Younger Dryas, were actually influenced by people growing crops. See for example a recent Scientific American cover story on this. Of course, these all use computer models which, as we all (should) know, are hypotheses to be tested, not tests in and of themselves.

In essence, the proponents are attempting to make anthropogenic global warming entirely impervious to empirical testing.

Well, my comment is not nearly as authoritative as Frank Black's. References to Scientific American generally trump perjorative remarks such as "it's all bunk"...

But, from what I understand the model which created the infamous hockey stick tends to create hockey sticks - even when fed random data. That, plus the fact that the model can't successfully 'predict' past climatic change...leads me to question why the heck it is still in fashion.

Ice age glaciers carved much of the landscape in North America. The earth's freaking magnetic pole has flipped several times. All before mankind was a pimple on the earth. These huge climatic changes occurred without 'evil' SUVs. It seems to me that climatic change is the norm - not the exception. We, insignificant as we are, have very little affect in this regard.

...wait for it...

"It's all bunk"