I've been on my travels. This morning I was speaking about hurricanes and climate change at a conference of catastrophe risk modellers, adding a bit of sceptic spice to a discussion panel of insurance people, including one familiar name in the shape of Pielke Jr's regular sparring partner, Robert Muir-Wood of RMS. We had a nice chat after our session was over.
Much of the focus of the session was on shorter-term predictions than are relevant to climate change concerns, although there was an interesting divergence of opinion among the panellists, with Muir-Wood arguing against the insurance industry's traditional focus on historical data alone and arguing for a greater emphasis on models. Others took the view that unless the models included all the complexities and subsystems of the real atmosphere, the output was likely to be dangerously misleading. The similarities with the arguments over the use of GCMs in public policy decisions need hardly be stated.
I'm now on my way home and will pick up blogging on the train.