>>My 2 cents: the global warming/climate change activists need to make some predictions, then come back in 20 years and we'll see how well they did.
>>
>>So that's why I'm a skeptic. Not a denier, but a skeptic. Sadlly, we have men like the current president who proclaim that this is a "settled science". (Sigh)
>
>Kevin, as always, you are the voice of reason.
>
>The part I find funny about all this is that the "science" is explained in computer models.
>Who amongst us techies would trust a computer model with an unknown number of unknowns to predict the future ?

But at the same time one can only make predictions with the data that is available. It would stand to reason that some things can be predicted by simple linear regression. There is quite a bit of data that exists - and math can really help out here. This is a decent read on explaining glacier retreat mathematically.
http://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1049&context=honors_proj
and these is kinda interesting too
http://www.esciencecentral.org/journals/modeling-of-data-from-climate-science-using-introductory-statistics-2332-2594-1000129.php?aid=47928
https://ww2.amstat.org/publications/jse/v21n1/witt.pdf

so in part I do think it's fair to say that these computer models are based on an unknown number of unknowns - and frankly it's the best models we have. Perhaps a better way of thinking here would be to decrease our pollution FIRST - then come back in 20 years and see how well we did.