A look at the models from someone who understands heavy-duty signal processing. It is difficult to tease out all that goes into a complex system - so many variables contribute to the outcome and many of these variables will interact with each other either amplifying or cancelling the outcome.
In most Engineering, the gold-standard for this is Fourier Analysis - from the Wikipedia article:
Fourier analysis has many scientific applications – in physics, partial differential equations, number theory, combinatorics, signal processing, imaging, probability theory, statistics, forensics, option pricing, cryptography, numerical analysis, acoustics, oceanography, sonar, optics, diffraction, geometry, protein structure analysis, and other areas.
Fourier Analysis is also very useful for picking out threads of interaction. What input goes where in a complex system and how does it interact with other inputs while engaged in the system. From the Wikipedia article again:
When processing signals, such as audio, radio waves, light waves, seismic waves, and even images, Fourier analysis can isolate narrowband components of a compound waveform, concentrating them for easier detection or removal.
This sounds like a perfect tool for analyzing climate models but unfortunately, there seems to be no record of anyone having done so. From the Perth, Australia Sunday Times (note, the article is from one year ago):
Miranda Devine: Perth electrical engineer’s discovery will change climate change debate
A MATHEMATICAL discovery by Perth-based electrical engineer Dr David Evans may change everything about the climate debate, on the eve of the UN climate change conference in Paris next month.
A former climate modeller for the Government’s Australian Greenhouse Office, with six degrees in applied mathematics, Dr Evans has unpacked the architecture of the basic climate model which underpins all climate science.
He has found that, while the underlying physics of the model is correct, it had been applied incorrectly.
He has fixed two errors and the new corrected model finds the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is much lower than was thought.
It turns out the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has over-estimated future global warming by as much as 10 times, he says.
And Dr. Evan's theory?
Dr Evans has a theory: solar activity. What he calls “albedo modulation”, the waxing and waning of reflected radiation from the Sun, is the likely cause of global warming.
He predicts global temperatures, which have plateaued, will begin to cool significantly, beginning between 2017 and 2021. The cooling will be about 0.3C in the 2020s. Some scientists have even forecast a mini ice age in the 2030s.
And his education?
Dr Evans is an expert in Fourier analysis and digital signal processing, with a PhD, and two Masters degrees from Stanford University in electrical engineering, a Bachelor of Engineering (for which he won the University medal), Bachelor of Science, and Masters in Applied Maths from the University of Sydney.
OK now - let us fast forward to today.Christopher Monckton of Brenchley has been working with Dr. Evans and has come up with the following two-part post - Feet of clay: The official errors that exaggerated global warming:
First: Part I: How the central estimate of global warming was exaggerated
In this new series, I propose to explore the sequence of errors, large and small, through which the climatological establishment has – until now – gotten away with greatly exaggerating climate sensitivity.
The errors have an unholy, cumulative effect, conspiring to bring about an exaggeration that is grievous.
The focus in this series will be on describing each error clearly, so that the commenters who have so vigorously had their say on my earlier descriptions of the current method of determining climate sensitivity can examine them and say whether they think the climatological establishment has come to the right conclusion.
I shall do my best to make it clear when I am describing the official position and when I am describing a proposed alternative view.
By all means criticize me if you think I am wrong about the errors I have identified, or if you think my description of the official position is wrong. But do not hold my feet to the fire for the official position itself: address your criticisms of it to the IPCC secretariat. I am here not to argue for the official position, but rather to raise certain very specific questions about it.
Second: Part II: How the central estimate of pre-feedback warming was exaggerated
Part II, which will necessarily be lengthy and full of equations, will examine another apparently small but actually significant error that leads to an exaggeration of reference or pre-feedback climate sensitivity ΔT0 and hence of final sensitivity ΔT.
This two-part article is very math heavy but he takes Dr. Evans' work and absolutely shows how the mainstream climate theory (and its practitioners) are wrong.