PREDICTING climate change is a tricky business, so thank heavens for computer programmes that can take a melting ice sheet here and an El Niño effect there and turn it into a recipe for disaster. But not so fast, says Lenny Smith, a statistician at the London School of Economics who is concerned by the “naïve realism” of climate modelling.

“Our models are being over-interpreted and misinterpreted,” he told a conference organised by the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. “They are getting better; I don’t want to trash them per se. But as we change our predictions, how do we maintain the credibility of the science? We need to drop the pretence that they are nearly perfect.”

Smith singles out the British Government’s UK Climate Impacts Programme and the Met Office for making detailed climate projections for regions of the UK when the global models vary widely.

Policymakers “think we know more than we actually know. We need to be more open about our uncertainties”, Smith says.

But that’s not to say that there’s any good news on climate change, New Scientist (Aug 18) reports.

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