Agreed. The point of criticism that the authors didn’t include all relevant models is among the lowest of the low-hanging fruit I can imagine one picking. And while the process of peer review isn’t without its flaws, I can also imagine that fruit has long since been picked by the reviewers, who have far deeper knowledge of the published models than I or just about anyone else in this thread, save for the actual climate scientists among us.
mturmon|6 years ago
In many of these cases, it's clear that the commenters have done no background reading, and have no climate science background. Their comments thus consist of simple armchair speculation (your "lowest of the low-hanging fruit").
In these comments, I have found people with strong opinions on the lack of seriousness of climate science, who have no idea we have gravimetric measurements of ice sheet mass. This is a dataset going back almost 20 years that has revolutionized geoscience. HN commenters have expressed strong opinions about melting ice, with no knowledge of this data and what it means.
I have found people who think that climate science consists of having a stable of models each with a host of knobs, and the research method is to turn the knobs or choose new models until the results look dramatic enough to publish.
The gap between the firmness of these claims and the knowledge to back it up just boggles the mind.
The most basic step people could take to fix this is to read the executive summary of the IPCC AR5 report, or (even better/easier) the executive summary of the NCA (https://science2017.globalchange.gov). This report was specifically written by people who really know this stuff, for people like us.
mistermann|6 years ago