“And they run past climate data on computer models built to predict the planet’s future - because if the model works for the future, then it should work for the past too”
The sentence is intentionally distorted. It should say that the model should reflect the past so that results concerning the future can have confidence.
Any time simulation should be able to show that (within acceptable bounds), especially a CFD run that is attempting to model stochastic events.
But the cop out will be that “we don’t have data that goes that far back with sufficient resolution” and then we’re supposed to take it on faith, or some crap statistical model that just regurgitates tree ring data sans underlying rationale.
Exactly. None of their models can accurately reproduce past known climate data. Until they come up with one that does, nobody can have any confidence as to the predictions of their computer models about what the future climate will look like.