How long is long range?

I find these two articles from the UK both amusing and frustrating. Amusing because they contradict each other, frustrating because they.....contradict each other. On the one hand in the UK Telegraph we learn that short term weather patterns will no longer be able to mask man made global warming caused by CO2....after 2011. So in the future, always the future pesky weather will not get in the way of the alarmist forecast for rising temperatures, even though the alarmist never forecast the cooling that masked the warming in the first place-got it? Having been wrong in the past they can boldly say:

World temperatures set for record highs

World temperatures are set to rise much faster than expected as a result of climate change over the next ten years, according to meteorologists.

Not only are the temperatures that were forecast to rise but didn't over the past decade not important in the climate science community (or this article) the future temperatures are going to rise "faster than expected".So the past REALITY is irrelevant to the future THEORY.

Gareth Jones, a climate research scientist at the Met Office, said the effect of global warming is unlikely to be masked by shorter term weather patterns in the future.

He said that 50 per cent of the 10 years after 2011 will be warmer than 1998. After that any year cooler than 1998 will be considered unusual.

“The amount of warming we expect from human impacts is so huge that any natural phenomenon in the future is unlikely to counteract it in the long term,” he said.

Then in the second article from the UK Guardian we are told:

Seasonal weather forecasting: Still uncertain despite leaps in technology

Long-range forecasts are limited by the chaotic nature of weather systems

So in this article we are told that despite improved technology predicting the weather is not a sure thing. This of course is a response to the fact that the same MET office which is boldly predicting record high temperatures in the Telegraph story above, has done an abysmal job of forecasting short term weather in the past:

Weather forecasting has been transformed by the advent of Earth-observing satellites, leaps in computing power and more advanced models of the atmosphere and oceans, but it .

When the Met Office announced in April its much-criticised seasonal forecast for the summer, it declared a 65% probability that temperatures would be above average, and that rainfall would be near or below the average for the time of year.

Of course they were off a bit on their seasonal forecast and have been several years. But with advances in technology (more funding) they expect to improve:

Seasonal forecasts are still in their infancy, but they are likely to improve considerably as technology and understanding of the atmosphere and oceans improves. The Met Office's four-day forecast is now as accurate as the one-day
forecast was 20 years ago.

The Guardian article is full of reasons (excuses) why the MET can not seem to get its seasonal forecast correct, but the fact is the MET can not seem to get its seasonal forecast correct. or as they say " Long-range forecasts are limited by the chaotic nature of weather systems", well how long is long range?

The same seasonal forecast that we are told is responsible for the masking of the forecast global warming by the same people who forecast the global warming! Why can't they seem to get it right? Because they need a better "understanding of the atmosphere and oceans".

So we are led to believe, or not, that their lack of understanding of the atmosphere and oceans stands in the way of their seasonal forecasting but not in their long term climate forecasting? Do you buy this? As the article says weather forecasting which is hiding the previously forecast of global warming "remains a business built on uncertainty" yet long term climate forecasting is a certainty?
If you buy this I got a sweet deal on a house for you.

H/T An Honest Climate Debate, Climate Science and WUWT

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