One of the biggest problems with the current media and/or climate scientists and/or their
PR departments is the air of absoluteness of their facts, statements like "it's never been hotter", "most rapid increase in temperature ever" etc etc etc. I have been reading scientific journals and published papers (mainly High Energy Physics and Astrophysics) for about 30 years now and without a doubt a story post will come out with a declaration taken from a paper that X will definitely happen by Y. When reading the actual paper it will (usually in the abstract) still contain a "most likely" prediction. However, 5, 10 odd years down the track the prediction is usually out by a long way or never actually going to eventuate. Even now Einsteins "Theory" of Relativity (theory in quotes because many physicists are quite firm that it is a law) is now starting to unravel, mainly because of more accurate measurements, better equipment and less rigid thinking (it was almost heresy to even think that Einstein might be wrong).
On better measurements, one of the big problems climate researchers have is inconsistent measurements and data. Temperature records have gone from basic mercury or alcohol thermometers to digital equipment, some were in Stevenson boxes, some not, some measurements taken every hour, half hour or quarter hour, some now taken every 5 seconds. Sure the BOM and other meteorological institutions have homogenised the data based on their best assumptions but it is still an assumption, not a measurement. If I use an hourglass to time how long it takes my aircraft to travel 100nm and average over the results over time (to remove the effects of wind etc) and determine it takes an hour, then my aircraft averages 100knots. If i then time it using a digital stop watch and get an average time of 56 minutes, has my aircraft gotten faster by 6 knots?
As time goes and more data comes in from the same instruments over time it should gradually give a better picture, how hard is it to say "from our best estimates and assumptions, based on models built on what we currently know we postulate that this will happen in X years, but we must stress that this is only a hypothesis, we hope to get a better idea in future years, but in the mean time it might be a good idea to try and convince China and India to cut down on their emissions and for everybody else to do what they can within reason."