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The question is not really how we can predict, but how well.
Science will always be limited, but I can list innumerable fields where our ability to predict has gotten better and better. This is certainly the case with weather and climate modeling. We have increasing amounts of data, improving computer models, and a great increase in raw computing power.
Among the most interesting of the many books on weather and climate I have reviewed or added to The Science Shelf archive over the past several years is The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850 by Brian Fagan (Basic Books, 2000). It's more about history and culture than science, but it gives a good insight into how scientists have determined climate trends and what the implications are for the rest of this century.
In my opinion, probably the best popular book on the subject of climate modeling from a scientific perspective is The Change in the Weather by William K. Stevens (Delacorte, 1999). Even though that book is now more than six years old, it still is a great point to start understanding both the predictive power and the limitations of current science.
The thing that concerns me most is that the most extreme scenarios discussed in 1999-2000 are now considered much more plausible as the science gets better, i. e. improvements in predictive power, better data, better computational tools and models, and less uncertainty. No one hopes the worst case scenarios come true, but refusing to consider them will not make them less probable.
As I have said several times, I think Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science has a lot to commend it, even if it is quite partisan. One of its strongest points is the discussion of how ideologues misrepresent the scientific process, especially the role of uncertainty, to cast doubt on a growing consensus that they do not want to accept. These days, the ideologues doing that are mostly Republicans, but Democrats have been guilty of similar practices in the past. No matter who does it, the result is the muddling of the solid scientific consensus that good policy-makers need to consider.
When that happens, everyone loses.