Offtopic geekery warning ignore if prone to drowsiness
Very true Horsey - but the pace of this change - geologically, is unprecedented (am a professional geek in this area - have been using the models and projecting impacts for insurance companies and energy utilities etc for nigh on 10 years).
The climate models fall down because we can't model large chaotic systems like the Arctic Oscillation, North Atlantic Oscillation and the Jet Stream - even beyond a fortnight we struggle because it is so erratic. We are getting better at modelling ENSO / El Nino / La Nina but we have a lot to learn. I don't believe we can accurately model climate change to a localised degree or short term timescale, nor do I believe we understand all of the ins and outs and the unexpected consequences but we are learning more and more.
The changes we are seeing just do not fit with the solar cycle, wobbles in the earth's rotation, volcanic activity on their own etc - it's only when you add our emissions onto natural factors (and worse still the natural emissions that warming is now triggering from forest fires in the Amazon, drought ridden soils, melting methane hydrates, and melting permafrost) that the trend fits the graph of observed change.
As Cheney (or was it Rumsfeld?) said there are known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns! We're only in the early days so I hate it when the press totally misrepresent the science as it colours so many folks views and leads to me banging my head against the wall when facing armchair experts (am not thinking you here, am more thinking DFIL!!!) with their education fuelled entirely by the Daily Mail and the Great Global Warming swindle (which misrepresented the scientists on it, relabelled graphs to suit it's case etc) ....
The science on blockages and kinks in the Jet Stream is very new and totally fascinating to a geek like me and seems to be linked (IMHO) to the albedo effect i.e. where we've seen sea ice lost or slow to reform in the autumn - rather than having white ice which reflects sunlight you have dark sea which absorbs it and which leads to a column of hot air and high pressure which knocks the Jet Stream off course. But you need the right sea surface temperatures and Arctic Oscillation conditions for it all to combine into a bad snowy winter. The basic physics is pretty irrefutable, and it looks to have happened 3 winters out of the last 4, and for the last 3 summers (i.e. we end up with wash outs).