Models blur the laymans picture and feeds into denial when predictions aren’t correct, and as their value lies in future predictions that past trends also corroborate, more emphasis should be put on said measureable effects.

No models, no chance of reliable forecasting. What the layman (or the oil-company shill) has to say about errors is irrelevant. All they have are baseless opinions and vested interests. Everyone who works on developing models is constantly bringing in new theory, responding to new kinds of observations as instrumentation and coverage improve, correcting the models based on observations, doing backcasting and improving skill scores.