I may have time to post more, but in the meantime, here's the IPCC comment.
During the 15-year period beginning in 1998, the ensemble of HadCRUT4 GMST trends lies below almost all model-simulated trends (Box 9.2 Figure 1a), whereas during the 15-year period ending in 1998, it lies above 93 out of 114 modelled trends (Box 9.2 Figure1b; HadCRUT4 ensemble-mean trend 0.26°C per decade, CMIP5 ensemble-mean trend 0.16°C per decade). Over the 62-year period 1951–2012, observed and CMIP5 ensemble-mean trends agree to within 0.02ºC per decade (Box 9.2 Figure 1c; CMIP5 ensemble-mean trend 0.13°C per decade). There is hence very high confidence that the CMIP5 models show long-term GMST trends consistent with observations, despite the disagreement over the most recent 15-year period. Due to internal climate variability, in any given 15-year period the observed GMST trend sometimes lies near one end of a model ensemble
