Some global warming skeptics say the computer models that simulate future climate change can be wrong.

Walter N. Meier, a climate scientist, agrees.

“They tend to be underestimating” how quickly global warming is melting arctic sea ice, Meier said. The models “can be wrong in both directions.”Meier, a researcher with the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, was one of two scientists who spoke yesterday at a program on the state of climate science. The session was held at the University of Richmond Downtown, 626 E. Broad St.

The program coincidentally came two days after state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli filed two legal actions seeking to block a federal move toward regulating heat-trapping gases. Cuccinelli said the Environmental Protection Agency has relied on faulty data, and he said new regulations could hurt jobs.

In interviews during yesterday’s program, Meier and University of Massachusetts Boston hydrologist Ellen Marie Douglas said the evidence of man-made global warming is overwhelming.

It is basic science that carbon dioxide traps heat in our atmosphere, that carbon dioxide levels are rising and that people release carbon dioxide through activities such as burning fossil fuels, Douglas said.

“There are physical processes we know, like gravity,” she said.

The future effect of global warming on specific regions is harder to tell. But scientists are seeing, among other things, evidence that warming could increase the intensity of hurricanes but not necessarily the number of hurricanes, Douglas said.

The climate program was organized by the Virginia Conservation Network, an umbrella organization of conservation groups, and by Clean Air-Cool Planet, a nonprofit group.