Progress in understanding climate variability through the last millennium leans on simulation and reconstruction efforts. Exercises blending both approaches present a great potential for answering questions relevant both for the simulation and reconstruction of past climate, and depend on the specific peculiarities of proxies and methods involved in climate reconstructions, as well as the realism and limitations of model simulations. This talk addresses the use of millennial simulations with the ECHO-g model to explore three main issues that group most of the interaction between model and geothermal efforts: the use of models as a validation tool for borehole climate reconstructions; comparison of geothermal information and model simulations as a means of either model validation or inference about past climate; and implications of the degree of realism on simulating subsurface climate on estimations of future climate change.