Cox and Ince on the scientific method
Dec 19, 2012
Bishop Hill in Climate: other

Pop-sci heroes Brian Cox and Robin Ince have an editorial in the New Statesman. It's about the scientific method and discusses its application to - among other things - climate:

Let us take the politically controversial issue of climate change as an example. Climate scientists make measurements of observable properties of our planet, such as sea surface temperatures and the area of Arctic sea ice. Over many years, these measurements have formed a large data set. The only grounds for arguing with the data would be specific technical issues with the measurements themselves. One could assert that the satellites measuring sea temperatures were not calibrated correctly, or that there was a methodological error in the measurement of the area of the sea ice. Such criticisms are relatively rare. A more common criticism is of the interpretation of the data using computer models.

All models are, by nature, an approximation to reality. But they are the best we can do, given our current understanding and the power of our computers. The important words here are “the best we can do”. There is no other way of predicting the probability of weather in the future. The only legitimate criticisms would be of specific issues with specific models, or of specific inferences drawn from them. It would certainly be wrong to assert that the ensemble of climate models from various research groups around the world encompassed all possible uncertainties about the future, but it is not logical to attack climate science as a whole, because to do so is to attack scientific method.

The timing of this article, coinciding as it does with Nic Lewis's observations about observational estimates of climate sensitivity, couldn't be better. Climatology needs to explain why the scientific method gets reversed in this area.

(I'm on the warpath about ranty comments. Please be nice and on topic)

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