The Spencer and Braswell story goes viral

gnomish, “It really smells like he was ordered to resign under penalty…”
That would make his behavior cowardly. Wolfgang Wagner is a physical climate modeler and Prof. of Remote Sensing at the Vienna University of Technology, with a full title of a complexity only Germans can assign (or revere): “Univ.Prof. Dipl.Ing. Dr.techn..” Given his position, there is little anyone could do against him, apart from making grant money harder to get. This is a problem already faced by honest academic climate scientists, such as Demetris Koutsoyiannis, who has commented at Roger Pielke’s blog on his reception by the larger climate science community, here.
So, it’s not as though Wolfgang Wagner didn’t have a role model for how to behave honestly and how to meet the consequent challenge of prejudicial opprobrium by his erstwhile friendly colleagues.
It doesn’t seem likely, therefore, that Univ.Prof. Dipl.Ing. Dr.techn. Wolfgang Wagner could readily have been forced into resigning his position because the consequences of principled scientific integrity would not have been mortal to his career. He must know this.
We’re left with the supposition that he resigned out of some sort of conviction of rectitude. In paragraph 2 of his editorial, after all, Prof. Dr. Wagner wrote that he, “[agrees] with the critics of the [Spencer – Braswell] paper. He immediately after goes on to give his reason for resignation: “With this [resignation] I would also like to personally protest against how the authors and like-minded climate sceptics have much exaggerated the paper’s conclusions in public statements…” This is a principled rationale. He resigned to emphatically dissociate himself from the Spencer – Braswell paper in view of the claims that were made in its name. It’s not that the claims were factually or scientifically wrong. it’s that Prof. Dr. Wagner disagreed with them on principle.
He goes on to defend his modeling arena with the following scientifically incorrect statement, “But trying to refute all scientific insights into the global warming phenomenon just based on the comparison of one particular observational satellite data set with model predictions is strictly impossible.”
But, of course, refuting climate model validity with one particular observation strictly is possible. It can be no other way in science. There have been many instances of a ‘beautiful theory refuted by one ugly fact.‘ The theoretical beauty of a static eternal universe was refuted by the (theoretically) ugly fact of universal redshifts, for example. This principle of science falls under Einstein’s observation that one scientist is enough to refute Relativity Theory, discussed here in a larger context.
The way I see it, having focused on being a physical modeler, Univ.Prof. Dipl.Ing. Dr.techn. Wolfgang Wagner never gained the deeper perspective needed by a fully fledged scientist, namely that science is the ruthless interplay between repeatable empirical observations and falsifiable predictions from theory. He says that, “The use of satellite data to check [models] … should not be done in isolation by the remote sensing scientists.,” but rather that, Interdisciplinary cooperation with modelers is required…” But this, to use a term Prof. Dr. Wagner will recognize, is quitsch quatsch mit sosze (nonsense with gravy). Science is not a waltz of theory with result, a Viennese view notwithstanding.
Remote sensing scientists have every right to publish their critical work without consulting modelers. They also have every right to point it out when their empirical results contradict the evident predictions of the models. Empirical scientists have no obligation to consult modelers before publishing critical results. Nor do they have any obligation to work with modelers to attain a joint consensus on the points of deviation. It’s up to modelers themselves to notice the problem and correct the failures of their models. Doing so is an expression of their scientific integrity.
It’s only in the now normative corruption of modern climate science where Prof. Dr. Wagner’s distorted view of science can garner any sort of acceptance.
So, I see Univ.Prof. Dipl.Ing. Dr.techn. Wolfgang Wagner’s resignation as a honest expression of his hurt feelings, of his personal dismay, and of his entirely lop-sided and crippled understanding of what science is and how science works. It’s also an expression of his attempt to rescue climate modeling now in the present, and to protect it into the future, from the blows of a properly ruthless empiricism. Although his letter is principled from his point of view, its subtext is all about fear of experiment; of the shock of refutation.
I also have to observe that the orotund style of the resignation letter, full of portentously couched ambiguities, is an embodiment of educated Euro-double-speak.