From the “fabrication makes publication” department comes this study on the “core values” of scientists.
What values are important to scientists?
WASHINGTON, D.C. – While many people are marking today scrutinizing the virtues of their Valentines, Michigan State University revealed a first-of-its-kind study on the virtues and values of scientists.
The study, presented at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C., surveyed nearly 500 astronomers, biologists, chemists, physicists and earth scientists to identify the core traits of exemplary scientists.
The subjects selected were scientists who had been honored by their respective national organization or society, and the results show that above all, these researchers hold honesty and curiosity in the highest regard, said Robert Pennock, a professor in MSU’s Lyman Briggs College and leader of the study.
“If you’re not curious, you’re probably not a real scientist,” he said. “The goal that you have is to find out something true about the world, regardless of what your preferred hypothesis might be. Your real drive is to find what is revealed by the data. This is absolutely essential in being a scientist.”
If someone is dishonest and going to the extreme of faking data, that person is not really a scientist in the true sense, Pennock added.
Those surveyed, using a scale from zero to ten, were asked to rate attentiveness, collaborative, courage, curiosity, honesty, humility to evidence, meticulousness, objectivity, perseverance and skepticism with regard to their importance for scientific research.
Once they scored each trait, the scientists were asked how each characteristic is or isn’t expressed in science. The subjects also were asked to identify the three most-important virtues.
The study revealed a tacit moral code in scientific culture – one that most researchers hope to be able to pass on to their students, Pennock said.
“The results will have some implications for teaching science,” said Pennock, who conducted the study with Jon Miller of the University of Michigan. “Our teaching shouldn’t stop with the content or science processes. Cultivating the values – like honesty and curiosity – that underlie science should be a part of science education.”
Underscoring the importance of instilling desirable traits in the next generation of scientists, the study tackled how exemplary scientists preserve and transmit these values to their students.
A whopping 94 percent of scientists believe scientific values and virtues can be learned. The number dropped a bit, though, when asked if these traits are actually being transmitted to current graduate students.
“It’s encouraging that 4 out of 5 scientists believe that their values are being embraced by the next generation of students,” Pennock said. “However, it’s somewhat troubling that 22 percent of the scientists surveyed see these valued traits eroding a bit.”
With stories of falsified results making headlines, it’s known that some scientists not only fail to achieve these ideals but directly violate them.
Science is a truth-seeking enterprise. Based on this study, researchers violating this unwritten code of conduct may not be scientists in the truest sense, Pennock said.
“Researchers who commit such misconduct are not merely violating some regulatory requirements, but they also are violating – in a deep way – what it means to be a scientist,” he said.
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UNEORI VISEZI CU OCHII DESCHIŞI
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2016-02-16 17:06 GMT+02:00 Watts Up With That? :
> Anthony Watts posted: “From the “fabrication makes publication” department > comes this study on the “core values” of scientists. What values are > important to scientists? MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY WASHINGTON, D.C. – While > many people are marking today scrutinizing the virt” >
manzatu
Ok, I dumped that into Google Translate and got “sometimes daydream”.
Great post, dude. Really moved the ball forward.
This article makes me proud to be labeled a so-called “denier”. I deny Mikey Mann and others like him the title of scientists. Especially with Mikey, the article gives an exact description.
Mikey the anti-scientist.
I’ve lived my life since 1963 tightly coupled to the computer , having gotten thousands of lines of APL in which a single symbol can be profound , and Forth , building APL , to work . With computer code truth is absolute : the expression either works or doesn’t .
The casual dishonesty I see , a staple of sitcoms and virtually expected in courts and politics and this AlGoreWarming nonscience , is so terribly destructive of human welfare .
Truth is the universal positive definite eigenfunction . Truth endures .
I wonder if people are not taking an artificial view of an issue which sometimes has a non – sinister human side to it . 2 examples ;
1. at the time of the devastating storms in NW England late last year the head of the UKmet office was asked for the reasons for the storms and she of course came out with the usual “warmer = wetter” theme that the Govt and the greens have been promoting . Now no one questions that as a starting point for discussion but as I watched her , her eyes and body language seemed to indicate that she was unhappy with this simple answer. If you look at her career resumee she has a solid background in meteorology and was , IMO , the obvious choice to take over the Met Office. I thought that she wanted to explain to people the complex and fascinating story of why storms hit with such severity , and so localised (which meant that the flooding was worse than if the storms dissipated over the whole of England and not just a narrow corridor) but was constrained by the attitude of the BBC and her employer , the UK Govt , from expanding beyond the most facile answer.
2. As a post- doc I was asked to comment on a PhD thesis that was about to be submitted . The work had been done on an instrument elsewhere , and I suspected from the results that the student had so misinterpreted the readings that his conclusions were unjustified . However I had no definite evidence for my suspicions , he had spent 3 years on this project and , had just recently lost his father . So I could not say that I thought his thesis was valueless and just made some minor comments . I later found out , through using the instrument myself that my suspicions were correct and that he had mistaken noise for signal. So did I fail as a scientist , but perhaps succeed as a human being . Even scientific life is not always so black and white.
mikewaite
I think the issue is did you willfully fail (in the situation you describe, probably not, though certainly you could have asked harder questions).
On the other hand, do you think Cook honestly believes his “97% climate consensus” paper?
The Al Gore quote in Grist on May 10, 2006 “In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.” — Al Gore
Did you lie? No I made an “over-representation of factual presentations” !
Always remember Victor Borge: He claimed to have an uncle who invented a cure for which there was no disease. Tragically, he later caught the cure and died.
“Over-representation” of “debate has ended” in attacks on the science process of continual fact- and model- checking is the more egregious ethical lapse of the political scientists.
It is a fact that there has been widespread pathetic data GISS manipulation of the surface temperature data by NOAA which explains why (in addition to the urban heat effect) there is roughly a 0.15C temperature difference current temperatures, satellite vs GISS.
Manipulating data does not change the fact that the planet is about to abruptly cool. The data and analysis supports the assertion that the majority of the warming in the last 150 years was due to solar cycle changes rather than the increase in atmospheric CO2. If that assertion is correct, global warming is reversible. Observations continue to support the assertion that the solar cycle has been interrupted.
Big surprise the paleo data unequivocally shows that the planet cyclically warms and cools with the warming and cooling periods (sometimes abrupt cooling) correlating with solar cycle changes. The past is a guide to the future.
Scientific Explanation why there is almost no warming for a doubling of atmospheric. Explains why there has been no statistical warming for the last 18 years and why the CAGW predicted tropical tropospheric hot spot at 8km did not occur.
The One Dimension, No Feedback Forcing Calculation’s Deliberate Incorrect (White Lies/Fibs) Assumptions
A) Lapse Rate Fib
The so called 1 dimensional, no feedback, forcing calculations for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 ignored the fact that the lapse rate decreases when atmospheric CO2 increases which reduces the surface forcing by a factor of four (the issue is how much the surface temperature changes not how much the atmosphere warms). The change in the lapse rate is due to the fact that hot air rises which causes cold air to fall causing the phenomena which is called convection cooling.
B) Water Vapor Fib
The 1 dimensional no feedback calculation CO2 forcing warming for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 was done with no water vapor in the atmosphere. As the planet is 70% covered with water there is a great deal of water vapor in the atmosphere. As the absorption spectrum of water and CO2 overlap, water vapor in the atmosphere reduces the surface temperature increase due to the doubling of atmospheric CO2 also by a factor of four.
Due to Fib A and Fib B, the warming due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2, no feedbacks is 16 times smaller 0.075C rather than 1.2C which is so small the without feedback warming is the same as the with feedbacks warming.
The climate wars have helped to change and set the ‘liberal’ culture which has also spilled into science. As it not possible to scientifically defend CAGW or even AGW, acceptance of CAGW as a liberal pillar forces the acceptance of lying and hiding the truth.
It was once a matter of honor to speak the truth and to stand up for those who speak the truth. It was once an important responsibility of the media to search for the truth and publicly identify miss-truths and lies.
Over the last decade (this is a change, previously there was for example real factual discussion in the Economist and on the US public broadcast system (PBS) of policy and scientific issues) there has been a stronger and stronger change to the de facto liberal policy where questioning/logical analysis of a liberal policy pillar, including scientific pillars is to risk being labeled a heretic, a denier. This is particularly true for anything related to AGW or climate.
US liberal television (CNN for example) is devoid of pros/cons, facts, and logical analysis. The discussion, concerning climate/AGW/uncontrolled ‘immigration’ or the presidential candidate selection process for example, when it occurs is presented as good guys vs bad guys with interviews that are limited to the good guys. The news reports are astonishingly and unabashedly partisan and politically biased. Name calling and making of faces to emphasis agreement that with the rhetoric and/or the evil nature of the political opposing team is now standard fare. This would be unthinkable a decade or two ago when there was serious newspaper analysis and serious discussion of issues on television.
The CNN ‘discussions’ have over the last decade become exclusively the righteous team reading their rhetoric. The CNN news anchors appear to have the policy/technical knowledge of a high school dropout and appear to have no interest in technical issues such as climate beyond supporting the righteous teams’ rhetoric.
Rhetoric reading is limited, most of the CNN is broadcasting is limited to live video, sensationalism completely avoiding controversial subjects (i.e. subjects where observations and analysis does not support the rhetoric.)
The US public broadcast system (PBS) policy review now follows the same format as CNN. There is an obvious great effort to have an ethnically and gender diverse team of believers for the ‘discussions’ which are limited to a spokesperson from the government or video of spokesperson reading their rhetoric. The PBS anchors now, unabashedly, make funny
you wrote;
‘Manipulating data does not change the fact that the planet is about to abruptly cool.’
My comment:
I think it would be a good idea for skeptics to refrain from predicting the future climate.
Predictions of the future tend to be wrong.
It makes sense to claim that after the current warming trend ends, a cooling trend will begin.
No one knows when, and it doesn’t even matter.
If we have a cooling trend the leftists will probably predict a coming global cooling disaster and tell everyone to do as they say, or life on Earth will end as we know it.
Wait a minute, some of them did exactly that in 1975 !
Why predict more than saying a cooling trend is expected to follow the current warming trend, based on what was seen in ice core climate proxy studies?
Richard, “I think it would be a good idea for skeptics to refrain from predicting the future climate”. You advocate that skeptics abandon science? Prediction is the gold standard of science. Whilst some have in practice already done this (see the gravitational wave post for some examples), it is not usual to see it so openly acknowledged.
“The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking”
ALBERT EINSTEIN
kalsel3294
Well, it’s relative.
If it’s Einstein’s every day thinking, maybe.
Don’t know about you, but I seriously doubt anything I’m thinking would have predicted gravitational waves 100 years in advance of their discovery.
An excellent post.
It disgusts me that “scientists”, governments and society in general have come to accept that raw data can be corrupted.
The scientific method is the only test of a scientist and their claims of scientifically testable hypothesis.
If it cannot be reproduced, it must remain speculation.
The claimed consensus, a majority shared opinion has zero scientific meaning or value.
Vague claims ,citing unavailable measurements and methodology are all the vogue in Climatology.
A person, scientist or not, who is wrong but honest and ethical is trustworthy. When he sees himself or is shown he is wrong, he’ll admit it.
Science, politics, religion, auto repair, etc. etc.
Character matters.
“The Great Betrayal – Fraud in Science” Horace Freeland Judson
Our clever “climate scientists” are determined not to lose all our manufacturing capability overseas.
Neoconservative aka warmists.
Regime change = repairing climate change
CPP = WMDs
Parallel story line.
Max Fisher
Vox.com – Tuesday, February 16, 2016
America’s unlearned lesson: the forgotten truth about why we invaded Iraq
A tautological result. Unscientific scientists are not scientists. If they fake the results then they don’t care about the results hence they don’t have a characteristic of scientists therefore they weren’t scientists in the first place. Science with a capital S is not science.
Or, said another way, unethical practices seldom (?) produce real science.
The implication being science requires ethics.
I saw an item headlined Glenwood Springs in the 2/15 Denver Post. Seems the area wildlife managers are concerned that the local owls, eagles, elk, assorted wild life in their personal charge are “scrounging” for forage due to the deep snow and need some supplemental feed. Why do (the royal) we presume to know what is best for nature? Feed them now so they can starve next fall? Is this the same snow our children would never see again? I maintain bird feeders in the front yard, does than make me a “wildlife manager?” Can I apply for a grant? Maybe instead of “climate scientists” the title should be “climate managers,” t’would make for higher pay grades.
Then you need a cat to chase the squirrels. Before long others will imitate your ecosystem and then you’ll be drawing lazy birds to your area and the raptors will follow. Then, the cat will bring something through the cat flap and then, well theeeeen you can apply for post traumatic stress disorder induced by a poorly designed ecoexperiment.
Hey – what ever happened to seaice1 (MUCH earlier in thread)?
I thought he was going to give us 1 (ONE; >0) testable prediction from CAGW…
I also liked (well, choked on my popcorn) when he allowed as how until we could give him better climate models, the CAGW ones were good enough. Yikes.
Hi Chip, did you not see the reply? I posted a prediction that had already been made and largely came true. Hows that for science?
You also did not understand the argument. It is that predictions are necessary for the conduct of science. I never said that they were good enough, I said the were the only ones that were science.
Hey -whatever happened to Chip Javert?
“I didn’t even know data could be real” ~ Dilbert cartoon
That may be the best comment on “science” seen at this site in a long, long time.
Memo to all climate and psychology journals
There seem to be a lot of people doing science these days who are not really scientists in the true sense.
Louis 2/17/16 @ur momisugly 10:37 pm said,
There seem to be a lot of people doing science these days who are not really scientists in the true sense.
There ARE a lot of such people.
Those adjusting their model to fit the data are doing science. Those adjusting the data to fit their model are doing something between ignorant and unethical, according to the degree they understand science. Among the unethical practices is adjusting the meaning of science to justify the handiwork.
Willis E. is a “real” scientist.
Jeff Glassman and peyelut,
I made the same point here.
dbstealey, 2/19/16 @ur momisugly 9:41 pm, has me confused. He said, Jeff Glassman and peyelut, [¶] I made the same point here.
where here is an off-target link to a comment by seaice1, 2/19/16 @ur momisugly 4:37 pm.
To be specific, peyelut and I shared no common point. If dbstealey is seeking credit for some prior posting, the only post of his preceding one of mine was another irrelevant post of 2/17 @ur momisugly 8:12. That dbstealey post also shared nothing in common with any of my comments at any time.
Jeff,
I was referring to seaice1’s implication that people like Willis aren’t real scientists. Sorry I wasn’t more clear.
seaice1, 2/20/16 @ur momisugly 4:25 am, said
A comment on predictions. There is confusion because the word “prediction” is used to mean predicting the future. In science it is not quite the same. The predictions in science are of the form If…then. IF some set of parameters is as described, THEN there will be this outcome. In many sciences we can set up an experiment and keep other factors constant. In some fields we must use observations instead of experiment. We might say IF there is a huge volcanic eruption THEN there will be cooling. We must then wait for an eruption to test our hypothesis. The prediction is not that there will be cooling in any particular year.
To be precise, scientific models describe experiments. The hypothesis, the if-part, describes the set-up, which may require a triggering observation, like seaice1’s volcano example. The conclusion, the then-part, ALWAYS predicts the resulting measurements. A model is a mapping from existing facts to, not real world outcomes, but future facts, where facts are observations reduced to measurements and compared with standards. Contrary to seaice1’s explanation, existing scientific facts ALWAYS relate to observations. And future facts may indeed be about past events, as in archeology, cosmology, paleontology, and especially climatology — climatology, where Global Average Surface Temperature follows solar activity. GAST follows the Sun with lags commensurate with and longer than IPCC’s projection periods, and where, in the present geological era, GAST regulates atmospheric CO2 concentration, overwhelming human effects.
So making a scientific prediction is NOT necessarily the same as predicting the future. To distinguish these types of prediction the term projection is sometimes used.
seaice1 urges that predictions give way to projections because the process being modeled depends on future events. IPCC explains why it uses projection in place of prediction, and the reasons are different. They boil down to these two claims, each of which happens to be false: (1) the climate is inherently unpredictable, and (2) man, whom the model is designed to influence, is in the loop:
The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long term prediction of future exact climate states is not possible. TAR, Technical Summary, G.2 Climate Processes and Modelling, p. 78.
It is not possible to make deterministic, definitive predictions of how climate will evolve over the next century … . It is not even possible to make projections of the frequency of occurrence of all possible outcomes … . Projections of climate change are uncertain, first because they are dependent primarily on scenarios of future anthropogenic and natural forcings that are uncertain, second because of incomplete understanding and imprecise models of the climate system and finally because of the existence of internal climate variability. The term climate projection tacitly implies these uncertainties and dependencies. AR5, Ch. 12, Long-term Climate Change: Projections, Commitments and Irreversibility, §12.1, Introduction, p. 1034.
IPCC’s reasons are all excuses for the scientific failure of radiative forcing, its chosen paradigm for its models, a paradigm requiring vigorous defense because of its political successes.
A post script to my last, to seaice1, 2/21/16 @ur momisugly 8:27 am:
Science is the objective branch of knowledge. It’s only eyes to the real world are facts — measurements, which are making historical strides with great regularity, from evolutionary microbiology, to remote sensing from space, and on to gravity waves.
Jeff Glassman. Thank you for the response. My point was a simple one, that what I was asking for – i.e. a prediction from the skeptical community, was not necessarily a prediction about what the future climate would be. It could be in the form If..then.
I am not quite clear about what you are saying. You say “A model is a mapping from existing facts to, not real world outcomes, but future facts, where facts are observations reduced to measurements and compared with standards.” Is it not the case that the future facts and real world outcomes are much the same? Using the volcano example, we hypothesise that a big volcano will reduce temperatures. The volcano occurs, and we observe temperatures fall. Are you saying it is not that the temperature drops that supports our hypothesis, it is our measurement of the temperature drop that supports our hypothesis? Whilst this is true, I think it is an unnecessarily precise distinction for the discussion here.
“Contrary to seaice1’s explanation, existing scientific facts ALWAYS relate to observations. ”
OK -maybe I see it. My language was imprecise. My intention was to distinguish between observation of experiments where we can control most of the relevant parameters and observations of “natural” experiments, where we must wait for or look for conjunctions of parameters. Yes, each relates to observation.
Finally, you make assertions about climate. You deny that the climate is inherently unpredictable as defined by “the long term prediction of future exact climate states is not possible.” Which suggests you think prediction of exact climate states is possible. You also say that man is not in the loop, because solar effects are overwhelmingly dominant.
If I have characterised your position here correctly (please correct me if I am wrong), it seems to me that in the context of this discussion, it is reasonable to ask for the predictions your hypothesis has led to. As indicated earlier, there are myriad predictions that the mainstream climate community produces.
seaice1, 2/16/16 @ur momisugly 8:06 am, objecting to Richard Greene’s clever observation @ur momisugly 7:30 am, i.e.,
People on the government dole who play climate computer games in air conditioned offices, and make wrong climate forecasts, may have science degrees, but what they do is not science. [¶] It is climate astrology.
said,
They are making predictions that can be tested. That is science. The predictions are not 100% accurate, but they are orders of magnitude better than anything else I have seen. If you know different, provide the evidence here.
First, considering only what IPCC reports, they don’t make predictions at all; they make projections, just as seaice1 discussed earlier. But this is a distinction without a difference; it’s an out for failed modeling. E.g.,
There is … a continuing awareness that models do not provide a perfect simulation of reality, because resolving all important spatial or time scales remains far beyond current capabilities, and also because the behaviour of such a complex nonlinear system may in general be chaotic. AR4, ¶1.5.1 Model Evolution and Model Hierarchies, p. 113.
However, only digital models exhibit chaos, never the real world. This fact follows from IPCC’s very next paragraph:
It has been known since the work of Lorenz (1963) that even simple models may display intricate behaviour because of their nonlinearities. The inherent nonlinear behaviour of the climate system appears in climate simulations at all time scales. In fact, the study of nonlinear dynamical systems has become important for a wide range of scientific disciplines, and the corresponding mathematical developments are essential to interdisciplinary studies. Simple models of ocean-atmosphere interactions, climate-biosphere interactions or climate-economy interactions may exhibit a similar behaviour, characterised by partial unpredictability, bifurcations and transition to chaos. Citation deleted, bold added, Id.
Each of IPCC’s examples is about the limiting behavior of a model, highlighted in bold. None is characteristic of the portion of the real world being modeled. Confusing a scientific model with its real world object is so pervasive among scientists that it even infects physicists, practitioners of the modern epistemological archetype for the scientific method. Dynamic systems occur in nature, and are the most interesting and most important systems for scientific modeling. They include defense against a threat from space to evolution. Dynamical systems, though, never occur in nature. See Wikipedia > Dynamical systems. Nor do linear or nonlinear systems. See my comment on WUWT 10/22/15 @ur momisugly 2:49 pm here. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/22/is-the-climate-chaotic/#comment-205443
Second, IPCC’s main climate projection (i.e., weasel-worded prediction) is a best estimate catastrophic global average surface warming. The claim is that it will lie between 1.8ºC and 4.0ºC in the 2090s, relative to that between 1980 to 1999, varying according to six different human emission scenarios. AR4 SPM p. 13.
Whether IPCC ever uses the word catastrophic to its main projection is unknown, but IPCC does say this:
Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems. Bold added, AR5 SYR Topic 2, Future Climate Changes, Risk and Impacts, p. 56.
Catastrophe is a fair synonym for IPCC’s clarion alarm.
Regardless, IPCC modeling rests on its Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS), a prediction underlying and essential to its main prediction.
IPCC predicted ECS to be less than 1.5, 2, 3, and 4.5 ºC for a doubling of CO2, with corresponding probabilities of 10%, 17%, 50%, and 83%. Lindzen & Choi (2011), among others, estimated ECS from satellite data. L&C put the value at no more than 0.7 ºC/2xCO2. That value fits IPCC’s estimates with 2.2% confidence, based on a simple linear extrapolation of the logarithm of IPCC’s four values.
IPCC also provides a set of estimates of the ECS probability distribution from 12 sources. AR4, Box 10.2, Figure 2, p. 799. According to those PDFs, the confidence that L&C estimate fits IPCC’s data lies between 0.0000011% and 1.65%, with an average of 0.33%. In other words, with extraordinarily high confidence, specifically between 98.4% and 100%, IPCC’s ECS estimates are not valid, and err on the high side. Consequently, the whole of the AGW conjecture is invalid.
To make matters worse, no one is measuring ECS as it is defined, that is, with temperature (T) observed to lag the increase in CO2. According to physics, in particular Henry’s Law of Solubility, IPCC assumed the causation vector between CO2 and T to be backwards. The Vostok data confirm that error:
[A]tmospheric CO2 follows temperature changes in Antarctica with a lag of some hundreds of years. … the climate changes at the beginning and end of ice ages take several thousand years … .. AR4, FAQ 6.1, p. 112.
All this leads back to the current topic relating to scientific ethics. A model that has not been validated is Feynman’s guess-work. As a predictor, it is objectively connected to nothing. It is astrology. For a scientist to use a scientific model for public policy, when that model has not been validated, is unethical.
I’m surprised these scientists didn’t identify themselves as self-serving pseudo-scientists. What a silly study.
Re: seaice1, 2/22/16 @ur momisugly 6:31 am.
(1) We cannot say a real world event occurs unless we have measurements and thresholds as to what constitutes an event, that is, facts with standards or rules.
(2) Scientific models are not True/False propositions, notwithstanding the Vienna Circle and Wittgenstein, nor Karl Popper with his famous and popular deconstruction, i.e., All ravens are black, cured by falsification clauses. Scientific models are empirical, representing experimental facts; Popper’s model of science is metaphysics.
(3) Volcanoes. Some erupt continuously, so have no special transient and disruptive effect on the climate. Others erupt with varying in start times and duration, but frequently. Eruptions occur roughly 50 to 60 times a year, so on average are not likely to have any effect on climate scales, that is, 30 or more years. These are but another form of regional, not global, events.
(4) Scientific facts include probability distributions. Almost all measurements, and hence almost all facts, have measurement errors. Facts are multidimensional probability clouds, not exact states. If facts were exact states, scientific models might have true or false states. In a model, observations include the existing facts, the predicted facts, and the future, test facts that allow rejecting, refining, or validating the model. This could be seen as a generalization of Heisenberg Uncertainty, or it could be that electrons, for example, are themselves morphable clouds of energy in space, one distribution in orbit and another in free space.
(5) AGW hunting season is open. Science provides one and only one standard for judging the quality of a model: its predictive power. Scientific principles say nothing at all with respect to model fidelity to the real world. So the AGW model, owned today by IPCC, which happens to be based on radiative forcing, cannot be criticized based on its paradigm. But now, occasioned by the failure of its critical prediction, it is fair game.
(6) AGW predicts ECS, and fails. IPCC denies that its model predicts, but one can coax a prediction out of its writings on the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity. Based on IPCC’s ECS estimates, ECS measurements now invalidate AGW with quite high confidence. Therefore, AGW is fair game for scientific criticism and replacement.
(7) Inherent unpredictability. Climate can be modeled as GAST = 11ºC ± 6ºC. At the next level, and until one of the certain catastrophes, such as the next supervolcano eruption or the next collision with an asteroid, the climate will continue as it has been observed over the past five or six cycles, covering 640,000 years. GAST ≅ 14ºC and warming. 5ºC ≤ GAST ≤ 17ºC, ± ~2ºC on each end. In this model, GAST and atmospheric CO2 are sawtooth waveforms, the Vostok pattern, increasing at a fairly repeatable slow rate and decreasing at a rather repeatable, rapid rate, with a period of ~100,000 years, CO2 synchronous but lagging T by roughly one millennium. These examples show that modeling climate is not inherently difficult. What’s tough is predicting climate as it depends on irrelevant parameters; that’s astrology. At the next level of complexity is a heat flow model that repairs the major factual omissions in AGW. Examples of omissions include the following.
(8) Temperature. AGW omits dynamic cloud cover, the dynamic cloud albedo that modulates solar radiation to Earth’s surface. Hence, the AGW model omits the two most powerful feedbacks in climate, one positive with respect to the Sun (the burn-off effect, unwittingly measured by Stott, et al., Do Models Underestimate the Solar Contribution to Recent Climate Change?, J.Clim., v. 16, 12/15/03; and by Tung, et al., Constraining model transient climate response using independent observations of solar-cycle forcing and response, Geoph.Res.Lett., v. 35, L17707, 9/12/08). And the other, negative with respect to surface warming from any cause (mitigating cloud cover dependent on the Clausius-Clapeyron effect and the perpetual presence of an excess of CCNs).
(9) Atmospheric CO2 and temperature. AGW omits the real world phenomenon integrating two major processes, the Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) (AR5 Glossary) and the Solubility pump (id.), which combine to form the largest and slowest global CO2 effect, the physical, temperature-dependent, carbon pump. It is carried on an ocean circulation underlying surface eddies, and 15 times as strong as all the world’s rivers combined, with periods of a few centuries to a millennium. This current emits massive amounts of CO2 at a few deep, cold upwellings, principally at the Equator, where it is subject to intense solar heating. Being warm and depleted in CO2, it is less dense, and returns to the poles over the surface, comprising well-churned, the mixed layer. All along the return path to the poles, it cools by radiation to space, and hence immediately recharges with CO2. It thereby regulates atmospheric CO2, keeping it from accumulating in the air. It swamps human effects by more than an order of magnitude.
(10) Lags and equilibrium. AGW attributes causes to effects without measurements to show the scientific prerequisite that a Cause must precede all of its Effects. AGW models global and local effects with respect to presumed states of equilibrium, including steady state (e.g., model initiation at the start of the Industrial Era (passim); ECS (AR5 Glossary)) and thermodynamic equilibrium (AR5 ¶3.8.2). But no part of Earth’s climate is ever in either steady state or thermodynamic equilibrium. In 1750, at the nominal start of the Industrial Era, CO2 and Temperature were both increasing, causing AGW models to attribute on-going natural processes wrongly to humans.
(11) AGW does not exist. Global Average Surface Temperature is predictable from TSI models with a two lag transfer function to an accuracy at least approximating the accuracy of IPCC’s smoothed surface temperature. http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2010/03/sgw.html . Neither man nor CO2 is in the loop. The challenge in predicting climate translates to the ability to predict solar radiation.