Good science predicts the future. We know enough about biology to know that what we can to do grow more food; and we bet our lives on that...if that science let us down one year, we'd starve in our modern society that depends on optimum agriculture.

We know enough about cars to know that all our cars will start and get us home tonight when we leave work. We aren't afraid as we approach other cars at alarming rates because science guarantees brakes and tires do predictable things.

We know that if we dump lead into rivers the lead gets into fish and human tissue and causes terrible consequences. We can bank on this being true today as well as 1000 years from now. That science is done.

But the science of climate modeling is certainly not done, at least in the minds of most people. Let's face it; we are talking very tiny numbers - .038% CO2, < 0.2 degree temperature deltas. We are asked to believe that while human emissions are small compared to natural ones, that the earth absorbs exactly the amount it emits, and so any tiny perturbation is a disaster. Hogwash.

There was a time where the orbits of the planets were explained by invisible crystal spheres. And they have models too - ones that would even explain the retrogradation of Mars - all of which functioned using the inviolate assumption that Earth was the center of the visible universe. That premise drove the model - which, while far from elegant - was made to work.

Here we are in the same situation. I have to believe that climate researchers have an agenda. People who don't believe in AGW are certainly not going to devote their lives to studying it. And so, we start with one premise - it's all our fault - and work from there. When an objection comes out - say to the magnitude of CO2 and man's contribution to that - out come the curves. Out come the crystal spheres. Out come the graphs showing tiny variations drawn on an offset scale for emphasis. Out comes a vague paper digestable by 'the community' but no one else.

If you truly want people to believe that "the science is done", do some actual physical research. Create a large enclosed simulated atmosphere and show the effect of doubling CO2. Don't slip away saying it's not that simple. Science is all about reduction to experiments that are that comprehensible.

Otherwise, the models are about as believable as those that can model old stock market data but won't make a dime.

-- MattWalsh - 16 Oct 2009