Climate Catch 22: big bucks, big bets and big mess

Another group (Perlwitz, et al) insisted that “some cold events are consistent with the inter-play of on-going global warming and internal variability”. Catch-22.

Want to play the climate game? Make sure you can explain away any meteorological or climatic outcome, even if you have to resort to ad hoc hypotheses. And discourage any attempt to falsify your claims.

CCS symptoms returned while reading the latest article by ARC affiliates, Ailie Galland and Sophie Lewis, also posted at The Conversation.

There are, they confided, “bits of the [climate] puzzle we don’t even realise are missing yet. These are “unknown unknowns”. There are bits of our puzzle at the limits of our reasoning or modelling, so their uncertainties can’t be quantified”.

Yet they went on to suggest probability analysis allegedly “allows “scientists to communicate findings more precisely and transparently”. Or is it merely an exercise in obscurum per obscurius?

Paradoxically, despite noting “that the only scientific certainty is uncertainty”, they were uncomfortable with scepticism because: “at times, these inevitable scientific uncertainties have been framed as synonymous with doubt and used to try to discredit findings.” Catch-22.

Socrates encouraged pursuit of truth by open discussion and free enquiry. In the rarefied world of climate computer games, however, the orthodoxy seems as keen to avoid scrutiny of its alarmist claims as it is to ignore the uncertainty monster - and its offspring - banging on the door.