Yes! This is what I was trying to convey, but I was having a hard time articulating it.

Instead of the process being:

- Observe problem

- Ask "Hmm, how could AGW have caused this?" (easy)

- Find plausible way AGW could have caused it

- Publish, adding another mostly uninteresting dire AGW article to the stack

It would be nice if the process were:

- Observe problem

- Ask "Is it possible something other than AGW caused this?" (harder)

- Find plausible alternative to AGW ("hmm, looks like there's some sort of fungus killing the frogs")

- Publish, leading to further investigations

Obviously some things really are caused by AGW, but I fear it's becoming easy, and indeed popular to attribute problems to AGW, rightfully or not.

This is a false dichotomy and betrays a lack of understanding of the actual work of the scientific community here. The mortality of the fungus and amphibian behavior are both affected by climactic conditions. It is far from “easy” to attribute the epidemic to global warming but careful studies are illustrating how different temperature envelopes and humidity can cause this fungus to thrive in amphibian populations. I suggest you take a few minutes to read this study, it might change your perspective.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1685858/

Actually neither of those scenarios seems right to me. At some point scientists should generate a falsifiable hypothesis and then test to falsify that hypothesis.

You are correct that this step seems to be omitted in much popular writing about science.

This is a sciency-sounding position that actually misrepresents science. Since scientists are not gods, just as with macroeconomics and astrophysics and paleontology, climate science cannot readily “test to falsify a hypothesis.” We are restricted to observing the universe and hoping to come across useful data we can compare and contrast. Thus to imply that the inability to regularly cleanly isolate and test variables in these disciplines is unscientific is itself a disservice to science.

No, that pretty much is the definition of modern (Popperian) science. At least the sort of science that we should require in order to justify rewiring trillion-dollar economies.

Oy vey. Astrophysics is in opposition to Popper's philosophy now, huh? Scientists in these fields falsify theories all the time.

This "astronomy makes no predictions" meme is goofy. Halley got a comet named after him by predicting the year of its return. That was a completely falsifiable hypothesis. If you like something a bit more current, there are plenty of falsifiable hypotheses concerning e.g. neutrino mass that various underground/under-ice detectors will test in the next few years.

Such hypotheses are not inherently impossible for climate science.

(Shrug) Nobody is asking us to shut down air travel and stop eating steak because of an anthropogenic increase in the cosmic microwave background.

Good to know your opinion of the scientific method depends on the political implications of its conclusions.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." - Carl Sagan

"No, extraordinary claims don't require more proof than any others, but extraordinary demands do." - Me