And it does not make a credibility issue. This is how science works — it is a process that strives to be as accurate as possible, not come up with a static answer and stick to it (that’s what religion does).

The ability for science to change and adapt is what makes it so strong. That is the message that needs to always be driven when discussing science; not throwing hands in the air and saying “why do these scientists keep changing their answers? They obviously don’t know what they’re doing”

If you change your model (hypothesis) to fit the facts, your model is merely descriptive of the evidence that is already available, and useless for prediction - as proven by the act of changing the model. That's how science works.

If you want to cast it in the rigid hypothesis testing language (not a very good description of the actual practice), the description is this:

A physically motivated modification to existing tools lead to unexpected results that are not understood yet. As part of figuring out the cause of the new result they are running a series of smaller experiments to test various hypothesis of what aspects of the modifications matters most for the new results.

In effect, objecting to the practice of turning things off and on again is to object to the very notion of doing experiments, which is not very scientific.

> This is how science works — it is a process that strives to be as accurate as possible, not come up with a static answer and stick to it (that’s what religion does).

That's fine. Many public policy advocates throw around the term 'settled science'. But based on what you said, is there such a thing?

From the article:

Climate models have been doing a fine job projecting warming for a long time. A recent study compared models as old as 1970 with observations made in the decades since. Some models warmed up too much, and some too little, but 14 of 17 past projections turned out to be consistent with the measured path of global average temperatures.

Scientists can not give definite answers in such complex systems, but it is the closest we can get in extrapolating the trajectory that we are on and computing what the effect of various measures is.

I am not sure what else one could base policy on.

Yes, there is. Just because there is no absolute certainty, doesn't mean it's all just baseless speculation. Just because, as a matter of scientific methodology, atomic theory is not absolutely certain (i.e., we could hypothetically find evidence that contradicts the model), doesn't mean someone just made it up and it has no predictive power.

> The ability for science to change and adapt is what makes it so strong

To me this article is them _resisting_ change, looking for a reason NOT to accept it, because it goes against what they previously said. Maybe this is all to early, and in a year or so we will be seeing 4 or 4.5 degree predictions, but this article describes them trying to change their inputs to match previous answers, not getting new answers.

Indeed, even people we nowadays consider brilliant minds of their time, encountered plenty of resistance [0] during these very same times because their proposed ideas just seemed too outrageous.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_rel...

Just imagine they would go public with this "Scientists found climate change is worse than previously thought with updated model" and then weeks later find an error in the changes made to the model "Scientists made mistakes, climate change less severe than previously thought".

What do you think would hurt their credibility more?

They are not throwing away their findings and they are not burying it. They are working to valdiate/invaldiate them, because they are scientists.

We have known the rough level of the climate sensitivity (delta T per doubling CO2) in the current macro state for decades. We have observed it. This science is incredibly settled. We don't know where the tipping elements are and we don't know how the impacts will be distributed.

Questioning the credibility of people calling for action might look like you are being the circumspect and rational one, asking for action proportionate to the evidence. In reality you are endorsing an ignorant position that ignores the evidence we have. If this is not wilful ignorance then please read up on this. The IPCC report summary is a good spot to start. Sceptical Science also often provides good writeups: https://skepticalscience.com/climate-sensitivity.htm

The fundamental physics that drive the sensitivity are straightforward. Energy balance and water vapour. That gets you a ballpark figure that is confirmed by the last 100 years of emissions.

It is a denier talking point to claim that we just don't know enough, or that the models are always being tweaked and we should just wait until scientists have "the final answer" before doing anything.

Hey, let's stop giving NOAA weather forecasts because they aren't 100% accurate. Let's close down the stock market until everyone can decide what the values should be. Let's disband the military because not all military leaders have the same opinion.

If we are mature enough to recognize that imperfect but credible models are worth acting on in other domains, why do we hold climate change to impossible standards?

What you're saying is that you have established a prior that undermines all further evidence presented to you, because it has changed substantially in the past. However, that seems irrational to me.

Given that, how could you possibly advocate for doing nothing?

There are two basic modes of reducing pollution. Technological advancement, and conservation.

In the case of technological advancement, you get less pollution per unit of output as the same or lower cost. As long as capital is fairly cheap, these advances tend to propagate quickly through a competitive market.

In the case of conservation, it’s more a question of which groups of people should conserve (i.e. suffer) for this outcome, and by how much.

I'm seriously wondering why there is any reason to oppose technological progress at all. What can they possibly gain by sticking to the old technology? Who's going to benefit from something so short sighted?

To point out just how wrong your misinterpretation is, the very next sentence has the "why":

> A new research paper co-authored by Zelinka from the Lawrence Livermore National Lab likewise pointed to the role of virtual clouds in determining the results.

The key phrase being "role of virtual clouds." The motivation wasn't to slavishly reproduce results from the literature, and to even suspect that it completely outside the bounds of reasoned discourse. It comes across as if you are trying your hardest to find something to nitpick, some small phrase that you can misinterpret in order to raise doubts in those who aren't paying close attention.

This is exactly how denialists and propagandists behave.

So we actually did an experimental test of the predictions made in 1970, and those predictions turned out to be largely correct.

We should probably halt this experiment on ethical grounds.

If you are unfamiliar with climate sensitivity, this is a good place to start: https://skepticalscience.com/climate-sensitivity.htm

If your model produces wildly different results from previous models, either you hit on some really big discovery or you made a mistake. An ethical scientist will try to rule out the latter possibility before accepting the former.

One pretty general debugging/analysis strategy for a complex model is to deactivate it piece by piece until you get it to a point where it should reproduce a result that you can verify by other, independent means. E.g. tweak the parameters of the model so that reproduces a result that is known analytically. For instance, whenever it is possible in a model, a good sanity check is to set parameters that must lead to e.g. a perfect conservation of certain quantities.

http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm

[0]http://omegataupodcast.net/326-weather-forecasting-at-the-ec...

Sadly the political activists have hijacked the normal scientific process. And this allowed some pseudoscience (with alarming predictions or alarming observations) to mix in too.

In some science news I read that the Arctic Ice-sheet is growing back, and that Envisat showed that the oceans were not rising. So very likely the climate is more complex than some alarmed scientists thought.

I can't ding the climate scientists too much, though... I'm not sure there's a better way to study this stuff.

But I'm only a bit surprised this would be such a controversial opinion here.