“As things now stand, the advocates representing the establishment climate science story broadcast (usually with color diagrams) the predictions of climate models as if they were the results of experiments – actual evidence. Alongside these multi-colored multi-century model-simulated time series come stories, anecdotes, and photos – such as the iconic stranded polar bear – dramatically illustrating climate change today. On this rhetorical strategy, the models are to be taken on faith, and the stories and photos as evidence of the models’ truth. Policy carrying potential costs in the trillions of dollars ought not to be based on stories and photos confirming faith in models, but rather on precise and replicable testing of the models’ predictions against solid observational data.”

Jason Scott Johnson of the University of Pennsylvania Law School for the Institute for Law and Economics, a Joint Research Center of the Law School with the Wharton School of Economics. Report: http://www.probeinternational.org/UPennCross.pdf [PDF, 399KB]