Its fate would be sealed by a minimally scientifically literate public

You never know what you are going to find and where your are going to find it. Case-in-point is Conjecture, Hypothesis, Theory, Law: The Basis of Rational Argument by Jeff Glassman. Glassman lays out an excellent summary of the scientific method and the structure of knowledge in an article that addresses in turn String Theory, Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), and Creation Theory/Intelligent Design. Where did I find this admirable science article? In Crossfit Journal, "a fitness, health and lifestyle publication dedicated to the improvement of athletic performance and quality of life."

So many proponents of global warming seek to shame the skeptical public of their unsupported claims through simple shaming and appeals to authority. If you question their models and methodologies, or seek to reconcile their forecasts against the quite different empirical data, then you are a "denier", anti-science, or a kook for bucking the consensus. Glassman, quite properly, will have none of that. Science is a set of models and methodologies and consensus has nothing to do with it.

Let's get the AGW argument out of the way in order to focus on the models Glassman lays out.

Just as intelligent design is a threshold question between nons-cience and conjectures, anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a threshold question between conjectures and hypotheses. AGW is a centurie sold conjecture elevated to an established belief by a little clique of quacks who proclaim themselves the Consensus on Climate, guardians of the vault of exclusive knowledge. Does this sound familiar? Is the Consensus patterned after the Council of Trent? As a matter of science, as opposed to a matter of belief, the AGW conjecture is gathering more contradictory evidence than supporting. The layman can test it and understand its failings by applying just the few principles outlined here.

AGW fails the test because it is proclaimed by a consensus. Science places no value on such a vote. A unanimous opinion, much less a consensus, is insufficient. Science advances one scientist at a time, and we honor their names. It advances one model at a time. When the article gets around to saying “most scientists believe…,” it’s time to go back to the comics section. Science relies instead on models that make factual predictions that are or might be validated.

AGW fails on the first order scientific principles outlined here because it does not fit all the data. The consensus relies on models initialized after the start of the Industrial era, which then try to trace out a future climate. Science demands that a climate model reproduce the climate data first. These models don’t fit the first-, second-, or third-order events that characterize the history of Earth’s climate. They don’t reproduce the Ice Ages, the Glacial epochs, or even the rather recent Little Ice Age. The models don’t even have characteristics similar to these profound events, much less have the timing right. Since the start of the Industrial era, Earth has been warming in recovery from these three events. The consensus initializes its models to be in equilibrium, not warming.

And there’s much, much more.

Anthropogenic Global Warming is a crippled conjecture, doomed just by these principles of science never to advance to a hypothesis. Its fate would be sealed by a minimally scientifically literate public.

The problem is not with the public who maintain a degree of practical skepticism in the face of a frantic raucousness on the part of self-interested parties within the AGW camp whose well-being and livelihood depend on there being a shared sense of panic in the face of data and science.

But that's pretty comprehensive rejection. It is based on an awareness of science as opposed to politics.

Glassman offers two nice summaries. The first is a summary of science principles.

In response, I offer a schema for science that includes the following, and more.

Rational argument must be the zeroth axiom.

Observable evidence must be reduced to measurements—that is, to comparison against a standard.

Scientific facts, the foundation of all model building and testing, are measurements with an established accuracy.

Science is a branch of knowledge, the objective branch, and ultimately public.

The application of science to public policy with unvalidated models is unethical.

A little out of the ordinary as a summary, but a perfectly reasonable explication. From this foundation, Glassman observes:

In common use, scientists speak at once of probability theory and the laws of probability. Scientifically credentialed individuals advance unvalidated models by proclaiming a consensus. It’s an infection like university grade inflation. Nevertheless, here is a guideline that will improve your science literacy, give you a framework for evaluating all variety of supposedly objective or scientific claims, arguments, and models, and hold you in good stead with real scientists.

Science is all about models of the real world, whether natural (basic science) or manmade (applied science, or technology). These models are not discovered in nature, for nature has no numbers, no coordinate systems, no parameters, no equations, no logic, no predictions, neither linearity nor non-linearity, nor many of the other attributes of science. Models are man’s creations, written in the languages of science: natural language, logic, and mathematics. They are built upon the structure of a specified factual domain.

He then goes on to provide a set of definitions which I think are highly useful.

The models are generally appreciated, if not actually graded, in four levels:

1. A conjecture is an incomplete model, or an analogy to another domain. Here are some examples of candidates for the designation:

“Ephedrine enhances fitness.”

“The cosmological red shift is cause by light losing energy as it travels through space.” (This is the “tired light conjecture.”)

“The laws of physics are constant in time and space throughout the universe.” (This one is known in geology as“uniformitarianism.”)

“Species evolve to superior states.”

“A carcinogen to one species will necessarily be carcinogenic to another.”

2. A hypothesis is a model based on all data in its specified domain, with no counterexample, and incorporating a novel prediction yet to be validated by facts. Candidates:

“Mental aging can be delayed by applying the ‘use it or lose it’ dictum.”

“The red shift of light is a Doppler shift.”

3. A theory is a hypothesis with at least one nontrivial validating datum. Candidates:

Relativity.

Big Bang cosmology.

Evolution.

4. A law is a theory that has received validation in all possible ramifications, and to known levels of accuracy. Candidates:

Newtonian mechanics.

Gravity.

Henry’s Law.

The laws of thermodynamics.

I like it: Conjecture, Hypothesis, Theory, and Law.

What leads to the ultimate condemnation of AGW with which I opened the post is that the climate models do not use all the data sets, they are incomplete in terms of known variables (see How Reliable are the Climate Models by Mike Jonas for a contemporary description of the problem Glassman was seeing in 2007), and the models predicting catastrophe do not reconcile with empirical data, and cannot backcast (when the models are set to start at a given date in history, they fail to forecast climatic events that are known to have occurred).

Thus the inclination to see AGW as simply an attempt by self-interested parties to create a "crisis" where none exists (or not for the reasons they are advancing) followed with a coordinated effort to suppress anyone pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.

Obviously the failure of AGW as a modelling issue does not obviate the need for prudent conservation. It just means we have to be smarter about the issue and more disciplined about dispensing with noise in the system (which is what weak models that fail to forecast usefully accurate scenarios are.)